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FromSoftware’s Elden Ring will show off a world that “lives and breathes” with dynamic open-world elements, like day and night cycles, weather, wildlife, and enemy encounters (via WccfTech).
This comes from a leak published on Resetera, so let’s not get too hasty. A user named Omnipotent says that, though Elden Ring is a medieval fantasy action role-playing game, just like Dark Souls, this one stresses “freedom of choice in direction and how to approach a situation.” The world won’t use castles and corridors to do a reverse TARDIS impression, like it’s bigger on the outside. The openness of Elden Ring is something special, according to the leak.
“Dynamic day/night cycles, lighting, weather, I’ll even throw you a bone and say wildlife, enemies out in the open world that change their positioning, both big and small. Things that make the world feel like it lives and breathes and doesn’t just exist as your playground and while they’re relatively minor when looked at as singular elements. You start to take all of these elements and put them together and ultimately what you have is something that again, shares the same DNA as past games, but culminates into something different,” claims the leaker.
None of this is exceptionally enterprising, though. There are beautiful, dynamic weather effects in Red Dead Redemption 2, and animals will hunt prey in Assassin’s Creed Origins. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s day and night cycle is spectacular, and enemies will change their behaviour in reaction to the player in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. However, this sort of stuff would be the first time that these elements have been seen in a FromSoftware title. Especially, enemies moving position and potentially changing class or type depending on these dynamic conditions is definitely different.
Also, creator Hidetaka Miyazaki said that Elden Ring will build from the basic blocks of Dark Souls. “However, that doesn’t mean that it plays out in the same way. With a more open and vast environment, the way combat plays out becomes fundamentally different,” he explained at the time. This sounds something like the leak, though neither developer nor publisher has acknowledged the revelations. We should be cautious for now, until FromSoftware shows off what Elden Ring is all about. It’s been a while, after all, and when would be a better time than E3 2020? (Here’s hoping it’s still going ahead in June).
