Elden Ring Previews
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We recently had a chance to check out this Game Informer preview for Elden Ring. Featuring a few quotes from the game's director Hidetaka Miyazaki, that preview covered pretty much everything there was to cover about Elden Ring's opening hours. However, if you're still interested in learning more about FromSoftware's upcoming action-RPG, you can now find several other hands-on previews below.
Let's start with Fextralife's article that also features an overview of the game's classes:
Elden Ring is poised to be a generation-defining game by combining FromSoftware’s creative ingenuity with tried and true Souls concepts, taking the excellent combat of the series and giving it incredible room to grow in this expansive and fantastical world that is a pleasure to explore.
Then, there's also IGN:
Excluding Sekiro, each of their action rpgs have let you choose between several class archetypes, and Elden Ring’s ten starting classes are no exception. And yet, sometimes even with the ability to level up and invest in the attributes you find more important, I felt like there were limited options to experiment once I’d invested in certain weapons and attributes. Elden Ring’s customizable weapon skills - called Ashes of War - seems to aim to change that. In just six hours, I had already amassed quite a collection - finding them in chests, recovered from bosses, and even sold from a self proclaimed Warmaster. Each of these could be applied to different types of armaments depending on the skill, as well as potential scaling depending on what attributes I was building up.
Mistrust of random inanimate objects aside, Elden Ring feels freeing in ways From Software games haven't before, perhaps in part due to fear of the unknown, but also, fear of the great unknown expanse that lies before you. if you're struggling with a particular area or boss, simply fast-travel or summon Torrent and ride your way out of there, and find a myriad other directions you can explore in. I might have felt pressure during a timed preview, but this will surely feel extremely freeing in the final game, when you can take things at your own pace, go your own route, indulge in the freedom that this jagged, ragged open world offers you. There's difficulty and challenge here, yes, but there's also the promise that you can and will overcome it, however you wish. Freedom. Great and terrible freedom.
Other little discoveries await if you take the time to explore. A little goblin statue holding a book said, "Seek three wise beasts". Turns out you have to hunt three hidden animals to enter a nearby magic tower. Another time, I inserted a Stonesword Key into a nearby statue. This granted me access to a hero's grave, which it turned out, was a vast underground tomb made up of near identical slopes that rose and fell. A mechanised chariot with spiky wheels rumbled up and down them, always in pursuit of anyone silly enough to try and pillage the tomb's contents. An environmental puzzle ensued, where I had to time my runs to outwit this machine, only to turn corners and lose my bearings. It's frightening, hearing that rumble grow closer.
Oh, and there's a boss down there alright. A gigantic lizardy-thing, covered in boils and lesions. It writhes and hurls itself at you with real unpredictability. Nope, didn't so much as scratch it. One I said I'd come back to later.
NME:
From craggy cliffs to those god-damned poison swamps, there was just so much to take in. There was one unremarkable bridge that I passed several times without drama, until I happened to travel over it at night. At that moment in time, I found my way barred by a boss that looked every inch of a Ringwraith atop his black steed, and spent the next few minutes trying to cut him to pieces from atop my own horse. Details like that – as well as shifting weather – did lots to bring the world of Elden Ring to life, even if it did ironically bring me countless deaths.
And GamesRadar+:
It also might be one of the most approachable FromSoftware games, though that's obviously a massively qualified statement with a thousand asterisks hanging off the end like a string of cheap tinsel. No, Soulsborne games are never friendly, but Elden Ring is at least willing to meet its players a little more in the middle, encouraging them to navigate around challenges and explore all possibilities before committing to one suicide mission in particular. There's even increased co-op options, meaning you can call on a specific friend to hold down whatever enemy's been tormenting you while you go for an easier kill.
