Front Burner - Elden Ring and an unlikely video game phenomenon

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

The video game phenomenon set to release Friday isn’t a U.S. military shooter, a space epic or even a carjacking simulator. FromSoftware’s Elden Ring, a fantasy game from an auteur Japanese video game director, is part of a series known for its unwelcoming gameplay and frustrating difficulty. The cult following of previous games like Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls has exploded into mainstream popularity, with trailers for the series showing up on network television and before movies. To write the background for Elden Ring's world, FromSoftware managed to recruit author George R.R. Martin, who wrote the A Song of Ice and Fire novels that became the basis for Game of Thrones. Fans on the game's Reddit forums have said — some satirically, some genuinely — that they fear they might die before they get to experience Elden Ring. Today, to understand how a challenging niche game captured the world's attention, we'll talk with GameSpot managing editor Tamoor Hussain as he explains the allure of the game's desolate atmosphere, and how its difficulty level helped him through some real-life personal struggles.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. That's it, okay. I'm out. No!

Oh my god! These are two very entertaining video game streamers in Montreal on a channel called Woolly Versus. And they're throwing themselves repeatedly at a boss called Knight Artorias the Abysswalker. I'm so dumb. I'm so stupid. Get him! Get him! I'm so stupid.

Do not let him steal this. This is your show. This battle of wits and patience and reaction time has partly defined a series of games called Dark Souls. It's so tough. These games are so tough that honestly, it can be hard to imagine why anyone would have fun banging their head against these bosses. I can't miss. Another miss. Oh, that's critical.

Stinger. Back roll. Oh, no. But despite and because of that, Dark Souls and other games from developer From Software have become this cultural phenomenon. Awesome fight. That was it, man.

That was awesome. This Friday, From Software is releasing its latest game, Elden Ring. And it's such a big deal that Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin helped create the game's world. I worked up a fairly detailed background for them. And then they took it from there. To understand how these uncompromisingly difficult games have still captured mainstream imagination, I'm joined by a true FromSoftware expert.

Tamor Hussain is managing editor at GameSpot, and he's host over at gaming sites Kind of Funny and Giant Bomb. He's also already played Elden Rite. Here we go. You hear that? Breathing? Yeah. That's John Dark Souls.

Hey Tamor, thank you very much for being here today. Hi, Jamie. Thanks for having me. So since you're deep in these games and the community, I'm hoping you can help me measure the hype right now. So how big a deal is it for Elden Ring to be coming out on Friday? It's massive. It's been in development over four years, probably. This game has been in production.

And the developer from software has not put out a bad game yet. In fact, there's a huge community that has built up around these games because they are not simple surface level experiences in the same way that you might watch a movie, understand it completely and walk away. Each of these games is a puzzle, narratively and mechanically. These people, they come together and they unpack everything in these games for months and months and months on end. There will be YouTube videos, articles, there's going to be essays written about the thematic implications of these games, character studies studies it's a massive massive release because it is going to define the lives of a lot of people for a long time to come the elden ring oh elden ring

shattered by someone or something um it was it's pretty crazy i was reading this quote on reddit and there was this fan saying uh is anyone else having genuine and anxiety about dying before elden ring comes out i drank two cups of coffee this morning, my heart fluttered a bit. And my first thought was, oh, God, no, not before Elden Ring, like I can't die before Elden Ring. I wonder, just for people like me who haven't played these games, you go around squaring off against enemies with like medieval weapons or spells or even guns and but but you're really fighting towards these big boss battles you'll probably have to do dozens of times right can you

just can you just explain that to me yeah so if you think about it in the classical sense where everyone probably has this frame of reference super mario 1-1 you know exactly how that starts start on the left hand side of the screen as little italian plumber mario run forward jump over the goomba stomp on its head and then keep doing that until you reach the end flagpole and then you do that a couple more times and then you fight bowser at one of those that is effectively what these games are on in their most reductive and rudimentary form. Except instead of being on a 2D side-on plane, they're massive, intricate 3D worlds built around a dark fantasy aesthetic. Ultimately, the goal is the same.

