Everything you need to know about Elden Ring: New trailer, release date, and story

When FromSoftware announces a game, you can bet your life people pay attention. Its long string of hits, starting with Demon's Souls (recently remastered in excellent style), running through the Dark Souls saga, Bloodborne and Sekiro, has earned it one heck of a reputation.

If you take that game-making prowess, and add in the plotting of George R. R. Martin, the author behind Game of Thrones, you've got a seriously enticing proposition - and that's just what we're looking at with Elden Ring. Find out everything you need to know, below.

squirrel_widget_160914

Elden Ring trailer and release date

Elden Ring was announced with a nice and splashy trailer, embedded below, at E3 in 2019, and as you'll see there wasn't much news about it since then. The trailer, though, had absolutely loads to go on in terms of themes and ideas.

Now that's all changed - January 21 2022 is the new release date that was announced at this year's Summer Games Fest, along with a brand new trailer that you can see above.

Elden Ring platforms

FromSoftware has a chequered history when it comes to releasing its games on different platforms - some of them, like Demon's Souls in both incarnations and Bloodborne have been PlayStation exclusives. 

That doesn't seem to be the case this time - we now know that the game will come out on every platform you could hope for, including PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. Plus, for the first time for FromSoftware, PC players will get a day-and-date launch as well.

Elden Ring story

Here's where things get juicy - George R. R. Martin has co-created this dark fantasy world along with Hidetaka Miyazaki, the mastermind behind the Souls series. That's an amazing team-up, and also brings together two absolute specialists in bleak surprises.

The trailers paint a scene of a shattered world, and it sounds like the Elden Ring, whatever it is, is the aim of many travellers - will we be questing to find it? To restore it, perhaps? Time will tell, but there's a lot more to unpack, but we know that it's been shattered, according to Miyazaki.

For one thing, there's a lot going on with arms here - arms shattering off bodies as a hammer strikes, an arm being attached in readiness for a fight, and more. After the importance of a prosthetic arm to the world and plot of Sekiro, there's clearly come kind of theme being explored, but we don't have much more to go on for now. 

Elden Ring gameplay

Elden Ring looks like a big step for FromSoftware - multiple sources including Phil Spencer from Xbox have discussed it being the studio's biggest and most ambitious game yet. Part of that appears to be related to a wider gameplay scope.

We still expect to see challenging combat encounters, of course, and the game is again a third-person action RPG, but there's going to be a lot more options for players. For one thing, we now know that magic will be a big part of the world - it's big in the Souls games, too, but sometimes feels more like an addition than a core gameplay tenet.

Similarly, the new footage contains gameplay on horseback, confirming a new way to get around a bigger open world, and combat in another arena on the back of your mount. As in the Souls games, there will be character customisation, too. Hopefully, it can take a leaf from the remake of Demon's Souls, and let us create people who don't look like potatoes. 

That open-world format is also big news, of course, and will be a major change for FromSoftware. However, Miyazaki has confirmed they're not going all-out to imitate something like The Witcher 3 - there won't be towns full of NPCs to talk to or get quests from. Rather the open world will be available to explore as what we hope will be like a tied-up set of FromSoftware's already expansive levels. 

squirrel_widget_178110

from Pocket-lint https://ift.tt/3rtQ6Ik
via IFTTT