As a pretty big Souls and general FromSoftware fan, even hailing back to their days working on the Armored Core series, there is but one AAA title I’m sure I’m getting for next year: it’s Hidetaka Miyazaki’s next action game, Elden Ring, which received plenty of considerable attention as it seems like a return to the highly successful Souls formula that was remixed and changed vastly for this year’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Following its official reveal back at E3 earlier this month, new information about this next big title from FromSoftware has eluded a lot of fans, but now we finally have what seems to be the first wave of information regarding Elden Ring. In an exclusive with IGN, game director Hidetaka Miyazaki talks about some of the details surrounding Elden Ring, and how he sees the game as an evolution of From’s game design.
“Elden Ring is a third-person action RPG with a fantasy setting,” Miyazaki told IGN. “The gameplay is not so far from Dark Souls. That doesn’t mean that the gameplay will be identical, but you could say that Elden Ring belongs to the same genre.”
It looks like we’re back to the role-playing genre with this one. While Sekiro is overall an amazing game because of how much it innovated on its combat and traversal mechanics, it did suffer from too much linearity and lack of replayability. With Elden Ring, we can expect the RPG elements to come back in full force.
Of course, this being a new title means breaking new ground, one which Miyazaki hopes to achieve by implementing a large open world. “With a larger world, new systems and action mechanics inevitably become necessary,” he said. “In that sense, I think that Elden Ring is a more natural evolution of Dark Souls.”
For the most part, many people have been waiting for a fourth iteration of Dark Souls, even though FromSoftware and Miyazaki have stated that they are done with the series. I do feel that whatever they end up doing will be compared to Dark Souls so often, that they just gave up all pretense and stated that it’s an “evolution of Dark Souls,” rather than a new IP that follows the formula that FromSoftware is best known for.
I have very high hopes set for Elden Ring as a whole, especially after Sekiro showed me how innovative FromSoftware can still be with their combat design. I can’t wait to see how new mechanics will be implement it for this bigger and more expansive title.
Elden Ring will be released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC at a still unknown date.
