Having suriel back for this is all I could possibly ask for, so good at delving into the granular mechanics of a game.

10:44 Really couldn't disagree more with this point, as someone turned off by From games (from a distance) who's fallen all in on Elden Ring. I get frustrated easily, but the ability to park a major boss for hours while I get better has meant I always have the drive to keep going. I've put off the first boss for 16 hours and loved every second of exploration in that time.

To Ben's comment around the 13th minute mark - I agree. I've never played a souls game but the open nature/action adventure-ness of it piqued my interest. I read the reviews and pre-ordered it! 5 hours in and loving it so it worked on me!

About the hype we've felt surrounding previous game releases : I was full on-board on the Smash Brawl hype train, and I completely agree it felt like a collective craze. I grew up in South America and there weren't a lot of places to buy games in my city. When Brawl was coming out, I begged my mom to take me to the mall at opening hour so I would be the first kid in the country to get his hands on Smash. I waited at the mall's doors and saw how progressively more and more people came, and some of them I could instantly see they were also there to buy Smash. When the security guard finally opened the doors, we all dashed like crazy and ran all the way to the second floor where the game store was. I don't think I got the first copy, but I sure got one, went home, called all my friends and by the end of the day there was like a 10 person party at my house and we played Brawl for like ten hours. Peak hype, forever.

ohhhh noooo not a free hour of geller passionately gushing about game he likes oh nooooooo

Hanson you can loop videos on KZfaq for b roll, seems like that would be a lot easier. Keep up the great work!

also i love the handgun-turned-usb-port on the desk behind suriel

Suriel is a God damn treasure and I'm always happy to see him.

I really wanna play Elden Ring, everything I hear about it makes it sound much more enticing than most other games released recently. I'll be looking closely before I buy.

I have a lot of friends that aren’t hardcore gamers, they only play fifa, overwatch, etc. all of them are already playing elden ring, i think it’s going to be more mainstream then people think

I bounced off of DS3 when my brother forced me to play it a few years ago. I've come to realize I probably would have really loved it, so I'm giving Elden Ring a shot. Hope I like it because I've already bought it!

It's really cool to hear you guys are so positive on it :). It's crazy getting such a big exciting game so early in the year. Feels like this is going to be a very strong contender for the 2022 goty.

An old gamer who hadn't heard of this game before release, has built a new PC and ordered 4k monitor. I am fucking mad for this Elden Ring.

2:14:08 - wow, I never imagined that my tweet would make it into GALOT, thank's Kyle :D

I'm really enjoying my time with the game so far. I've been playing about 5 hrs.

Never even heard of From Software before I picked up Elden Ring. Currently 260 hrs in @ L210. Game is hard as hell but epic.

Up until a couple years ago I was in pretty much the same boat as Ben. I played and bounced off of basically all of the Soulsborne games, each time wondering if maybe this would be the one I'd finally get into. I understood they were well-made games but I figured I must not be skilled enough for them. Then for whatever reason I picked up Dark Souls 1 again and a few hours in it just completely clicked for me. Now I've played and beaten nearly all of them and I can't wait for Elden Ring. It's possible to go from thinking these aren't your kind of games to absolutely loving them, just speaking from my own experience.

Man I miss Suriel :(

I suck at Dark Souls but I know I will end up buying Elden Ring and suck at it.

Elden ring has now gone down a notch in OpenCritic at 96.

Always great to see Suriel on the show

Knew this was going to be the most 'Luke warm' discussion on elden ring and they all still seemed to really enjoy it overall so I'll take that as a win for us fromsoft fanbboys

I think big difference between going in blind, not being exposed to areas and enemies beforehand, and looking things up you are curious about as you play. One of my favorite moments in the game so far is my first encounter with an enemy type that is common in northwest part of the map. I was horrified and screamed out loud. I also had a boss encounter that made me laugh out loud and surprised at the game having an actual sense of humor. If saw these in a trailer, it would have robbed me of these memorable moments. What this game nails and other open-world games could learn from is that there is no real adventure if there isn't mystery.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 is the new Duke Nukem Forever

I was the new From fan... beat the game yesterday! I absolutely love it!

