2026
By: Alexander Holmes
Here’s what I’m going to do.
I’m going to describe one boss from Elden Ring. I’m going to then leave 2 seconds of downtime on the video to give you time to pause, comment below which boss you think I am describing, then play the video again to see if you guessed the right boss.
Ready?
This boss’s strategy is to dodge and jump around to avoid the player's attacks, while mixing between aggressive combos and long-range attacks to disrupt a player’s position and timing. Their movements and attacks can only rarely, or never, be interrupted, thus requiring the player to act defensively until their opportunity to attack.
Tell me which boss you think that is in the comments now. 2. 1. 0.
Well… if you guessed any single boss, you were wrong. Because its actually describing all of these bosses on screen!
Margit
Morgott
Godrick
Ancestor Spirit
Radahn
Loretta
Valiant Gargoyles
Godskin Nobles
Godfrey/Hoarah Loux
Mohg
Commander Niall
Fire Giant
Malenia
Placidusax
Malikath
Radagon/Elden Beast
Dancing Lion
Rellana Twin Moon Knight
Commander Gaius
Scadutree Avatar
Messmer
Death Birds
Putrescent Knight
Romina Saint of the Bud
Metyr
Falling Star Beast
And Golden Hippopotamus
Part 1: Boss Fights Are All The Same
There are dozens of mainline bosses in the game, and only 9 of them do something other than that core design principle. We will get to listing those 9 bosses in a second. The variety only comes in the particular rhythm, the element or status used, or if their super-attack at phase transition doesn’t follow this playbook.
The concept of Orthogonal design is creating a system wherein each piece has a distinct function. More literally, orthogonal means to be either independent or it means 90 degree angles. So as a design principle, it means to diverge as much as possible without going backwards. Making orthogonal design a central tenet of a game means to create only that which is unique while developing the overall design goals of the game as a whole.
To highlight my critique of Elden Ring boss design, I’d like to start by looking to the player avatar as a foil. Specifically what are your defensive options as a player? You can: dodge, jump, block, parry, and run away. Now tell me… what bosses in Elden Ring block or parry the player’s attack? Think for a moment, and realize that none of the unique bosses ever block.
Some regular enemies are capable of blocking and guard counters: Crucible Knights, Black Knights, Cleanrot Knights, et cetera. Crystallians have a lot of poise, but are still doing that same design philosophy. However, only one enemy variant boss is different from this. Demi-Human Swordsman Onze can deflect an attack, and has a follow-up guard counter. On top of having a mini-malenia moveset, with both a waterfowl dance and a grab. This alone makes Onze the best bossfight in the game!
In Demon’s Souls, two of the first bosses you can encounter are centered around blocking. Phalanx Demon in Boletaria has many smaller enemy slimes blocking a defenseless main body. Tower Knight has extremely high defense and a shield, that protects his Achilles Heel. Other enemies using ranged attacks encourage the players to clear the arena before the fight, and thus gives the very large, slow boss some time to use its moveset.
In Lies of P, The White Lady is an optional Boss fight wherein the boss has a parry. If you ask me what enemies in Elden Ring have a full ass parry, I cannot point to a boss. I can only point to Moongrim the Carian Knight.
Or, let’s talk about duo-boss fights. Fights against 2 bosses at once. In ER, almost every duo fight is either two of the same boss, or two regular enemies placed in a room together. Two Crucible Knights. Two Gargoyles. Etc.
In Dark Souls, the poster child for soulslike duo-bosses is one that thrives on orthogonal design: Ornstein & Smough. A slow and powerful enemy paired with a fast/aggressive enemy created an interesting dynamic in which players had to figure out how to do one of two strategies. 1) Using the slower Smough to obstruct Ornstein’s movements while fighting the big guy first. Or 2) Using the environment and Ornstein’s speed to create distance from Smough while fighting Ornstein first.
The genius of this design is that the two strategies emerge not out of the player’s abilities and builds, but only the boss’s encounter design. Moreover, the second phase of the boss then requires the player to engage with a stronger version of the boss they were having more difficulty fighting against. Thus ramping up the perceived threat in the middle of the fight.
