“Elden Ring”, a video game as harsh as it is sublime – Le Monde

“Everything that is capable of exciting the ideas of pain and danger, everything that is in some way terrible, is a source of the sublime, that is to say, capable of arousing the strongest emotion that the soul can to feel “wrote the Irish thinker Edmund Burke when developing his theory of the sublime in the 18^and century. This overwhelming beauty, which imposes itself and threatens to destroy us utterly, also characterizes the achievements of FromSoftware.

With his series Dark Souls, the studio has crafted a harsh and ruthless game philosophy where repeated deaths form the heart of an experience that intoxicates us with playful loops, disembodied atmospheres and tortuous medieval-inspired architectures. The souls as well as their Victorian cousins ​​(Bloodborne) or samurai (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice) have striven to work with the same model. With an unexpected success that took their influence far beyond insider circles, these action role-playing games are among the most revered of the past decade.

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In this extension appears Elden Ringthe fruit of six years of work and a prestigious collaboration with the writer George RR Martin (The iron Throne) which laid the fictional foundations of the Underworld, the massive world of gaming. cloisters and its cycloidal cathedrals to finally measure up to open-world video games, the Holy Grail of adventure games.

A range of freedoms

By coming out on the Nécrolimbe, the wooded and mountainous region where Elden Ring, we are beset by an abundance of possibilities. The familiarity of Skyrim reminds us as we unearth remote caverns, then that ofAssassin’s Creed when we hide in the thickets to surprise a procession of soldiers, or even that of The Witcher when picking and collecting invite us to concoct many tools.

Here, no quest log or quantified objectives, and a summary map for the only luxury

If these borrowings from the tenors of the genre seem agreed, FromSoftware does not however betray its credo: here, no quest log or quantified objectives, and a summary map for the only luxury. Faithful to its depopulated universes, the Japanese studio opts for a refined version of the open world which is close, in less radical, to Breath of the Wild. Rather than reinventing the genre, FromSoftware adapts these proven principles to its own method.

Elden Ring thus pushes the formula of souls at its peak: the plethora of character classes, the panoply of swords, armor, spells and incantations, the multiplayer games (cooperative or competitive) or the system of mutual aid messages are transcended by size of the world. Despite an inevitable repetitiveness of the situations, the profusion of adventures that we cross while traveling through these regions, for the most part optional, enriches the FromSoftware palette. This increased balance between challenges and choices responds in an exciting way to the debates over difficulty modes that have often animated players about these titles.

world in ruins

With the open world, FromSoftware also finds a lively, timid but unprecedented breath for the studio. Wild animals frolic, the decor sees the passage of days and nights as well as that of the elements. Under the effect of the gusts, even the trees seem animated. And yet, Underland remains a continent of bleak regions, submerged villages, and roads strewn with remains, a world after calamity. It could be a distorted echo ofOcarina of Timethe Nintendo classic released in 1998 where you similarly traveled on horseback through a vast kingdom that had fallen into disrepair.

We explore stunning dungeons, among the most sophisticated ever imagined by the studio

The distant model of Zelda allows FromSoftware to embrace large areas while maintaining its formidable reputation as a builder of enclosed levels. Each of the regions ofElden Ring is crowned by a castle where resides a demi-god that we will have to slay in order to obtain a fragment of the Circle of Elden. By pushing the door of these castles, we explore stunning dungeons, among the most sophisticated ever imagined by the studio. The call of the void and adventures in the four directions is followed by a return to labyrinths.

Beyond this spatial dichotomy, Elden Ring sends us back to the evanescent poetry of Fumito Ueda’s games, to the fortresses riddled withICOsto the desolate high plateau of Shadow of the Colossus and its masses of stone and flesh that wander among the ruins. No coincidence, since Hidetaka Miyazaki, the president and chief designer of FromSoftware, entered the industry twenty years ago after being seized by the beauty of these games.

The twilight of the Gods

With its panoramas à la Caspar David Friedrich, Elden Ring spins a melancholy of strongly romantic inspiration. The promontories from which we peer into the improbable perspectives of the Underworld tower over wave-battered cliffs, jagged mountains, while in the distance a castle beckons us, with at its feet, no doubt, ever more poisoned caves. , cursed hamlets or enchanted groves. Each castle hides another; there is always higher and always lower, this row ad nauseam of fantastic sites drawing the history of a perverted golden age. If the royal academy of Raya Lucaria resembles so much the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein, it is because the citadel has also known the twilight of the gods.

In this teetering world, chimeras and dragons wait, lurking in their lairs, behind stone doors, for the player to come and free them from their locks of hatred. FromSoftware draws from a vast catalog of abominations and rabid carcasses imagined over the years. For who decides to embrace this nightmare, Elden Ring offers inexhaustible prodigies: colossi awakened by fire rising on a ruined wall, living mausoleums like pachyderms, underground rivers leading to intraterrestrial cities, a tree of gold and life enthroned in the center of the world . And then two giant fingers, flayed, whose oracles are consulted. So many terrible and fascinating visions of a sublime elsewhere.

Pixel’s review

We liked:

• a spellbinding and airy open-world experience;

• mind-boggling dungeons, in the great tradition of FromSoftware;

• an unusual sense of mystery, snippets of stories and epiphanies;

• a game that is not afraid of delusions of grandeur.

We liked less:

• a few sequences declined over time in the open world;

• bosses that are sometimes too tough as well as a number of enemies who allow themselves to be killed in one shot.

It’s more for you if:

• you have the soul of a romantic contemplating a sea of ​​clouds from the top of a rocky outcrop;

• you want to immerse yourself for long weeks in an intense atmosphere that will occupy your thoughts day and night;

• you want to get to know the enfant terrible, desperate and masochistic, ofOcarina of Time and of Shadow of the Colossus.

It’s not for you if:

• you don’t like FromSoftware’s unkind games or have spent enough time in their dark fantasy worlds;

• you appreciate Game Of Thrones for his political intrigues and his sense of dialogue (the mark of George RR Martin remains very discreet here);

• you like video games that take you by the hand more than the excitement of extreme feelings;

• your benchmark for open world and dark fantasy, it’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Pixel’s note:

5 Great Runes out of 5that is an Elden circle.

Victor Moisan