FromSoftware's Game Design Changed Everything

i always end up writing these pinned comments while im delirious and sleep deprived (or sleep DEPRAVED on my fromsoft shit lmao) but thank you for coming by and tuning in i really really love these games and I know they also mean a lot to many other people too and I think thats really cool and video games are so magical. i hope this video is good! and i hope you're doing good too. and i hope the people who wanted ROMCOM merch are happy too! the hoodie is high quality 14oz heavy blend for size ref and im really really proud of how both pieces turned out and feel on my bod. anyways im gonna finally play tears of the kingdom!!

All hail the rat king. Honestly one of my favourite characters in all of Demon's Souls

Taking a left instead of a right at Fire Link Shrine has probably ended the start of more Fromsoft game careers than anything else in their catalog.

The feeling i felt when i was unlocking all the sections of the map and it just gradually getting bigger and bigger filled my heart with complete joy.

I think it's cool how Miyazaki's lack of English skills made him fill in the gaps in the story with his imagination. It's even cooler that he translated that experience into a whole new genre of game!

One aspect that doesn't get discussed enough is how FromSoft's success isn't an overnight thing, but purely years and years of iterative design.
From the King Fields, Armored Cores, Otogi, Evergrace, and Souls, each one of them is just years and years of iterating on those same ideas and moving the needle just enough to make it feel fresh, and Elden Ring feels like a perfect culmination of those 36 years of existence.

So refreshing to see this dude post a classic video. Look at the likes he got from this video. Just to show people are still watching and new people are coming to watch. Proud of your journey and your music man

congratulations to from software for making everything great for all the jacobs out there

While you were talking about the game “not hitting quite as hard on subsequent play throughs”, it made me think about my first experience playing Elden Ring and how special it was. It’s such a core feeling inside me, drumming up tons of memories and emotions. The aweh I had playing this game was like no other and I can’t wait for another game to come along and make me feel that way again.

I love that you mentioned 'choose your own difficulty' structure of ER. I wonder if it would have helped to have something like Bonfire Ascetics from DS2, to not only selectively buff areas, but also cut down on the number of playthroughs needed to complete your wishlist? :D

I think you're at your best when the videos are more 'serious' since the humour feels way more organic, you have a great way of never feeling like you've actively tried to be funny more just its a part of your fun way of conversing.

I think my biggest complaint about one of the ways elden ring failed to innovate on previous games is the gear upgrading system. The game cries at you to experiment with different builds and weapons, and whilst it's never been easier to respec your stats, the old smithing system feels completely archaic in this game. It taking so long and so many materials to upgrade a new weapon you might want to try is a nightmare, especially when you don't tend to be able to buy the required stones until you've already started upgrading your main weapon with the next level of smithing stone.
I personally think emphasising the impact your stats had on weapon scaling would have made more sense in elden ring, or perhaps getting a key item that upgrades your smith and it only takes runes to upgrade them, or at the very least have a weapon respec option like with your stats where you can remove smithing materials and reuse them.
I like the progression of weapon strength in these games, but I think so rigidly keeping it the same in elden ring that was in dark souls 3 was a mistake that limits the amount of experimentation you're willing to try out.

if I'm being honest, I absolutely love that most of the dragons are similar. it was awesome to get to know their entire moveset, and it made their standout abilities more memorable. It felt like even though I had beat a dragon, I still had the opportunity to continue learning the ins and outs of fighting dragons because there was another one waiting for me somewhere else. I am having such a blast hunting them all down, but I was honestly quite disappointed when Fia's dragon (whose name befalls me at this moment) was completely different from the others. I would have liked if the culmination of hunting all the dragons would give me a strong advantage against the late game ones. even my least favourite dragon fight, decaying ezykes, I think of fondly because it was unique to add those new (bullshit) smoke attacks into my catalogue.

