Let’s get something straight right up front: there is no news about Elden Ring to report at this time. Developer FromSoftware has been conspicuously tight-lipped about development on the dark RPG game it’s working on in collaboration with A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. Fans desperate for news have gotten to the point that they’re now creating their own Elden Ring bosses to get stuck on.
The Elden Ring subreddit is a pretty loopy place these days. After the reveal teaser, its regular readers have had very little to go on. The top two news posts on the sub contain the 2019 E3 trailer for Elden Ring, and FromSoft’s recent tweet that essentially said that Elden Ring has not been cancelled. The rest of the sub’s front page is chaos and salt, basically.
There are fans making their own Elden Ring fan games, fans posting gameplay and screenshots from those games, and fans commenting on those posts, pretending they’re commenting on Elden Ring itself. That’s how badly people want to play and talk about Elden Ring. They know it’s fake, but they want Elden Ring content to discuss on Reddit, and so they’re making do with what they have.
Some are simply posting remixed screenshots or meme-type images based on other games. Here’s an example:
Others have gotten quite a bit more elaborate:
Just got to the Great Feet Plains. How tf do i beat this guy? Fungus is even worse than toxic… from Eldenring
“Just got to the Great Feet Plains,” user ixphia says. “How tf do i beat this guy? Fungus is even worse than toxic.”
The image shows a crusader character standing on the grassy hill in the Windows XP ‘Bliss’ wallpaper. He’s facing what I think is a giant Bionicle figure, and surrounded by green feet growing out of the ground around him. The Dark Souls UI has been added, and our hero is carrying a sword, a bottle of hand lotion, a can of Monster Energy, and some WD-40 lubricant. He’s been afflicted by the ‘fungus’ status effect.
There’s plenty more of this kind of thing under the ‘Fake Lore‘ tag on the subreddit. It makes for fun browsing, even if there’s an underlying sadness about the whole affair – although we suppose that itself is in keeping with the Souls games‘ main leitmotif.
Here’s everything we know about Elden Ring so far, which we’ll admit isn’t very much. Here’s hoping we learn something new at this year’s Game Awards.