Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week, I thought I’d take a break from our usual film medley, as the past month has clearly been more defined by videogames than cinema. Basically the entire would-be holiday release schedule was released over the past several weeks, with Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Dying Light 2, Horizon: Forbidden West, and Elden Ring all staking their claims to the open world throne. Given this bounty, my house elected to save Horizon for a future sale, but the other three have been consuming my life for some time now. Let’s take a moment to break down this marvelous bounty, before I’m inevitably dragged back to Elden Ring!

The seeds of this spring’s absurd bounty were actually sown five years ago, when Nintendo released the epoch-shifting Breath of the Wild. At that point in time, open world games had hit a point of stagnation, the endpoint of foul pollination stemming from two major releases: Assassin’s Creed and Arkham Asylum. From Assassin’s Creed, open-world games had adopted a chore-based approach to gameplay, wherein the allure of exploring an open world was largely condensed down to “go to all of these points and hit all of these checkmarks.” From Arkham, they’d developed a style of combat that didn’t really involve combat at all – more just a few quicktime presses, which would result in your character performing some independent feat of violence and acrobatics. Between these two influences, many open world games didn’t really have any “core gameplay” at all, and had become pure vehicles for either checklists or textual narratives. Press forward and X until you’re eighty hours closer to death.

Breath of the Wild changed everything. No longer was the open world simply a plain separating you from what you wanted to do – the open world was the gameplay, and traversing it was an inherently rewarding experience. Nintendo’s team accomplished this feat through a few key innovations, combined with an extraordinary level of pan-map craftsmanship. First off, BotW introduced verticality as a component of both world design and gameplay, letting Link climb anything so long as his stamina supported it. This shift immediately changed the nature of players’ relationship with open worlds – high mountains were no longer walls barring passage, but promises of challenge and secrets. Just like the simple joy of moving Mario in space, moving Link through BotW is a gameplay hook in itself, turning travel from a chore between highlights to a highlight in itself. When combined with the game’s visual focus on an escalating series of triangles and the tedium-shattering convenience of the glider, BotW’s shifts essentially redefined the player’s relationship with open worlds. And all of this was of course hammered home by BotW’s extraordinarily secret-rich map, wherein any flight of wanderlust would undoubtedly be rewarded by Korok puzzles, shrines, and other hidden wonders.

So, “introduce verticality as an element of world design,” “use stamina or other means to turn movement into gameplay,” “build your world to visually invite a sense of wonder and discovery,” and “individually craft each square of map to provide new experiences.” Seems simple enough, right? Well, it’s taken about five years for BotW’s lessons to fully percolate into finished products, but whether you’re lost in Genshin Impact or enjoying last month’s releases like me, it’s clear that we’ve officially entered the post-BotW game design era. I mean, if even a developer as conservative as Gamefreak is embracing BotWisms, surely the game’s moment has past arrived.

Because it’s true, Pokemon Legends: Arceus certainly embraces some of BotW’s lessons: the escalating triangles of world design are here, as are the climbing and gliding options. But more fundamentally, holy shit, open world Pokemon! This is the Pokemon game I’ve been dreaming of ever since I first played Yellow as a kid, a rich 3D world where you can wander and capture as you like. With diverse regions, a decent set of QoL improvements, and a robust capture-focused Pokedex, Arceus is a game that I can get mindlessly lost in for hours, just wandering through grass and throwing balls at turtles.

Of course, this is still a Pokemon game, meaning it’s wildly outdated graphically and remarkably feature-light compared to most major releases. You really need to love catching Pokemon specifically to love Arceus, because the game essentially doesn’t have a story or trainer battles, and is mostly just one big zoo for catching critters. Arceus can at times feel more like a tech demo more than a completed release, but it is a tech demo for a game I’ve been dreaming about since childhood, and so I’m still having a wonderful time with it. If filling the Pokedex is your favorite part of Pokemon, this is exactly the game for you.

While Arceus is frankly a bit too rudimentary of a game to fully embrace BotWism, Dying Light 2 is a proudly post-BotW game in every aspect. The first Dying Light was a satisfying mixture of parkour and zombie action, as you raced across the fictional city of Haran during a massive outbreak. Dying Light was actually one of very few pre-BotW games to effectively turn terrain into gameplay – but even then, its largely automated climbing system could be occasionally clunky, and the mid-game addition of a Batman-style grappling hook essentially “solved” the game’s own gameplay loop.

For Dying Light 2, Techland has integrated basically all of Breath of the Wild’s innovations with astonishing results. The Assassin’s Creed-derivative auto-climb system has been replaced by a shared stamina bar, giving a much clearer sense of challenge to climbing obstacles, while also creating an inherent tension between fight and flight (since both are tied to the same resource). And once you hit the game’s central area, you are swiftly introduced to both a glider and a grappling hook (no Batman theatrics this time), ballooning your range of motion into the stratosphere.

You’d think some of these movement systems might step on each other’s toes, but the transitions between them actually feel remarkably seamless, with the glider generally just facilitating your movement between major destinations, or providing opportunities for narrow escapes. All of this, plus a vastly expanded richness of mini-dungeons throughout the map, have made for a profound upgrade over the already-excellent original game. I look forward to munching through Dying Light 2’s second half, just as soon as I can drag myself away from… well, you know. ELDEN RING.

I don’t even know how to begin talking about Elden Ring. I’m already twenty-something hours in, but the game keeps expanding in directions I never expected, leaving me no clue how far in the experience I am. And I love that feeling – I love the sense that this world is too big for me to understand it, more a living space than a discrete series of interlocking systems. I keep getting lost in Elden Ring, and having a wonderful time doing it, because this game has at last fused the lessons of BotW with the most satisfying third person action gameplay in history.

The Soulsborne games have felt like “Zelda for adults” right from the start. Do you love the idea of exploring a rich fantasy world, but wish it trended a bit more mature and stylized than Nintendo is willing to go? Do you enjoy solving puzzles and fighting monsters, but wish those monsters actually fought back, demanding you actually think and develop countermeasures? That was a great part of even Demon’s Souls appeal, and From Software have been honing that formula ever since, with all of their varying innovations bearing fruit in Elden Ring.

Outside of the lack of a stamina meter, Elden Ring embodies BotW’s innovations more effectively than any release short of Death Stranding. And more than the form of these innovations, Elden Ring reveals their ultimate function: to make the idea of walking forward in an unknown space an inherently thrilling proposition. Elden Ring’s map is built on layers and layers of escalating landmarks, with each enemy encampment offering unique avenues of stealth and combat. Castles and monuments offer promises of loot or adventure, while dark corners reward your diligence with hidden dungeons. Quests and build paths are numerous, but never clearly delineated: as a result, stumbling upon a unique weapon or plaintive stranger feels like a genuinely personal experience. Nothing is gated, because nothing needs to be; this world is treacherous, but Elden Ring trusts you to explore it at your own pace. If you enjoy Souls-style combat, Elden Ring could quite well be your definitive open world game.

I could gush for hours about the specific ideas Elden Ring has poached from its own predecessors, and I’m sure I’ve got a full article in me about the value of mystery and minimalism in game directives, but right now I just want to go play more goddamn Elden Ring. More thoughts next week, I promise. The kingdom awaits!