Our preview of what has been shown so far from Elden Ring.
Summer is finally upon us and, with the rising temperatures, gamers' fever is also rising in anticipation of new trailers, announcements or reveals. This happens because, historically, June is the month when the entire gaming industry shows what it has in store for gamers in the months, sometimes years, to come. If in the past E3 was the main trade show where publishers showcased their work, for the past year Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest has also been added.
The inaugural event of Summer Game Fest 2021 saw a succession of previews of games we already knew and brand new titles. Among the high moments, no doubt mention the very brief appearance of Hideo Kojima with the revelation of the Director's Cut of Death Stranding for PlayStation 5. However, if we have to identify the highlights of the show, we can not fail to mention the new Elden Ring trailer. Shown at the end of the event and two years after the previous preview, the video also revealed the title's release date: January 21, 2022.
In this preview of ours, we will go into detail about what is shown in this suggestive trailer. So get ready: the quest for Elden's Ring has just begun.
New souls
Hidetaka Miyazaki's authorial growth has led the designer to evolve considerably from his first games to the most recent ones, managing to do what only great artists can do: always change without ceasing to be themselves. If you think about it, Demon's Souls and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice are apparently, and not only, two extremely different games. However, a screenshot would be enough for each of these titles and would immediately recognize the author's hand. This happens because Miyazaki manages to instill in his works a poetics that is his and his alone, made of gloom, darkness, decadence, but above all from a very precise idea of game design.
Miyazaki, learning the lessons of level design from the most classic metroidvania, creates universes in which the maps are totally interconnected in a coherent way. It often happens in his games, in fact, to have the appearance of being at a very distant point from the initial location and then opening a door and finding yourself exactly where the adventure began. An example is the map of Bloodborne or, again, the fantastic spherical world of Dark Souls.
With this new Elden Ring trailer we start to get an idea of what the game will really be like. Let's start with the basics: the structure will be open world. So far, if you think about it, nothing new because, after all, Dark Souls was also open world. However, Elden Ring's open world feels much closer to that of modern open worlds, such as Horizon or Breath of the Wild. However, it is equally true that in the trailer we see images of our warrior entering dungeons or enclosed spaces. What does this mean? That for the first time we will have a wide range of souls.
If you look closely at the images in the trailer, the environments are very large and vast, so we expect the largest world ever seen in a FromSoftware game. At the same time, the title doesn't forget its predecessors. And this is where the dungeons come into play. Despite the vastness of the game world, Elden Ring doesn't want to lose those dungeon crawling aspects that have characterized all of Souls. In fact, we expect it to be precisely in those enclosed, claustrophobic environments to find the level design typical of classic Souls, with treasures to discover and shortcuts to unlock.
But there is another aspect that immediately catches the eye from the trailer. Something that had been announced but never seen before: the mount.
Dark Souls meets Shadow of the Colossus.
He reiterated it in several interviews: Miyazaki has always been a great admirer of Fumito Ueda's works. The author of Dark Souls has even stated, in some interviews, that it was ICO the game that inspired him to become a game designer. Today, with Elden Ring, Miyazaki probably wants to give his personal tribute to another great Ueda game: Shadow of the Colossus. Just look at the image of the warrior riding in the mist of a ruined forest, to immediately make you think of Ueda's masterpiece. But not only that: the addition of the mount has additional meaning and value.
In fact, the insertion of the mount confirms that the game's environment will be so vast as to justify the integration of a vehicle to allow faster movements.... We do not know if this mount will be usable in all game spaces and, frankly, we doubt that we will be able to ride our steed inside a dungeon. What is certain is that in open spaces we will be given total freedom and, as you can see in the trailer, in some places. Our mount, which is very reminiscent of Yakul from the animated movie Princess Mononoke, can even jump vertically to allow us to reach a height or climb a mountain.... This aspect could be an evolution and integration into a soul of the verticality seen and appreciated in Sekiro.
