With the recent explosion of Souls-Like games flooding pretty much all of the gaming markets, the question of what makes the ideal Souls game becomes more and more pertinent. Questioning every design choice, narrative quirk, gameplay twist- all in the aim of breaking down this genre to it's core most elements so that they can be replicated onto eternity. And through all of that questioning and experimentation I think one of the most easily overlooked aspects of the development process is that of Level Design- perhaps the biggest culprit of games like these turning into either contemplative explorations into the depths of ruined society or simply collapsing into a frustrating trudge through endless identical hallways for no real reason other than the developer wanted to pad out the gameplay of their levels.
Level Layout of course refers to not only the path that players walk throughout their experience with the game but also the artistry with which these digital hallways are draped. The scenery, the environments and also in this genre- the way the world reinforces the narrative that is being told. Level Design also works as a kind of silent language to the player teaching them unconscious norms of the world. If you stumble upon a shortcut that ties you back to a previous rest point you'll come to learn that points of reprieve are valuable in this area and you should always look for ways to shorten run-back trips through short cuts. If you see a ruin layout with a staircase leading down repeated a dozen times, and then spot one ruin without a staircase- you'll know to start poking about the area a bit for that inevitable illusion wall. So much goes into level layout that you'll never consciously consider.
Of course, at the same time it is very easy for Level Layout to become the detriment of a game. If you overload your levels unnecessarily with looping paths and overlapping routes without means of guidance, overt or otherwise, then you've turned the act of navigation into an obstacle- which never seems to work out well in the combat-heavy genre of Souls-likes. We like to challenge ourselves against enemies, test our builds, battle against huge bosses we have to learn to overcome. Trying to figure out where such enemies even are does not exactly feed into any vertical of the supposed gameplay loop. And yet Blighttown still exists.
Sometimes we can be victim of looking at game design in an objectifyingly binary angle. "You either get exploration or linear worlds" but it's never quite so simple. Exploration is a avenue of expression, that can be stoked just as powerfully in a carefully crafted mostly linear dungeon as in a wide-open field. In fact, typical wisdom has taught us that more often than not it is the carefully crafted smaller scale content that is imbued with the more meaningful exploration over the large open wastes. Those that achieve meaningful exploration in giant fields are the exception to the rule, with Elden Ring being a bit of a dazzling exception. And I can think of a few linear games that totally drop the ball when it comes to exploration.
Take 'Lords of the Fallen' for example. That is a game which ties up it's world in a labyrinth of corridors differentiated only by the theme of the biome that situates them. Too often you'll find yourself thrown into an area that you simply wander around blindly until you stumble upon the boss- and even Blight Town is never that obtuse. Remember Blight Town starts you at the top of a perilous descent of iffy-looking hovels suspended over a drop into a mire. You see the destination from first entry before you're shoved into the hell of houses and ambushes, so that the player always knows what it is that they are heading towards. You see how powerful that is?
Every one of these Souls-likes handles their exploration in a different way, most of which work to support the style of game. Nioh and Wu Long have largely mission-based designs where you're never too far off the beaten path- you constantly have a map marker giving you the rough direction where to go, and exploration is something of a means to empower yourself before the final boss by collecting a group of standardised level powerups present in every map. Sekiro employs perhaps the loosest rails of a FromSoft game prior to Elden Ring due to it's more Metroidvania style design philosophy prioritising movement freedom. You're still on rails, but you don't feel on rails. And, of course, Elden Ring employs wider world design philosophies to guide the unshackled mind to points of interest on the vast horizon guiding their way in a subtlety most don't even realise.
Through it all LOTF remains the one franchise that has always been an outlier and which I think I'm happy labelling the most rough of the big budget Souls-likes out there. I can't rightly say why it is that Lords of the Fallen just never seems to get the fundamentals of this genre down right, but it might perhaps be because they seem to focus on 'frustration' over 'challenge'. Never have I seen that principal channelled more disastrously than by the new game's 'innovative' New Game+ challenge wherein, get this: the game erases 'Bonfires' (they called 'Vestiges' in this game, but you know what I'm talking about) with each new game. Those are places to recharge your healing kits, and more importantly to respawn when you die. By New Game+ 3 they're all gone. Do you know what that means? No fast travel. Who, exactly, finds the fun in the 'challenge' of navigating several hours of enemy spam hallways?
There is no blueprint to making the perfect Souls-game. So much of this genre is vibes based and that's what makes it so fertile and open to interpretation- it's what brings the genre life. But it's also a slip-up point when you come to studios who still, after all this time, can't seem to nail the right vibes. Don't get me wrong, Lords of the Fallen has improved significantly from it's predecessor who prominently featured identical room layouts in unfathomably dull labyrinths. But they also haven't improved as much as you'd think someone would when publishing their fourth Souls Like. I just... expect more.
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