Why You Should Be Excited About Elden Ring

First announced during the 2019 E3 Expo as a teaser with very little information about what the game would entail, Elden Ring was a quickly beloved game for many soulsborne fans. The next two years of silence however had led to fans growing anxious about when they would finally learn more about the game, let alone play it, but the wait is now over. On June 10 during the 2021 Summer Game Fest, the gameplay trailer and release date for FromSoftware’s newest title Elden Ring had finally been revealed exactly two years after its initial announcement.

What Is Elden Ring?

Elden Ring is a dark fantasy open-field RPG created by FromSoftware in collaboration with the fantasy author George R.R. Martin that will be available to play on PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Elden Ring will feature six unique regions filled with a wide range of secrets to explore as they venture through the Lands Between. Elden Ring is the spiritual successor to FromSoftware Director Hidetaka Miyazaki’s infamous Dark Souls series and is the culmination of everything the company has made in their line of RPGs so far, utilizing the all too familiar combat system found in their soulsborn line of games, along with the stealth and verticality found in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Elden Ring will contain all of these familiar features and much, much more.

According to Miyazaki, you will be able to ride around the Lands Between on a ‘Spirit Horse’ which will serve as your companion throughout the game and will allow you to move swiftly throughout the open field and even overcome a multitude of obstacles through the use of double jumps and jump pads that are placed around the game world. You will be able to take your mount into battle, letting you take advantage of the spirit horse’s mobility as you dash across the battlefield and secure the upper hand.

Elden Ring will also feature summonable companions that you will be able to acquire throughout your journeys and will take the form of previously vanquished adversaries which you will be able to upgrade to assist you in battle. It will also feature weapon arts from Dark Souls 3 as a set of skills you can use with any weapon allowing you to adopt different fighting styles with your weapon of choice.

You will find yourself exploring both the vast open fields of Elden Ring filled with roaming encounters and towering marvels that you will be able to navigate with the use of a map that you can use to find your way through labyrinthine landscapes and markdown places of interest. Elden Ring will also feature Legacy Dungeons, a series of catacombs, dungeons, and fortresses scattered around the lands between. These dungeons are filled with vicious monsters and challenging bosses harkening back to the level design of most soulsborne games.

Each of the six regions in Elden Ring will have you explore one of these Legacy Dungeons in order to challenge each of the demi-gods that are in possession of each of the Elden Ring’s fragments. Unlike the open world, however, the dungeons in Elden Ring will not have their own mini-maps for players to follow, focusing on the thrill of having to delve deep into an unknown structure forcing you to figure out how to navigate these underground structures on your own.

I Doubt You Could Even Imagine It.

After its initial announcement during the 2019 E3 Expo, soulsborne fans were given very little information about the nature of their newly anticipated game. All they knew at the time is that it would contain an open world, horseback riding, and the very familiar Dark Souls experience of overcoming powerful foes and searching for hidden trinkets, but that wasn’t enough for them.

For the next two years, the community was wildly active, especially on Reddit despite the lack of information to go off on in their discussions. Here many fans made their own speculations about what upcoming game event would have more news on Elden Ring but after several events had passed without so much as a mention of FromSoftware’s upcoming game, someone or something happened. Posts began to appear across the Elden Ring subreddit claiming that the game had already been released with users starting to ask for tips against one of the game’s hardest bosses, Glaive Master Hodir.

The community then burst into a frenzy, as many users were now beginning to make up bosses, enemies, and even entire levels that they were struggling against with other users playing along. This unifying experience soon led to a large amount of fan art and memes popping up on the subreddit about these fan-made foes, levels, and items which was taken to the next level when VaatiVidya, a well-known individual in the soulsborne community hosted an art contest.

When the 2020 Game Awards neared many in the community, now referring to themselves as Hollows in reference to the undead inhabitants of the Dark Souls games, were convinced that they would finally be given some gameplay footage as they began to band together to vote for Elden Ring to be the Most Anticipated Game for 2020 in the hopes that by winning the award they would finally hear something new about the game. While Elden Ring did win the award for Most Anticipated Game the community was devastated once again when there was no news about the game at the event.

On March 2021 some new gameplay footage was leaked into the community, stirring them into an excited frenzy once more while others remained cautious of the leak’s origin knowing they had been hurt before from false information. However, to the excitement of all, their wishes were quickly answered during the 2021 Summer Game Fest in which Elden Ring gameplay was finally revealed to the public along with its January 21, 2022 release date.

Will Elden Ring be Hard?

While Elden Ring will be a difficult game, it won’t be unbeatable. Though it is considered the spiritual successor to the Dark Souls series which were notorious for their unforgiving difficulty, the customization, and myriad of tactical options that players will be given in order to customize their playstyle, newer players to the series will have little to worry about as Miyazaki believes that players will be able to progress through the game’s story without having to face an insurmountable wall while fans of the challenges found in Dark Souls will be able to face off against a number of optional bosses.

Elden Ring will still live up to the difficulty of its predecessors but through the access to diverse tactics that you can use from head-on conflict to stealthy ambushes and even employing the time-old Dark Souls tradition of jolly cooperation in which you will be able to call in other players to assist you in overcoming challenging obstacles in conjunction with the game’s new spirit summons.

The exploration elements of Elden Ring will also allow you to engage with the game’s story in a way that benefits you, allowing you to traverse to different areas early on in the game by finding hidden paths so that you can come back to whatever difficult boss you are having trouble with later when you are feeling more confident in your abilities. While Elden Ring like many other soulsborne games relies on your own skills and mastery of the system in order to overcome difficult foes it also leans heavily on allowing you to face challenges with tactics by utilizing terrain, day/night cycles and your choice of skills or allies.

Following the design philosophy of FromSoftware’s earlier titles, Elden Ring will challenge you with a diverse range of obstacles that will challenge you with a diverse range of obstacles which will force you to think about how you approach each encounter and will allow you to learn from past failures. Character customization will also play an important part in how you will approach Elden Ring, with almost one-hundred customizable skills and a vast magic system, meaning that there will always be a different way to approach your experiences in the Lands Between.

So if you enjoy traversing over large expanses of land, uncovering ancient secrets, engaging in thrilling combat, or if you just enjoy making highly customizable characters, then you should keep an eye out for FromSoftware’s newest title in preparation for its early 2022 release.