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Elden Ring gameplay trailer shows off open world, spectral horses

Otto Kratky
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Today’s first look at gameplay for Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s highly-anticipated upcoming title, is all-encompassing. The 19-minute video from the developer offers details on everything in the game, including the random encounters that players can expect, new gameplay mechanics like crafting and stealth, and the changes that have come from giving players the option to do a little hop whenever they want.

ELDEN RING - Gameplay Preview

Elden Ring takes place in The Lands Between, and that’s pretty much all we got of the game’s story or setting during today’s presentation. It’s not clear why players will be adventuring through the strange, cursed land or what their goal is. Like the Dark Souls games, Elden Ring‘s story may be told through item descriptions. However, much like a Dark Souls game, there are places scattered throughout the world for players to rest at called sites of grace. Lights from the sky point to these sites, giving players a beacon to head towards if they need to get away from the action.

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The Land Between in Elden Ring.

Elden Ring‘s largest departure from all of From Software’s other games is that it’s totally open-world. Players can summon a spectral horse and ride through The Lands Between, meeting NPCs or taking part in random encounters. One such encounter shown today had a dragon swoop in and attack the player as they were passing a patrol of enemies.

Players will also be able to ambush convoys of enemies, stealing treasure from the carriages they carry. In today’s video, the player accomplished this by sneaking up on enemies and stunning them with a heavy strike before taking them down. Similarly, players can prepare for fights by crafting useful items, including arrows, from the materials they find around the world.

When they approach enemies or the game’s dungeons, players won’t be bound to the same constraints of other Souls-like games, either. Movement in Elden Ring seems to be a blend of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, with fast dodges being available in combat and quick, high jumps performable at any time. Giving players the ability to jump without needing a running start has evidently affected the design of the game’s dungeons as well. Players can take multiple routes through Elden Ring‘s dungeons by climbing across rooftops or into open windows.

Not everything in Elden Ring is different from FromSoftware’s previous games, though. Players can still summon other players for co-op play or invade others to ruin someone’s day.

Elden Ring is set to launch on February 25, 2022, for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Anyone who wants to try out the game early can register for a Closed Network Test slated to take place next week.

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Square Enix's open-world action RPG featured some neat ideas with its fast-paced magical combat and freeing traversal abilities, but many people couldn't get into it. While more focused on melee combat than magic, Atlas Fallen is a similarly ambitious open-world game that delivers satisfying movement and action that's different from the norm. That makes it a game that might scratch some itches that Forspoken didn't fully reach due to its heavily criticized writing. If it's not on your radar yet, you might want to know what Atlas Fallen has to offer.
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Based on my demo, I'm not fully sure what to expect from Atlas Fallen's mysterious story yet. The basic premise is that player was a person from the lowest caste in this world's society who was bonded with an ancient gauntlet. That gauntlet has an amnesic spirit named Nyaal living inside it and is now trying to save the world from gods that have left it in desert-filled ruins. The narrative wasn't a big focus in my preview build, though, and the script is full of jargon that probably will only make sense once I play more of the game.
A talking companion bonded to the player's arm and hand is already an unexpected narrative coincidence between Forspoken and Atlas Fallen. But neither game's story is the appeal of either to me: It's their fun traversal and combat that interest me. The few seconds of Atlas Fallen's sand-surfing and fighting in its Gamescom trailer caught my eye last year, and both lived up to the hype.
 
As I worked my way out of a cave at the start of the demo, I learned how to raise large structures out of the ground, surf across large patches of sand, and dash through the air with the help of my gauntlet. After I entered the game's open world, I could play around with all my movement options and found them to be a treat. Open-ended games with large worlds like Atlas Fallen can live or die on how satisfying they are to explore, and making movement fun is a crucial way developers can make traversal enjoyable.
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Deck13 and Focus Entertainment had yet to go into much detail about Atlas Fallen's combat before now, so I was shocked by how unique it was. The core combat revolves around attacking, dodging, and parrying, with weapons shapeshifting as you use them in different ways. It's faster-paced than I expected from a developer who previously made Souslikes, but it's the Ascension system that really caught my attention.
In between fights, players can equip their character with Essence Stones that buff or add abilities, assigning them to one of three tiers in the process. Once they are in a fight, attacking and defeating enemies causes players to gain momentum, which fills a bar at the bottom left of the screen. As this bar fills, or "ascends," players gradually gain those Essence Stone abilities, getting more powerful the more aggressive they are.
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There's something exciting about how mysterious this game still is to me, as that means there could be lots of surprises when players finally get to try the whole thing in a couple of months. It's shaping up to be an unexpected, almost accidental alternative to Forspoken. If you're still looking for an action-heavy RPG with innovative movement and combat gameplay ideas, Atlas Fallen should be on your radar.
Atlas Fallen will launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on May 16.

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