I like how you shown the Crucible Knight as an example of a weaker boss

Fromsoftware and indie games have pretty much defined my last decade of gaming. The first game I played of theirs was Bloodborne when it came out in March 2015 (I saw some of the trailers and thought it looked cool), by the time I had gone through Central Yharnam and beat Father Gascoigne I was hooked. The level and art design were immaculate, the OST was beautiful, the game feel was amazing (the sound effects from transforming weapons and visceral attacks are perfect), and the boss fights were intense with amazing movesets. In fact, I want to emphasize how fucking good they are at enemy attack animations, tells and wind-ups, it's the main reason the boss fights are so fun to learn and dodge through.
After Bloodborne, I immediately bought DS2: SotFS because it was the only other Fromsoft game available on PS4 at the time, I loved that as well. Then I went out and got a PS3 to play Demon's Souls and DS1. After I was done, they sort of ruined other games for me, lol. The combat and bosses in other games didn't feel as intense or dangerous (Team Ninja's recent games are probably the closest for me). I also think Fromsoft does healing management better than a lot of other games, it's limited, done in gameplay (not a pause menu), and you have to find an opening to do it (usually by sacrificing an offensive opportunity, Hollow Knight also has good risk/reward healing for example). At this point, I'd play anything they want to put out. Armored Core 6 is my most anticipated game despite me never having played the series and never really playing mech games in general. I have that much confidence in Miyazaki and his team.

Hey Jake if you ever get the chance, play through this game again with a proper HDR display with HDR on - it totally transforms the visuals in this game. I don't know how to describe it other than - My friend without HDR was screen sharing as we went through the game together in COOP, I would ask him where he was... and he'd be right next to me. The locations were almost unrecognizable that's how different the game looked. And it really made me interested in exploring the world again just to see how gorgeous it is with HDR

I would like to say, for the record, that in Vahalla you can do the same type of exploration that you can do in Elden Ring (where it doesn't show you makers on the map). You can turn off that feature. It even ask you before you even start the game if that's how you would like to play the game (and how it's recommended). I actually enjoyed Vahalla. Those River Raids were a lot of fun.

such a good point about the upgrade systems. When I was getting through my first run through of bloodborne, every upgrade was a near panic inducing choice (however, it could be argued that for that game that might have been intentional)

if you load in all the areas in DS3, its actually all correctly placed. Every area has a vantage point where you can see most other locations in the game, the first one being after burning the door at the start of the game.

ive always said that the bell bearings should have been tied into the main progression, instead of hiding them in random little dungeons

I’ve watched a *lot* of video essays about souls games in the hopes that someone out there can better articulate how I feel about them than I can, and this video is the first one matches my thoughts beat for beat. Watching it was cathartic, and as always I love your work. Thank you for being who you are!

I was fighting the pumpkin head looking guy on my way to Fort Haight and by the time battle was over (it came pretty close with 2400 runes on the line 😢) my heart was beating out of my chest and I was like...this is it. This is the feeling of fear or loss nakeyjakey described.

So excited to see Jakey doing a deep dive on the Souls games!
I finally played through Dark Souls this year, and it was just as good as everyone said. Now my wife and I are playing through Elden Ring with a co-op mod, and it's been so cool to share this with her. These games are really something special.

I agree it feels bad when you get a weapon you want to play but you don't have the stones for it! BUT to me that's why I love my subsequent playthroughs. After my first game I now have an idea of what weapons I really want to play with next time!

THIS GUY GETS IT

Jakey your videos give me happiness, thank you for your hard work and effort you put into these videos to bring us cheer into our lives

Really great video. I do think I would really hate a level scaling prompt and would rather just take the underpowered enemies. As for weapon respec, personally I like the feeling that you have invested in something, and that the benefit of collecting weapons is to know where they are for repeat playthroughs

It's pretty cool how accessible Elden Ring is compared to Dark Souls, whether it's the removal of the Durability stat that caused weapons to break, and even simple things like the compass marking where your Grace is when you die, or even the ability to choose what bosses you want to fight first. I can imagine it's surprisingly easy to jump into compared to other FromSoft games, other than Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or even Sekiro.

