DLC

Shadow of the Erdtree has ground me into dust, which is why I recommend it

Dark Souls, difficulty, DLC, elden ring, FromSoftware, gaming, shadow of the erdtree, souls-like / Mike M. / June 19, 2024

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC —

Souls fans seeking real challenge should love it. Casuals like me might wait.

Kevin Purdy – Jun 18, 2024 2: 01 pm UTC

Image of a fight from Shadow of the Erdtree — Bandai

Elden Ring was my first leap into FromSoftware titles (and Dark-Souls-like games generally), and I fell in deep. Over more than 200 hours, I ate up the cryptic lore, learned lots of timings, and came to appreciate the feeling of achievement through perseverance.

Months ago, in preparation for Elden Ring’s expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree (also on PlayStation and Xbox, arriving June 21), I ditched the save file with which I had beaten the game and started over. I wanted to try out big swords and magic casting. I wanted to try a few new side quests. And I wanted to have a fresh experience with the game before Shadow arrived.

I have had a very fresh experience, in that this DLC has made me feel like I’m still in the first hour of my first game. Reader, this expansion is mopping the floor with me. It looked at my resume, which has “Elden Lord” as its most recent job title, and has tossed it into the slush pile. If you’re wondering whether Shadow would, like Elden Ring, provide a different kind of challenge and offer, like the base game, easier paths for Souls newcomers: No, not really. At least not until you’re already far along. This DLC is for people who beat Elden Ring, or all but beat it, and want capital-M More.

That should be great news for longtime Souls devotees, who fondly recall the difficulty spikes of some of earlier games’ DLC or those who want a slightly more linear, dungeon-by-dungeon, boss-by-boss experience. For everybody else, I’d suggest waiting until you’re confidently through most of the main game—and for the giant wiki/YouTube apparatus around the game to catch up and provide some guidance.

What “ready for the DLC” really means

Technically, you can play Shadow of the Erdtree once you’ve done two things in Elden Ring: beaten Starscourge Radahn and Mohg, Lord of Blood. Radahn is a mid-game boss, and Mohg is generally encountered in the later stages. But, perhaps anticipating the DLC, the game allows you to get to Mohg relatively early by using a specific item.

Just getting to a level where you’re reasonably ready to tackle Mohg will be a lot. As of a week ago, more than 60 percent of players on Steam (PC) had not yet beaten Mohg; that number is even higher on consoles. On my replay, I got to about level 105 at around 50 hours, but I remembered a lot about both the mechanics and the map. I had the item to travel to Mohg and the other item that makes him easier to beat. Maybe it’s strange to avoid spoilers for a game that came out more than two years ago, but, again, most players have not gotten this far.

I took down Mohg in one try; I’m not bragging, just setting expectations. I had a fully upgraded Moonlight Greatsword, a host of spells, a fully upgraded Mimic Tear spirit helper, and a build focused on Intelligence (for the sword and spell casting), but I could also wear decent armor while still adequately rolling. Up until this point, I was surprised by how much easier the bosses and dungeons I revisited had felt (except the Valiant Gargoyle, which was just as hard).

I stepped into the DLC, wandered around a bit, killed a few shambling souls (“Shadows of the Dead”), and found a sealed chasm (“Blackgaol”) in the first area. The knight inside took me out, repeatedly, usually in two quick sword flicks. Sometimes he would change it up and perforate me with gatling-speed flaming crossbow bolts or a wave emanating from his sword. Most of the time, he didn’t even touch his healing flask before I saw “YOU DIED.”

Ah, but most Elden Ring players will remember that the game put an intentionally way-too-hard enemy in the very first open area, almost as a lesson about leveling up and coming back. So I hauled my character and bruised ego toward a nearby ruin, filled mostly with more dead Shadows. The first big “legacy dungeon,” Belurat, Tower Settlement, was just around the corner. I headed in and started compiling my first of what must be 100 deaths by now.

There are the lumbering Shadows, yes, but there are also their bigger brothers, who love to ambush with a leaping strike and take me down in two hits. There are Man-Flies, which unsurprisingly swarmed and latched onto my head, killing me if I wasn’t at full health (40 Vigor, if you must know). There are Gravebirds, which, like all birds in Elden Ring, are absolute jerks that mess with your camera angles. And there are Horned Warriors, who are big, fast, relentless, and responsible for maybe a dozen each of my deaths.

At level 105, with a known build strategy centered around a weapon often regarded as overpowered and all the knowledge I had of the game’s systems and strategies, I was barely hanging on, occasionally inching forward. What gives?

