You can’t pause but you can just quit out of the game and you’ll be exactly where you left off so if you need to step away from the game just do that.
Loading is super fast anyways.
It’s because the game is kind of always online. The way multiplayer works is that you can leave messages in your world and other players will see them, and you can also get invaded by other players if you open your game up to it (usually it’s also a power up so you can be tempted to do this even when you don’t necessarily want to fight other players). If you could pause, it would make things weird with the multiplayer because it’s supposed to feel like a fluid real time world.
i doubt thats the reason seeing as you can easily just play offline and you still cant pause. not to mention there technically is actually a pause mechanic in elden ringy that being the tutorial popups which you can open whenever you want in the menu, fun fact.
It really is a big part of the games. Even when not playing multiplayer the online component was significant.
Not just player messages: bloodstains and phantoms are a big part of the storytelling.
You consistently see glimpses of other player phantoms in realtime and you see recordings of their deaths. I am not sure a pause button would work well with those.
But phantoms are shown in (semi?)realtime and bloodstains are a recording of the few seconds before death. Scenes of people pausing kind of undermines some of what the devs built around online play.
You can’t pause but you can just quit out of the game and you’ll be exactly where you left off so if you need to step away from the game just do that. Loading is super fast anyways.
Ah ! somehow that’s still super weird, not being able to pause, but I see that’s not an issue in practice
It’s because the game is kind of always online. The way multiplayer works is that you can leave messages in your world and other players will see them, and you can also get invaded by other players if you open your game up to it (usually it’s also a power up so you can be tempted to do this even when you don’t necessarily want to fight other players). If you could pause, it would make things weird with the multiplayer because it’s supposed to feel like a fluid real time world.
i doubt thats the reason seeing as you can easily just play offline and you still cant pause. not to mention there technically is actually a pause mechanic in elden ringy that being the tutorial popups which you can open whenever you want in the menu, fun fact.
It really is a big part of the games. Even when not playing multiplayer the online component was significant.
Not just player messages: bloodstains and phantoms are a big part of the storytelling.
You consistently see glimpses of other player phantoms in realtime and you see recordings of their deaths. I am not sure a pause button would work well with those.
Neither messages not bloodstains would require the game to not have a pause function though.
For player messages you’re absolutely right.
But phantoms are shown in (semi?)realtime and bloodstains are a recording of the few seconds before death. Scenes of people pausing kind of undermines some of what the devs built around online play.