Slight correction: DS2 wasn't delirious because it wasn't directed by Miyazaki (at least not exclusively), it's because it was more or less passed to a new director about three different times and nobody could agree where it needed to go as a whole. The last director eventually figured out a theme to string all the "what the fuck is happening" into a narrative, being "human civilization is both cyclical and doomed to be overwritten by what comes next". If anything, it's even mastered by DS3, which is why it feels like "Fromsoft's Greatest Hits". It's the last hurrah of a dying world.

JAKE!!! I love your video essays from the topics you cover, to the editing style, to your stellar personality. Thank you for everything you do.

I love how Jake's fans have all collectively decided that he's our cool older cousin that we never see. It's just so fitting.

the weapon respec is literally the #1 thing im wanting from the next fromsoftware game. in most souls games i end up sticking with a weapon i find good in the beginning, and then looking up what the strongest weapon is halfway through the game because my weapon sucks now and putting resources into a weapon that turns out to suck could flush hours of time down the drain. i would love to be able to try all the weapons but with the way the games built i always just go for the greatswords

Can't wait to stumble across this video 10 years from now after I've had the chance to finish all these games finally. I can already tell it's gonna be a good one

I love that line at the start "a gameplay first philosphy". It seems self evident that the gameplay of a game should be front and center.

This guy's channel made me want to try my hand at video essays back in 2019 (didn't work out) and my first idea was making a piece about FromSoft's design and the impact of it. Years later, this video is easily the best thing I've ever found in my sub feed.
This truly is the Elden Ring of The Dark Souls of FromSoft Video Essays.

Just came from Asmongold's reaction video to yours, and I felt that I had to sub cause your content is pure gold. Absolutely brilliant and well done mate.

I was working at GameStop when Demon’s Souls came out. We didn’t get many copies at first, but slowly over the next several weeks more and more people came in asking for it and we kept getting more and more copies due to demand. That natural word of mouth growth was something that rarely ever happened

While Elden Ring was very clearly inspired by Breath of the Wild in a lot of its decision making. Tears of the Kingdom took some inspirations from Elden Ring right back. It's nice to see when studios inspire each other

In action games like God of War, secret areas are fun to find, but are secret compartments with a chest and a power up or some shit. In Dark Souls, secret areas are AREAS that are also secret. Their game worlds have a feeling of exploration that is really hard to explain to someone who hasnt experieced it before, because there isnt really anything that compares to it, and is as good as it.

Pretty much every problem that you stated has a mod that and make the experience different and better on consecutive playthroughs like the convergence mod I believe it's called and there are others as well. That goes beyond just the vanilla game and makes it more interesting if you played through a few times already

Thank you for bringing up the weapon upgrade system! I loved Elden Ring, but that was my biggest complaint with it. Nothing feels worse than investing a ton of resources into a cool looking weapon to bring it up to the level of your main one, only to find out that you don't like the damage output. It made me just not even bother with the vast majority of weapons I found, even the ones that fit my build.

This is a great video from a true souls games devotee and i have to thank you for it. I think your thoughts represent the most of us since every other game after you meet the souls concept and mechanics, is just a small break. A small break until the next souls release or until you go back and start all over again with the previous titles. Cheers from Greece and thanks again.

Realizing the Miyazakis approach to storytelling was akin to reading a book in a language where you only understand about 75% of the words explains SO MUCH!!

your channel makes me accept who I'm as a person, I don't know why exactly but watching you happy and doing what you love makes me happy even though I feel that I shouldn't be

Some of these modern innovations(dodge roll/i-frame, weighted combat that requires commitment, to name a few) were showcased by Capcom through Monster Hunter years before the first Souls game came out. There was a period back then that these two IPs are always being compared due to their similarities.

i beat darksouls 1 years ago.
decided to play it again recently, and was surprised that i could still easily remember the map.
the design of dark souls 1 brought my love for gaming back. the way its played the fact that you could literally go anywhere from the start.
a masterpiece.

