As the pioneers of their own distinct subgenre, FromSoftware’s Souls games are generally ahead of the curve, with games likeElden Ringsetting trends, serving as the benchmarks throughout the industry, or oftentimes both. Overall, there’s a lot thatElden Ringintroduced to the familiar FromSoftware formula, making the subgenre more accessible than ever before, while simultaneously ramping up the difficulty to maintain a challenging, yet balanced experience.
However, one of thefeatures thatElden Ringinherited from FromSoftware’s past gamesstill hasn’t quite reached its full potential, which is the playable character classes. This feature could potentially be the key to taking the subgenre’s RPG elements to the next level, considering in its current state, it has little to no long-term significance.
Future FromSoftware Games Can Take Their RPG Elements to the Next Level
Elden Ring’s character classes are generally only a means of customizing the appearance of the player’s character or starting the game with a particular item unlocked. However, many players typically end up hiding their character’s appearance behind armor. Also, aside from a few rare exceptions, any items, weapons, or armor unlocked via choosing a specific character class can be found naturally throughout the game. Ultimately, this seemingly significant choice at the beginning of anew playthrough inElden Ringhas little to no impact on the player’s experience.
Even though players often hide their character under layers of armor, the roleplaying potential of the character classes still remains, but only for as long as players stay in character. For instance, players who are well-versed in the game’s lore could strictly adhere to weapon types andschools of magic inElden Ringthat fit with their class, like playing as a Raya Lucarian scholar who only uses Glintstone Sorceries.
Beyond role-playing, a more practical use for choosing a character class is to obtain an item, weapon, or armor set immediately at the start of the game. This is useful forElden Ring’s speedrunning community, but as mentioned, the majority of the gear these starting classes have access to can be found early on in a playthrough and they’re often outperformed by most of the gear in the late game anyway. So in general, the mere minutes most of these items take to earn naturally is rather insignificant.
Outside of roleplaying, speedrunning, orchallenge runs inElden Ringand FromSoftware’s other Souls games, character classes lacking any kind of significance is arguably a wasted potential. In hindsight, future games should step up to the challenge of exploring the full potential of this feature.
This kind of change could still be a welcome addition toElden Ring, although the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is said to beElden Ring’s final major content update.
How FromSoftware Can Make Future Souls Games’ Character Classes More Meaningful
FutureFromSoftware games afterElden Ringcould give more meaning to their starting character classes by making each class proficient with a specific weapon type or school of magic since this is how most players currently utilize this feature. However, limiting the kinds of builds that players can create could be considered a downgrade compared toElden Ring’s generous build crafting variety. Instead, it might be a safer option to give players unique interactions throughout the game based on their character class.
This could be as subtle as different lines of dialogue or certain enemy types being either hostile or passive by default. On a much more extreme level though, this could also mean that players have different ways of progressing quests, potentially leading to unique outcomes or even completely new endings for the game. Ultimately, this kind of feature could take FromSoftware’s RPG elements to the next level, giving their games a whole new layer of replayability.
