How Elden Ring Ruined the Dark Souls Multi-Boss Fight

fighting two bosses at once is nothing new to the souls games father arien dell and sister feet bellend gargoyles ornstein and smegma ass eaters every title in this series of games has featured a boss encounter where you have to juggle multiple enemies at once two varying levels of success a lot of these boss fights are talked about fondly and some are even considered to be among the greatest boss fights ever made and for good reason from software definitely has a knack for designing these kinds of boss fights and over the years they've had time to hone those skills so why aren't elden rings multi-boss fights talked about in the same way well first it's important to understand what makes souls boss fights great in the first place bosses reinforce the core gameplay loop that's at the heart of all of these games when you walk through a fog door you're met with an unfamiliar and seemingly insurmountable obstacle and told kill it you try your luck and probably die a lot but not before getting a taste of what the boss is capable of you respawn and try again and again and again gaining a better understanding of the fight each time of the attack patterns and how best to respond to them of what skill or combination of skills the boss is testing be it parrying your awareness dps or even your sanity [Applause] [Music] with each subsequent attempt you're rewarded not by the boss being made weaker but by you becoming stronger with all of the information and experience you've gained unless you're fighting the bet of chaos your eventual victory is satisfying because it feels earned but once seemed impossible you managed to overcome not by bashing your head into a wall until you did but by learning and adapting now let's add another boss into the arena where you once had to learn a single enemy's attacks before you now have to master two enemies at the same time this may seem like a cheap way to increase a fight's difficulty but it doesn't quite work like that in practice from software doesn't design two separate bosses for their dual fights rather one boss that just happens to have two separate character models what the does that mean alright alright alright hear me out the past games follow a very distinct design philosophy in all of their multi-boss encounters the two enemies don't function independently when dark souls 1 throws another boss at you the game accounts for that the bell gargoyles are for all intents and purposes a single boss literally so in the first half of the fight you have to lower the first gargoyle to about half health before the second one spawns and when it does the first gargoyle begins to behave differently whenever one gargoyle is trying to brutally murder you with its halberd the other gargoyle enters a more passive state in which it stands still and breeds fire its passivity however does not mean that you can entirely ignore it during the second phase the player has to be much more careful with their positioning so as not to back themselves into the fire breathing gargoyle additionally there's the constant threat of that gargoyle going on the offensive so both bosses must be kept on screen so that you can properly respond to their regression the two remain in perfect synchrony with each other so that the player never gets completely overwhelmed the second boss is more so an extension of the first one's moveset rather than its own independent enemy the bell gargoyles are in essence a reimagining of demon soul's man-eater's boss fight where you have to fight two similar flying enemies with the second one spawning when the first one is lowered to half health dark souls gives them a wider boss arena and more clear telegraphs between their aggressive and passive attacks these changes emphasize the importance of two things how the boss's attacks interact with each other and the arena that you fight them in but no fight illustrates this quite like dark souls most notorious boss fight ornstein and smoke smo is a fat lumbering giant who can gap clothes but takes a considerable amount of time to do it ornstein is a crack out blue hedgehog who can get on top of you faster than you can say marek is tits it's fairly clear right away that ornstein is the easier boss to focus down since he's the one that's constantly in melee reign but what should you do about the constant threat of smoke blocking you with this hammer the arena has these six pillars that you can use to interrupt his attacks where he charges at you giving you some time to focus on the crack head with the sphere before repositioning to regain distance from smoke each boss serves a unique role in delivering this singular boss experience their varying behavior can seem suffocating and devoid of any openings at first but it is exploitable you have to use the tools given to you to find those chinks in their seemingly impenetrable armor this design philosophy continues into dark souls 3. sister freda is a brutal boss fight that has a double boss encounter just for one of its three phases yet it's still beloved by countless players because it adheres to those same conventions 1. create enemies that complement each other and two place them in an arena that properly accommodates the additional boss and their moveset frida is a human-sized enemy of average build