honestly there's just so many upgrade materials, especially somber stones that I never thought about transferring of weapon upgrades. But I don't think that's required, elden ring by itself offers you so many materials and the caves where you get the bell bearings are pretty much marked on the map with the red volcano looking spots. I think if they just put the bell bearings in a way you know you could get them if you went to the caves then it'd work, since the amount of runes required to upgrade the weapons starts to become easy. Also yeah the inconsistent amount of runes you get for beating difficult enemies is kinda dumb but it also makes sense, in my first playthrough i fought every boss in which half of the time i fought bosses I used the gold scarab and I was level 170 by the end. Which is fine, but I fought every boss and was only a few levels higher than the average playthrough, which is kind of stupid. If a boss consistently equated to around 1 level in any area it'd be great, which overall it does happen, but the majority of your levels you get from the high rune bosses, for example the shardbearers, outside of them, there are not many runes.

Jacob Geller made an amazing video (Dark Souls 3 is thinking of ending things) talking about some of the design choices and thematic directions Dark Souls 3 had taken and explains (in a purely vibesy way) why it is the way it is.
Deffo worth a watch!

Are we ever gonna acknowledge the insane amounts of drip this man has acquired over the years

Missed u nakey. Hope we see u more. Don’t care what capacity, as long as your happy man
Take it easy jake

To the area scaling point, I liked bonfire ascetic from dark souls 2, maybe something similar could have worked in Elden ring to ascend certain areas to higher ng cycles, harder but more runes

Fantastic upload mate, subbed. I know it would never happen but similar to how tears of the kingdom often feels like breath of the wild but much more complete I wish with the upcoming dlc for elden ring that it got some kind of scholar of the first sin treatment where many of the repeat bosses were removed and some quality of life stuff (like weapon upgrades being respecable) gets added, better balance with bosses and of course the new stuff being added with dlc put in there too. Basically I wish for an Elden Ring definitive edition that fixes a lot of the issues it has while adding in even more cool new stuff with the dlc lol.

Bloodborne in 2015 was one of the best gaming experinces in the last decade for me. Favorite game of that year. After school in my junior year of HS, coming home and playing the game till i had to go the school the next day 😂 From the atmosphere, weapons, gameplay, lovecraft/berserk inspired worlds and enemies, what a game! 💜 Great video mate

My theory is that FromSoftware created multiple masterpieces for 15 years to grab million's atention just to eventually tell them they are maidenless and laugh their ass off

Rejoice fellow gamers. This is some of the most consistent Jakey content we have seen in a long time.

Damn and bless you - ok no just bless you, that’s mean - anyway now I have to (read: GET to) complete the quest of finishing all those FromSoft games so I can be rewarded with seeing another of your videos (THIS video). You are truly a video game culture hero
Seriously Clip-Share probably has no way of calculating the value of your video being that I’ve only seen less than a minute of it, but now I will go and play all these games so I can return and watch the whole thing… that’s a whole other level of video goodness

I held off the video until I had cleared an almost 200 hour through Elden Ring and man were those both worth it. I was gonna move on with my life afterwards but then I actually checked out "In Rainbows" and that album too has not left my mind for a second. I appreciate you, NudeJacob.

what an amazingly high quality, enjoyable, and informative video. Thank you for this.

In the games by Supergiant Games (Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, Hades) there's always a mechanic to crank the difficulty in various ways for better rewards. Elden Ring could've done something similar I suppose.

I know Elden Ring made all the money but I really hope Fromsoft goes back to a smaller more compact design. I got so burnt out on this one, esp the inability due to scale enemies the same.

He's the hero we need, but not the one we deserve. Welcome back Jakey

Demon's Souls will forever remain my favourite. What a heroic story of a game that was. Everyone counted it out, but it rose on its own two feet. Much like the journey it makes you the player take as it whoops your ass.

One thing I realized while fighting margit was that the fact that they place this (at first) seemingly impossible enemy to tell you, "You can do this. Get up."

Crazy idea, what if there was an item you could get that you could use only at sites of graces that scaled enemies or bosses or both to your level? Or maybe a ring idk, someone smarter can fine tune it, but I think it be neat.