Shadow of the Erdtree has ground me into dust, which is why I recommend it Read More »

One and done: Elden Ring’s first DLC expansion will also be its last

action RPG, DLC, elden ring, expansion, FromSoftware, gaming, Namco, shadow of the erdtree / Blake Jones / May 3, 2024

Over and out —

But the studio is “leaving some possibilities” for a sequel that continues the story.

Kyle Orland – May 2, 2024 7: 17 pm UTC

Enlarge / A big erdtree casts a big shadow.

Namco Bandai

The good news for Elden Ring fans is that the two-plus-year wait for the game’s first DLC, “Shadow of the Erdtree,” will end in just a couple of months. The bad news is that “Shadow of the Erdtree” will also be the last bit of DLC for FromSoftware’s multimillion-selling action RPG.

In a wide-ranging interview with Chinese site Zhihu (machine translation), Elden Ring producer Hidetaka Miyazaki said “Shadow of the Erdtree” contains a lot of existing lore and content that was created for the original game but couldn’t fit into the final package. Miyazaki said the team decided to release all of that unused content as one large DLC expansion, rather than multiple smaller bits, because “if they were sold separately, the freedom of exploration and sense of adventure would be reduced.”

As for just how big the DLC will be, Miyazaki balked when the interviewer asked how long it would take players to complete. Miyazaki brought up memories of being called a liar after estimating in an earlier interview that the original game would only take about 30 hours of play to complete—crowdsourced game-length database HowLongToBeat puts the “main story” estimate closer to 60 hours.

While Miyazaki was definitive on the lack of plans for additional Elden Ring DLC, he left open the possibility of further games that could continue the story of the Elden Ring universe. “FromSoftware’s style of doing things is that it generally does not allow the future of an IP to be easily locked, but it is better to leave some possibilities” he said.

Previous games in FromSoftware’s Dark Souls series have split additional content across multiple episodic DLC expansions in the years after their respective releases (though Bloodborne only saw a single DLC expansion, “The Old Hunters“). Last year, Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red confirmed that the “Phantom Liberty” expansion would be that game’s only DLC, owing to an engine transition within the company.

Elsewhere in the interview, Miyazaki said the upcoming expansion would closely match the legendary difficulty of the original game’s second half. The DLC was designed with the expectation that “players… should already have a certain understanding of the game,” he said. But players who have grinded their characters into unstoppable, overpowered machines will be able to turn off the leveling system in the DLC area to add a bit of additional challenge.

Miyazaki also offered a few hints about the DLC’s plot, which will include new characters like St. Trina, a counterpart to Miquella, who was only hinted at via item names in the original game. Most characters featured in the DLC will be completely new to the expansion, Miyazaki said, if for no other reason than that “there may be a situation where the player kills the NPC [in the original game], causing him/her to be unable to appear in the DLC story.”

One and done: Elden Ring’s first DLC expansion will also be its last Read More »

Cities: Skylines 2 team apologizes, makes DLC free and promises a fan summit

cities skylines, cities: skylines 2, city building, colossal order, DLC, gaming, Paradox Interactive, simulation, simulation game / Ari B / April 20, 2024

Cities: Skylines 2 development —

A “complete focus on improving the base game” will happen before more paid DLC.

Kevin Purdy – Apr 19, 2024 7: 21 pm UTC

A beach house alone on a large land plot — Enlarge / Like the Beach Properties DLC itself, this property looks a bit unfinished and in need of some focus.

Paradox Interactive

Perhaps the first clue that something was not quite right about Beach Properties, the first $10 DLC “expansion” for the already off-kilter city-building sim Cities: Skylines 2, was that it did not contain a real beach house, which one might consider a key beach property. The oversight seemed indicative of a content pack that lacked for content.

C:S2‘s developers and publisher now agree and have published a letter to Cities fans, in which they offer apologies, updates, and refunds. Beach Properties is now a free add-on, individual buyers will be refunded (with details at a FAQ page), and Ultimate Edition owners will receive additional Creator Packs and Radio Stations, since partial refunds are tricky across different game stores.

“We thought we could make up for the shortcomings of the game in a timeframe that was unrealistic, and rushed out a DLC that should not have been published in its current form. For all this, we are truly sorry,” reads the letter, signed by the CEOs of developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive. “When we’ve made statements like this one before, it’s included a pledge to keep making improvements, and while we are working on these updates, they haven’t happened at a speed or magnitude that is acceptable, and it pains us that we’ve now lost the trust of many of you. We want to do better.”

