Elden Ring

[Rob_Haines]

Ahead of the forthcoming DLC, I've been diving back into Elden Ring over the past few weeks, with two goals: to set up a new faith-build character suitable for the DLC, and to do an in-game photography project that I've wanted to do since I realised how absolutely beautiful this world is.

Slash-cut to me trying to play Elden Ring without the HUD, and regularly jumping off my horse and backing my butt up against nearby rocks so I can force the camera to clip through my character and I can get nice clear screenshots xD

A few examples (with only *very* early-game spoilers):








~ Rob

[Jubal]

Oh, that's all wonderfully pretty. You're quite into screenshot projects, right? I seem to remember you doing something for Outer Wilds on a similar basis.

Elden Ring is on that list of games that I'd sort of like to play but the mechanics, some of the vague vibes of the theming (I don't actually know much about the setting in depth at all) and bits of FromSoft's general attitude and reputation, kind of put me off. I don't generally deal well with the sort of combat that is about pacing and timing: I eventually taught myself some systems for a couple of more action-driven games like The Witcher 3 and Hades, but the reputation of the Souls/Elden Ring genre is rather a step beyond that. Also I dunno how well they work as mouse and keyboard games and I've never liked using controllers.

[Rob_Haines]

Yeah, I find doing in-game photography is a great excuse to spend more time in a videogame world I enjoy, once I'm technically done with it. And going back to Elden Ring at this stage has really given me a fresh appreciation for how breathtakingly gorgeous it is.

(And yeah, I did a similar Outer Wilds project back in 2022 [Caution: contains game-ruining spoilers for anyone who hasn't played Outer Wilds]: Link )

I think Elden Ring is definitely the most approachable FromSoft game so far; it does require a degree of learning, and there's a real mindset of "progress until you run into a roadblock, then if you get frustrated, there's a thousand other things to explore" that it helps to cultivate. That said, I think the core design is superb, the dungeons iterate in wildly imaginative ways, and - as FromSoft's first open world game - it avoids almost all the pitfalls of boilerplate open worlds.

[Jubal]

Yeah, I've heard it's more approachable before... I guess I should probably give it a go sometime.

Do you tend to approach these projects in a planned "I want this set of shots" way, or do you have more of a "let's go and see what's fun to snap" approach?

[Rob_Haines]

*Very* occasionally, I have an idea of a specific shot I want to achieve and set things up accordingly, but those shots are pretty unusual.

My approach is generally to immerse myself in the world, to explore with a little more depth than I usually would playing the game, trying to find lighting or angles that result in interesting compositions. Half the time this involves parkouring around buildings, or trying to make it onto precarious cliffedges so I can get angles I wouldn't normally see in game I don't particularly want to just reproduce concept art, so it's more fun finding angles that the devs never intended, and I get to see the game from a new viewpoint.

[Rob_Haines]

Oops, just realised rebuilding my website may break some of those image links. Tried a different approach xD

A few more of my recent favourites (CW: mild body horror/corpses):

[Rob_Haines]

I've just released the sixth part of my Elden Ring Photo Tour, so I thought I'd drop some links to the albums here. (Minor location spoilers in the titles)

A Stroll Through Scenic Limgrave

Down by the Liurnia Lakeside

Chasing the Sun Across Altus Plateau

Leyndell Capital & the Path to the Erdtree

Nokron & the Deep Rivers

The Slopes of Mount Gelmir, The Fire Within

[Jubal]

Those are all super pretty. There's something very dialled up to 11 about the Fromsoft stuff I've seen. It feels like a reaction aesthetically to classic fantasy by going "what if more of all this": like, rather than trying to ground things or go "back to source" and get new material from some part of reality or literature, it feels like it's an attempt to get a hyper-distillate of the look of gaming fantasy. Some bits have some vibes that remind me of what bits of DOS1 would look like if you tried to do the more mystical bits of that game in a high realism style.

I don't know if it actually feels like that in the game, but that's the impression it gives.

[Rob_Haines]

Yeah, it's definitely feels like a reaction to the increasing grimdark horror of FromSoft's games over the years. It's still dark and horrific, but there's a vast degree of imagination at play, and it really leans into subverting the expectations of where a path will lead.

Minor locational spoilers:

Spoiler

There's a whole vast segment of the world set underground, and the whole thing is designed to undercut the "drab cave systems" expectation of underground locations. You just keep going down and down and down, every subterranean environment more colourful and imaginative than the last, until at last you emerge at one of the highest points in the world.

[Jubal]

Another thing it reminds me of, or maybe reminds me of my imagination of, is Age of Sigmar, arguably not a flattering comparison but that thing of "let's abandon the groundedness of the geography and turn every slider up to 11" seems to track as a setting concept.

[Rob_Haines]

Next photo album is out: The Rot & Ruin of Caelid

I've also put all the photo albums together in a single location, which is organisationally pleasing: Elden Ring Photo Tour

[Jubal]

Next photo album is out: The Rot & Ruin of Caelid

These feel quite similar in vibe to a lot of the more blight infested bits of DA: Veilguard. Which now I think about it in places also generally does lean in a bit to that aesthetic "this is a game that is in dialogue with other games more than with a route back to existence" feel.

[Rob_Haines]

Yeah, I really struggled with this album - mostly due to the sheer amount of visual noise - to the point where I got completely waylaid and had to go back post-game and take a bunch more photos to get enough that I was satisfied with.

And I agree, Caelid is definitely in the long standing tradition of FromSoft poison swamps; it has an in-lore rationale of why it turned from a place of fertility to a place riven with rot, but it's never a passing blight. These are places which are fallen to rot in a way beyond recovery.

And of course, even the existence of the poison swamp trope has become an in-joke with creative director Miyazaki, with him gently teasing the playerbase in pre-release interviews about the sheer number of poison swamps he managed to fit in to Elden Ring.

[Rob_Haines]

As of yesterday, I crossed the "1000 Elden Ring photos edited" milestone, and I'm rapidly approaching the end of the editing process for the base game.

I'm kinda hoping to be able to wrap up the curation of the base game albums by early April - a year after I started - then I can move on to the DLC in earnest.

In related news, one of my friends has asked to feature a handful of these photos in his weekly newsletter (which has a *significantly* larger reach in SFF circles than I do), which I'm very appreciative of!

[Jubal]

In related news, one of my friends has asked to feature a handful of these photos in his weekly newsletter (which has a *significantly* larger reach in SFF circles than I do), which I'm very appreciative of!

Oh that's exciting! What's the newsletter?

I really should try and do better at getting my stuff and Exilian's articles and so on into those sorts of things, I just rarely know where to begin.