I really liked the DS2 healing system the second time I started to play the game/when I restarted and knew what I was doing. The small healing orbs were so afodable that I would buy max amount and roll through the whole game with them. Made the whole exploration side so much more manageable

Nakey Jakey just want you to know man that once every year I go back and watch all your videos from the very beginning with Games that Should Bang up til the more recent stuff. I just start watching one then get hooked watching the rest of them. I think you’re funny as hell and we’d be good friends irl (very similar sense of humor, Tim and Eric especially) and I’m also a hot boy born in 1994. Also, your videos give great insight and I’m a nerd about video games and the stuff surrounding it intrigues me too like “ads in video games” or small stuff like “title screens in video games.” Etc. Etc. I hope you keep doing what you love by making awesome music and uploading great Clip-Share videos. Take care man!

Seeing this man is like reading Game Informer or Gamepro as a kid, and being immersed in playing a good ps1,N64 or Dreamcast game. Or reading a classic manga that wasn’t popular but was well known. A wholesome, informative, funny, and well crafted tv show or movie. It’s a heart warming feeling that gets rarer as time goes by.

I was so freaking lost with the NPC’s quests that I ended up following guides and that kind of ruined some discoveries but I know it’s still my own fault. I just can’t progress through any game without knowing I have done everything possible in a single area. Elden Ring taught me to stop caring about that, at the very least, and that it’s not that important, on your first playthrough that is. I have never played DSII and will dive into it with that idea.

33:00 the game design problem with this approach is that it basically means you can fully upgrade like 2 weapons and basically never have to look for upgrade materials ever again, which is obviously not what they wanted. One way to get sort of around this would be to only give you half of your upgrade resources back from your old weapon, but that's more like putting on a bandage than actually solving this design issue.

The intro is such a beautifully long, strange way to say how much of an effect from Software has had on the gaming industry and himself

I was onboard with everything until the last part about gating the narrative to happen at specific locations and specific times of the day - this ties into the discovery aspect you speak about earlier.

I watched a blind playtrough of elden ring by an experienced souls player and he both found the flame of frenzy and the way to fix the corruption without help. I don't think it's too hard, just a reward for stubborn players who are thorough.

I sometimes forget about how Jakey is an attorney when he isn't making videos for years at a time.

I loved hollow knight and elden ring. But I loved how the more open world and allowance of upgrading in elden ring helped me get through some tough areas. Otherwise I would have quit. I quit hollow knight cause there gets a point where you have to get one particular perk to progress, and if the tools you have now aren't helping you then you are screwed. I like how in elden ring I could get stuck and it would force me to explore more so that I can come back stronger.

I really like the way you have your self imposed in the game on the ball!
Great video 🇨🇦

Jake videos are rare, but when they come, it's one of the very few channels that make me laugh out loud several times throughout the video.

A lot of ideas you had were interesting. I'm not sure if I'd prefer them personally, but they're good food for thought. The only thing I didn't agree about was the questlines because I felt they actually did make them much easier. Kenneth Haight for example basically tells you exactly what to do in his questline. While not all of them are that straight forward, the game will automatically progress questlines if you miss a step or a step is made impossible due to some issue. I think what would be a better fix would be some kind of journal or quest tracker so that you could actually keep track of all these quests over the game. Not like the ubisoft map tier shit, just like a book of friends that tells you what you did last with them. Kind of like Nioh's NPC gallery. Sometimes the key item notes help with this, but i find forgetting what progression you are in a quest much more than how to actually do the quest was my issue.

