How does roleplaying hold up when the spell breaks?
Elden Ring is a strange old game. On the one hand, it does everything in its power to make you feel like you’re at the centre of its delicately poised universe, blessed with the privilege of being a pioneer across these breathtaking worlds, your unique steps untangling the arcane mysteries within. On the other, it plays out with ghosts of other players wafting all around in ridiculous headgear, their bloodstained echoes falling comically off ledges to their deaths, their ubiquitous messages somehow finding a thousand different ways to obsess over the word ‘fingers’. In this way, offline and online Elden Ring feel like two entirely separate experiences, and as an experiment it’s worth logging out in order to appreciate the difference. We know some people who won’t even play the game online any more – but then these are the same ones who seek out anything that appears to actively exclude ‘multiplayer’ from its trail of bullet points.
For those in particular, this issue’s cover game hits the bullseye. The Invincible is a narrative-driven adventure that is a resolutely singleplayer proposition, with handsomely rendered technology, characters and environments, and (as far as we know) a complete absence of smutty notes just lying around. We have thousands of excellent words about it elsewhere, so we needn’t spoil too much here. The story begins on p54.
This month we also welcome columnist Adrian Hon to the magazine. As the CEO of UK indie studio Six To Start (Zombies, Run!), Edge’s newest contributor has lots of experience in videogame development, but as the lead designer of Perplex City he’s also made a mark in the world of alternate-reality games; he is the author of both fiction and non-fiction books; and once upon a time he worked as a neuroscientist. With such an extensive and broad-ranging CV, he’s ideally placed to consider videogame topics that don’t always appear centre stage, including new interfaces and technologies, gamification, emerging diversity, borders with other media, and beyond. Alternate Reality opens its doors on p30.