Elden Ring The Shadow of the World Tree: New weapons, new boss… What to expect from the DLC?

Gaming News Elden Ring The Shadow of the World Tree: New weapons, new boss… What to expect from the DLC?

Funny timing that announcement of the shadow of the world tree. While Elden Ring celebrated its first anniversary on February 25th, the existence of the DLC and its title were only revealed to the world three days later. A somewhat missed opportunity, but not enough to spoil the excitement of fans, who are excited to finally see this rumor confirmed in broad daylight. It was therefore in a laconic message that we announced this From Software is working on an “extension” for Elden Ring. No release date otherwise the project is in development. Fortunately, we still have an illustration to accompany this message, just to eat something.

A matter of timing

Let’s start by already describing what the figure shows us. It depicts a large wheat field dotted with ruins and ghostly tombs with two distinctive features: a person with long blond hair on top of a two-horned mountain and a black tree in the distance oozing gold. Don’t worry, we’re intentionally keeping things simple before we delve into any guesses about the lore. First, it is the identity of the person on horseback that raises questions. From what a large majority of the community seems to be saying, it would be Miquella, Malenia’s little brother, on the back of Torrent, the player’s mount throughout the adventure. As a reminder, Miquella is one of the Empyreans, beings capable of becoming the gods of a new age, and he comes from the union of Queen Marika and Radagon, just like her twin sister Malenia. For others, given the character’s androgynous looks, it might be Marika.

The other point that everyone focused on was the environment depicted in the figure. With its wheat fields this reminded players of the village of Dominula, this famous place where we find old women dancing around a kind of cross, the tower is surrounded by windmills. But in the distance it looks like we can see the world tree as the title suggests but never looks like it in the base game. In this artwork, he appears to bleed golden sap while covered in shadowy bark. In this state, the question arises as to when the DLC will take place. Considering the size of the world tree and the fact that there isn’t Leyndell, the capital, around it, Many base it on the fact that this extension would take place in the past

. This would be consistent with previous additional content developed by From Software, which often takes place in the past, where the player has more or less control over what happens next. So it could be the era when the dragons ruled over the underworld before Marika and her lineage arrived and the latter took refuge in Farum Azula, as we learn at the end of the game.

What about content and gameplay?

So, once this little tour on the lore side is complete, we can ask what this additional content can offer. And this is where we have been at our unhappiest ever sincewe have absolutely no concrete information

. For consolation, we can turn to the previous DLCs developed by From Software, starting with the one that comes close to Elden Ring: Dark Souls III. In 2016 and 2017, the title received two additional pieces of content: Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City. We were entitled to the program new areas, new bosses, new weapons and spells, all to renew the experience of the players. Logically we should have the same thing in The Shadow of the World Tree.

The big difference between Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring is that the latter fully embraces the open-world formula. So, The unpublished area added in this additional content must also comply with this new approach. It remains to be seen whether we are entitled to one large open space or several. The other underlined point is whether there will be one or more legacy dungeons, those famous dungeons that recall the more classic structure of From Software’s level design. All of this combined raises many questions about the scope of this DLC.. Especially since some areas of the original game, like Farum Azula, already looked like extra content alongside their side, detached from the main storyline. In the meantime, we just have to wait for Bandai Namco to share the progress of the project that we hope will be playable this year.