>>717558354
You're obsessing over technicalities and missing the entire point. Yeah, you can beat Elden Ring without doing side quests. Just like you can beat a racing game without tuning your ride, or beat an RPG without talking to anyone and just killing everything. That ain't the point. These NPCs aren't just flavor text. They're baked into the world and story. Not required, but meaningful.
Your Silmarillion vs Hobbit comparison doesn’t fit. Those are separate books with their own goals. The NPCs in ER are in the game, built alongside the bosses, dungeons, and regions. They aren't some external lore add-on. They’re part of the structure, and thessue is how their quests fall apart when you play the game the way it's supposedly designed to be played. You're told to explore freely. But explore the wrong place at the wrong time? Boom, broken quest, it's fucked. No warning, no feedback, no second chances. Just gone.
Your solution is basically "play 100+ hours per playthrough, take irrelevant notes, replay the whole thing and maybe get it right next time." That’s not depth, that’s guesswork. It’s not engaging, it’s trial and error that takes 20 times longer than just dying to a boss and trying again. And saying "just cause they put effort into it doesn’t mean it should be required" ignores my point. I’m not saying it should be required. I’m saying if you put time and care into building full questlines with voice acting and world impact, then hide them behind vague conditions and invisible flags, that’s bad delivery. That’s content most peopel will never even know existed, let alone complete.
Anyway, I'm a wagie past his bedtime. G'nite.
