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Elden Ring will have multiple endings and new game plus mode

By Otto Kratky January 28, 2022

In an interview posted to the PlayStation blog, FromSoftware director Hidetaka Miyazaki confirmed that two pillars of previous Souls games, multiple endings and a new game plus mode, will be present in Elden Ring.

Plus good news for FromSoftware fans:

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“𝘠𝘦𝘴, 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘎𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘗𝘭𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘌𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘙𝘪𝘯𝘨.” pic.twitter.com/zd0Sg4y2CY

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) January 28, 2022

Miyazaki bluntly stated that both “New Game Plus and multiple endings will be intact in Elden Ring” during his interview, which also covered the director’s own gaming habits and decisions around the game’s difficulty setting. Both features are staples of the Souls franchise, with players typically deciding the ending they want after beating a final boss instead of through story decisions made throughout the duration of a game.

FromSoftware’s approach to new game plus modes in its games has likewise been somewhat different than the approach other games take. Previous Souls titles have multiple levels of new game plus, with Dark Souls having an infinite level of reruns for its players to go through. The major difference each time, though, is that enemies will deal drastically more damage and have more HP.

The same will likely be true for Elden Ring, giving players the opportunity to explore through The Lands Between multiple times and fight increasingly difficult enemies with each iteration of their adventure.

However, Miyazaki also stated in the interview that balancing difficulty in Elden Ring is something the team at FromSoftware has kept in mind. “We don’t try to force difficulty or make things hard for the sake of it,” Miyazaki says. “We want players to use their cunning, study the game, memorize what’s happening, and learn from their mistakes. We don’t want players to feel like the game is unfairly punishing, but rather that there’s a chance to win a difficult encounter and make progress.”

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Bringing VR’s best Star Wars game to PlayStation VR2 was a no-brainer, devs say

star wars tales from the galaxys edge psvr2 interview ilmxlab starwarstalesee screenshot c 3po and r2 d2

When ILMxLAB learned about the PlayStation VR2, Director Jose Perez III thought it was a "no-brainer" for the studio to bring the Oculus Quest game Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge to the new headset.
"We're always looking at how we can push the fidelity of the work that we're doing," Perez III tells Digital Trends in an interview. "PlayStation VR2 is ridiculously powerful; we got really excited about what we could bring to that. We started talking with our friends at Sony because we had a great relationship with them for Vader Immortal, and it was really a no-brainer. Then, you put the headset on, you start feeling the haptics, and you start seeing what you can do with the visual fidelity and lighting, and it's like, 'Oh, this is awesome!'"
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Enhanced Edition | Official Trailer | PS VR2
PlayStation VR2's launch and its first wave of games are nearly upon us, and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge Enhanced Edition is one of those titles. This is a make-or-break time for VR, which is still struggling to move into the mainstream but could become more popular if Sony's headset can offer a compelling and accessible virtual reality experience. Ahead of its release, Digital Trends spoke to Director Jose Perez III and Producer Harvey Whitney from ILMxLAB to learn about the process of crafting one of these critical "no-brainer" launch games and PlayStation VR2 will ultimately stand when it comes to the future of VR gaming.
The power of PlayStation VR2
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge was originally released for Meta Quest VR headsets in November 2020. It's set on the planet of Batuu, which people also explore at Dinsey parks, and follows a Droid Technician who gets caught in the middle of a grander fight against the First Order after crash-landing on the planet. At the time, it was meant with decent reviews and only got better as its story was completed and expanded with the Last Call DLC.
After getting the "Enhanced Edition" of the game for PlayStation VR2 greenlit, ILMxLAB actually had to go and make it. As the team was dealing with new hardware for the first time, producer Harvey Whitney thought it was good that the team's first project on PlayStation VR2 was an enhanced version of an existing game.
"Early on, knowing that we already had the content that was created for the original, that changes things quite a bit," Whitney tells Digital Trends. "We're not redeveloping the story and coming up with all of that. We just had that opportunity to work as a team and ask, 'What do we really push here, and where are the changes that we want to make, and what we can do to really take advantage of this hardware?'"

The VR space is full of different headsets with unique specs, with the much higher specs of the PS VR2 standing out. The PlayStation VR2 sports some impressive specs compared to its VR peers, displaying content in a 4000x2030 HDR format at a 90Hz or 120Hz frame rate. Plus, games have the PS5's power, spatial, and brand new Sense controllers to take advantage of, rather than the 2013 console and 2010 motion controls that limited the original PlayStation VR.
PlayStation VR2 supports Roomscale, Sitting, and Standing play styles, which added more complexity as Tales from the Galaxy's Edge supports all three. Thankfully, Perez III that bringing Tales from the Galaxy's Edge to PlayStation VR2 was relatively manageable because of how impressive the system's specs were.
"A lot of the development processes are similar [to other VR platforms]," Perez III says. "We're still working inside of Unreal, and we're doing a lot of those same processes. But we don't have to look at performance quite as much as we do on some of the other devices, so we're able to open up a lot of things or not be as concerned about certain things. That comes with better hardware."
Better hardware, better games
Looking at the biggest games of the PlayStation VR2 launch window lineup, the visuals of titles like Horizon Call of the Mountain and the VR modes of Resident Evil Village and Gran Turismo 7 are impressive. In our discussion, Whitney also made it quite clear that one of the real advantages of working on this remaster was not having to worry about strict limitations on the visuals or even the audio. "We got lucky in the sense that there's a lot more to PlayStation VR2 that we hadn't had previously," Whitney says. "We could really push the graphics and make it shine. But then there were also some other things that came into play. We totally redid the audio, it sounds amazing."

Gaming

PlayStation Plus just set a new first-party precedent with Horizon Forbidden West

Horizon: Forbidden West

Sony revealed the games coming to PlayStation Plus Premium and PlayStation Plus Extra this month on February 21, and it's the best month that the service has had since it launched in the summer of 2022. Not only are some great PS1 classics like The Legend of Dragoon and Wild Arms 2 coming to the service, but Horizon Forbbiden West is getting added as well.
Horizon Forbidden West coming to the service one year after launch is a big deal because Sony has been resistant to putting recent first-party PS5 games on its subscription service. While it's still not adding first-party titles on day one like Xbox Game Pass does, this is possibly our first indication of how Sony will handle adding its own games to the subscription. It's not the only PS4 and PS5 title coming to the service this month either, as the following strong lineup of games was also confirmed to be coming on February 21.

The Quarry (PS4, PS5)
Resident Evil VII Biohazard (PS4)
Outriders (PS4, PS5)
Scarlet Nexus (PS4, PS5)
Borderlands 3 (PS4, PS5)
Tekken 7 (PS4, PS5)
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (PS4)
Earth Defense Force 5 (PS4)
Oninaki (PS4)
Lost Sphear (PS4)
I Am Setsuna (PS4)
The Forgotten City (PS4, PS5)
Destroy All Humans! (PS4)

Gaming

This samurai strategy game is my new deck-builder obsession

A samurai slashes an enemy in Mahokenshi.

Ever since Slay the Spire was released in 2017, deck-building has become a go-to genre for indie developers, right up there with roguelikes and Metroidvanias. Six years ago, it felt like a relatively untapped genre waiting to be torn apart. In 2023, the scene is much more bustling, which makes it a bit more difficult for something genuinely fresh to break through.

Mahokenshi - 4 Houses Trailer - Gamescom 2022