To all the new players, I sucked when I played Bloodborne and Dark Souls for the first time but trust that the more you play the more proficient you will become. Just be very stubborn about it at first but dont pressure yourself too much and put in the intitial work, learn and build muscle memory and in no time you will improve dramatically that it all becomes 2nd nature. It will just crash over you 1 day like a wave when it all clicks and you realize how far you've come in skill and how smooth your game play starts to become. The challenge always remains but you will be much more proficient in dealing with them and it becomes a real fun dance that is no longer tedious and you will even impress yourself alot. You will still have failures but far less than in the beginning although ive managed to get to a point where ive done deathless runs of both DS1 and 3. I can almost do it in DS2 and Bloodborne as well but still manage to screw up in the dlcs. Anyways these games are really a journey of perseverance and the story and lore is all about overcoming challenging times as well and beleiving in yourself. It will be rough and ugly at first but than you will get to a point of mastery and you will eventually become the real boss that roams the lands and legends will be about you echoing throughout the rest of time. Hope you give it enough of a chance to get to that point, takes some time but it will come and it will be the best feeling you've ever had in a game! Also in these games the areas you explore become more and more unique and intricate the further you get into the game. The world is never just the same look throughout and enemies will have totally different appearances and characteristics and each zone has it's own personality and tone so stick aroumd and keep pushing forward. Take it slow like me and soak it all in and find awesome items throughout and interesting encounters. Lingrave much like all the souls games is just the beginning and although beautiful it's meant to be more striaght forward to find your groove before venturing forth into the truly awesome content. Oh and some of the best most inspired content in all these Souls games usually hides in secret behind fake walls and out of the way corners. Usually optional content but totally a must play. Most players will never find the best content and zones in these games which is truly something! Have fun!

I was very curious to hear the MinnMax take on Elden Ring, given how pretty much none of the cohorts have liked previous From games to a significant degree. The start of the conversation was actually even more negative than I expected but I respect the group for not feeling the pressure to immediately proclaim this game game of the decade. And I'm glad to hear that everyone is still having a good-to-great time with it!

Love that at the Pokemon middle school game (great game btw!) Ben notes that it’s similar to the Easy Allies podcast game I would send in, Pokemon or Real Animal. My influence over games media is growing…

I have never quite played these games before, always heard they were too hard....but, funnily enough Monster Hunter gave me hope....and the first looks with more magic, spells etc Cant wait to play Elden Ring now

I could feel the top left guy's soul leaving his body everytime he was trying to steer the conversation and give social cues to the other guys and they just derailed it with some weird tangential nitpick.

Great show as always couldn't picture a better crew to talk Elden Ring!!! I was so happy I wasn't the only one losing my mind in the lead up to Brawl. RE5 surpassed that for me I watched those trailers multiple times when it was a single player horror game and Chris had crazy dodge counters and melee attacks It was mind blowing!!!

Suriel!

Really appreciated Kyle making the distinction between GTA open worlds and BOTW open worlds. There's been a tendency in games media to compare Elden Ring to BOTW and contrast it with Assassin's Creed, suggesting these standard icon-heavy, narrative-driven open worlds are exemplified by the quality of Assassin's Creed. Whereas GTA, The Witcher 3, and RDR2 also fit this more standard mold and are some of the highest rated games of all time.

How dare you Suriel, Spider-Man was my GOTY in 2018.

Sorry it took me so long to find this. You where great on Game informer. Great discussion just listen to my 3rd episode of the Elden Ring Discussion.

What Jacob said is so true. Because it's not linear anymore I don't know if I'm underleveled or just bad lol

Surial looks so healthy, I haven’t seen him in awhile, looks like he lost a lot of weight.

suriel at 56:00 ''the jump in this game has been pretty useless in combat so far'' - very wrong, the jump heavy is one of the best attack in the game

Yeay its Suriel!

Also wanted to comment that I had the Pokémon VHS and one for Banjo Kazooie. Loved Nintendo Power.

Daaaang Suriel, looking fresh

Its really interesting to go back and see how they expected elden ring to be a niche game for souls nerds, when it wound up "breaking containment" in a way and becoming a big cultural moment

100% with Kyle on this one.

Suriel the litteral pod GOAT

Let's go!!!!

It’s funny revisiting this after seeing how many copies it sold, how many new From fans it’s created and how May game of the year awards. Especially how wrong everyone was on this panel when asked if it’s “goty.”

