953k concurrent players are playing on "unplayable" Elden ring PC, how can it be??
It doesn't take players for braindead slugs with waypoints, yellow/white paint places where you can jump/climb, it doesn't try to fucking whisper into your ears every goddamn minute something that should interest the player to do or spoon feed you the story, for one.
The map design is above everything else that has been done in videogame industry. Simple as that. The sense of exploration is unmatched. All curiosity ends with a nice unique item or skill that can transform or give alternative means of playing the game. As for the core combat? There could be discussions on hitbox porn and so on, but more notably, it let the players PLAY the game. Not an Hollywood movie or constant chatter. It gives enough pieces of the puzzle that you can make up your mind on the story. It's just you, the player, doing stuffs. A lost art apparently. It's more akin to Bioshock in that aspect than any modern AAA games. The combat feels weighty and different weapons totally change the feeling of it. How many games where combat is completely hollow or an afterthought? Target enemy glowing weak points for tons of damage!
Bullshit on "no one can explain this - ever", you probably never listened or trolled back.
Robot dinos is definitely one of the developers' dying kid's last wishes of something cool. It's straight out of 90's Beast war level of cool.
Seriously? Robots that can't even fucking pick up on you from the foliage? (sensors?? what are those!) Humans able to get hit by some 2 story high robot mass of metal clawing on them? Why are robots even around in those fields? There's no goal here, just "something cool".
Anyway, I won't link here but, Jim Sterling had a nice video on open world games today (and because of Elden ring). The old open world recipe is hopefully gone sometime in the next 5 years.