Here's the longest preview of ‘Elden Ring’ yet

If a AAA title was announced at E3 and then footage for said game was unavailable for multiple years, will it ever really exist? Apparently for Elden Ring, the upcoming action-adventure RPG from FromSoftware, the answer — finally — is yes. Though the developers behind Dark Souls and Bloodborne teased the release of Elden Ring in the summer of 2019 and then proceeded to go silent for two years, that all changed today. During a digital showcase, Bandai Namco, the game’s publisher, released a 20-minute gameplay preview video at long last. Check it out for yourself:

Since the game’s announcement at 2019’s E3 conference, information regarding the RPG has been almost non-existent. Sure, there was a leaked shaky-cam video that evoked a bootleg stream of a movie still in theatres to confirm the game still existed. But otherwise, no game imagery or comments from the big names attached to the release ever came out since the initial announcement.

Over this past summer, fans were treated to footage of the project, effectively breaking the two-year-long silence. A game trailer in 60 fps dropped at Summer Games Fest 2021 along with a release date, targeting early 2022 in January. This trailer, aside from showcasing a gothic, dark fantasy world akin to what users had been accustomed to with Dark Souls, also spawned a number of memes focusing on an autonomous pot of sorts.

The plot thickens — When it comes to a high-profile game release, you would think that a gameplay trailer coupled with a release date would be enough to ease the nerves. Recent history, however, has shown us that this faith can be mistaken. Look no further than Cyberpunk 2077 and Halo Infinite.

Similar to those two titles, Elden Ring was delayed in mid-October, but only a month after the previously announced launch date. It could certainly be much worse, and maybe this goes to show that patience can go a long way when it comes to gaming anticipation.

Now that we have a 20-minute video of what to expect from Elden Ring though, a lot of the details that FromSoft provided during GamesCom earlier in August were confirmed. The RPG will be open-world and set in a dynamic environment that has a shifting weather pattern. This world is filled with grotesque and terrifying enemies that usually dwarf our player character, especially during boss fights. Fall damage doesn’t seem to be a thing and we will be getting a variety of game modes including co-op, competitive, and invasion.