Braid creator Jonathan Blow on why Elden Ring has no 'real' design: "It's a huge map full of a bunch of bosses"
Jonathan Blow, renowed indie game developer and creator of Braid, has shared his thoughts on Elden Ring. While praising the game’s scale, he claimed that it has no design per se.
It all started with a tweet from programmer and blogger Casey Muratori. He said it is difficult to play most AAA titles now due to their “degraded” design quality.
It’s very difficult to play most “AAA” games now. At least for me, the design quality has degraded to the point where the high production values can’t compensate, and I just end up wishing I hadn’t wasted my time.
— Casey Muratori (@cmuratori) December 27, 2022
Tyler Glaiel, indie developer behind The End is Nigh and Closure, agreed but added that Nintendo and FromSoftware “seem to still understand design.”
I haven’t played Elden Ring yet, but I’ve been acting under the assumption that the reason everyone loves it is because the design is actually passable, which seems to now be super rare in AAA.
— Casey Muratori (@cmuratori) December 27, 2022
After that, Jonathan Blow replied to Muratori’s tweet, arguing that Elden Ring “doesn’t really have design per se.” The developer described the title as just a “huge map full of bunch of bosses with different attack patterns.”
Blow praised FromSoftware for creating a game that impresses players with its scale. But he also saw this aspect as the biggest problem, because the developers just give you a bag full of different stuff with no “real” game design.
(But the amount of stuff is also kinda why there is no real design — it is just, here is a bunch of stuff we put in a bag, here’s the bag.)
— Jonathan Blow (@Jonathan_Blow) December 27, 2022
The Braid creator then noted that he doesn’t try to criticize the team behind Elden Ring because they “did a good job.” He just thinks that the game’s boss fights don’t offer anything new or unique to players and just copy the same mechanics and patterns from the past.
Released on February 25, Elden Ring is likely to become the second-biggest launch of 2022, only behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. It received praise from both critics and players and became the winner of The Game Awards 2022. The game has already sold over 17.5 million units globally.
Who is Jonathan Blow?
- Blow began his game dev journey in the 90s after starting a studio with his friend from college. In an interview with Noclip, he admitted that it was probably the worst time to enter the industry because budgets were climbing up and it was hard to survive and compete with already succesful companies.
- After closing the studio, Blow worked as a contractor on games like Oddworld, Thief: Deadly Shadows, and Deus Ex: Invisible War.
- He rose to fame in 2008 with the release of Braid, a time-manipulation platformer that would eventually influence the next generation of indie developers.
- Blow used the revenue from the game to fund his next project, The Witness. He then founded his own studio Thekla, Inc. and released The Witness in 2016. This puzzle game also received critical acclaim and sold over 100,000 units in its first week.
