...

ELDEN RING: SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE

nothing exists in the lands between without accounting for the player. every enemy's trained all their life to defeat self-proclaimed Souls Vets, clearly at the expense of their shitty kingdoms. everyone from the biggest bosses to the lowliest jobbers have been waiting for this moment: the one where you think you should roll, but ACTUALLY you shouldn't. everything exists more as reflection of from's relationship with the audience than an entity within an ostensible place or time. if folks were half as serious about lore as the funereal affect in their explanation videos suggested they'd stop talking about shit they read on a sword and start pondering the prevalence of these 4th wall ruptures, cos the inhabitants here clearly report directly to Shinjuku Front Tower

its escalation's self conscious, its default mode's Prank Fuck, and its arms race aspirations are the purest evidence that fromsoft's identity's morphed into a bandai namco marketing slogan, but man I enjoyed it anyway

call it bad praxis but we're never getting demon's souls back so I'm gonna keep playing the dumb ass cbt rhythm games if they keep putting stuff like the friendly flame, impaler, and goop horse in there and let me poke around bizarre geographies that screw and coil inward and downward and betweenward for a couple dozen hours. running a bit low on freak masks and cool scythes but I'll live; the microdungeon with the forge was sick, the world design's better than it's been since bloodborne, and they only threw in three prolapsed tree spirits instead of fifty so whatever man. they're learning

keep em coming. one of the best dark souls 3s yet