What will happen next, according to the letter, are changes in how the game is improved and how those improvements are communicated. To wit:

A “complete focus on improving the base game and modding tools”
Better community involvement in choosing priorities
Focusing on free patches and updates ahead of paid content
Relatedly pushing “Bridges and Ports” expansion to 2025
Shifting Creator Packs work to independent developers
An “advisory meeting” between a small group of player representatives with significant followings and developer and publisher heads

For those eager to see the game on consoles, despite all this signaling of how far the base PC game might have to go, the letter offers an update. An “upcoming build delivery in April” should show sufficient optimization progress to move ahead, with “a release build targeted for October.” Yet until they can see the real results, no firm release date can be made. The console team will operate separately from the PC team, however, so it should move ahead “without splitting our focus or time.”

Put together, the C:S2 team’s actions, and plan for the way forward, seem like reasonable ways to make sure their work meets with fans’ expectations. There’s a fair amount of positive feedback to the forum post, however self-selecting “Paradox Forum members” may be. I do wonder if there’s a danger of some owners and fans never considering the game to be “good enough” to not react negatively to paid add-ons showing up in the store. It’s a tricky thing, releasing a game that almost inherently demands a swath of future add-ons, packs, and expansions—the original Cities: Skylines had more than 60 add-ons.

In an interview with Ars, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen said that “working on new content for the game” was the thing she most looked forward to, “after, of course, we have sorted outstanding issues.” There are seemingly many more months of sorting to go before the fun new stuff arrives.

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“We’ve done our job”: Baldur’s Gate 3 devs call off DLC and step away from D&D

Baldur's Gate 3, DLC, Dungeons and Dragons, gaming, hasbro, Larian Studios, Wizards of the Coast / Ryan Harris / March 22, 2024

Baldur’s Gate Closed —

Larian boss says BG3 is “a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

Kevin Purdy – Mar 22, 2024 4: 56 pm UTC

Karlach, the tiefling barbarian, infernal heart glowing, axe at her back. — Enlarge / Sometimes your infernal-engine-powered heart just isn’t in it.

Larian Studios/Hasbro

Swen Vincke, director of the colossal entity that is Baldur’s Gate 3, is not leaving the door open to future expansions of that already fully packed game.

At this week’s Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), Vincke made it clear during a talk and in interviews that Larian Studios is not going to make any major new content for Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)—nor start work on Baldur’s Gate 4, nor make anything, really, inside the framework of Dungeons & Dragons’ Fifth Edition (5e).

Not that Vincke or his team are bitter. Their hearts just aren’t in it. They had actually started work on BG3 downloadable content and gave some thought to Baldur’s Gate 4, Vincke told IGN. “But we hadn’t really had closure on BG3 yet and just to jump forward on something new felt wrong.” On top of that, the team had new ideas that didn’t fit D&D 5e, which “is not an easy system to put into a video game,” Vincke said.

“You could see the team was doing it because everyone felt like we had to do it, but it wasn’t really coming from the heart, and we’re very much a studio from the heart. It’s what gotten us into misery and it’s also been the reasons for our success,” Vincke told IGN.

After returning from winter holidays, Vincke told the Larian team, “We’ve done our job. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. So let’s pass the torch to another studio to pick up this incredible legacy.” The team, he told IGN, was “elated.”

Onto the next act

Vincke’s enthusiasm for having determined Act 1 of “this thing I’ve been working on,” as he posted on X (formerly Twitter) in early January 2024, has some new context from this new dialogue. Larian, it seems, is working on another RPG, just not one involving a certain port city in a particular tabletop scheme.

At GDC, Vincke said Larian was “a company of big ideas… not a company that’s made to create DLCs or expansions,” according to PC Gamer’s recap. “We tried that actually, a few times. It failed every single time. It’s not our thing. Life is too short. Our ambitions are very large,” Vincke told the crowd.

As you might imagine, Larian Studios is ready to say goodbye to D&D games, but Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro almost certainly are not. As of February, BG3 had made around $90 million for Hasbro. Hasbro’s CEO followed up on that report by noting that BG3 was “just the first of several new video games that will be coming out over the next five to 10 years.”

One of those is likely to be “an innovative hybrid of survival, life simulation, and action RPG,” from the makers of the notably survival/life/RPG-like game Disney Dreamlight Valley. Gameloft Montreal pitches the game as a space where “the rich lore of this legendary franchise meets real-time survival in a unique campaign of resilience, camaraderie, and danger at nearly every turn.

It feels safe to say that you will not be able to romance Beast, Maui, or Mike Wazowski in the next big D&D game. Larian’s time in the Forgotten Realms is over, and the team is likely to have many people waiting to see where they’re going next.

“We’ve done our job”: Baldur’s Gate 3 devs call off DLC and step away from D&D Read More »