The People of Elden Ring
NPCs or Non-Playable Characters as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary are any characters in a computer game that aren’t controlled by the player. With this in mind, the recent video game hit Elden Ring by FromSoftware, an Action Role-Playing Game with its ambitious scope and an expansiveness previously unheard of, is rightfully expected to contain a large number of NPCs to fill its world with life and history. One of the best uses of NPCs in a story is to make the fictional world feel real; as if it has existed long before you pressed the start button, and will continue to exist long after you see the credits. Elden Ring carries on the successful use of NPCs from previous FromSoftware titles, utilizing these lines of code and polygons quite differently than the norm set by other RPGs.
Different from other games
What differentiates Elden Ring NPCs from other successful RPGs such as Skyrim and The Witcher III, is the characters' dependence on the player. With other titles, the characters seemingly wait an infinite amount of time for the player to find them, start a conversation with them, and finish their quest. In Elden Ring, each NPC feels more like real people not necessarily because of their increased independence from the player, but specifically, their accentuated dependence on us, how their dependence is part of the story, and how it affects them realistically. The application of this concept is part of what’s called the dimensions of social roles in NPCs, specifically: interdependence because of overlapping goals and complementary abilities.
While in other games you can postpone an NPC given quest as long as you like, in Elden Ring, the more you play the game, the more you participate in the characters’ quests, the more you affect the world, for good or for ill. An NPC may move places without you knowing just because you’ve cleared a castle or killed a boss. An NPC may die just because you cleared a quest from another NPC. There is a larger cause and effect present in the world, as if every life is intertwined, branches from the same tree, and yet sometimes it can also feel like none of the NPC need you, as they never wait for you or stay in the same place for too long; they have their own lives, dreams, and struggles.
Emotional investment
Another aspect that elevates Elden Ring’s NPCs from their ilk is their tragedy. One of the core pillars of immersion is a present emotional connection, or in other words: empathy. Almost every NPC in Elden Ring has their own drive and dreams, desires that are sovereign from you, yet ones that your actions affect severely. One of the first examples of this is an early NPC encounter with the name of Roderika. When the player finds her in an abandoned cabin, she lays crestfallen, spouting lamentations. Yet after a few repeated interactions with the player, the woman who once felt purposeless, who found no confidence in herself or her abilities, discovered her calling with great company; all this in no small part because of your actions.
A blissful outcome for one of the inhabitants of the game. As in real life, such things transpire when our life’s path crosses another, and for a moment we do not walk alone. This is another dimension of social roles in NPCs, namely: obligations in the form of kinship or other group relations that bind individuals together. With a common goal shared between the NPCs and the player, the game produces a natural sense of fellowship that increases immersion and emotional attachment. On the other side, there are characters in the game who help you and then you never meet again, either because you couldn’t find them in the vast world, or because the circumstances were not quite right. These realistic depictions, though some may argue as unintuitive as a video game mechanic, echo our day-to-day reality, where people come and go like waves on a shore.
It is the fact that these characters are flawed, both in their characterizations and the obtuse ways in which you encounter them, that highlights a tangible person behind mere lines of code and polygons. You get to know these characters through your own intent of discovering them, sparking more dialogue with them, and reading information about them from items in the world, giving you a more personal investment in their wellbeing. There is development and growth even in the NPCs, micro-stories inside a larger tale, each a piece of the grand puzzle. Another manifestation of NPC usage in Elden Ring is as a tool for Social and Fantasy Affordance. What this means is that the NPCs serve as a context cue for the player’s role and how they should act in the game world. But instead of blindly following and motivating the protagonist for the sake of feeding the player’s ego, Elden Ring derides and chides the player even from the very beginning.
Yet it is this tough love that pushes the player to model a behavior of internal persistence. Like other FromSoftware titles, the game is difficult, the world is bleak, but beyond the barred fog gates lost lights lie in wait. Psychoanalytic psychologists have long touted the importance of fantasy stories in helping people come to terms with concerns and explore emotionally laden problems. Games can provide this sort of outlet for exploration as the player characters are often those that speak to many players’ real-life hopes, fears, and issues. They offer players a chance to enact them and explore possibilities, face and conquer challenges that are abstractions of their real-life struggles (Isbister, 2018). In real life, we learn behavior socially through other people. In the game, the player similarly learns through these Non-Playable Characters: their role, their urgency, and their latent capabilities. Finally, there is an aspect of NPCs that hasn’t been explored here. Neutral and supporting characters aren’t the only roles taken by NPCs, there are also the enemies and bosses in the game.
Enemies and the end
Contrary to previous NPCs, these characters act as a focal point for the protagonist— providing a clear target and embodiment of what must be conquered in the game. As such, the player has a strong motivation to keep playing even after countless defeats. But as with our allies, these bosses also have frighteningly complex motives for what they do and how they end up in their disposition — fighting you. There is a hidden three-dimensionality beneath their horrific designs and aggressive attacks. Akin to reality, where we may find people who challenge our values or ego, people who halt us from achieving our goal because their own goals inhibit us; when we look deeper and discover more about them, there is tragedy in their treason — just as they see tragedy in ours.
Other people color our world, they give it a reason for meaning; it makes sense that the people of Elden Ring are colored by pain yet hope, ambition yet desolation, and the grace of traversing a pathless land with forlorn intent.
References
Isbister, K. (2018). Better game characters by design : a psychological approach. Crc Press.
