Okay thank God I’m not insane hahah. I’m over here like, man I’m in tech support, surely I’m just not that bad with Nvidia drivers 😂😂

You know, this may be it hah.

Yeah, that’s pretty basic. I seem to recall the option to even search by OS/GPU being fairly hidden, but again, probably just misremembering.

I’ve done that before, yes, but I seem to recall it being a lot of hoops to go through. Could be misremembering it, as well though.

Can I not have to log in to download a bloody driver without jumping through a thousand hoops? Can I choose not to use it at all? Probably not, probably still shit.

Folkmetal and symphonic metal.

No problem, bud! Elden Ring is a good start for the series, imo, because it’s as open as it is. If you enjoy it, honestly, go back and give the dark souls series another shot after understanding their design philosophy a bit more.

As much as I love the world of elden ring, nothing will compare to the level of interconnected labyrinths that connect back on each other so elegantly that dark souls 1 has. Enjoy your time!

It’s less esoteric than that. There’s rhyme and reason to all of the individual steps of the quest lines, but sometimes if you aren’t thinking juuuuuust like the devs want it can be a bit of a leap.

I haven’t played it since launch, but apparently they’ve added map markers for NPCs you have already met, that’ll make it significantly easier to understand what they’re wanting you to do, I think.

You should take a gander at the YouTube account VaatiVidya. He does deep dive lore videos on most or all of the FS games, and shows the in-game sources for most or all of the lore he covers. It’s remarkable how much they tell you with so little.

Yeah, 100%. There are some much more obvious signs posts around the main quest stuffs.

Not the guy you replied to. I think I’ve looked up guides or tips for bosses like… 3 times in all of the from soft games. Bosses are largely puzzles to be figured out. They’re some of the most engaging moments of gameplay, and, barring gimmick bosses, reading a guide for them still doesn’t do the work of beating it for you anyway. They’ll just give you some things to look for and some general advice, then the rest is on you.

Think of it less as “at the 20% mark you’ll need a guide” and more “you’ll probably only FIND 20% of the game your first playthrough without a guide” - you’ll find the critical path, you’ll beat the game, but without a TON of tenacity, you won’t complete a lot of the side quests, and probably won’t even find some. You probably won’t really have a grasp on what conditions you need to get an ending you like, etc.

All of it CAN be found, can be done, without a guide, and you’ll probably have a blast doing it, it’s just a matter of the time and commitment you want to/are able to put in.

Yeah, a guide will say like, “okay, first go to stormveil. To do that you’ll have to kill Margit. Go more or less north from the start.”

Between the start and Margit is like, easily 5+ hours first time for a decently experienced player. There are tons of caves and miniature dungeons and other cool things to explore. The individual challenges, you’re more or less doing yourself. Unless you’re watching a video walkthrough. No comment there. Imma let people enjoy their way. Some guides include tips for certain particularly brutal areas, or build ideas of you’re struggling, but those are absolutely not required to play the game, and if anything removes some of the sense of satisfaction from overcoming.

Then, there are things like the interactive map. Elden ring is a huge open world. Really all of the souls games are open, non-linear, and thoughtfully connected worlds, but elden ring is the only one of call " open world". If you really want to see just how dense the world is, and how little using a general route guide actually ruins for you, I encourage you to take a gander at it before playing. The world is FUCKING HUGE.

I think one of the coolest things with FS games is, the level of hand holding you get is pretty much what you want to look for. You CAN watch a video walkthrough and follow it step by step, sure. You can read a general route guide to have a bit of bearing. You can just use the interactive map, to uncover things you may not otherwise. And, if you’re so inclined, you can raw dog the Panda Between, just you and your own wits.

Think of guides in FS games more like MapQuest directions. It’ll tell you to take a left at a certain exit, but not all of the traffic between here and there. You gotta navigate that bit on your own, just here’s a sign post to follow.

As far as lore goes, that’s one of the most compelling things about the games. They’re absolutely oozing more from every possible orifice. The worlds are so dense and thematic, and the lore isn’t spoon fed with excessive cutscenes and talking, it’s largely given to you environmentally. Placement of items and enemies, item descriptions that feel like they’re telling you bits of legend. Stuff like that.

Not inventory load, but equipment load. You can carry whatever you want with you, but each piece of armor, each weapon, and each ring has its own weight. You have an equipment weight value, and you can go up to a percent (different in every bloody game, it feels like, but usually around 50%) that you can “light roll”, then another threshold between the two where you can “medium roll” - a bit slower, less invulnerability, less movement. Over that you fat roll, and no one likes fat rolls.

Essentially, you can carry the whole world with you, you just have to pick what you’re actively using.

It’s not about REQUIRING a guide to do anything, it’s that if you’re trying to do one specific thing, or have a bit of assistance navigating exactly where you’re supposed to go next, they’re indispensable.

I definitely could have played elden ring without a guide. Problem is, the world is HUGE, and there are many endings with specific requirements. I don’t have hundreds of hours to pour into one game, even one I’m quite enjoying. I also want to see more of the plot, and that tends to require seeing multiple endings or other specific, exclusive, quest lines. All of which is just more approachable with a guide.

Some of the fun in from soft games comes from the exploration, but a lot of it is mechanically focused. Git gud. That, and being steeped in a fascinating, dark world, tend to be what keep me coming back. A guide helps keep me from feeling too frustrated just wondering where I should go.

Right? First thing, look for a torrent. Second, put aside some money when I have it.

Unless I’m missing something new in later civs, the civilization series is missing the “real tine” part. Unless we’re talking about the fact that it takes place during real time periods. Hah.

That’s fair. Hades wasn’t as much my jam, story-wise, as bastion or transistor, for sure. It leaned heavily on tight mechanics and beautiful art, which were also staples of bastion and transistor. So in a sense, I agree. I think there is only so much creativity you can have in a storyline based on something like Greek mythology, and so I’d like to see them return to more original plots.

Supergiant is the only studio to consistently deliver. Even their hands-down least interesting game, Pyre, isn’t a bad game, it’s just not for everyone. Everything else they have released has been golden.

I can’t support prepurchase. Not even for supergiant. The industry has killed that for me. But yeah, I’ll probably be there day 1, too.