Introduction

I am a big fan of the 2022 video game Elden Ring. In addition to having beaten the game pretty comprehensively before, I have watched easily 500 hours of gameplay videos on YouTube (mostly speed runs and challenge runs). This game is an obsession so central to my life that I have not fully reckoned with its impact on me. Nothing but D&D has ever been so squarely in the aesthetic, mechanical, and media-community sweet spot for my brain.

So anyway last week a big Elden Ring DLC came out and I have played for around 10 hours. While I’m not remotely close to done with it, I’ve formed some clear impressions and want to record them here.

The Good

• The DLC legacy dungeons are crisp, challenging, and perfectly execute on the classic Souls game loop. FromSoft is at the top of their game here in terms of dungeon design. There have been so many moments where I just had to grin because they foresaw exactly what I would do in a situation—typically when rushing around a blind corner to get away from certain death—and just got me so good with a jump scare or hidden pit or gank fight that suddenly made the situation far more dire.
• All of the mini-dungeons I’ve seen so far (they are far less numerous than in the base game) have been super thoughtful and rewarding as well. The base game got a lot of flak for reused assets everywhere, and somehow the DLC is absolutely overflowing with original assets and room configurations that are still somehow entirely consistent with the Elden Ring vibe. Because there are fewer mini-dungeons, they are basically all bigger and more sophisticated than the average base game equivalents.
• FromSoft went absolutely balls-out with the art. Basically, they took Elden Ring and added primary colors. It’s some of the most gorgeous stuff I’ve ever seen in a video game.
• The bosses I’ve fought so far are pretty cool. Considering the breadth of the base game, I’m surprised FromSoft still has more ideas for boss encounters that somehow feel fresh and exciting. They even made the most gimmicky gimmick boss I’ve ever seen in a Souls game, and once I figured out how to beat it I felt like a genius.

The Bad

• The difficulty has gotten a lot of hype and I agree that it’s hard, but I don’t think it’s actually more difficult than the base game. Rather, the problem seems to be that the special scaling mechanic they introduced is initially quite inscrutable and punishing, which makes the first couple hours of the DLC far harder and less fun than everything that comes later.
• Also regarding difficulty, I started the DLC at level 90 and found it really constraining—not because I was too weak (I was), but because I didn’t have access to as many options due to beelining to the DLC with relatively little setup. Eventually, I felt compelled to leave the DLC and go spend a bunch of hours doing most of the remaining base game story progression, in order to give myself access to a wider variety of equipment and upgrade materials. This made me a little bit stronger in terms of levels, but the real benefit was increased freedom to try out new weapons and strategies instead of being locked into what I entered the DLC with. (I’m level 140 or so now and basically shredding my way through the game.)
• The DLC is lousy with huge, beautiful areas with nothing in them for the player to do. The open world feels really empty compared to the open world in the base game. It really feels like FromSoft misunderstood what made the base game open world so compelling. Whereas the base game has an interesting, living world full of nooks and crannies that virtually all offer exciting interactions and treasure, the DLC has a lot of what feels like open space for the sake of open space. I’m definitely down with huge open spaces as a form of environmental storytelling, but there should be more cool stuff to find after a 3 minute run than just a few crabs on a beach.

The Verdict

Without question, Shadow of the Erdtree is more Elden Ring. If you liked Elden Ring, you will like this DLC, too. Just be forewarned that it doesn’t really hit its stride until you get a couple hours deep.

Postscript

The DLC experience has caused me to reflect on why exactly this game is so attractive to me. I did not totally click with Dark Souls III (to which you could reasonably consider Elden Ring a successor), nor have I sought out any other of the “Souls-like” games that are cropping up everywhere nowadays. There is something unique in the Elden Ring formula—the ambitious scope, the striking art, the crisp gameplay, the clear fingerprints of George R. R. Martin in its nigh-inscrutable and absolutely buck-wild lore—that makes it feel like more than a video game. Elden Ring is not just a computer program. It is an artwork, a game the playing of which elucidates something about what a video game is and how one gets made. As a writer, DM, and gamer myself, I find it endlessly engrossing and stimulating. I don’t just pour energy into it and leave burned out and empty handed. Like the best shows and movies and novels, I come away feeling somehow more awake and alive to what creative arts—and thus humanity—can achieve.