Elden Ring's Notorious 'Tutorial Hole' Secretly Teaches You A Valuable Lesson About The Game
Early in Elden Ring you see a grand stone doorway illuminated by the ethereal glow of a magical tree. To the right, a dark, ominous-looking pit with a ghost slumped in a chair next to it. Talk to the spirit and it urges you to "take the plunge." When you play a FromSoft game, you go in with a certain amount of trepidation. If you're familiar with the studio's work, you know it loves playing tricks on unsuspecting players. But even if you're not, you're still probably well aware of its reputation for making punishing games.
If you assume the pit leads somewhere dangerous, perhaps to be tackled later, I don't blame you. Why would you trust some weird phantom and take a leap of faith into the unknown? The massive, eerily glowing door is clearly the path forward. That's what modern game design dictates. If something is conspicuous, it's where the developer wants you to go. Yet, hilariously, this scary hole doesn't lead anywhere dangerous—it leads to the tutorial. If you want to learn how to play Elden Ring, you have to throw yourself into it, literally.
Related: I'd Have Given Up On Elden Ring A Long Time Ago If It Wasn't For The Kindness Of Strangers
There are a few ways of looking at this. One is that FromSoft is being wilfully misleading and cruel to new players. Another is that it's just really funny, which it is. But I think the most important lesson it teaches you, minutes into the game, is that Elden Ring wants you to figure stuff out on your own. This moment reprograms your brain to approach the game in a different way. You won't be led by your nose from place to place like in other open worlds; you gotta use your initiative, be brave, take risks, and leave your comfort zone.
A lot of modern games go to great lengths
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