With the launch of the new trailer today, FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki has been doing the PR rounds to talk about the Elden Ring DLC.
So what have we learned today? Let’s take a quick look.
- Miquella is key to the story of Shadow of the Erdtree and players will follow his path. Queen Marika is also part of this story.
- The expansion will have a similar playing experience as the original game with large map open areas as well as small and large legacy dungeons.
- Shadow of the Erdtree is the biggest FromSoftware expansion ever.
- The expansion will cover an area about the size of Limgrave in the main game and it will be a new map.
- The field and dungeon areas are being brought together a “little more seamlessly”.
- There will be a poisoned swamp.
- There is a connection between all the bosses and the Land of Shadow
- The enemy in the trailer with snakes and flames is called Messmer the Impaler with the element of Shadow. See the image above.
- There are optional bosses which had been “tuned” in a similar way to Malenia.
- There are 10 new boss fights.
- Eight new weapon categories have been added.
- A second DLC is not off the table but there’s nothing in the works at the moment.
Based on what we have seen and read today, Shadow of the Erdtree sounds like an excellent expansion and it’s been done at scale. FromSoftware are keeping a lot of the detail close to the chests at the moment to avoid spoilers but this is at least a good start to having a better understanding of the expansion.
21 July can’t come soon enough. Let us know what’s piqued your interest in the trailer in the comments below.