Newer gaming releases tend to have some teething issues to work through as bugs and errors that may not have been apparent in a testing environment rear their heads. The wide variety of player hardware often lends itself to discovering newer issues too. Where there may be some platforms that don’t suffer in the same way, such as mobile as games for online players, like games of chance, which tend to be less demanding run smoothly, AAA titles have to contend with multiple platforms and this wide variety of hardware. FromSoftware’s latest title, Elden Ring, has had a few ups and downs, but the mixed to mostly positive reviews has shown the games success.
The developer behind the popular Souls series of games looked to push the boat out very much with Elden Ring with a well-developed story and a push to a fully open world style of game, and a deviation from the linear path chosen for all previous titles which set players on a very strict progression path with not much room for deviation. Some issues were discovered during the initial network test by those who had managed to get their hands on the game early, notably stuttering issues and FPS drops. The full release saw these issues seemingly worse on some hardware configurations, so much so that a large number of players weren’t even able to open the game.
A day-one patch had promised to fix these issues, and for a large number of players it did seem to have an impact, which is why many players would then go to change their initial reviews—taking the current Steam ratings from mixed to mostly positive in a few short days. That isn’t to say all problems have been rectified as there are some who are still experiencing similar problems. Future patches will surely resolve these issues but they’re also part and parcel with the larger scale releases that come with the latest AAA titles.
Either way, the game has been a huge success and, despite being a very early release in the year, it has already been suggested for the award of Game of the Year, and given player feedback it will almost certainly get it too, given how anticipated it had been. It may also show a changing direction for future Souls games that may look to continue expanding on a fully open and explorable landscape.
Image Credits: Anton Porsche
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