Outside the often debated difficulty of the games, another aspect that’s defined the Souls franchise developed by FromSoftware has been their worlds. Often abandoned and bleak, the games have put us in worlds that feel like all civilization has collapsed long ago. While Elden Ring, the next game from the developer, does not share any official branding with the series, it certainly looks like that tradition will continue with it.
We already knew that both the storytelling and gameplay would be based heavily on Dark Souls. With the switch over to an open world game, people wondered if maybe that would change little, primarily in their being more NPCs and more active villages, and the sort of thing we’ve become accustomed to in open world RPGs. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki squashed that by saying the world of Elden Ring is very much like the Souls games, one of ruin and desolation, in an interview with IGN.
“Villages will be the dark dungeon-like ruins that you have come to expect from us,” he said. “Creating a more open game is a big challenge for us. If we were to add towns on top of that, it would become a bit too much, so we decided to create an open-world-style game focused on what we are best at.”
It’s sounding more and more like Elden Ring is going to be a spiritual successor to the Souls franchise, just while dropping the branding. We’ll get to see for ourselves when the game drops next year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.