Compare that to its closest analogue in Elden Ring: The Godskin Duo in Farum Azula.
The Godskin Duo has similar aesthetics to Ornstein and Smough. A skinny guy, a fat guy, and they fight together. But despite different movesets, they functionally serve the same purpose. Aggressive, forward moving attacks and wide, circular attacks, alongside managing the damage-over-time effect of black flame. Neither serve a unique function to this fight. They easily move around each other. They have the same weaknesses. The only difference is which moveset you find easier to deal with and the frequency of attacks. Your strategy is the same for both. There is less decision-making. There is no escalation. Only attrition.
So what about these other 9 boss fights that do apply orthogonal design principles? Let’s talk about those. Because they make up both the best and the worst bosses in Elden Ring.
Let’s start with Rennala, Queen of the Moon, and the night she conjureth. This boss will be useful for highlighting how different designs can be achieved in Elden Ring. But it also highlights how a lack of attention to orthogonal design created a sub-par boss fight.
The first phase of the boss fight is a pure puzzle. Players are assaulted with a lot of different kinds of attacks that, while relatively weak, distract the player from noticing the puzzle solution. Once the singing children are identified and the player gets the feedback of Rennala’s orb cracking, the puzzle is solved. The player needs only to quickly execute the solution to reach phase 2.
The concept behind Phase 2 Rennala is that she will maintain distance and out-space the player with her attacks as she retreats. The issue is that, to make her stand out from Margit, Godrick, and Radahn, they made her animations slow, smooth, and graceful. The result being that she is easy to catch up to, easy to predict the timing, and easy to hit even on her turn to attack.
The only defensive ability Phase 2 has is to push the player when summoning one of her spirits. Repositioning her further away while players deal with wolves, a bloodhound knight, a troll, or a dragon. So why doesn’t that work as a design?
First, because the summoning is not pre-scripted, but a part of her move set. She may not use it at all. Or she will summon all of her companions in a row, and remove the rhythm and reactions that define a bespoke encounter. A simple solution for this would be to script what summon appears when, and return Rennala to her defensive orb in the sky. But have her continue to cast spells while the player deals with the summons.
Secondly, the design doesn’t work because she has no standard method to defend. Give Rennala an attack that pushes the player a far distance, like the immortal dragon fight in Sekiro. Or give her a defensive bubbletear that can negate a couple of the player’s attacks. Make her defenses push and block to help her stand out from other bosses, without the need for the summoned enemies at all.
Jori the Elder was Elden Ring’s second stab at the same kind of boss fight as phase 2 Rennala. Their solution was to make the teleporting, summoning, and spell casting more frequent. More a part of the boss’s move set. Rather than summoning a fully autonomous NPC, when players get close, Jori the Elder summons a different spirit to do stabs, fire, butt slams, or spinning attacks. Much more like From Software’s previous title Lost Kingdoms and the weapon-summoning cards in that game. (That’s right, I just referenced Lost Kingdoms, and you don’t even know what that is. Fake Fans!) While the spirits are attacking and the player is defending, Jori teleports away, and starts peppering the player with spells until the player closes the distance again. That’s not far off from my suggestion for Rennala, if you are only thinking in terms of offense rather than defensive moves. While technically more difficult, Jori is also a boss that can just be rushed down and backstabbed. Which means the player can still pretty much turn off any engagement with the boss design for the adequately aggressive player.
In a game where every other boss teaches you to rush down a dodging, jumping enemy, the designers are largely relying on players not being in the habit of backstabbing a boss to not find that option. The accidental discovery of that backstab is actually somewhat likely.
The boss that actually executes this concept the best is Astel, Naturalborn of the Void. The use of gravity magic to push, pull, grab, and explode the player, as well as the ability to teleport to the other end of the arena, all make for a better Rennala than Rennala. Astel is Rennala, if Rennala was a dragon.
That’s three of the 9 different bosses down: Rennala, Jori, Astel. But speaking of dragons, let’s talk about Dragons.