at at least by soul standards her attacks are fairly aggressive but don't have immense range so her arena doesn't have to be that big the rectangular shape of the room means you only really have two directions you can retreat to the back of the room or back near the entrance the sides give you enough room to space her attacks but if you remain passive you'll quickly find yourself backed into a wall the only real way to get to safety is to get past the woman with the scythe trying to kill you this creates a sense of tension that would be lost in a more circular arena now let's add papa aryan del to the fight he's he's a big boy takes his vitamins i i don't know what he's got in that bowl but he's been eating good his body takes up the entire width of the arena and his large size mean that he doesn't take long to get from one end of the room to the other fighting him alone in this room would be miserable let alone both him and sister freda luckily after a cutscene that perfectly contextualizes the change in setting were placed in a larger arena where we have much more freedom to respond to aryandel's attacks additionally frida's aggression is significantly dialed back she's much more likely to use ranged attacks like or frost stomp before it was broken i love this attack the ice begins to build frostbite as soon as it appears below your feet and then explodes and deals significant damage after a brief delay the attack is designed so that it's extremely easy to dodge so long as you're expecting it but if you ignore frida and commit to just one too many hits on ariendel by the time you see the ice at your feet you're locked into that animation and don't have enough time to dodge away it adds complexity to the fight while still being incredibly fair and forgiving although the two have a shared health bar meaning you can kill them by exclusively going for the bigger target frida can heal both of them so she should always be kept close enough to where you can interrupt her heal adding yet another layer of complexity that's deeper than just another enemy trying to kill you each one of them contributes something unique to the fight even in fights with two of the same enemy the second one is always doing something different their complimentary moves perform a delicate balancing act to create an experience that simply cannot be achieved with a single boss so how well does elden ring recreate this magic it doesn't mom mom i want ornstein and smo no honey we have ornstein and smote home [Music] [Applause] where before we had slow boss and fast boss we now have fast as boy and still fast as boy just to add insult to injury it's the fat one that's actually faster let's start by looking at that first rule while it's clear that there's been some consideration in how the boss ai behaves in multi-boss fights some design choices are directly in opposition to this rule in the foreskin dual boss fight both enemies blatantly read your inputs to throw a fireball the moment you use an item this fireball is their only ranged attack so the more passive boss doesn't have many options besides constantly approaching you to get in on some of the action i say passive with air quotes because there really is no such thing in elden ring this problem is magnified greatly if you ever get both of them to have health see while they do share a health bar they also have their own smaller health pools that determine when they face additionally if you kill one of them instead of being rewarded with the now one-on-one fight they just infinitely re-summon each other until the main health bar is fully depleted in both of their second phases the aggression is taken up to 11 and they gain new attacks that vastly increase their range namely the fat one's rolling attack this attack can be eye-framed with proper timing but you'll have to do this multiple times per cast and while this is happening the skinny one isn't just sitting in the corner playing with himself he's on that ass your second option for responding to this attack is to hide behind these pillars like the ons fight but that's not entirely reliable sometimes the boss will just roll over or around the pillar anyways which brings us to the arena the room is essentially a scaled down version of the ons arena and i can't for the life of me understand why they'd make it so much smaller considering arena's size and the player's ability to keep both enemies on screen are directly related the cramped quarters just further highlight how poorly the boss's move sets interact with each other rather than being complementary boss attacks overlap in ways that don't account for the other enemy in the room each boss demands your full undivided attention and will punish you for giving it anything less sure this fight can be trivialized with items that inflict sleep but an option that almost entirely circumvents the fighting part of the fight doesn't excuse poor balancing to continue the tradition of reimagining ds1's fights for the worse we have bell gargoyles at home once again it starts as a one-on-one fight until you lower the first gargoyle to half health then a second one spawns it in falls apart the two gargoyles alternate between one being passive and the other one being aggressive right right well like i said the game's definition of passive is vastly different from the