Take your character from one side of this world to the other and defeat the boss at the end. There's not traditionally a princess to save this time. And then what happens is along the way imagine if every single one of those goombas those little mushroom boys that you jump in on the heads of was vicious and shields but in in a more sophisticated way than i just made it sound i understand it sounds incredibly sophisticated very hard um and and to sort of understand what makes these Souls games. I want to talk specifically about the first one, right? Demon's Souls.

It was released in 2009 in Japan. Like, bring me back to that time in 2009. Like, what was it like when this game dropped? This game, 2009, this game dropped, and there was little to no buzz about it. So the website that I work for currently, gamespot.com, this was before I worked there, they would go on to eventually give it game of the year, which was quite controversial because a lot of people had not played it. And those that had played it

described it as impossible and poorly designed and not fun to play. Let's get this out of the way. Demon's Souls might be the hardest game you'll play all year but it's also one of the best this action rpg but that was kind of the point i remember i imported it from china because the chinese version had english language subtitles in it and i played it and i remember feeling a lot of that same confusion around it because it wasn't coddling me. It wasn't holding my hand and taking me through a game. It was hard to overcome that change in mentality. But when I did, I completed the first, just a small section of the first level.

It was an immeasurable sense of satisfaction. I feel like I was on top of the world for that just a few moments because I had been battered and bruised and bloody for hours before that. And then I did one small task in there and it was unbelievable. And that is what really caught fire amongst people, the sense of satisfaction. Games largely don't challenge you that much anymore unless they specifically are puzzle games or brain testers and teasers. Games are designed, they're massive blockbuster experiences. They cost way more than movies. They're marketed with more money and designers spend years and years and years of their lives making them, putting graphics on them, music, and they are massive big budget things. It is mad to think

that you would create a game that is that expensive and then make it so that a vast majority of people cannot see everything that you put in there but that's exactly what these games do it's so interesting to hear you talk about how it's so satisfying to get through these tough games because i was trying to wrap my head around this with our producers nick and derrick yesterday i'm like why do you guys want to play this game that's so hard like yeah like don't you want to sit down and you know have fun and relax but the way that they described it it was it was just like this this like moment of euphoria right so I've tried I spent a lot of time trying to think about how how I would describe that feeling to someone who has literally no frame of reference.

I always basically had in my mind my mom. And the best I can come up with is imagine a soda bottle or a ketchup bottle, and it's just too tight. Like you cannot, you know, you have that moment where you're trying to open it and your fingers just keep sliding and you just keep at it and you keep at it. But eventually you start to feel it give. And then you keep at it, you keep at it. But eventually you start to feel it give. And then you keep at it, you keep at it, you put more strength in it, you try a few angles, maybe like you wrap a tissue around it

and you keep doing it. And then there's that one moment where it gives and it opens. The feeling that you have when you open that bottle, it's small. Magnify that by a million. Like by that feeling is what effectively is happening. You are beating your head against these challenges. And then there's that moment where you make a breakthrough and you emerge on the other side and you feel like a god

and you feel like I'm unstoppable. I can now put ketchup on my fries. I feel like you're really speaking my language right now. I like. That is so good. So you're talking about how Demon's Souls, this 2009 game, although super, super popular among a certain segment, was still considered niche. Does that change when the next game comes out, Dark Souls?

Thus began the Age of Fire. but soon the flames will fade and only dark will remain yes it does change but not immediately so dark souls comes out and the dark souls is quite different from demon souls so demon souls uses imagine like the lobby of a mansion you can go into different rooms. You walk down different corridors and into the rooms there. But ultimately, to go to another area of the mansion, you need to return to the lobby area. Dark Souls and a lot of the games following it, they're these open environments. Imagine a forest where you start in the middle of the forest and you walk in any direction.

And suddenly you emerge and, you know, I don't know know there's a thicket or you suddenly find a lake the thing that people talk about is they walk out of the lobby as we call it which is firelink shrine walk keep going fight through all these things and they'll be taken to a what feels like a distant kingdom fight through that and then emerge on the other side of the kingdom and suddenly look down and realize that they've arrived back at Firelink Shrine. So that was a big part of what drew people's attention to it. It was a intricately created, crafted world that very few people had seen anything like. But there's also the idea of an atmosphere. The area that I mentioned, Firelink Shrine. If you go to YouTube and type in Firelink Shrine,

