Elden Ring (2022)
Elden Ring is a 2022 role-playing (rpg) video game made by FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
The Elden Ring has been shattered, its shards scattered among the demigods who tore it apart in a war that left the Lands Between scarred and leaderless. You arrive as a Tarnished, an outcast called back by a beckoning Grace, and the world gives you almost nothing: no map, no guide, no indication of which direction will kill you fastest. FromSoftware and George R. R. Martin built a mythology that rewards patience, an open world where every ruin and cliff-edge belongs to something older than the story you are told.
Quick answers
What is Elden Ring about?
The Elden Ring has been shattered, its shards scattered among the demigods who tore it apart in a war that left the Lands Between scarred and leaderless. You arrive as a Tarnished, an outcast called back by a beckoning Grace, and the world gives you almost nothing: no map, no guide, no indication of which direction will kill you fastest. FromSoftware and George R. R. Martin built a mythology that rewards patience, an open world where every ruin and cliff-edge belongs to something older than the story you are told.
When was Elden Ring released?
Elden Ring was released on 25 February 2022.
Who made Elden Ring?
Elden Ring was made by FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
Similar games
Explore Elden Ring guides
Elden Ring in our writing
- Companion guide: Cosmic Horror
- Companion guide: Dark Fantasy
- Companion guide: Dying Earth: The Complete Guide to the Last Twilight
- Companion guide: Epic Fantasy
A few thoughts on Elden Ring
Fans of the dense, faction-driven world-building might find a different flavor of it in How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, which plays with similar summoned-hero mythology, or the strategic ensemble politics of Driland for something lighter that still centers on a party navigating hostile magical territory.
Epic fantasy where a broken world is the whole point
The Lands Between are a kingdom already fallen apart before the Tarnished ever arrives, every ruin a leftover from a greater age. Wizard and Glass wanders through a Mid-World that's worn down the same way, Oathbringer's Roshar buckles under ancient orders and older wars, and House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones both watch a once-mighty dynasty tear itself apart from the inside.
Music heavy enough for a dying god's throne room
Elden Ring's world hums with a sorrow that's older than anyone still walking through it, and these records carry the same weight. King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King builds a similarly grand, doom-laced atmosphere, the Return of the King score matches its sense of scale and loss, and Fates Warning and Cradle of Filth bring the same dark, ceremonial heaviness to the speakers.
Warriors bound to serve something older and bigger than themselves
Every demigod in the Lands Between answers to a fractured order they didn't choose. Saint Seiya's bronze warriors fight and die in service to a goddess, Inuyasha is dragged into a feudal world ruled by ancient demon hierarchies, and How Not to Summon a Demon Lord and The Girl Who Drank the Moon both build their magic systems around old, binding pacts.