What is Elden Ring?

The Souls structure, opened to the horizon: FromSoftware’s largest world and its largest audience.

Elden Ring was released on February 25, 2022 for PlayStation 4 and 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, published by Bandai Namco abroad and, in the established pattern, by FromSoftware itself in Japan. Directed by Miyazaki with Yui Tanimura, it moves the formula into the Lands Between: six great legacy dungeons joined by a true open world, rideable, explorable, and scaled so that the player is always small in it. A Tarnished seeks the shattered Elden Ring and the title of Elden Lord; the worldbuilding underneath is by George R. R. Martin.

It became the studio’s commercial summit: over 30 million copies, Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022, an expansion, a co-operative spin-off, and a film adaptation in production. A Nintendo Switch 2 edition followed in 2026.

THE LANDS BETWEEN

The summit · 2022

Elden Ring · 2022

A sigil, a drowned landscape, one small figure: the first cover in the line with no hero on it, for the game where the world is the hero.

Six dungeons, one world

The legacy dungeons, Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, Leyndell and their kin, are Dark Souls levels embedded in open country. The design did not replace the old structure; it gave it weather, distance and a horse.

Two directors, again

Production ran parallel to Sekiro under a co-director structure, with Miyazaki overseeing both and Tanimura directing here, the supervisory generation of the studio carrying its biggest game.

What is Elden Ring?

THE LANDS BETWEEN

THE FIRST WORD