The difference grrm brought is that all of the dragons only have 2 legs now. Obviously I haven't played it yet, but I'm gonna assume the story will turn out to be about some hive minded consciousness stuff. The hivemind probably set your character into motion and fooled you into actually killing good guys so at the end you'll probably need to either kill the hive mind, join it, or if you don't have the right items, probably just kill all of the hivemind's enemies. That's the GRRM bread and butter

Loved this discussion, but boy they were wrong that this wouldn’t bring new fans to Fromsoftware.

1:50:54 I'm laughing out loud when I listen to this!

1:22:10 you should try out flashpoint. That project has done a great job archiving and curating most flash and html5 games allowing them to be easily downloadable.

every complaint about this game or about from's decisions pertaining to it have an undercurrent of "GAHHH THAT'S NOT THE STANDARD ISSUE WAY TO DO THINGS! YOU NEED TO BE UP TO CODE AHHH!" 😂

In regards to the starting question, I mean, yeaaaah? I ignored Horizon literally because I was waiting for Elden Ring, but I'm sure I'm in the minority of people in that aspect.

I've been playing since Demon's Souls and yes, most people I know have stayed away from the series knowing what they know. But I've already talked to a handful of people who wanna try it for the first time. So I guess the best way to put is I think it's going to hook in new players and From Soft fans, but I don't think it'll drag anybody back into the series who didn't enjoy it the first time. 28:25. I think the game actual deters you from going into Stormveil Castle because of the first boss there. In fact I think it's trying to guide you to start exploring, especially towards the south and east.

I don't want to know why he feels this way but I'm surprised by Ben's astounded reaction that the Strokes won. Julian Casablancas is a genius! His band The Voidz is even better (Tyranny).

I play Suriel's parts at half speed ...

Jacob Geller eh? Minn Max is so surreal at times

Suriel "I love s'mores" Vazquez!

Yea you guys needed more playtime. 20 hours is like a cursory glance in elden ring

Shoutout to Jawarhello for the sick Suezo picture at 1:14:50

I can’t help but laugh to myself when Leo makes a great joke

I’ve been telling people this is Super Dark Souls 64.

@1:07:25: becoming "that guy" lol!🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂 "We're all looking for a guy to be." -Jacob Geller Sadly, i'm that guy...

Elden Ring is challenging not hard.

Bro if it’s Dark souls 4 I’m fucking sold

First time checking out the channel, you guys were all wrong, lol

Kyles point at 10:44 didn't age very well lol. Tons of non from software souls game has gotten into Elden Ring.

I've found so many sights of grace and I've probably fought 6 or more mini bosses alone in 7hrs. I've beat the first main boss as well. The game is truly massive and it has so much to explore. I've skipped through so many enemies on horseback and it's hilarious.

Oh my god, I lost it at Ben’s stoner moment in this episode

I have tried to ask so many people this question but do we know if we can finally change the controls in any way? Like can I change the attack buttons from the bumpers to the face buttons?

Horizon overlooked? 20 million copies sold Multiple crossover events Became the face of Mount PSmore. Yeah, I think they'll be fine.

Hanson doesnt seem like a dark souls kind of person (he wouldnt ever touch much of bloodborne and i dont think the souls games either) and i dont think hes gonna stick with elden ring. Just because of the hype and how its a really good game wont make it all of a sudden a game liked by the people who previously didnt like from software games. I hope he does, because it's always fun seeing people get into the series at every new entry.

Elden Ring did get a lot of new players so Kyle turned out to be wrong but its np good podcast.

Those first two guys that spoke were so wrong lmao, the game ended up selling four times DS3's lifetime sales in just a month, and it's not just blind hype, over 70% of people have beaten Margit and almost 60% have beaten Godrick. Botw is going to be a retread of the first game's map with some alterations, it's not going to recapture the magic. Starfield is coming out too late for modders to make it good by the time awards season rolls around. God of War will probably not be revolutionary aside from some shocking story developments. This is GOTY no question.

