Everyone is gearing up for the summer gaming event, “Shadow of the Erdtree,” the final chapter of “Elden Ring,” which releases Friday for PlayStation 5, Xbox and PC. And like the 2022 version sold 25 million copies, it is, once again, bigger than one might expect.
“Elden Ring” tells the story of The Lands Between, a world torn apart by the warring demigod children of its god Marika. A child, Miquella the Kind, cursed with eternal youth, was absent from the original game, but he left traces and clues everywhere. “Erdtree” is fundamentally a mystery story: what is the true nature of the world Miquella has fled to, and what is he doing here?
The answers are terrifying, enchanting and incredibly difficult to find. Game director Hidetaka Miyazaki, who wrote the story with “Game of Thrones” author George RR Martin, has said in interviews that the world of this new chapter, the Land of Shadow, has roughly Nearly the size of Limgrave, the starting region of the original game. He’s a liar. “Shadow of the Erdtree” feels like 75% the size of “Elden Ring,” a game that is already larger than most games. Developer FromSoftware has essentially created a sequel.
The smaller world size means a more focused world design than the original game, with regions that intersect into each other, like the classic dungeon design philosophy of “Dark Souls”, expanded across continents . This is the biggest improvement over the original game, which was so big that it often felt exhausting. In this new world, I thought I would make a good sense of its geography, the most important landmarks and the places I needed to go. I was so wrong. The world kept unfolding like origami, revealing new, invisible regions in the landscape. Each new area often amazed me as I admired the view. Some of these areas are nightmarish, while others inspire awe.
The dungeons, like the original game, are the highlight. In particular, the castle first visible on the horizon called Shadow Keep is among the best and most complex dungeons ever designed by FromSoftware. It feels like an evolution of Zelda’s best temples, with multiple exits and locations that fit together like a communication route to other regions. It is a work of architectural genius.
Make no mistake, this is even more “Elden Ring.” If that gargantuan experience left you exhausted or turned off, here’s something just as big, just as exhausting, and even more challenging. I entered this world as a level 713 character, the maximum power level achieved in two years and hundreds of hours. The first enemy I fought was a man wearing only underwear. I hit him with my strongest attack and he barely flinched. He hit me twice (melee is just one of eight new weapon types) and I died. “Shadow of the Erdtree” contains its own unique leveling system, requiring players to discover shards that apply a fixed percentage improvement to your damage and negation. Finding these fragments will become an essential part of your journey, as it is seemingly impossible to survive without them.
The atmosphere of the original game was that of a post-apocalyptic world with wizards and dragons. Miyazaki’s adventures are often depressing. But the Shadowland’s sinister name belies its true nature as a thriving world teeming with life. After years of drab landscapes filled with dead trees and rotting corpses, these beautiful but hard-to-find areas feel restorative, like finally taking a warm bath after a decade of hiking through mud and mountains.
So, is the mystery story good? It’s compelling, but only if you can find it. Miyazaki deliberately tells his stories through gameplay and a patchwork of information delivered to the audience in the form of fragmented thoughts and ideas. He draws inspiration from his early years of trying to read fantasy books like “The Lord of the Rings” with a limited command of English – which only made the stories more fascinating and mysterious to him – and he tried to recreate that imaginative spirit. exercise through video games.
Clues to the truth behind Kindly Miquella’s actions and motivations are scattered throughout the original game, but in “Erdtree” it’s the focal point. It is told through the lens of seven loyal Miquella followers, each with their own specialty and story. I found them all over the Shadowland, but there were so many side stories, and “Erdtree” is a much harder narrative to piece together than “Elden Ring.” Martin provided the story and lore for the games, and provided a solid structure to follow in “Elden Ring.” Here, much of the story is wrapped up in hidden passages, vague riddles, and cryptic clues.
Somehow, despite this disjointed nature, I was still amazed at what I discovered. But I mention the word exhausting often, because “Elden Ring” demands so much of its audience, whether in terms of the skills required, the mental acuity to tackle difficult challenges, and the literary sensitivity to understand non-linear narrative logic. Some of the areas of the game most important to understanding the story are hidden in obscure passages and require a keen eye and good spatial awareness. I had to ask other reviewers at gaming news site IGN and YouTube creator FightinCowboy to find these locations. Perhaps it’s a good thing that games as large and complex as “Elden Ring” are rare. If Miyazaki’s games are special moments in time, and indeed they are, it’s good that we aren’t trapped in them like the eternal ghouls of the Land of Shadow.
“Shadow of the Erdtree” brings horrifying and unexpected answers to 2022 gaming’s biggest mysteries. It’s a big conclusion to what many consider to be the greatest video game of the 2020s. base. It’s even more “Elden Ring”, which shatters expectations.