What I love about Fromsoft is the fact they don't give a fuck if your good or bad, they stay true to their story and game play loop and after all these years of growing still have not shaken that foundation and have only built on it further and further

as a jacob, i can confirm that it has had a huge impact on the industry of jacobs. we'll never be the same

I've had Dark Souls 3 in my steam library for ages because I tried it once and couldn't get into it but this video inspired me to pick it up again so thanks Jakey! Also In Rainbows is their best so I knew that I was listening to a smart man in this video

If you looked at my favorite games of all time it would be a lot of Nintendo, Capcom, and Konami with some indie titles sprinkled in. But over the last 9 years since I first played Dark Souls and all the other games several of them etching their way into my favorites.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. But I got to that large city (forget what it’s called) and got very frustrated and gave up. I really should finish it. Beating DS3 was some of the most satisfying experiences I’ve ever had

I remember you talking about how Dark Souls helped you out of a dark time in your life and i really connected with that, at the height of my depression, playing Dark Souls for 20 hours a day and suceeding with something as hard as Dark Souls really gave me hope.

Despite everything wrong with what happened to this show, I am still very excited for the final season

I've always thought it was hilarious how far boss quality swings in each game. Every single games has at least one 11/10 masterpiece of a fight as well as some load of horseshit that should never have seen the light of day

I haven’t played the series before, but it does combine aspects of botw and hollow knight and even dungeons and dragons which are all my JAM. This is a great video, I’m glad you mentioned them, even though I haven’t played these games I can relate to the style because of that. Although one little detail, towards the end you talked about how in dark souls if you were stuck on a boss you HAD to go grind to get better stuff and better gear and it SUCKED, and then you said the same for Elden Rong but stayed it was better. Knowing I haven’t played the games, is there a significant difference there I’m missing?

JAKEY OMG IM SO HAPPY TO HEAR YOUR VOICE! Bro your videos have kept a special place in my heart. I just watch my favs over and over. I can listen to your opinion and know that it's genuine and coming from a place of love. Please never stop! Youre a straight up G

This video is great for many reasons! Well done, NakeyJakey!

I've spent 700 hours so far in it. I really just enjoy the world. The sounds, the vista, the music, and singing rats with wings. Sometimes I just put the controller down and listen to it. Sometimes I put my summon sign down for hours on end. Sometimes I actually find the courage to progress the story.
I frequently think I've completely explored an area, no possible way I missed anything, then while just rerunning through areas for the hell of it, boom, stumble on something I didn't notice before. If you look at something the wrong way or from the wrong angle, you will completely miss it and not even know it. Granted this doesn't always amount to anything tangible, for me it's still worthwhile.
I understand people's criticism of the catacombs, but I think they did a great job generally speaking. I've been through most if not all of them, while they look similar in the obvious aspects, they really went out of their way to mix things up more than just a little. The familiarity actually works against you because you think you know it all, only to get blasted by a simple trap. Especially how frequently they mix up the mechanics to progress. One of the last ones with the light mechanic is my favorite, that place is just full of obscure areas you'd only figure out if you'd been through many of the other catacombs.
I have to agree with the difficulty, perhaps easier bosses you missed the first time around could just get progressively stronger the more time goes by? I could see some interesting mechanics there similar to Chrono Trigger. Though I've been summoned more than a few times to one where there's three of us and we spend more time buffing up like Super Saiyans than actually fighting. Like using an M60 as a weed whacker.
A big mistake I see people in general make is the Astel assumption. I don't believe Astel is it's name, it's just what they are called. You actually fight some of these hanging down from the ceiling in other places in an earlier pupa-like stage. Basically Astel just means "Freaky Space Bug". These along with the other gravity focused monsters from space and even General Radahn, actually make the world bigger by introducing an outer space to the Lands Between. I imagine armies of Astel raining down on planets around the galaxy. Why? You wouldn't understand, it's a freaky space bug thing.
I love these games because they refuse to revolve around the player directly, corpses of those that came before you are strewn about your entire playthrough. Things aren't spelled out for you just like in real life, you have to get out there and figure some stuff out and maybe study a few wiki pages along the way. I actually didn't screw up any important NPC quests this time, they were pretty forgiving with time sensitivity. They did a great job of making you care about NPCs, especially when it's your fault they die or when you realize they aren't coming back, you visit their place and they aren't there anymore. So few lines of dialogue and yet they leave an impression on you. Also the feeling of rage when an evil one tricked you into it. At least we got some cool boss fights for our troubles.

