I’m not saying that a potential Elden Ring 2 needs its own version of Ultrahand or Fuse that would feel derivative. In turn, it also makes me want to see the developers of other lauded games do the same. ![]() Nintendo didn’t play it safe with Breath of the Wild, even though it still could have sold millions of copies doing so, and that’s very commendable. It’s a formula that’s worked wonders in immersive sims, and applying it to an open-world action-adventure game has also worked wonders. Instead, Nintendo used Breath of the Wild similarities to, as Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi puts it, “create new gameplay.” That meant deepening the ways players interact with the world, whether by fusing any of the items they pick up or building an Ultrahand contraption that the game didn’t tell you about to solve a puzzle. At first glance, the fact that Tears of the Kingdom shares many visual assets and even some map design with Breath of the Wild may seem unambitious and disappointing. ![]() The result was one of the best games of all time and warranted a sequel, but Nintendo didn’t want to do more of the same. Similarly to Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild was a revelation compared to many of the Zelda games that came before it, eschewing series conventions to try something new. FromSoftware could undoubtedly find success that way, and that version of Elden Ring 2 could still be quite good, but a game as important as Elden Ring deserves the same sequel treatment that Nintendo gave Breath of the Wild. And the easiest way to capitalize on that would be to pump out sequels quickly that refine the core formula but don’t do that much that’s new. ![]() Elden Ring could still feel unapproachable at times, but there’s no denying that this is a brilliant evolution of a formula that the Dark Souls series had pushed to the limits.īecause Elden Ring was such a success, there’s a demand for more. It was a massive jump from Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, taking FromSoftware’s proven Souls formula and unleashing it on a Breath of the Wild-like open world. I’m not the biggest fan of Elden Ring, but I still recognize how monumental of a release it was for the game industry. And if that opportunity for an Elden Ring sequel does come to fruition, I hope that FromSoftware is as boldly ambitious with Elden Ring 2’s design as Nintendo was with Tears of the Kingdom.
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