Elden Ring sold me on the FromSoftware fan experience

polygon.com:

I went into Elden Ring a bumbling yet earnest rookie. I cleared out Stormveil Castle after much death and despair; so I set out to adventure, and shortly found myself atop a tower, next to a chest. Someone who had come here before me had helpfully left a message: treasure ahead!

I opened the chest, got sucked through a portal, and woke up in a nightmare region of the game, full of misery. It was the moment that something clicked for me; I suddenly felt like I was in on the FromSoftware experience.

Elden Ring is one of the biggest titles of the year, with over 12 million copies sold as of March 2022. The game has proven to be both a commercial and critical success, and while developer FromSoftware filed off some of the harshest edges from previous titles, it’s still very familiar for long-term fans of the studio. FromSoft has been tinkering with many of the same mechanics and design principles for years, and the scale of Elden Ring’s success is largely thanks to the fan base the Japanese developer cultivated through earlier releases. And it’s this very same community that not only got me hooked on Elden Ring, but also fueled my interest in both playing FromSoft’s previous games and digging deep into their lore.

FromSoftware is perhaps best known for the Dark Souls series. Demon’s Souls, a 2009 release that would later be remade as a PlayStation 5 launch title in 2020, was a cult hit. The Dark Souls trilogy would be released over the 2010s, along with Victorian gothic horror Bloodborne in 2015 (hence the term “Soulsborne” many fans use, a way to casually refer to the developer’s catalog). FromSoft also released the Sengoku-era adventure Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in 2019, which departed from familiar elements like the