@12:00 I will say that Bloodborne's system has some redeeming qualities. The ability to loot healing items from enemies and exploration while simultaneously forcing you to make use of the rally mechanic to recover health where you can because your healing is precious makes the non-boss sections of the game, in my opinion, a lot better. The combination of forcing you to conserve healing with letting you persevere on as long as you're killing things faster than they're killing you is actually a big strong point of Bloodborne's exploration in my opinion...
On the other hand, the system completely fails and falls apart when it's time to fight Orphan of Kos and you die 700 times and burn through 14000 blood vials in the process. But still, there's something to be said for the way it interacts with exploration that I really liked.
I think FromSoft realized this, because they tried something similar in Elden Ring, where killing packs of enemies in the open world recovers your flask, but it's just... useless. With all the fast travel and plentiful sites of grace, you're never more than about 5 seconds away from being able to just refill your flasks in the open world, so there's very little to conserve them and very little reliance on the recovery. It's a minor QOL, preventing you from having to rest if you just got nicked a few times by the pack of wolves, but it doesn't have the same feel.
I wonder if you could optimize Bloodborne's system to get the best of both worlds somehow: The key is scarcity while exploring, as well as ability to recover through successfully exploring, while keeping a similar system to what there is now for bosses. One thought I've had while I write this is basically just... have a Bloodborne-like consumable system, but make doing damage to bosses (effectively, somehow or other) put blood vials in your inventory. Or something else to functionally just... refund any blood vials used in boss fights.
@31:30 You make a great point there with the Hollow Knight comparison and like... Elden Ring has 3 perfect opportunities built right into it!
• Like halfway to 2/3rds through the game (depending on how you count, but given that it naturally happens easily before Rykard, Malenia, and Mohg, I'd say it's fair), you set the Erdtree on fire, and this makes all the early game areas covered in a perpetual rain of embers... so make this come with some small changes. Set some trees on fire and replace some enemies with fire variants or something. And while you're at it, rescale the entire area!
• Opportunity 2 is not far after that, which is to say: When you obtain the rune of death and make the capital into the Ashen capital, they could have made this have effects outside the capital. You've got the Rune of Destined Death now; the theft of the Rune of Death and murder of Godwyn is what made the Ones Who Live in death everywhere, so I dunno; buff the fuck out of them and get rid of their respawn.
• Opportunity 3 is after you obtain an ending, though less obvious what you'd do there.
Still, the game already has changes to the world, if they just came with changes to scaling if nothing else, it'd go a long way to alleviating the whole "I skipped this area, now I step on it with one pinky" without invalidating your progress the way enemies scaling on your level would.

Only Jakey could get me to watch a half an hour video on a game series I've never touched in my life. I love all of your videos man

Playing elden ring made me feel like a kid, I could just explore endlessly and just keep finding new objectives to engage in. One of the best games to come out in years

I loved Elden Ring… the first run through. How people keep playing with new builds after the exhaustion of one run is beyond me.

They already have items that allow you to increase the difficulty if you're finding things too easy.
And recycling upgrade materials would make the entire aspect beyond redundant. Besides, I've always had tons of materials leftover by just the halfway point in any souls playthrough.

I agree with the weapons upgrading issues. I found a brick hammer early on and I've invested so much into it. I've found other hammers (and other cool weapons that aren't hammers), but I stick with my brick.

I spent 100's of hours in the game and platinumed in the couple of months after the game first came out and thought that the exploration would be boring when I started again. But after nearly a year, I have just started again and am so excited to jump back in

Please never stop making these passion projects Jakey, top tier as always.

jakey i love your videos and just in general and i am so happy to see you thriving

I've been trying to apply breath of the wild's design to my DnD campaigns, and one thing became super clear
Player rewards hugely impact exploration
Like, I'm convinced the reason why I enjoy breath of the wild is because of its reward structure.

I love that “really makes you feel like Batman” joke because I remember all those reviews for Arkham Asylum. They all said that over and over, so much so that the instant you said it I remembered them