In the latest episode of our video series Reality Check, paleontologist Dr. Darren Naish returned to give his assessment of the monster designs in Elden Ring. While you might be unsurprised to learn that FromSoft's opus isn't exactly "realistic," Naish praised the studio's attention to detail and commitment to its fiction.
Case and point: The universally loathed Land Octopus. With an eye for environmental storytelling that would make a FromSoft lore YouTuber proud, Naish praised how the beasts are often found at shorelines or in shallow water, move like real-life intertidal octopi, and demonstrate adaptations to a more hybrid environment than real-life octopi.
