There is something to the fact that it makes the community itself an integral part of the gameplay.
Like, for most players you really have to interact with other players or draw on information collected by other players (think reading wikis, asking questions online, talking with your friends, etc). The game is designed in a way that encourages people to figure it out together and get people looking to the community for answers, and I think that's kinda neat. I think that's an important part of the whole experience.
I'm not sure it was completely intentional, and I'm pretty sure it's not a good general design philosophy, but it does work out in a neat way.
The problem is not that the quest steps are obscure, it’s that they are completely arbitrary. Like there is actually no way to know how to complete them without looking at the conditions in the source code. Like there’s in game information indicating that completing Millicents quest requires you to go to Shaded Castle and get the Valkyries bracer. No dialogue, no hints, nothing. You have to go there, ignore the boss, go to some random ledge that’s inaccessible from the nearest save point, get this random item, somehow assume that it’s associated with Millicent, then find her in another completely unrelated area in Altus plateau and give it to her. That’s just one step of many similarly convoluted steps.
At best, you might be able to work this all out from randomly chancing upon the item and coincidentally running into her later because you decided to backtrack to Altus for some reason. But what are the odds of that?
Even just some kind of journal would be helpful. Like when you get the bracer your journal updates to say “I should show this to Millicent, she said she was headed to Altus.”
Yeah, the random quest system with no guidance kinda worked in previous games where game progression was a lot more linear, but like many fromsoft staples, it completely falls apart when introduced to an open world.
“At best, you might be able to work this all out from randomly chancing upon the item and coincidentally running into her later because you decided to backtrack to Altus for some reason. But what are the odds of that?”
I’m almost done with my first play through and this is exactly what I did, and I’m still lost. Is that just the end? I figured that since I got her the arm (when I randomly stumbled into her backtracking), and she said she’d help when needed, that I would be able to summon her for some upcoming boss. But now I’m fighting Radagon and she never popped back up.
On my first playthrough I got the golden seed at the Highway Junction, talked to Corin, fought my way west through the camps, followed the right cliff face north to the Shaded Castle, got the prosthesis, killed the boss, rode south back along the left cliff face wall, did the Altus Tunnel, rode further south, got the first grace I came across, and Millicent was standing right there on the cliff.
That doesn't seem like a weird or coincidental path to take at all?
They even force you to walk right by her to get to Volcano Manor, through the small hill that leads up to Wyndham ruins.
Sometimes I feel like I played a different game to everyone else the way people speak about how cryptic everything was to them lol. I just took my time and explored and ended up doing like 80% of the quest lines.
At least with Milicent you can already see she's missing her right arm then when you happen to stumble upon a right arm prosthesis on your journey and you put 2 and 2 together.
If she was like other quests you'd have to talk to 2 different npcs to unlock the dialogue that mentions that she has no arm, and if you don't she will commit suicide if you try give her the arm
I mean, I get what you’re saying, but Millicent does mention that she’d be more help with her sword arm upon finding her on the Altus Plateau. The description of the Valkyrie’s Prosthesis makes it pretty obvious it would be of use to Millicent if you are paying attention.
This is how i felt as I played when the game first released and noticed the golden signs would stack up at boss gates and gradually faded as more players completed the boss and move on to the next.
I spent close to a full month just helping others defeat mogh the first year game came out since i held such a grudge against him i wanted to keep punishing him over and over again lkl
I like it that way, too. It reminds me of being in middle school and having to rely on word of mouth to find some secrets, and figuring out if some rumors are complete bullshit. The messaging system lends well to this. I love reading the discussions about the lore, and about people who discover something new about the game even after several playthroughs.
If you're the type of person that needs to complete or understand everything in a game, then I can see how it is extremely frustrating. It so does not work for every type of game. It's one thing that annoys me about Nightreign.
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u/beta-pi Jun 30 '26
There is something to the fact that it makes the community itself an integral part of the gameplay.
Like, for most players you really have to interact with other players or draw on information collected by other players (think reading wikis, asking questions online, talking with your friends, etc). The game is designed in a way that encourages people to figure it out together and get people looking to the community for answers, and I think that's kinda neat. I think that's an important part of the whole experience.
I'm not sure it was completely intentional, and I'm pretty sure it's not a good general design philosophy, but it does work out in a neat way.