I was alone in the patient's ward of the asylum and it was so dark I could hardly see. I had no idea how much time had actually passed. But you don't actually have to follow anyone or anything at all-in fact, for large chunks of the show, you'll find yourself completely alone and able to wander to your heart's content.Īfter 30 or so minutes of wandering, I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was or how I got there. Instead, they're expected to chase-yes literally chase-different characters as they race through the hotel and advance their own storylines. There is virtually no dialogue and the audience isn't allowed to speak. The play, if it can be called a play, involves the "residents" of the hotel-actors in full '30s regalia-who perform their roles almost entirely through dance. There's a cathedral and a crypt and a ballroom with a mezzanine balcony. One of the uppermost floors is an asylum that contains a labyrinth made out of birch trees. Another floor is a fully recreated downtown street, populated by tiny shops and businesses. One floor is the hotel lobby, another is a portion of the Macduff residence, bedrooms and foyers and offices but it spills out into a graveyard that funnels into a sort of greenhouse in the middle of a maze. Looming at five stories (plus one secret floor that only a select few will ever stumble upon) tall, the venue is called The McKittrick Hotel, and each floor is done up as a dream-like movie set. Instead of a theatrical venue, production company Punchdrunk has bought and renovated a massive warehouse. The biggest conceit of Sleep No More, the thing that makes it "immersive," is the fact that it's not done on any sort of stage. It sounds silly to put it so plainly, but let me explain. You can imagine my surprise when, on a trip to New York City, I chanced upon an opportunity to see Punchdrunk's Sleep No More, an immersive theatrical production of Shakespeare's Macbeth (mixed with a generous helping of Hitchcock's filmography) and, my first coherent thought upon entering the sprawling building was a question: Why does this feel so familiar? And then, absurdly, an answer: This feels just like Elden Ring. It's difficult, if not impossible, to fully recreate that off-the-rails "am I allowed to be doing this?" feeling when you're worried about things like creating an experience that is reliably enjoyable, but predictable, for every customer who embarks on the authored adventure. Places like theme parks have certainly tried, with varying degrees of success to capture it-"immersive" hotels, like the Star Wars hotel in Disney World, are a high-profile example-but even with one of the wealthiest companies in the world funding such an experience, the vast majority of these projects have found themselves hobbled by things like logistics or price points. This is an experience that is almost entirely unique to video games. It's a dizzying feeling of being both completely under your control and completely out of it. The ruins spiral into more ruins which spiral into more ruins which open up into ancient cities. It feels like you're getting away with something, which makes the next few subsequent discoveries hit even harder because that minutes-long elevator ride was just the beginning. You can just keep going, even though you know, absolutely, that you took a wrong turn somewhere. You've got a horse you can summon pretty much anywhere, and there's ample space to maneuver or simply to run. Even if your suspicions are "confirmed" by the video game logic of running head-long into a monster that can kill you just by looking at you wrong, the game never actually forces you to stop or turn around. If you're anything like me, you probably chanced upon this part of the game on your first day with it and were immediately consumed with the feeling of "I shouldn't be here, I did something wrong."īut that's the beauty of a game like Elden Ring. The further you get, the more it starts to feel like you probably made a mistake-especially as the elevator shaft opens up to reveal a whole night sky and sprawling ruins in the distance. There's a moment relatively early on in Elden Ring where you have the chance to stumble upon an elevator which, if you decide to hop on it, will take you on what feels like a journey to the center of the earth.
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