you'll find videos of people who have taken the music for that area and looped it for 15 hours, 20 hours. That's because people love the feeling of being there. There's a kind of... Everyone has the sads now and then, right? And sometimes it feels good to be in your feelings, right? Like you just want to wallow in despair. In the sad the sads yeah and these games are about wallowing in the sads at times you know it not everything has to be a an experience where it's telling you you're the greatest thing in the world and you're the you know you're the best that has ever been you are

the chosen one you're a wizard harry i'm a what a wizard and a thumping good night wager you need to take the ring to mount doom or whatever it is they do in that lord of the ring stuff you really earn that sense of self-fulfillment and the self-confidence because you've just been beaten down so much yeah because you've been well you've been beaten down but then you really buckled up and thought to yourself, I'm going to try it. I'm going to put my hardest into this. There's that moment where you come through the other side and you're rewarded, not by someone patting you on the back in these games. It's usually like a stunning vista. Like you walk out into the other

side and you just see beautiful Gothic architecture laid out in front of you and realized i made it here that kind of sense of fulfillment is what was also honed in on really really sharply in this game but on top of that it was the sense the fantasy world the stories the characters all those characters in these games they have heartbreaking stories it's very difficult to get that story on first playthrough you have to do a lot of digging but some of them are genuinely heartbreaking i will honestly like i'm happy to admit like i've i've like been moved to tears by some of the stories in these games and i won't be the only person to tell you that there's gonna there's legions of people who will Grey Wolf Sif or Artorias or Solaire.

I am Solaire of Astora, an adherent of the Lord of Sunlight. And because when that happens, when you start to piece together stories, it feels so real and genuine. It makes you just want to stay in that world. And over time, you just become a bit obsessed with it

and it becomes a safe space that's what those games are for me which sounds crazy because as you know they are designed to be brutal but when you play them in enough and you develop a kind of synchronicity with them they become a place where you feel at home you're able to also express and understand things that you perhaps are grappling with in real life in a better way by playing and allowing the the emotions and the vibe and the atmosphere of these games to wash over you obviously the community aspect of it was trying to figure out the wild crap happening in this game together is also a big part of why it became big you know to listen to you talk about it,

it sounds like, well, it just sounds like these games are a real refuge for you. I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing, like when you talk about how they might have helped you through something that you were trying to grapple with or get through in your own life. Yeah. Absolutely.

Like there's one of the games that they've made. It's called Bloodborne. It looks like werewolves and vampires, Victorian England kind of gothic game. And it is that, but there's way more beneath the surface. That is a simplification. Set in a place called Yharnam, you are this figure called the Hunter. Long ago, old Yharnam was overrun by the plague of beasts and left to rot and decay. And now the only voices heard there are the howls of beasts. And everyone in that world does not like you. They do not want you there. They blame you for a horrible, ironically, a pandemic that has left a lot of its denizens kind of ill or dead and transformed into horrible, monstrous beings.

Safe to say, it's not a place that on first blush you find to be comforting at all. I've played that game probably close to about 800 hours now. And it is now, I've played it enough for Yharnam to go from this place that I actively was terrified of being to a place that now is my safe space. It's a home for me. It's a place that helps me think and unpack and process a lot of information. I, over time, have taken this thing that wanted to hurt me and understood

it and now have made it my home. And the idea of being able to overcome the challenges that that game presents and kind of harmonize with them and find a way to exist within them is incredibly powerful. And it's a reminder to me every time I go there that I'm capable of overcoming challenges and figuring them out. And that extends to real life. of overcoming challenges and figuring them out. And that extends to real life. So in the past few years, you know, I've, I've moved from, I moved from England to San Francisco in America. Um, I've had various visa concerns around that. I've been through a breakup. I've, you know, had depression and anxiety and struggled with, uh, mental health issues in therapy.

