Under a butter-yellow sky, high up on the Altus Plain, driving my horse at full gallop, I spied a group of peasant women dancing. They hopped between feet, as if on scorching ground, twirling in unison beneath the sails of a neglected windmill. It is a mesmerising scene – one of hundreds you will happen upon while exploring the relentlessly beautiful, relentlessly hostile expanse of Elden Ring’s fantasy world, the Lands Between – but its rustic appeal is not to be trusted. I learned that lesson several hours earlier, when I caught the strains of a melancholic song carried by the wind. I rode toward the sound, hoping to meet someone who might offer support in my journey. The singer, however, was no friendly merchant or cooperative knight, but a grotesque siren, with beating leather wings and foot-long claws. The song was a ploy, and I was the prey.
The dangers posed by director Hidetaka Miyazaki’s games have been notorious since 2009’s Demon’s Souls: these are challenging works, filled with eldritch monsters, where even apparent allies are not to be fully trusted. Every danger must, eventually, be confronted. But Elden Ring differs from its predecessors in its expanse: every hillcrest represents a fresh opportunity. If one path seems too foreboding, one dragon too fearsome, one group of cackling dancers too disconcerting, you can simply ride off in another direction. The rhythms of struggle, setback, perseverance and, finally, triumph familiar to any player of Miyazaki’s work are present here, and exquisitely refined. But the frustrations have been eased; there is always another alluring path wending into the horizon, another cave entrance hidden in the bushes, another mineshaft down to a subterranean cathedral city.