The main way Elden Ring tries to encourage players to deal with dragons is to create a weak points on their heads. To keep the head out of reach, and to have unique attacks to prevent players from attacking the feet instead. Dragons lower their heads and keep their heads still for players to hit with melee or spells, but only at the end of the dragon’s attack animations. This creates a fun flow where players try to stay just outside the dragon’s range, so as to not be too far away to hit the weak-point when the opportunity arises.
The two-legged dragons, 4-legged dragons, and Bayle all play by this rulebook, and it allows dragons to consistently feel like their own class of combatant. Yet even among this class of boss fight, there is another sensibility that adds variation.
The Four-legged dragons and dragonkin soldiers tend to use lightning attacks in environments that are covered in water. This adds the environmental effect of the lightning expanding into an additional area of effect attack. This restricts even more how a player may use spacing to stay safe while waiting for that opening. Lichdragon Fortisaxx and Borealis further restrict the spacing defense by filling the arena with deathblight clouds or constant frostbite.
Lastly, the Magma Wryms cover the ground with magma, which not only restricts where a player wants to run, but also interrupts movement of players that run into the lava. Fights with a magma wyrm may trap a player between the fog wall, a pond of fire, and getting flattened by a spinning dragon’s ass. Which becomes more of a frustration than an opportunity for flow; teaching players not to take actions rather than encouraging what actions can be done.
This environmental hazard sensibility is actually a good example of progressing a challenge. Agheel uses fire attack on a lake of water, which gives the player less damage taken from fire attacks. Smarag uses magic on a lake of water, which brings the attacks back to full strength. Which progresses further to lightning dragons on water environments being given a damage buff against the player, and area of effect hit boxes.
That’s 6 of the 9 different boss fights down. So let’s get the most obvious one out of the way next. Rykard.
Rykard’s boss fight is more of a set piece than any of the other bosses. The latest iteration of the stormbringer fight that features in every FromSoftware souls game. Rykard mostly sits in one spot, swinging his sword and exploding with skulls and fire. While technically possible to use other weapons and spells, it makes little sense to use anything but the Serpent Hunter. It is designed specifically to hit the singular lock-on target of Rykard’s head.
Rykard’s fight is distinct in that it is defined by the spectacle of the special spear, which gives the player the ability to have attacks that are just as big as the boss they are fighting. A staple of the stormbringer fight seen as far back as Demon’s Souls.
Next up is Midra in his Manse. Phase one of this boss is purposefully a complete joke. A small, flailing old man who can barely hit you. Paired directly against the surprise and self-pity the player experiences if they are lulled into a false sense of security. Because that flailing combo or his grab attack will still level the player character’s health bar. Then in phase 2, while it is a bit of a return to form, Midra’s moveset is less concerned with charging in at first sight or jumping around the arena. Rather, Midra gradually pursues the player with unique rhythms in his attack patterns. Sword swings and frenzied blasts that start slow and then accelerate to catch players trying to outrun him. It is a fight that primes you to run around in phase 1, and then punishes simply running in phase 2.
This unique rhythm situates Midra in the same class of boss fight as the Dancer of the Boreal Valley in DS3. Yet without setting up these expectations, this boss would be largely the same as the description we started with at the beginning of the video. I’m trying to be a bit generous with this one.
This brings us to the last of the 9 boss fights that break Elden Ring’s standard mold. The Lamenter.
The Lamenter is an optional Boss that combines a unique, instant-death status effect with a puzzle mechanic. As an enemy it has very few attacks. A large headbutt to knock the player down, and a unique projectile to deal damage from long range. These moves mainly exist to buy time, because the Lamenter has a second phase where it summons other lamenters as it disappears and is shuffled into the crowd.
This could be my imagination, but real Lamentor seems to have a slight visual distinction which enables the player to single out and attack the real boss. However, every clone that is left alive applies 1 tack of a debuff that creates a unique, despair-based instant death. The interesting decision for the player is thus to prioritize safety from the debuff by clearing out the clones, or to accept the danger of the attacks in order to out-space the debuff with raw damage. This interesting player choice is available to any build, because it only involves changing the player’s decision making. As well as acting as a sort of primer for the unique instant-death mechanic of the final boss of the DLC.
