By GARRETT BABB
Staff Writer
On November 4th, 2021 BANDAI NAMCO (one of the corporations involved with the creation of Elden Ring) released the long-awaited gameplay trailer for Elden Ring and provided us with insight into the new gameplay features and other details regarding the game. So without further ado, let me run you through all the things you can expect from Elden Ring.
The first major point that was shown in the traitor was the movement and combat system that you use when traversing the map and fighting bosses and other enemies. It seems like Elden Ring has incredibly similar mechanics to the original Dark Souls games with your main use of movement is going to be rolls for dodging attacks and sprinting for closing distance and running away. Not only that but it looks like the player will also have access to a summonable mount that they can call at any time to explore the world and is even shown to possibly be integral to combat for certain bosses and enemies. This mount mechanic in particular will be important because it looks like the Elden Ring map is going to be absolutely MASSIVE in terms of the size of the overall map. The player can be seen traversing through all kinds of different places from poisonous decrepit forests to climbing tall snowy mountains and everything in between, with other underground areas and dungeons providing the player with even more content to explore if the vast overworld wasn’t enough.
As for combat, it looks like you’ll have your standard mixup of light and heavy attacks from any given melee weapon which also corresponds with the style of the old-school dark soul’s games. Although it’s not explicitly stated in the trailer, it appears that the use of “weapon arts” which are unique abilities that each weapon possesses may also be employed in order to give you an edge against certain enemies. Mage builds are also shown as being effective and the use of magic will likely be an integral part of your playthrough of the game, there were several unique and powerful spells that were showcased in the trailer that is going to be exciting to use when the full game is released. It was also stated that Elden Ring will take its magic systems into far more depth than its predecessors and will be focusing more on the RPG stat-building aspects of the game to give the player a lot of versatility and room for creativity for any build that the players can come up with.
Many of these editions to the game were expected and already known to some degree by the community, but there is one major gameplay feature that caught me and other viewers by surprise when it was shown. Elden Ring supports a crafting system that allows you to craft various tools and ammunition for certain weapons on the fly during combat, which has never before been seen in a souls-game in the past. How this will affect the balance of combat and the extent of the things that you are able to craft is currently unknown but has left players excited to see how resource gathering and crafting will be implemented into the game.
Overall the gameplay trailer has left people with nothing but further excitement for the game’s release and as more information comes out regarding the release of the game only more hype for it will grow. I just hope that this game can live up to its incredibly high expectations.