Random: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Devs "Too Occupied" To Play Elden Ring

I still need to try Elden Ring myself. Open world games are a little daunting, but the zelda team does it perfectly so I've never had an issue.

The depths reminds me of how dark, Dark Souls 2, was supposed to be, where the torches in the world suggested originally you would have to light your way through the darkness, a feature absent in the final release.

Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring between them are both outstanding open worlds, though I put Elden Ring on hold as didn't run great on my base PS4.

The funny thing is Elden Ring actually prepared me for Tears of the Kingdom. The insane difficulty, lack of direction, and general figure-it-out-yourself mentality of Elden Ring made Tears so much more accessible. I knew the game wouldn’t hold my hand and that set my expectations realistically. Back when Breath of the Wild came out, I was totally unprepared for the new format, but this time I was ready.

Two phenomenal games.

@NintendoByNature If you find it too overwhelming it might be easier to start with one of the Souls games. None of them are open world so it makes it easier to find where you need to go without any guidance.
If you have a PS3 or PS5 I suggest you to start to Demon's Souls. It's shorter, divided in levels and generally easier than the other games. It's perfect to dip your feet in the water without being put off by the difficulty of the series.

@NintendoByNature I highly recommend it. It was my first Souls game, and while the reputation of their difficulty can be a bit daunting, it gives you the freedom to approach the game how you want, while also being fantastically designed.

I never enjoyed a game I dislike most of as much as Elden Ring... The first half of it is a 10/10 experience, absolute peak world design with fairly engaging exploration, good bosses and a good variety of combat options.

And then everything past Leyndell kicks in and it becomes an absolute chore to play with a few cool locales sprinkled in here and there. I beat the final boss and told myself I'd never, in a million years touch that POS game again and just treasure my first fifty or so hours of gameplay out of..80 or 90, I believe.

The best "worst" game I've ever played.

Game developer: "I don’t have time to waste playing games!"

Well, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are inspired by several games
that aren't The Legend of Zelda so I don't know if they're being honest about not using ideas from other games.

Nintendo innovates, the industry imitates.

Rarely ever does Nintendo copy ideas from other games. There may be a few cases but it's far and few between.

I oughta revisit Elden Ring. I made it a fair ways into the game, and then stopped playing for a couple months. When I came back to it, I was standing in a field with a bunch of giant crawfish, with no clue as to where I was going or what I was supposed to be doing. I might just start a new playthrough at this point haha.

I've never played a Souls game but I've always assumed I wouldn't like them. And now you're telling me that my least favourite part of TotK reminds people of those games? I guess I'm now less likely to play a Souls game.

@Pat_trick I have played dark souls and wasn't all that into it if I'm being honest. I loved the world, but getting my rear kicked non stop quickly wore me out. I've heard elden ring is a little easier to get into though.
@Pho good deal. As soon as it hits a sale, I'll be buying it on xbox.

Both games are among the best ever. Loved both and could easily be among my top 5-7 all-time.
If one thing works in a game, there is nothing wrong to admit being "inspired" by it and even applying some similar features of it in your game to make it better.

Well, to say they're too busy to play other games from which to get inspiration from is actually a blatant lie haha: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/06/zelda_breath_of_the_wild_sequel_inspired_by_red_dead_redemption_2_says_aonuma

Elden Ring is a fantastic game, but it's so different in many ways to Tears of the Kingdom. ER is much more combat focused. A lot of the game is overcoming daunting bosses and hordes of enemies. There is combat in Tears, but much more of the game is about puzzle solving and using creative intuition to overcome challenges.

Both are amazing games, but I don't think playing one will prepare you for the other, or vice versa.

I'm not sure how I feel about Aunomas statement, there is clear Souls influence in botw and totk and there is nothing wrong with that. Totk basically lifted the DS curse system and it's better for having it.

I guess the Shiekah and Skyview Towers aren't based on the towers in Far Cry after all...right?

I did not like Elden Ring. No no no. The Depths are cool though.

Not only that, but the game was basically done by the time Elden Ring released.

Plus, the two interviewees were speaking for themselves and said it is possible the team did play other games so I love that NL is going with this...

@NintendoByNature Do you have Game Pass? You can try Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. They say that it's similar with shared developers and all but I haven't played it yet.

@Banjo- i actually played wo long and loved what it offered. But I couldn't beat phase 2 of the first boss 🤣. I've read they've since patched the first boss and made it easier but I haven't had a chance to get back since. It's a beautiful looking game though.