I love everyone here but why don’t Jacob and Leo do their own podcast

I think we might be conflating the idea of "bringing people in" with the idea of "keeping them". I think the reviews and the hype and the open world will get a lot of new people to buy the game. Whether they play three hours and never come back is a different story. In that sense, this game might actually have the potential to turn away more players than ever. To Kyle's and Jacob's point, if a certain percentage of all players who buy a Dark Souls game eventually drop off of it, it stands to reason that the biggest selling Dark Souls game ever would also result in the most "quitters" ever. The real question is whether that percentage changes with Elden Ring, which I tend to think it won't. Leaving aside the fact that it is still fundamentally a Dark Souls game, it is also incredibly big, which will result in even more people dropping off the game as they get into the 20-30-40 hour marks. In other words, the unprecedented number of players combined with the unprecedented size of the game suggests the largest number of DNFs in Dark Souls history. Perhaps not a bigger percentage, but likely a bigger raw number.

Why does Ben surround himself with bugmen?

"You can *finally* play Puzzle Fighter on the go!" ... Puzzle Fighter had a GBA release *almost twenty years ago* in 2003, and has had *two separate mobile phone releases*. 🤦

Soooo your saying darks souls players will like this dark souls game?

HZD has sold 20 million units, how was it overlooked?

I feel like a lot of the negative points are made because you all have only played 20-40 hours of a game you can easily put 150 hours In before finishing

Jacob Geller!

Well it seems to have pulled in a ton of new players so the first salvo of points fall super flat

I also agree that critical acclaim is going to lure people in, who don't like this style of game. My close friends are lured in and I told them they won't like it. I guarantee they will fall off in a few hours.

It kind of hurts my heart about Horizon. I get it, it isn’t hurting in sales, people are super positive, but I would like it to get the spotlight instead of people finding negativity about it and moving on. For people who are fans it’s like being shouted down and finding the corner your friends are in so you can talk quietly together through the noise. Yes, I realize that is purely opinion and I’m not dissing anyone who just doesn’t care about it and want to play other things.

I wanna say that they actually nailed what the noobs would think about Elden Ring. I dont like Souls games, played Bloodborne for about 5 hours and hated it. I dislike ER greatly. Feels like if a NES game got really good graphics.

Heads up! This is littered with spoilers if you wanna go in blind

If there's two things I love to have when a big name game comes out that I definitely won't ever play, it's: A) a nice beefy podcast telling me what I missed and that I was right for not playing it. B) A big game like Horizon that is the exact opposite that I will play and have a great time with. Kudos to everyone!

Dragons Dogma did it first.

It's like Skyrim in the dark souls universe...epic. they'll never top this game. It sets the new bar

Just wanna say beautiful podcast But no this is not dark souls 4 the lore is completely different Gameplay is alot different too Checkpoints are basically everywhere I also highly disagree I believe this game to be alot easier especially in the open world

uhh...It's called ZELDA INFINITE...duh

Way to sound entitled. "They only gave us a free game 5 days early."

Dear Lord, this game is magical and all you guys did was rag on it. I don't think pure exploration and discovery has ever been this good and that includes BotW. Who cares if it is like Dark Souls 4? Oh no, how terrible, it adds a bunch of stuff to a universally praised series of games. It has way more changes to the formula than you are giving it credit for anyway.

🍔🍟🥤🤡💄

Just fyi, most of the other channels have said this game is WAY more accessible. Minnmax has always been lukewarm on souls games, besides suriel. And so sure that it is not game of the year yet just because it doesn't do anything completely new. If that's the case, gow ragnarok and hofw can't be games of the year because they are sequels that are iterative. I'm all for legitimate criticism, but this opening discussion was a little ridiculous.

Hilarious how misguided this discussion is in retrospect!

Just wanted to chime in with my own "this is the first From Softeware game I liked" comment. I think I might have liked BloodBorne but couldn't play it. I hated dark souls 1 and 2. For me, this feels like the game people tried to convince me Dark Souls was. The world is interesting, it's hard but it feels far. There's still some time wasting unfortunately, but less so. I'm able to actually understand the levelling and the items and stuff thanks to the help things, i'm not constantly scared i'm ruining my build. I'm like 40 hours in maybe.

I will be surprised if elden ring out sells horizon

Horizon is totally gonna out sell elden ring, not that many people play from games

Hanson is rightly upset that these bum panelists started on a nitpicky downer.