FromSoftware

Miyazaki sized the world to the fantasy of a sense of adventure. Miyazaki wanted players to hop on a horse and freely explore a continent of boss monsters, secret dungeons and towering mountains. He calls Elden Ring close to the dream game he has chased since Demon's Souls.

The Lands Between dwarfs the twisty, interconnected worlds of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and keeps growing as you play, such as a forest elevator that drops to an underground city. Quote: "the open world enriches this ideal experience I'm trying to achieve."

Almost nothing is mandatory, so every playthrough differs. The game has over 150 bosses and only 12 must be beaten to see the credits; entering Leyndell needs just two of five Great Runes. On Steam, 50% of players reached Leyndell, 43% beat Rykard and 38% beat Mohg.

Hidden routes and quests skip bosses: a path around Godrick, a route to the Altus Plateau without the lift, Fia's quest past the Draconic Tree Sentinel, and Ranni's and Varré's quests opening Radahn and Mohg early.

Exploration runs on curiosity, with light guidance players can ignore. There are no map question marks, climbable towers or quest logs; players scan the horizon for landmarks and accept that much content gets missed. Regions chain one to the next, each with a legacy dungeon and a boss.

NPC hints, framed vistas like the first view of Raya Lucaria, and golden guidance lines at some sites of grace keep players from feeling lost. Miyazaki says the guidance is for players stressed by open design, and ignoring it should feel like a choice.

Static enemy levels clash with free exploration. Each area has a fixed difficulty: wander into Caelid early and basic enemies hit like a freight train, but explore too much and bosses become trivial. The game never shows enemy levels, so players guess.

FromSoftware had tried adaptive systems before, such as world tendency in Demon's Souls, Insight in Bloodborne and enemies that stop spawning in Dark Souls 2, but left Elden Ring's balancing static. The soft gating does add menace and gives players bosses to mark and return to.

When exploration changes, rethink the systems built for the old structure. From added a map, a horse, a jump button and infinite out-of-combat stamina for the open world, but kept the old linear-game enemy balancing.

Quote: "Elden Ring has doggedly stuck to the same-old Soulsborne formula - despite completely changing the way you explore its world."

Reused templates turn discoveries into predictable content. Catacombs, mining tunnels and ruins with secret basements repeat with small twists; every mage's tower has a memory stone and every church a sacred tear. The Godskin Apostle is fought four times, once as a mandatory boss.

Earlier Souls games also reused content, and Elden Ring has better loot and enemy variety than almost any game its size, but spotting the pattern breaks the sense of mystery.

The second half narrows into a linear queue of bosses. Mountaintops of the Giants has half as many sites of grace as Liurnia because it has fewer landmarks, and Leyndell is only about the halfway point. The end runs Fire Giant, Farum Azula, Maliketh, then Gideon, Godfrey, Radagon and the Elden Beast.

The one big late secret is the Consecrated Snowfields. Mark Brown reads the funnel as a sign the ambition outgrew development: half open world, half "just Dark Souls".

Breath of the Wild and Hollow Knight adapt enemies to player progress. Breath of the Wild adds stronger enemies after a number of kills, and Hollow Knight turns the Forgotten Crossroads into the harder Infected Crossroads; Skyrim and Assassin's Creed scale enemies with player power.

FromSoftware drew on Tenchu for Sekiro's stealth. The studio used the Tenchu series as inspiration for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which features stealth elements, and had planned a new Tenchu game.

Difficulty is the delivery mechanism for a sense of accomplishment. Miyazaki pursues "a sense of accomplishment by overcoming tremendous odds". Weak-feeling players, deadly traps and screen-sized boss health bars make every kill, shortcut and boss win feel big.

Remove the challenge and each of those moments shrinks. Without the constant fear of death, Dark Souls isn't really Dark Souls.

Tough enemies force players to learn the combat system deeply. Because even the weakest enemies can topple a careless player, people learn parries, backstabs, stamina management and i-frame dodges. Traps reward players who learn the layout.

A plain difficulty switch would fundamentally alter the game. Lowering Dark Souls' difficulty is compared to letting Resident Evil 4 players move while aiming or save anywhere: restrictions chosen to produce the intended experience.

A menu at the start also asks players to choose with no context, so some pick easy when they could handle more.

Hide difficulty valves inside the game so players feel clever finding them. Players can switch to ranged spell builds by reassigning souls to attributes, read messages warning of traps, summon friends or strangers for bosses, skip optional bosses, grind, or cheese bosses using level geometry and odd AI.

Players are rewarded for truthful messages, and unspoken rules push discussion online and in person. Bloodborne's Insight lets players raise or lower challenge. "Dark Souls makes you suffer, but you never need to suffer alone."

If you add an easy mode, bury it so the first run stays intact. Mark Brown's conclusion: more Estus flasks or shorter boss health bars would not end the world, but make it a cheat code or bury it in settings.

Quote: "do whatever it takes to make sure players don't miss the point."

Spelunky weaves difficulty choice into rewards instead of a menu. Shortcut tunnels give new players a head start, but full runs pay off in items and unlock the City of Gold and the final world.

Derek Yu says these guide players toward "my vision of how it's meant to be played". Fire Emblem Awakening and Darkest Dungeon offer softer modes while making clear they aren't the intended way to play.