The Summer Game Fest ended with a bang after showing the first gameplay trailer for the upcoming title Elden Ring. Shockingly enough the trailer had plenty of substance to sift through as it showed a decent amount of gameplay as well as a release date for the game.
Following that, Director Hidetaka Miyazaki sat down with IGN to give more information about the game world and the enemies that will be populating it.
The game is set in The Lands Between, a place that owes a lot to writer George R.R. Martin, of A Song of Fire & Ice fame. Miyazaki stated about his involvement that “As part of creating this vast world, we wanted to bring on involvement from George R.R. Martin, and he brought things to the table that we couldn’t have done by ourselves, in terms of that rich storytelling and that sense of character and drama. So we really appreciate his involvement as well.”
He also discussed the player’s role in the story. As a Tarnished the player was exiled from the land. However, when a powerful artifact known as the Elden Ring is shattered, your character is called back to this land. This event also helps to create many of the villains that will have to be faced. Miyazaki explained “One main theme of the main bosses of the game, in particular, are that they are essentially demigods – and characters who are written, again, by George R.R. Martin – and they inherited the mad tainted power of the Elden Ring shards once it was shattered. We wanted to depict these beings as not just creatures and horrible monsters, but have an element of heroism and an element of mythology to them.”
The world will be bigger than Dark Souls fans might be used to. Abilities to help with her traversing this land such as the added ability to jump, as well as mounted animals, will help the player. The game will also have an easy-to-use fast travel system. Speaking on this subject Miyazaki assured players that “There is a mainline route through the open world, but at any time players are free to break off this route and take the untrodden path.”
Similar to its predecessors the game will feature a seamless flow from each area. This should help the game feel like it is one connected map. He stated “six main areas of The Lands Between, and each of these six areas will house its own mainline dungeon map. These will be the domains or the areas of the main demigod bosses.”
Like all their games it is designed to be challenging. However, there will be a greater sense of freedom in the way you can approach the game. Miyazaki made a point to stress that “there’s a large variety of ways you can approach combat and a large range of abilities you can acquire.”
Elden Ring is being developed by FromSoftware and will release on January 22, 2022. It will be available for PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X.
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