The game, which „returned” on this year’s E3, allows its areas to be approached in different ways.

„One of our big themes for the development of this new world was that, because of the grandeur and sense of the scale of it, we didn’t want players to get lost and not have any clue of what to do or where to go. So there is an element of guidance, particularly at the beginning. There is a mainline route that they can follow, but at any time they’re free to break off this route and to take the untrodden path.

We wanted to focus on a design that caters to that high level of freedom, that free order of progression throughout the world – which order you choose to tackle the different areas, the different bosses, and how you approach each of them as well. You may get sent to a couple of areas against your will, but there’s a lot of ways that you can explore and approach these different situations,” Hidetaka Miyazaki, the head of FromSoftware (as well as the director of Elden Ring) told IGN in an interview.

Miyazaki also revealed that the stamina bar is back in the game with fewer limitations and that they allow more combinations between weapons and skills (unlike in Dark Souls III where Weapon Arts were tied to weapons): „Yes, the stamina bar exists in Elden Ring, but we feel it has less influence on the player overall. We wanted to make it feel less restrictive and contribute to that level of freedom more so than our previous titles.

You’re free to combine your different skills with different weapons. You’re free to build your character with different weapons and equipment. You’re free to learn magic as well. We think the build customization is going to be even richer and even more varied than before,” Miyazaki added.

He also praised Martin’s involvement in creating the lore for the world, which meant he has done things that the studio couldn’t: „And I think as far as some of its characteristics go, we focused on bringing something with just an enormous sense of scale and this broadness and openness to The Lands Between, the world that you’ll explore. As part of creating this vast world, we wanted to bring on involvement from George R.R. Martin, and he brought things to the table that we couldn’t have done by ourselves, in terms of that rich storytelling and that sense of character and drama. So we appreciate his involvement as well.”

Elden Ring will launch on January 21 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: WCCFTech