@OldManHermit

"I was standing in a field with a bunch of giant crawfish, with no clue as to where I was going or what I was supposed to be doing."

That's how I feel playing Elden Ring even when I don't take a break.

Lol uh huh suuure.

I'll be honest - it was a dumb question. Everyone knows Ring took some inspiration from BotW - and everyone also knows that TotK is simply building off of Breath.

@bahooney RDR 2 came out in 2018. Elden Ring came out during crunch.

I kind of wish they had taken the time to play it to be inspired. Elden Ring had actual dungeons that kind of scratched that classic Zelda itch unexpectedly for me. I like the new Zeldas fine but I do miss the original style games.

this is such an empty statement. Everyone has free time, it's just a matter of making time to do what you like.

While not a bad thing that developers take cues from other games(Nintendo's games have inspired other developers and vice versa), I believe this. TotK was delayed a whole year just for polish last year and ER released last year as well.

I 100%ed Elden Ring, but really there is no substantive comparison. I know this will hurt the fanboys' feelings but Elden Ring brought nothing new to the Souls formula other than making a large open world, also it didn't even bring anything new to the open world genre. It is one of the most 'dead' open worlds with pretty much nothing going on other than being connective tissue to link the legacy dungeons and a handful of quests.
Even the closest thing you could say was that both games have 'secret' underground sections but the truth is those areas in Elden Ring aren't that expansive and are segmented from each other. They barely are related to the surface area and have a broken space issue similar to Dark Souls 2 map issues, unlike Zeldas that are directly related and it isn't faked.
Like the article says they were developed at the same time so for the Zelda team to have implemented that idea based on Elden Ring would mean the Zelda team developed a huge segment of TOTK's game area and the story and themes throughout the whole world in 1 year.
It's really silly to even think this could be true.

The Depths seemed very in keeping with Zelda game design to me.

Having some sort of shadow/dark/mirror/parallel version of the main world could almost be considered a series staple. Even OoT’s pre-Ganon/post-Ganon Hyrule is just a temporal take on the same concept.

With that in mind, the Depths seems like a very natural (albeit ambitious) extension of the BotW template.

@Cashews

"Everyone knows Ring took some inspiration from BotW"

this is what i was thinking.

@McBurn

"Everyone has free time"
yeah, but im a cabinet maker. when i get home after a 9+hr day, i dont start building cabinets in my free time.*

OTOH i think they could have said "we didn't play that game," and left it at that. 🤔

*EDIT - ...but i do sometimes sit on the couch and watch woodworking related videos 🤔🤔😂

Yeah, I don't believe that they did not take any inspiration from Elden Ring. They also act like they invented the design behind modern open world, when there were very distinct inspirations taken from Ubisoft games for botw, such as the sheikah towers, which they reused again in totk. Another thing they borrow is just the sheer grindy-ness that other open world games have, whether it's the long walks to the points of interest, the amount of farming that you have to do for upgrades, or the complete lack of enemy variety in the first game that makes it feel like fighting is a grind in itself. Under thorough examination, the only innovations that botw brought to the table were quite frankly the slate powers. TotK's main gimmick has been pointed out by many to have taken heavy inspiration from Nuts and Bolts.

@Dom_31 Most of my favorite parts are in the latter half, I have no idea what you're on about. What was the chore you speak of?

I wish they would play Elden Ring and take as much inspiration as possible before working on the next game. They need way more enemy variety and intense combat. Otherwise they're equals in terms of fun, but I play for exploration AND a rewarding experience and ER has the latter in absolute spades.

They were too busy playing genshin impact.

@SpaceboyScreams I had lengthy opinions posted in the Elden Ring forums of this website. Bear in mind that I 100%ed the game which required multiple playthroughs and doing pretty much every little thing in the game, finishing off at around 150hrs on Steam.

I agree with the previous person's sentiment. Elden Ring becomes a chore after the first 30 hours because enemies are re-used at every single opportunity, boss fights underground are often copy/pasted above ground as standard enemies, there is no thought or purpose as to why those enemies are in the locations they're in which feels very cheap and consistently took me out of the world.

There's also the issue that the gameplay loop is exactly the same as any Dark Souls game except this time it felt too spread apart and as a whole way less exciting. Dark Souls is one of my favourite games, I also love Bloodborne as you can tell by my icon, but Elden Ring felt like many hours of meandering separated by some highlights between rather than one strong cohesive experience.

