'Elden Ring' is almost done, says From Software

There's nothing that Dark Souls fans love more than a new From Software game — except maybe talking about how much they love Dark Souls, that is. Luckily for them, the long-anticipated Elden Ring is nearing completion, according to a new interview with FromSoft's Yasuhiro Kitao, who said that the game is "at the final stages of development." That's good to hear, because the game comes out very soon: January 2022.

Hype cycle — While this means that Elden Ring is essentially content-complete, it probably hasn't "gone gold" yet, as game companies usually need the last few months of development for bug fixes and the like. (This is a gaming industry term for the point in which the finished game is ready to be stamped onto discs. However, in the era of big day 1 patches and DLC, it's not exactly as meaningful a checkpoint as it used to be.)

In that interview — which was machine-translated by Redditor MysteriousBloke — Kitao emphasized that Elden Ring will be a very difficult game, just like the Souls series, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice before it. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki stated in an interview earlier in 2021 that the game will have a more "manageable" level of difficulty, but given the standards of FromSoft, it probably won't be "manageable" for everyone.

Snakes in the grass — However, according to what little we know about the game, players will have more options for dealing with Elden Ring's tough enemies rather than just grinding against that boss over and over. You'll be able to take advantage of stealth and quiet kills like in Sekiro, and you can also summon spirits to help you out against big mobs of enemies.

As stated above, we still don't know much about Elden Ring, but that's part of the fun. Many first-time Dark Souls players had no idea what to expect when they played it for the first time, and that's a key aspect of what makes these games so memorable for fans. Elden Ring fans have had to entertain themselves with social media games and speculation for more than two years now, so let's hope they can wait the three months for the game's final release.