>>715657224
Ironically enough, even though it is objectively the biggest souls game by far, one of my biggest complaints about Elden Ring is how small it feels.
The idea of being able to walk virtually anywhere sounds cool on paper, but in practice what it does is break the illusion of the Lands Between having any cohesion as a place.
The previous games avoided this by making it look like you're only experiencing a tiny part of the world through a selected laid-out path. This way, you could suspend your disbelief enough to envision a whole coherent society being able to be formed in those worlds.
Meanwhile, in ER, you're forced to confront the undisputable fact that these lands that have housed civilizations and kingdoms, when removing all obstacles, could be traversed by foot in a day or two.
Elden Ring has the most wandering of any of these games, but by far the least wondering amongst them.