ELDEN RING
What can I say about ELDEN RING that hasn’t been said to death already? This must be one of the most-discussed games of the year, with everyone having a hot take or video essay on the Dark Souls of Breath of the Wilds.
So, instead of saying something normal, I’ll say that finding the hidden path around Stormveil Castle, emerging through the fog and onto the cliffs overlooking Liurnia of the Lakes, I was struck by the absolute beauty of the vista. Volumetric clouds rolling across the scene, distant mountain ranges, a castle jutting out through the middle of it all - the vibrant colors, the gentle blowing of the wind, and every inch of what I could see was explorable - nay, specifically designed to be explored. I stood there, transfixed, for probably ten minutes, piloting my character at a slow walk around the cliffs, watching the scenery parallax and the day turn to night. My soul wailed at the fantastical Bob Ross painting laid out before me - no place on Earth looked like this.
I descended the cliff, wading through the shin-deep marsh on foot (I tended not to use the horse provided, much preferring the surety of my character’s own two feet), marvelling at the fog wending through the trees - the simulacrum had surpassed the source, and I was thrown headfirst into the depths of weltschmerz because it had finally happened - video games were prettier than real life.
In an 1898 edition of Georg Büchmann’s 1868 book Geflügelte Worte: Der Citatenschatz des deutschen Volkes (Winged Words: The Quotation-Treasures of the German People), the originator of the word “weltschmerz” (world-weariness) is attributed to Jean Paul and his posthumous 1827 novel Selina oder uber die Unsterblichkeit (Selina or on Immortality). According to Britannica, Jean Paul coined this word to describe the emotions of none other than melancholic egotist fuckboi Lord Byron.
This would have been a fabulous connection, allowing me to type something like “The Soulsbourne protagonist, solitary and suffering, but possessed of great depths, is, both in virtual character and in player, the definitive modern reincarnation of the Byronic Hero”, but instead of driving forward with this point I opted to check my sources and read through the section from Geflügelte Worte: Der Citatenschatz des deutschen Volkes regarding weltschmerz.
I was, to my disappointment, unable to locate any actual reference to Lord Byron in the text. Checking the synopsis of Selina oder uber die Unsterblichkeit on German Wikipedia yielded a similar result - no appearance of our original Byronic hero. Either Britannica is incorrect or Lord Byron’s presence is only referenced in passing when Jean Paul coined the term.
Only one thing to do: skim Selina oder uber die Unsterblichkeit. Thankfully, Project Gutenberg has a copy, but things became strange: I couldn’t find any uses of the word weltschmerz in the text at all. Georg Büchmann’s references page 132 of Volume 2, and German Wikipedia says the novel ends with two characters having a telepathic conversation via magnetism, but this doesn’t happen in the Project Gutenberg version - was there another chunk of Selina oder uber die Unsterblichkeit out there that Project Gutenberg was missing?
A second reference to the Selina oder uber die Unsterblichkeit using the word weltschmerz appears in WILHELM ALFRED BRAUN (Ph.D.)’s 1905 paper TYPES OF WELTSCHMERZ IN GERMAN POETRY - also referring to Volume 2, page 132. Either these two both read the same edition of Selina oder uber die Unsterblichkeit that contains the mysterious second volume, or WILHELM ALFRED BRAUN (Ph.D.) just cannibalized Georg Büchmann’s reference and didn’t check his sources.
I found a scan of what I’m pretty sure is the original manuscript, but it’s handwritten, which I’m going to say is solidly beyond my abilities to translate. Even if this was in English, Jean Paul’s scribblings would be… difficult to parse. All was not lost, however - Google Play has digitized a print copy from 1827, and it contained two volumes! Flipping to page 132 of Volume 2, sure enough I found:
Someone even highlighted it for us during the last 200 years. Nice - we’ve found the oldest known reference to weltschmerz. You know what we didn’t find? LORD BYRON. There are zero references to Lord Byron in this novel. The ‘he’ in the above line (“Only his eye saw all the thousand torments of the people at their downfall. He can, so to speak, endure this world-weariness only through the sight of the bliss that rewards afterwards.”) refers to God, which is obvious if you read the line in its proper context. Or even if you read it out of context. How do you make this error!
I have sent a terse email to Britannica informing them not to stick random English fuckbois where they don’t belong. Hopefully the Britannica article on Weltschmerz will be fixed by the time you all read this.
I’m not sure if this rabbit hole has actually yielded any actual insights, though. All those words, and not a joule of philosophical work done, except to correct a record maybe. Perhaps I could pivot into Umberto Eco’s essay collection Travels in Hyperreality, in which he discusses how Americans create fantastic simulations of the real world (e.g. the castle in Disneyland), but I’ve not actually read Travels in Hyperreality and the copy at the nearby library is checked out. Besides, From Software is a Japanese company, so I’m not even sure Travels in Hyperreality would apply here anyway.
Perhaps I am suffering from recency bias. As a teenager, I was enraptured by the rolling landscapes of World of Warcraft, even though the family computer could only manage a scant 12 fps in exterior environments (The Barrens was my favorite zone since I could get 20). Even when acquiring one of World of Warcraft’s pricey horses at level 40, I tended not to use it - instead preferring to traverse the game’s countryside on my own two feet, marveling at how far I could see. Elden Ring possesses all of the qualities that I loved/love about World of Warcraft - a gorgeous landscape to explore, muted exposition baked into the world itself, getting stronger over time, finding cool swords, serendipitous player interaction - but bereft of the metric shitton of cruft that also comes with playing World of Warcraft, though that’s perhaps because the devs don’t need to cater both to powergamers (who maintain their subscriptions) and people like me, who buy the new World of Warcraft expansion, play it, and then move on.
Other, intermediate, examples of games with lovely exploreable scenery spring to mind - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim both give the experience of traversing a tremendous fantasy world on horseback, though I never bought a horse - clambering over rocks and hills was enough trouble by yourself, without having to worry about some ungainly, mange-ridden beast as well. The Witcher 3’s landscapes, with its physics-enabled trees and VRAM-munching lighting effects filtering through them made me want to step through these forests slowly, taking in the atmosphere. There’s a provided horse (who the protagonist does love dearly) in The Witcher 3, but I never rode it. Why speed past such well-rendered foliage?
I have come to the realization that I do not like horses. They look weird. You have to take care of them. They’re dangerous, but also fragile. Apparently horse technology has advanced tremendously in the past two-thousand years - used to be you couldn’t hop on a horse and ride around, since it didn’t evolve to carry both you and it. That’s why chariots were a thing in the ancient world. It wasn’t until much later we bred horses to be actually suitable for riding, but the animal’s robustness suffered as a result. Should have left those horses where they were, I say. You will never see Red Dead Redemption 2 on one of these ‘Games I’ve Completed in 20XX’ lists, because, when I dream, I do not dream of traversing America with one of these strange creatures. The only acceptable horse game is Mount and Blade: Warband, and that’s mostly because they worked really hard on the mounted combat. Elden Ring’s mounted combat, by contrast, feels like an afterthought, but it’s okay, because this is remedied by never saddling up.
The Bottom Line
My game of the year. Would be even better if they took out the horse.