And that is a game where at my hardest times or when I needed to kind of ground myself, I would start Bloodborne and just walk around Yharnam knowing that nothing there fazed me anymore. Nothing there could hurt me. I understood it completely because I had spent the time and made the effort to unpack and find ways to navigate the challenges that it presented me. And every time I did that, I came away feeling a little more capable in real life. If I could do these things in a game that was designed to crush my heart and soul at

every given opportunity, I could do that in a life that was currently trying to do the same. It's contemplative. And it's like, it is honestly kind of like a therapy for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that's so cool. This is so interesting for me to hear you say that. And I'm so glad that like this, these games have been this place for you um as you're going through anxiety or or battling with with mental health issues i i i i feel that acutely i know that acutely myself I love you. entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and

podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So you've interviewed the director behind most of these games before. His name is Hidetaka Miyazaki and he's really become a celebrity I understand there's like an article written every time he speaks and and you can you describe for me what he's like as as a character yeah I've been very fortunate enough to speak to Miyazaki-san a couple of times and he is a very soft-spoken unassuming very humble man to the point where it makes me wonder how some of the horrifying things in this in these games come out of his mind he's now the president of from

software but he joined um the company and was on working on armored core which is a different series um he actually heard that um there was a failing fantasy project that he desperately wanted to be on because his thought was, this thing, nobody cares about it anyway. Everyone's written it off as something that is going to fail so I can get in there and maybe explore some of my ideas. And he did that and would go on to create the game that is Demon's Souls. And the interesting thing about him is these games are a reflection of him as a person. So Miyazaki grew up incredibly poor. He describes it as tremendously poor. He said that back when he was young, he basically had no life purpose. He had nothing. He didn't really know what to do. All he loved was reading. But at the same time, because him

and his family were so poor, he wasn't able to buy books or any sort of manga or anything like that he had to just go to his library and borrow which is common but the books that he'd borrow were not made for children to read he couldn't understand them he didn't really get it so what he did was read the books and take in the bits that he did understand and then fill in the gaps using his imagination in between and use any sort of drawings or kind of illustrations that were included to help inform that. That is how he makes his games now. So the stories of his games are largely told not by people speaking or cut scenes or movies. They are told through

picking up items and then reading the description of the items. Each item in the game has some sort of description attached to it. And that description might refer to a place, a person, an idea. Then, you know, it could be minutes later, it could be hours later, you might pick up another item or meet a person that would say something that reminds you of that item and allows you to draw a connection between A and B, thus filling in the story in between them and creating that kind of web of narrative for yourself. But yeah, he's this kind of humble beginnings approach to go into becoming the president of From Software. humble beginnings approach to go into becoming the president of From Software. And it's not an understatement to say he redefined the video game industry. In the kind of aftermath of Dark Souls, everyone shifted to making a Dark Souls type game. There's an entire genre now called Souls-likes. This is a person and a team that is constantly innovating.

So then I guess this brings us back to this Friday, their next release. Tell me a little bit before we go about Elden Ring and why it's getting players excited all over again. and why it's getting players excited all over again. So Elden Ring is getting people excited purely off the back of it's a From Software game directed by Heidataka Miyazaki. That is the level which they've reached now. It's kind of like the way anyone gets excited about a Steven Spielberg movie. If Steven Spielberg announces a movie,

people are already excited. They don't care what it is. It's just his name is attached to it and they know to expect a certain level of quality and that's what this is but at the same time this is their most ambitious game ever it's an open world game has involvement from george rr martin he's known in the mainstream as the fantasy author and he's meeting um and collaborating with in the video game space the most beloved dark fantasy author and creator there is but then it is like everything i said earlier these games are important to people

they are a coping mechanism they are a way to to be excited about something a place to go the escapism the sense of community and the sense of personal growth that comes with them that had they that they have had in previous games the prospect of having that again is something that you cannot truly quantify it's like you're seeing your best friend after a really really long time you know that you're gonna it's gonna make you feel so good you're gonna have such a good time catching up and you're gonna you know it's gonna you're gonna leave that game or you're gonna leave that experience a better person and it is very much a case of this is going to be a new obsession for hundreds of thousands if not millions of people for the next few months if not years all right uh tomorrow thank you it has been such a pleasure

to listen to you today i have i have learned so much so uh i'm very appreciative uh thank you thank you for having me. All right. So before we go today, as I'm sure you have probably heard, on Tuesday, Canada joined the U.S., U.K. and Germany in announcing a suite of new tougher sanctions against Russia. This in response to the Russian ratcheting of military pressure against Ukraine. We're working on an episode that will break down what's going on with this escalating tension in the region. Please keep an ear out for that on Friday. That's all for today though. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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