previous ones the boss that takes the back seat is usually given a ranged attack with a clear telegraph so as not to overwhelm the player ranged check telegraphed no in dark souls 3's demon prince fight the more passive demon has a ranged poison attack that creates a trail of mist that then explodes dealing damage and creating poison buildup after a short delay the move is very reminiscent of frida's ice attack which also gives a visual warning well before dealing damage the valiant gargoyles also have a poison breath attack it covers a massive portion of the ground including behind them and in addition to poison buildup it deals damage on contact by the time you see the mist near your character you're already taking damage meaning the only way to respond to the poison is to see the gargoyle winding up the attack which isn't reasonable for how much these two jump around the green colored poison is also incredibly difficult to see against the blues and greens of the environment within the arena it's unclear exactly where the damage zone starts and stops so even if you see the poison coming your only response is just run as far away as possible from that particular gargoyle both gargoyles seem to have access to this attack regardless of which one is closer to you it can even come out when you're locked into a repulsed animation guaranteeing a warm welcome when you regain control of your character the game simply does not care to accommodate for additional enemies even games with a heavy emphasis on flashy fast-paced combat like devil may cry have a feature where mobs that are off screen and to a lethargic state where they're much less likely to attack the arena for this fight doesn't fare much better the larger a boss the greater the precedent for a perfectly leveled arena fights against massive enemies do not function on uneven ground as an enemy size increases the zone from which you can execute a critical attack also seems to increase but this area does not extend vertically so if you break a gargoyle's stance on uneven ground tough for the most part the arena is leveled aside from a few problem areas now you can choose to wait until the boss you're targeting is in a more favorable position but this isn't really practical for the first phase where you're trying to get as much damage on the first gargoyle before the second one enters the fight it's also impossible to dictate exactly where you fight either of them with the existence of the poison missed attack since the attack covers so much real estate the gargoyles can force you into a corner because you have no option but to respect that one attack the fight is an absolute mess but it wasn't at the start everything changed when the second gargoyle attacked i mean during the first phase of the fight i was gaming with a fat smile on my face and a wet spot in my trousers the same goes for the singular version of either of the godskins the crucible knights or even the crystallines these enemies work in isolation because that's what they were designed to do and that's exactly the crux of the problem multi-boss fights are something that have to be built from the ground up from the very conception of sister freda father ariendell was a factor being considered the design of her fight outside of the demon prince boss encounter we never see the two demons as individual fights imagine defeating ornstein and small in ann orlando entering the painted world and then fighting pornstein and bro as separate unique bosses these enemies don't exist outside of their boss room because they were made for that one express purpose elton ring doesn't have that there isn't a single multi-boss fight that does not consist of enemies that you fight individually somewhere else each and every one of them is existing content that has been repurposed and placed in a room with another piece of repurposed content with some minor tweaks added the crucible knights move set wasn't designed around having a misbegotten in the same room and look i have no issues with being resourceful and with the immense scale of elden ring it's absolutely necessary but when it comes to something that from software once created with such diligence and foresight it seems obvious that this kind of approach just wouldn't work my one major gripe with this game is that it's overly ambitious and the boss quality is something that suffers greatly from this although i've thoroughly enjoyed the countless hours i've poured into this game it's no masterpiece i'm extremely happy for the boys at from for the commercial and critical success the game has seen i only hope that they continue to learn from each release and don't see the acclaim as an invitation to stagnate elden ring introduced many worthwhile additions to the souls formula unfortunately not every change was for the better but that goes beyond the scope of this video i'm just here to hate on duo bosses let me know if you'd like to see a more thorough full-on critique of the entire game i've played it for an ungodly number of hours and i kind of need an excuse to keep talking about it but that's it for this video like comment subscribe to see more and uh elden bees [Music]

Channel: Nasu

Views: 805,302

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Id: ojBCAsgr5s8

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 06 2022