The Elden Ring community has been reduced to inarticulate shouting

Image for The Elden Ring community has been reduced to inarticulate shouting
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

The Elden Ring subreddit is a curious place. In the over two years since the game's initial reveal, it's maintained ceaseless enthusiasm on a diet of vague leaks, speculation, and thin air. Now, thanks to Geoff Keighley and his Summer Game Fest, there's an Elden Ring trailer that's almost three minutes long and a synopsis with a lot of proper nouns in it (presumably some of George R R Martin's contribution). We've learned that the player is going to be one of the Tarnished, returning to the Lands Between from which they were exiled to ride around on a horse and stab bosses with big swords. There will be at least two deadly swamps.

The post about the reveal on r/eldenring has so many upvotes it is currently the number three post on r/all. And how are the fans responding? With lengthy lore summaries and conspiracy theories? No, mostly they are shouting "LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" and "HUMANITY RESTORED". 

(Image credit: Tyler Wilde)

The memelords have been quick to pick up on certain elements of the trailer. The carriage being pulled by the two huge guys with chains is now Geoff Keighley being safely transported back to his house, and the walking pots, whether they turn out to be enemies like the mimics in Dark Souls or simply blameless wandering animated furniture, are now officially called "Vaseboy" and already have fanart. As another post puts it, "This is now a pot boy themed subreddit". Twitter's been busy too.

Elden Ring will be released January 21, 2022, and I don't know how they're going to cope.

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Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.