That unique status effect also gives us an opportunity to discuss the lack of orthogonal design in Elden Ring’s Status effects.
Part 2: Status Effects Are All the Same
Let's list out and number the various status effect debuffs in Elden Ring, not by their in-game names but by what they actually do. See if you can name them in the comments! Ready?
First, the Dots
Percentage Damage Over Time
Damage Over Time
Better Damage Over Tim
Even Better-er Damage Overtime
Second, the Chunks
Chunk of Damage & Stop moving - NPC Only
Bigger Chunk of Damage & Lower Defenses
Bigger-er Chunk of Damage
Third, the ones you’ll never use
Stop moving a little, sometimes
Stop moving forever, sometimes
Fourth, the Cheap Bullshit
Die Instantly - NPC Only
Special Die Instantly - NPC Only
Fifth, the Dot-Chunk
Chunk of Max HP & Percentage Damage Over time.
Sixth, the Debuff
Lower Defenses
Take a moment with your guesses. Now here are the names of the status effects in the order I just listed!
Blackflame
Poison
Deadly Poison
Rot
Madness
Frostbite
Hemorrhage/Bleed
Sleep
Eternal Sleep
Deathblight
Lamenter Death & Miquella Charm Death
Destined Death
Shriek of Milos and other yells
If you list the functions of those statuses, you are only really listing 5 in total. I was being kind to the lore to include Destined Death as its own category, but it’s just a redundancy of the percentage chunk damage and damage Over time effects. With a bit of time where that top percentage of Max health cannot be recovered. A benefit that only really applies to Malenia and Mohg maybe. Sleep rarely works on enemies. Instant Death and Madness never do. And you may or may not get to use the abilities that lower Defenses, but why choose those options if frostbite does the same thing alongside chunk damage anyway? Fingers crossed that the players you summon in all choose different status effects that actually work.
So there are functionally two status functions that are available to and of use to the player (Chunk and Dots). Thirteen different statuses for what is essentially five total functions, two of which are useful. These 2 useful functions, are simultaneously the most effective way to deal damage and the least variable, the least orthogonally designed part of the game’s status effects. Eight of the 13 status effects are percentage of HP damage.
To borrow a concept from The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, the Frostbite-Bleed combo with a black flame buddy is the Stealth Archer of Elden Ring.
So my question is, “Why all the redundancies?” How much variety does having the same effect with slightly different numbers really provide a game like Elden Ring? Other than enemies sometimes being immune or resistant to rot or bleed, the sense of variety seems wholly dependent on a player having limited access to the redundant status effects. That or simply being ignorant of their effects. Both of which are overcome simply by spending more time with the game.
So allow me to challenge my armchair game designer muscles to come up with all 13 status effects again, but this time prioritizing Orthogonal Design. Prioritizing making every status functionally unique.
Here they are On Screen!
Poison & Deadly Poison >> Reduce Stamina Recovery
Rot >> Health Damage Overtime (Same)
Frostbite >> Slow Animation Speed
Bleed >> Chunk of Percentage Health Damage
Sleep >> Builds very quickly, Causes Hit-Stun
Eternal Sleep >> Builds Stagger Damage Over Time
Can sleep some foes for a ground-crit
Black Flame & Destined Death >> Deals Percentage Max HP, instantly, only once
Madness >> FP Damage Over Time
Deathblight >> Eventually works on bosses
but deathblight moves apply to the player as friendly fire
Howls, Shrieks >> Reduces Defense
Lamenter >> Reduces Status resistances by half
Now let’s review what I have designed here, and think about the implications for how it would change the game. Firstly, to give players abilities that reduce the resources stats we normally only see with player-characters, i.e. Stamina and FP, means needing to change the game in a fairly drastic way. If we want to avoid the problem of creating options that only impact NPCs, than we need to design the bosses to have stamina and FP systems working in the background that actually matter. Currently, Bosses in Elden Ring do have stamina, but it is functionally infinite. They retain enough stamina to use their full movesets at any time. You can achieve the same effect by not having a stamina stat at all, but instead of percent chance progressions between different state machines. I’m sure FromSoftware has found some aspect of using stamina stats for bosses that allows them design flexibility, but that is a different matter than using stamina as a stat that players can feel impacts how they interact with the game.
