As 2022 draws to a close, it’s natural for all of us to look back at the year behind us and reflect on the games we’ve played. This year for me was mostly taken up with some amazing narrative indies like The Case of the Golden Idol and Strange Horticulture. But really, a big part of my heart belongs to Elden Ring, and the Elden Ring area in particular.
My brain is still stunned by the size and beauty of the world of Elden Ring. I gasped a little when I found something new, looking out over a ridge to rolling fields dotted with trees and man-eating beasts. I slowed to a trepidation walk as the ground beneath me turned from grass and mud to hard, dry dirt and poisonous sulfur. I peered over the edge of bridges toward certain doom, wondering if it was worth the sacrifice to look at what might be way down there. The environment and world of Elden Ring to me is simply the best of any game in 2022, and it still feels so valuable that I got to explore that world.
When I entered Elden Ring, I hoped it would hurt me and love me like Dark Souls
I wasn’t interested in FromSoftware’s games until I managed to drag myself through Dark Souls on stream. It took me a while to understand the appeal of the games, but once I did, once I understood how to love the horrible bosses and tricky world, I loved it. When I entered Elden Ring I hoped it would hurt and love me like Dark Souls but unlike Dark Souls the beauty of the world gives you reprieve from the horrible things that can be encountered with vast mounds of blissful ignorance. As long as you don’t encounter a bear or anything of course.
I explored Elden Ring with a constant sense of wonder, always looking for the unusual and unknown. In previews, before the game was fully released, I got the chance to flutter around the Lands Between (opens in new tab) without any knowledge of what the game entailed. I galloped furiously across the open areas. Seeing monsters, beasts, giants, and NPCs, jotting down where everything was for guides, op-eds, and to best pass that information on to the PC Gamer team. There was no time to laze, I had to consume as much of this world as possible in the short six hours I had.
I got up as hard as I could and finally made it north to Caria Manor. Elden Ring is so open that I was somewhat intrigued by this building conjuring up more Dark Souls than most other places I’d explored (Stormveil was initially unavailable), even though it threw magical projectiles at me.
The gothic, quiet interior was so peaceful as I gazed through the doorway. The mist and soft green grass were so inviting, compared to the horror I saw in Castle Morne. I stepped inside and saw some movement, a glimmer of a living creature in the distance, curious as to what it might be. The spine-chilling shudder I then experienced upon encountering the Fingercreepers in Caria Manor was unlike anything even Dark Souls made me feel. The juxtaposition between this beautifully hushed courtyard and the monstrosities within was striking.
When exploring these rooms you had to make every effort to notice where these fingers could be hiding as they imitated the statuesque nature of their surroundings, waiting to wrap their claws around you. If you saw these things in the fields of Elden Ring initially, they wouldn’t have been so scary. It is because you willingly walk into their home, their environment, that they are so horrible to encounter. And these finger monsters were the thing I most ferociously remembered about the PC Gamer team, desperate for someone else to see what horrors Elden Ring had.
A lot of Elden Ring makes you feel like you’re invading a hidden place, something where creatures have lived, existed, spoiled a cove where you’re not welcome. You are the invader, you are the one who changes the way the world works. Even as you gaze at the beauty of the Siofra River, you know you’re upsetting something ancient, on the graves of past civilizations. You’ll scramble over the sunken ruins of Liurnia, knowing that this was once a bustling city with inhabitants long gone. You study a map that shows Caelid’s rotting core as a festering wound. And almost anywhere you can look up and be reminded that it’s all beneath the glorious glowing heart of the Lands Between, the Erdtree.
Simply put, the scale of Elden Ring’s environment was my most special bit of gaming from 2022. It told stories, implied terror and travesty, invited you in with welcoming arms before showing you the most horrific shit you’ve ever seen. It hid secrets, invited exploration and watching mind blow all the time. I wish I could explore the Lands Between fresh, but I’ll just add Elden Ring to the pile of games that I think are special and never quite replicated.