Looking Outwards 1

A computational project that had inspired me before my time at CMU is the game Elden Ring, developed by FromSoftware. When I first got my hands on it, I had already seen the trailer, so I expected to be greeted with incredible graphics and exciting gameplay. However, seeing a game in a trailer and playing it yourself are entirely different experiences, so much so that I was already enthralled by what I was greeted with in the tutorial. Though this initial gameplay only involved my character needed to learn the basics of controlling movement and combat, the exquisite quality of every single frame combined with the already progressing story hooked me. In a trance and completely immersed, I thought I was already playing the game before I realized that it was only the tutorial and that I needed to emerge out of the cave and go into the first leveling area of the game called Limgrave. The game knows that it is beautiful. The way that Limgrave is revealed to the player is classic: the cave’s gate is opened out into a lush, hilly environment scattered with shimmering, golden trees and tall grass, amongst them roaming animals such as fluffy, tumbling sheep and brown eagles. Dominating the landscape was an enormous golden tree that resembled Yggdrasil, whose reason for existence seemed to mimic the sun in our world; endless rays of lights were beaming off of its crown, with its leaves of shimmering yellow raining onto the face of the world. In the background, I could spot hints of the medieval-looking architectural ruins of an ancient church. After I admired the environment by walking around or gazing into the distance, I knew that the church was where I needed to go. Thus my 100-hour journey to defeat the game had started. The game was directed Hidetaka Miyazaki with worldbuilding provided by the fantasy writer George R. R. Martin. To me, this is a superteam, as Hidetaka Miyazaki was heavily inspired by the artistic style of the Berserk manga, which is one of the greatest manga ever written, and George R. R. Martin is the great mind behind the Game of Thrones books. To my knowledge, Elden Ring was made in Unreal Engine, with its terrain being sculpted inside the program. The project’s creators, since they were working with FromSoftware, needed to take heed to the past works from the video game development company, notably, the Dark Souls franchise. The artistic style of both Dark Souls and Elden Ring clearly are of the same vein, and the style of gameplay in both games involve leveling your character by beating bosses. The project points toward more games of the same fashion. The gaming community speculates a sequel game to Elden Ring coming in a few years.