The only way to communicate to the players that these status effects are impacting the numbers behind the screen would be through the use of visuals and changes in enemy behaviors. A simple visual effect would allow players to experience the debuff working, but other moments, such as a melee combo stopping and returning to neutral, or witnessing a spell caster drink a mana potion, would be stronger indicators that their chosen strategy is affecting the state of the game.
You can actually see this exact debuff design philosophy in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Lightning magic reduced the Magicka of the player and magic enemies, which players with relatively small access to magic could use just to disrupt mages as they ran in with their big sticks. Whereas frost magic would drain player and enemy stamina, allowing spellcasters to slow and interrupt the aggressive charges of melee fighters. Balanced, elegant, and immersive by maintaining a consistent logic to the world. Giving us a blueprint for how Madness being changed to FP reduction can be integrated in a dynamic way in a redesign of Elden Ring.
Second is how we handle this concept of instant death for bosses. Essentially we would be creating an entirely separate way of playing the game. One that needn’t engage with the systems of damage and defense that the rest of the game is designed around. That is the kind of design choice that should lead a developer to question if it should be implemented at all. Which is why I suggest a balance of making the player engage with deathblight if they intend to use it. Essentially removing the self-debuff of Madness and moving it over to Deathblight. Turning Deathblight into Russian roulette, as a check and balance against an over-powered ability. You could also make sources of Deathblight and defenses against it a bit more obscure. Rare rewards for exploration
For two-phase bosses, Deathblight can also just move the fight to the next phase and reset the meter. To accommodate this, you need to make sure that boss phases of the boss are distinct objects that don’t share a stat-sheet, when using object oriented design at least. Elden Ring sometimes has boss phase transitions be distinct objects and sometimes not.
Third is a smaller critique of my own design here. Namely that poison reducing stamina recovery, frostbite slowing animation speed, and sleep causing Hit-Stun could all be summarized as the function of “slows down the pace of the fight.” This is a fair description. But allow me a moment to justify this design with an argument:
Each of these would slow down the pace in a unique way. Thus creating opportunities to design enemies and bosses around the differences.
For poison reducing stamina recovery, we can apply this design principle to encounter design, “mounted, flying or poison themed enemies have high max stamina, and higher stamina recovery.” Thus creating a class of enemy that would less often be vulnerable as a result of poison. While still allowing all enemies to be susceptible to poison. On the player’s side of the experience, poison would further encourage players to wait for that moment where a boss’s combos interrupt early. Creating a clearly telegraphed moment that the boss is vulnerable. Players do this now, passively, when they look for an attack window after the boss takes their turn, but tying it to a player’s strategy gives the player more agency on making that strategy work.
For frostbite, a reduction in animation speed would be seen by some as problematic because it would reduce difficulty. To that I say, “Who cares?” Because it creates an interesting choice to sacrifice the higher damage of other statuses to create a more manageable pacing. It is a way for players to actively impact the game’s challenge through a learned skill. Let me tell you about another choice that reduces difficulty. Having a shield that reduces damage by 100%. You know what else reduces difficulty? Having invulnerability frames with your dodge roll. All of these are wagering your skill for the ability to negate a challenge. If you ask me, medium armor with medium rolls and medium poise and an average shield is the real hard-mode of Elden Ring Defense, because you don’t get any of the best benefits of defense.
Our current concern is not difficulty but whether this change to frostbite is redundant with our change to Poison and reduced stamina recovery. I would say not, because reducing stamina recovery would manifest to the player as the boss occasionally needing to wait between attack chains. Or occasionally stopping an attack chain in the middle, creating rare openings that are not pre-programmed into the boss’s patterns. Whereas a slight slowing of the animation speed would create an even and consistent change to the pacing of the fight. Those slower animation speeds would actually create more time by which to recover stamina, and potentially making something like using Poison simultaneously of no benefit depending on how to run the numbers.
