'Elden Ring' First Gameplay Trailer Revealed

Bandai Namco has finally released the first actual gameplay trailer for “Elden Ring,” the highly anticipated successor to Hidetaka Miyazaki’s “Dark Souls” series, as part of Summer Game Fest 2021.

The three-minute-long trailer featured the typical FromSoftware style of presentation, which is something that every “Dark Souls” fan is familiar with by now. The showcase starts with a soft-spoken young woman uttering a vague description of the game’s premise while clips of striking new environments are shown.

Players will take the role of The Tarnished — a nameless, faceless warrior tasked to save the world from yet another unknown apocalyptic phenomenon. Much like its predecessors, “Elden Ring” is set in a bleak and hopeless world filled with horrifying creatures and awe-inspiring boss enemies.

Zombie-like enemies similar to the hollows of “Dark Souls” can be seen in the trailer along with bigger and scarier monsters. Lightning-wielding dragons, grotesque beasts and towering stone colossi are only some of the enemies that players can expect to fight in the game.

As for the gameplay itself, “Elden Ring” retains the signature “Souls-like” melee combat style. Players can block and dodge or roll away from enemy attacks while retaliating with their own strikes. However, there are some other noticeable changes and additions to the formula.

The introduction of mounted combat is the most obvious addition to the game. Players will be able to defend themselves while riding their mount, which will prove useful as the new world will be on a never-before-seen scale for a FromSoftware game.

Furthermore, the trailer shows the Tarnished casting a spell similar to Soul Magic from the previous “Souls” games, imbuing his claymore with hard light without using a catalyst or a staff. This could potentially mean that “Elden Ring” will have a more flexible spellcasting system that allows melee-focused builds to use sorcery without breaking the flow of combat.

Players will also be able to use actual stealth in “Elden Ring.” Instead of just slowly walking toward enemies from behind, players can crouch to muffle their movements and take targets down with a stealth attack like in “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.”

Overall, “Elden Ring” seems to offer more of the same gameplay that FromSoftware has provided before, but on a much larger scale and with significantly refined mechanics.

The game is set to release on January 21, 2022.