Elden Ring is so detailed, its NPCs accurately play their instruments

gamesradar.com:

An Elden Ring fan has brought attention to a highly detailed NPC who accurately moves according to the song it's playing. 

As pointed out by Sekiro Dubi on YouTube (and shared by @manfightdragon on Twitter) Elden Ring is so detailed that one of the Nomadic Merchants playing an instrument in the game accurately moves their hand according to the song they’re playing. You can see this breathtaking detail in action below. 

[Sound on!] People complain about recycled animations in Elden Ring while FROMSOFTWARE is out here hand-animating the fingers manually hitting every note on the song played on this NPC's instrument perfectly. Absolutely beautiful effort on such a tiny scale. pic.twitter.com/Cs09wn3K1CMarch 17, 2022

This small but mighty animation is a perfect example of how reusing assets during game development - as pointed out by various other developers upon Elden Ring’s release - doesn't always mean the final product will be lower quality. As pointed out in @manfightdragon’s tweet, FromSoftware appears to have gone above and beyond to give its characters life with tiny details that will most probably be missed by most players. 

Since Elden Ring’s release back in February, there’s been an abundance of fan discoveries made in the game, with new things being found every day. Some of our recent favorites include the fan who realized that Elden Ring spell damage changes with the weather, another who uncovered that Rainbow Stones can help you avoid fall damage, and, potentially our most favourite, one who theorized that George R.R. Martin’s childhood pets may have inspired the Tortoise Priest.

In other Elden Ring news, it was recently revealed that FromSoftware plans to take the action-rpg outside of the world of gaming.