A lot of bosses this time around felt cheap and were constructed for certain types of builds, a lot of multiple enemy bosses (which was by the way a massive criticism in DS2 at the time of its release), a lot of bosses with inexplicably high amounts of damage with no reward, very awful balance in most parts of the game where even if you play everything in its intended order you still end up being overlevelled. A lot of bosses felt like they under-rewarded, a lot of bosses felt the opposite. A lot of damage debuffs on bosses like poison and don't get me started on Malenia. The bosses should be some of the most exciting parts of Dark Souls games, in Elden Ring outside of a couple notable outliers the bosses were severely underwhelming.

Overall 100 hours into my 100% I felt completely worn down, it was boring just running around slicing the same enemies until I eventually hit the finish line. I feel like TOTK is the complete inverse of that. Yes, the combat mechanics are better in Elden Ring but they were ripped straight out of Dark Souls 3 down to the animations, not to mention expanded upon from 6 previous Souls games made by the same team. In TOTK even if I am not fighting something big and exciting, I still felt like I had a ton of things to do in the game. The sheer amount of diverse content in Zelda trumps that of Elden Ring, I think I'd even say that Breath of the Wild was more engaging for me than Elden Ring was. I played around the same amount of all three of these games although I have yet to finish TOTK.

This is, of course, my opinion. I'm also likely forgetting a lot of criticisms I had because I played through the game over a year ago, but that's the short version of my feelings on ER. I really felt like it was a major step back from games like DS and Bloodborne.

Is the gameplay of the depths similar to Elden Ring? If so, Ill buy Elden Ring right now, since the depths was some of the most novel and interesting gameplay Ive seen in a long time, and the best part for me

@SpaceboyScreams almost none of the later bosses follow the same rules your character does which is just awful game design. They feel like they were supposed to be used in a completely different game and it just...wasn't very fun for the most part.

Besides that, @Varkster actually managed to describe some of my biggest gripes very well, too.

@spottedleaf Nah, Elden Ring's underground just shared a similar "oh, what?" moment of discovering that the ground level of the standard game isn't the entire map, but this is also true in many games even in the Zelda franchise dating back to Link to the Past with the dark world mechanic and countless FF games which have a second and third map.

I only played about 10 hours. I didn't have a way to play it portably, and the PS5 is pretty monopolized by the kids...I'll get around to it some day.

@Varkster Ah, its a bummer that it was only a superficial comparison, but thanks for the answer. Yeah, my thought exactly was "this is sorta the dark word for this format of game"

@bahooney I was looking for someone to bring this up!

@spottedleaf I'm curious: what made the depths your favorite part? What was it that was novel and interesting?

@-wc-: Sure I agree with you but you said it yourself. They didn't phrase it like that. Not that it should matter to us what they do in their free time, but they DO have some and are certainly not "too occupied" xD

I doubt they lifted anything from Elden Ring specifically, but you can see hints of inspiration from Souls games in general throughout Botw/Totk. But that's just the evolution of open world games in general, everything influences everything else to a degree. Nintendo still did their own thing as much as FromSoft does theirs.

I wish they would consider taking the healing system from another game or hell, even from past Zelda games - the current pause-to-fully-heal every time I'm hit mechanic in these last 2 games is kinda awful for game balance and challenge

As we all know, Red Dead Redemption 2 stole the attention of the devs, but it didn't really affect the overall gameplay of Tears of the Kingdom, save for maybe carriages.

After skyward sword/twilight, i played 1000s hours of dark souls and thought if only zelda was more like this. Then botw, after 1000 hours, I thought if only dark souls was like this. Then eldin ring. Except I only played about 50 hours of that because it just got grindy and didn’t feel like it was a big step in open worlds. Now I’ve played like 75 hour of totk, and can only think that no game will ever come close to matching this, well, until Nintendo makes botw3 and adds multiplayer to this.

Yeah, it's obvious these two games are very different. I really don't see notable similarities between them.

That's unfortunate, they are two entirely different games but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't experience what the other notable action adventure game has to offer.

Seems like they're passing up ideas that could further the state of the game.

Seems to me like they are getting a bit big-headed after their BotW success, as with that game they openly admitted being influenced by other games. Now suddenly they never take any inspiration whatsoever?