As for regular sleep being transformed into a hit stun, the reason I think this would make for a good design within the dynamics of Elden Ring is because it would reintroduce an aspect of Elden Ring’s regular combat into the bosses. One criticism of ER’s boss design that I remember from the early days of reviews was that bosses did not feel as though they reacted to the player’s successes. Most bosses do not react to being hit, and they continue to play the movies of their long attack chains regardless of the player thinking they have found an opening. This criticism is often countered by people saying that, if you learn the moves, you can understand that boss openings happen in the middle of their combos. A retort that I would say is only sometimes true. And does not change the fact that players rarely see a boss react to something the player does.
By tying the hitstun to a status that can be triggered quickly returns an ultimately minor aspect of combat design to the boss fight, but one that has a relatively large impact on how a player feels a flow, a back and forth, in the combat animation. At the same time, saving sleep from being a rare status proc that only impacts a small number of enemies. Hitstun, in my opinion, also keeps in the spirit of what sleep already does to most of the enemies that are resistant to sleep.
Bosses are, for the most part, unable to be hit stunned in any way. Regular sized enemies tend to flinch and recoil when a player hits them. This creates good feedback, it feels good to see. Bosses like Malenia do this as well, but Malenia overcomes this by having certain moves that have “super armor,” which just means a move that cannot be interrupted even though the boss is still vulnerable. It’s a balancing act that both guarantees Malenia will be able to attack and make players engage with the boss design, while also encouraging players to Rush in and be aggressive to outpace her life-strike passive. With a sleep status effect that guarantees a hitstun, it encourages players to keep that aggression; If the status threshold is quickly built up and quickly recovered, it rewards players that don’t back off with a way to interrupt super-armor attacks that would otherwise be a forced moment of passive defense.
My change to black flame remains functionally the same, but by removing the redundancy of the 2% percentage damage over time, we also remove the complications that Black Flame added to Elden Ring’s design. Namely that it was fundamentally the best choice for most bosses, due to bosses having large health bars. To make sure black flame didn’t solve every boss in the DLC, From Software actually changed how much damage the DOT of black flame would do to each boss down to 1% of Max HP or 0.7% for Messmer, Bayle, and Consort Radahn.
Lastly, by changing the Lamentor debuff from on instant-death move to a move that reduces status resistance by enemies, we create something that synergizes well with status hungry builds. Making more strategies viable in situations where boss design would otherwise render them useless. Allowing for greater player expressions, and allowing players to feel like they have outsmarted the game when trying to overcome an encounter with their wit and guile.
Conclusion:
Orthogonal Design as a concept exists to remind developers that the specific feelings of agency in player expression come from the player’s perceived ability to have done otherwise. To have made different choices that would subsequently provide different, novel experiences. Not all games need to have this broad sensibility. Games that only want you to play in one way, and find mastery over that play, are just as valid in terms of how a game is designed. Games like Doom 2016 and Sekiro would be diminished somewhat if they created ways for players to circumvent their core concepts.
Yet there is nothing that reduces the magic of a vast and sprawling Open-World or an intricate and reactive immersive sim, than to be able to see past the curtain and realize that your options are rather arbitrary and limited. That playing differently wouldn’t necessarily yield a different experience. For any game that you dedicate your time to, that magic will eventually be lost; hopefully to be replaced by an appreciation for the full scope of what the game has done for us, and the achievements therein. Even NightReign, which solved a lot of my issues with the lack of orthogonal design through its distinct character classes and the roguelike nature of build-craft in an entirely different way than I just described, did so by making an entirely different game. One that I have also exhausted all of the possibilities held within.
When that point hits, all we have left is the ability to dream. Dream about how things might be done differently the next time, and what new experiences can be imagined for the future.
Thank you for watching.
Take care of yourselves.
And stay true.