Elden Ring Director Says There's "Something Small" Players Haven't Found Yet

thegamer.com:

Elden Ring launched almost two years ago, and since then, players have scoured The Lands Between for every single item or piece of lore they can get their hands on. After so much time, you'd have assumed that everything worth finding in Elden Ring had already been found, but director Hidetaka Miyazaki may have reignited the hunt after comments he made following the release of Shadow of the Erdtree's first trailer.

In an interview with IGN, Miyazaki said that he's "always surprised and delighted" by the amount of things that players end up discovering in his games, and that he's expecting the same to happen when Shadow of the Erdtree finally drops. We've got a handful of months to wait though, so Miyazaki gives players something to do until then, as he has claimed there's "something small still missing" that players haven't managed to discover yet.

Miyazaki being Miyazaki, he doesn't drop any hints as to what this "small element" actually is, but fully expects players to find it soon, calling it a matter of "a question of when and not if". That could imply that the recent Shadow of the Erdtree trailer could hold the secret to some previously mysterious piece of lore included in the base game, but your guess is as good as mine at this point.

For me personally, there is a small element that I feel has not yet been discovered. So, whether that’s up to user interpretation or up to just further investigation and playing, that’s something I’m looking forward to. I think it’s a question of when and not if, but there may be something small still missing.

We can probably rule out the idea that this hidden secret is an item of some kind though, as dataminers have completely rinsed Elden Ring of every weapon, spell, and broken pot currently included in the game's files, including stuff that didn't make it into the finished product. It's much more likely that Miyazaki is referring to some kind of interpretation of the game's themes or a piece of lore, rather than something