Elden Ring preview: Dark Souls meets Breath of the Wild

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FromSoftwares Elden Ring, at first glance, looks like some sort of Super Dark Souls, a spiritual continuation of that action RPG series in a vast, vaguely familiar fantasy world of sword and sorcery. But the developer of challenging games like Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is attempting something grander with the huge open world of Elden Rings.

This is such a large fantasy land that it requires a game map, something previous FromSoftware games have never offered. Players had to memorize the worlds of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro by repeatedly exploring their dungeons and castles, building those maps inside their brains. But in Elden Rings the Lands Between, Massive Games, they’ll be able to place markers on a map and get directions on where to go next.

As players venture into the dense Middle Lands, they will encounter dungeons, giant castles, and the occasional dragons that bolt out of the sky to attack them. We want the Middle Lands to be full of threats and discoveries, said FromSoftware producer Yasuhiro Kitao, in a video presentation with Polygon, who described the game’s big map not just for the sake of being big. In that video presentation, FromSoftware showed different settings: winter plains, an autumn forest, a flooded city and a rotting swampland.

Image: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco

Kitao said the dungeons players will encounter in Lands Between camps will have a variety of caves, cemeteries and catacombs, and are handcrafted, not procedurally generated like Bloodborne’s Chalice Dungeons. But players can find a bit of familiarity in those dungeons, with traps, gizmos, torch-lit tunnels, treasures and miniboss scattered everywhere.

Players, known as Tarnished in Elden Ring, will also encounter terrible monsters and enemy soldiers. There are large and majestic ash dragons and knights in armor. There are bizarre enemies, some with a dozen arms to wield weapons, some with snake-like bodies. In one fight, a huge hawk with swords attached to its claws pecked and sliced ​​the player, even throwing gunpowder barrels at him.

Tarnished will have a variety of combat techniques available to deal with threats in the Middle Lands: sword fighting, archery, spells, stealth and arrows that put enemies to sleep.

Like the Dark Souls games, players can also ask for help. They can invoke their Spirit Steed, a horse-like creature that will aid them in traversing and when combat in the saddle is warranted. Players can also summon other players, up to two at a time, to assist them in cooperative multiplayer. Different is the option to summon AI-controlled allies of other types. Kitao has described armored defenders and assault types and even a small crowd of friendly monsters that can be summoned with the ashes of the deceased. While it didn’t offer many details, it appears that the creatures you kill in Elden Ring may offer their assistance in the afterlife as disposable, consumable allies.

A tarnished on a spiritual steed, wielding a double blade, against a dragon Image: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco

Getting around the world of Elden Ring is also different. In addition to the aforementioned Spirit Steed, which can jump twice across ravines and throw a hundred feet into the air with the help of mystical jump pads, players can jump. Similar to how Sekiro’s Wolf: Shadows Die Twice moved through its world, Elden Ring players will be able to jump and bind without fear of falling damage through the environment. Traversing some areas, such as ruined castles or rocky terrain, seems to require generous hops.

In one section of the game, known as Stormwind Castle, we saw a Tarnished approaching the entrance gates, only to be greeted by a friendly character who told them that walking through the front door was a bad idea. It offered a safer second path. But the player took the hard way, had the gates open for them and was immediately greeted with a barrage of arrows. Going back to follow the easier and more tortuous path, we were shown that it required a lot of jumping, stealth and battles with armed but unprepared guards. There was also a giant troll if the player had chosen the direct and more difficult path, it would have been a one-on-one fight. On this secret path, they sneaked him down with a sleep arrow and let him lie down.

In another section, the player approached a caravan containing treasure under the cover of the night. They sneaked into the tall grass to hide, shot a sleep arrow at a guard and finished him off with their blade. The other guards, now alerted, were killed with a curved sword and magical abilities infused into that weapon. It was a short job and the treasure was quickly earned. More guards were sent out summoning a quartet of red-eyed ghosts with their ashes. It was a battle unlike anything I’d seen in a FromSoftware game: the player, five ghostly creatures, and half a dozen soldiers all fighting together.

Image: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco

The main combat will likely be familiar to Dark Souls players (slow and calculating), but FromSoftware is also borrowing the faster paced elements of Bloodborne and Sekiro. Players can run away from danger and reduce the enemy’s position to inflict critical damage not quite Sekiro’s guaranteed kill of a killing blow, but deadly nonetheless, Kitao said. There is also a new combat mechanic (Guard Counter), which will allow players to respond quickly after blocking at the expense of stamina. Kitao said Guard Counter is separate from the parade, which will be returning from Dark Souls.

There will be other familiar elements from the past of FromSoftware games: fast travels through the Elden Rings, the equivalent of bonfires (Sites of Lost Light); a young girl who will help them level up and learn new skills (her name is Melina); a hub world where friends and allies met in the fields will gather; and fragmented narrative that will allow the player to interpret the events and history of this world. It will also be, in the FromSoftware tradition, a challenging game. The developer could best encapsulate this in his description of Elden Ring: a good old-fashioned RPG.

Elden Ring arrives on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X on January 21, 2022.

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