Role-playing
Another feature of Elden Ring that will surely make soul fans happy is the return to Action RPG mechanics. FromSoftware has confirmed that, unlike Sekiro, we will create our character and choose which class to start our adventure with. This is definitely a welcome return to the action RPG mechanics that would make Elden Ring the perfect spiritual heir to Dark Souls.
Within the trailer, it is indeed possible to see different classes: the classic warrior, the mage, the thief or the assassin. This means that the game will give us the opportunity to live our adventure in different ways and, above all, in the way we prefer. In this sense, we expect a wide variety of weapons and armor available. In addition, the cooperative mode has been confirmed.
Bandai Namco then stated that we will apparently have several skills available that we will conquer within the game. While this statement may be temporarily rather obscure, we can assume that defeating bosses could give us the opportunity to learn some unique skills. However, there are still too few details to go a bit further and so we defer these considerations until we know more.
A new mechanic for classic souls, but not for FromSoftware in general, seems to be the sneak attack.... In the trailer, it is possible to see our avatar moving silently and crouching to attack an enemy from behind and take him by surprise. This type of stealth mechanic was included in Sekiro and it's absolutely nice to see it proposed again in a more classic soul.
Lore and George RR Martin
It's useless to go around it. The support of George RR Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire, is certainly something that fascinates anyone. As far as we know, Martin has been busy building the lore of the game before what will be told in Elden Ring. Miyazaki, however, will be handling the plot of the game itself. Martin and Miyazaki, for this title, drew on several sources of inspiration: among them, Finnish and Celtic mythology and, to a lesser extent, Norse mythology. To these, then, must be added the dark fantasy inspirations that have always fascinated Miyazaki, such as Berserk or the old King's Field series games.
In the tradition of Miyazaki's games, the world is in ruins due to the collapse of this Elden Ring. We will be Lightless and go on a quest to conquer the Elden Ring, an object of great power. However, as you can imagine, we will not be the only ones who will want this ring. The Interregnum, name of the game world, will in fact see a real war develop between us and other Lords in search of this unlimited power to become the new Ancestral Lord.
These are the few things we know about the plot and we are sure that, even within the title, it will be us, through the descriptions of objects and dialogues with NPCs, to fully understand the rules and lore of this realm ... . Surely, even with these few words, the title seems extremely fascinating.
Intergenerational
Let's move on to the last aspect we want to focus on in this preview: the visual sector. From a purely graphical point of view, the game is not next-gen from every pore.... On the contrary: we see that FromSoftware has been in process for this production for some time (according to some experts, the development started at the time of Dark Souls 3) and that the title is the classic intergenerational game. Therefore, we ask you not to judge Elden Ring in light of the next generation, because it would be the wrong approach. Despite this, however, Bandai Namco has announced that the title will receive an update for the next generation . For this reason, we hope that on next-gen consoles the title will be able to enjoy a higher resolution and, above all, stable fps.
As for the art direction, the game is shown in a very inspired way. The colors and atmosphere suggest to the player that they are inside a soul, but at the same time inside something new. Compared to souls, for example, the colors seem more vibrant and, in general, the game world, because of its size, conveys less claustrophobia. At the same time, however, the design of the characters and creatures is in the perfect style of Souls.
FromSoftware has confirmed that there will be alternating day / night and this, we are sure, will affect not only the game world, but also the visual rendering of some environments: it will be different to visit a forest by day or night and we are curious to see how will the Japanese development house work to mark these differences.
Elden Ring reappears after a silence that lasted two years. Miyazaki with George RR Martin and FromSoftware seem to have done a great job and the title looks great. The game aims to be the spiritual heir to Dark Souls, with classic RPG action mechanics and a huge dark fantasy world to explore. Very interesting are the Sekiro integrations, such as the stealth attack or the vertical movement thanks to the mount. Elden Ring, whose release date is finally known, is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated games of next year and, from what we have seen so far, it seems that the wait will be rewarded with a great title.
► Elden Ring is a game developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One,
