Elden Ring is still a game largely shrouded in mystery even almost 2 years since its initial announcement. Fans are, however, as excited about the title as they were before, consciously grabbing onto any piece of information that could connect to the game's release or an indication of what it could behold.
This kind of fandom is rarely seen in games, but Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding also saw a similar type of hype. Fans were drooling over whatever they could find about the game, yet an air of mystery ensued until the very release of the game. That being said, Elden Ring walked a very different road when compared to Death Stranding before its launch.
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Death Stranding had a lot of hype surrounding it, particularly after fans got to hear about Metal Gear Solid 5's fiasco and Kojima's following departure from Konami. The game was announced in E3 2016, and fans had to wait for more than 3 years for the game to come out. However, during that time, Death Stranding received numerous trailers, which totaled up to 50 minutes of cinematic and gameplay footage combined. Despite this generous showering of information, the game was largely shrouded in mystery for a long time.
Kojima had famously described the game as "the first strand type game," and one about connecting people in a dystopian society. Yet the trailers show so many different facets of gameplay, everything from walking to climbing, combat, supernatural elements, and more but which did little in terms of clarifying the focal point of the game.
On the other hand, it's been more than 600 days at this point in time and all fans have is Elden Ring's announcement trailer. While some more information about the narrative has been shelled out, nothing significant is shown. Hidetaka Miyazaki's open-field concept seems tantalizing, but how it works in a Souls game will be an interesting thing to see. Fans knew very little about Death Stranding for years and even up until launch, despite a lot of showcases; fan know very little about Elden Ring, because it has done the opposite of overshare.
While Elden Ring is still shrouded in mystery, it isn't reasonable to think that much would be known about the game leading up to its launch. No more than past games anyway, and it seems the silence is still working well for the game. It'll likely show more in the final months before launch instead of putting a lot of information out there over years.
If that does turn out to be the case, the route it's walking could turn out to be beneficial for it. After all, some fans believe that Elden Ring should just shadow-drop at this point, and controlling a sparse narrative is easier than a complex one. While nothing can be said definitively, the hype could very well carry its sales and become a gaming sensation almost instantly, as evident by the success of Apex Legends which released in a similar way. All of this should be taken with a grain of salt for now, as it is just fan speculation and nothing more.
Elden Ring is currently in development, with PC, PS4, and Xbox One as confirmed platforms.
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