Elden Ring

Elden Ring carries the design of Dark Souls into an open world and gives up what such a world is usually filled with. There are no quest markers, the journal doesn't lead you by the hand, the player places the map icons themselves, and even the map opens up in pieces that have to be found on the ground at roadside stelae. Direction is hinted at by sites of grace: they shine a beam toward where it's worth going, but nobody makes you go there. Companions' errands aren't marked either; the character simply moves on about their business, and you either find them again or you don't.

Out of the open world grew an answer to a long-standing complaint about the studio: there is no impassable spot left here. When you run into an enemy you can't beat, you can ride off to the side, clear a couple of dungeons, gain levels and come back, or not come back at all, because there are few mandatory fights. The horse lets you leave a fight and rise upward on air currents, meaning retreat is built into the rules. The big fortresses, meanwhile, are assembled to the studio's old patterns: dense multi-level areas with shortcuts inside. The world's backstory was written by George R. R. Martin, and the story itself, as usual, is broken up into item descriptions.