It's been nearly a year of silence since the premier trailer for Elden Ring, the latest dark action RPG being developed by FromSoftware, and fans of the developer have been creating their own versions of Elden Ring to pass the time. Artists, music composers, storytellers, and Reddit users alike have been posting fake lore, fake gameplay reviews, and depictions of fake boss battles for Elden Ring, each of them paying homage and parodying the grueling challenges of FromSoftware games like Dark Souls.
Hidetaka Miyazaki, the leader and main creative director of FromSoftware, loved reading fantasy books as a kid. In particular, he loved making up his own plot whenever the next sequel was incomplete or unavailable. This childhood experience influenced his work on iconic FromSoftware franchises like the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which employ a puzzle-piece approach to storytelling where environmental details and item descriptions offer more backstory than the (often biased and misleading) NPCs.
Miyazaki is famous for creating grueling fantasy RPGs where characters suffer and die a lot. American fantasy author George R.R. Martin is famed for writing Game of Thrones, a series where characters engage in similar actions quite often. When Miyazaki approached George R.R. Martin to help him write the backstory and mythology for Elden Ring, fans of both creators called it a match made in heaven. Since that exciting announcement and the spectacular premier trailer for Elden Ring back in June 2019, however, there's been no further news or updates. Because of this, as detailed by EGM, FromSoftware fans started to weave their own creative visions, and some are pretty impressive.
Elden Ring's Fake Bosses Like Glaivemaster Hodir
Glaivemaster Hodir is the first boss of Elden Ring, a "Skill Gate" character designed to get players used to Elden Ring's gameplay. Some gamers claim he's an easy boss that goes down after a few good parries, while others describe themselves rage quitting after dying to his spinning Glaive Attack for the 16th time. These accounts contradict because Glaivemaster Hodir is a made-up boss, a pastiche of Iudex Gundyr and similar bosses from Dark Souls III. Hodir and other such fictional Elden Ring bosses have taken on a life of their own on Reddit, Tumblr, and other sites. Some of them modeled after mythical creatures like the Nuckelavee or Herne the Hunter, and others bearing melodramatic titles like "Old Sage Ragnbjorg" or "The Flayed King."
Elden Ring's Fake Areas Like The Serpent's Fjord
The stories of Dark Souls and other FromSoftware RPGs are primarily delivered through environmental clues, such as in detailed yet sparse levels like Anor Londo, the sunlit city abandoned by the gods. This is also something which is emphasized in collectible items like the Moonlight Blade, which players learn is forged from the dragon tail of Seath the Scaleless. Players wander through these game zones like archaeologists uncovering an ancient tomb; searching for traps, plundering artifacts, and seeking clues about what happened in the distant past.
This approach to storytelling has inspired fans to create their own game areas for Elden Ring – fictional lands such as the snow-swept Serpent's Fjord, or hub regions such as Stonehaven Sanctuary. Some fans have crafted beautiful illustrations of these levels and items, while others spin tall tales about their experience playing through the game – for instance, talking about how the "Blood Vipers in the Serpent Cairn" are infuriatingly lethal, but how equipping the "Carnival Band" outfit makes the fight against them much easier. And, just like in every other "Soulsborne" game, everyone hates Elden Ring's fake swamp level. Check out Serpent's Fjord's fake soundtrack below, courtesy of leastworstgamer on YouTube.
All this fake Elden Ring lore is a testament not just to the fertile imaginations of lore-starved fans, but their love of FromSoftware's unique gameplay motifs. Each fake Elden Ring boss is a whirlwind of destruction that's both terrifying difficult and beautifully tragic. Each fake Elden Ring game level is a haunted ruin, filled with corrupted perils and the remnants of long-faded glories. Even the tall-tale accounts of "rage-quitting" and "cheesing enemies" reference people's love for a game that is often expected to make players fight for every inch of level progress, backstory, and personal triumph. Hopefully, when official information about Elden Ring is finally released, it will match these amazing fan creations.
Source: EGM, leastworstgamer/YouTube