Stepping into Shadow of the Erdtree feels like reuniting with an old friend. Elden Ring is more than two years old at this point, and it’s clear FromSoftware has taken its time to develop an expansion that is more than just a new map filled with a few more bosses to kill.

As I began my three-hour preview, I was struck by how it immediately expands upon The Lands Between in bold, unorthodox ways. The Realm of Shadow that Miquella roams is a morbid reflection of the beautiful fantasy realm, filled with tortured souls and distant beings that continue to cling onto life as ethereal gravestones rise up from the landscape to greet us. It’s immediately engaging, drawing you deeper into the convoluted web that makes up the lore of Elden Ring and captured the hearts of millions two years ago.

Shadow Of The Erdtree Feels Like A Vacation At The End Of The World

I knew I had a ticking clock above my head, and needed to push forward and see everything this expansion had to offer, but much like the base game, I wanted to soak it all in. To spend my time idly prancing over hilltops or finding a vantage point to peer down at the land below, watching as enemies go about their movement routines as the crimson afternoon sun gives way to a bittersweet twilight.

You can check out our full preview here, but for now I’ll be spending some time looking at how exactly Shadow of the Erdtree expands on and oftentimes rigidly abides by the stellar tone and atmosphere of the base game. It’s obvious that FromSoftware wanted to create a miniature successor to its masterpiece, one filled with towering dungeons and abandoned castles, and obviously a poisonous swamp that I was immediately scolded for trying to access since it wasn’t part of the preview build. But still the game encouraged me to dive in, delve deeper.

I was initially surprised how quickly Shadow of the Erdtree throws you into the thick of things with little to no preamble. You’re expected to piece together the parts of its discordant narrative yourself, but it also features an abundance of named characters both new and familiar.

Like Bloodborne or Dark Souls, the expansion is accessed by interacting with an object in the base game that swiftly transports you somewhere new. There’s a bunch of dense narrative exposition to be parsed from dialogue, item descriptions, and parts of the environment, but otherwise you can still make some decent progress through vibes alone. Shadow of The Erdtree does an excellent job of laying out why you’re here though; to find Miquella and uncover his reasoning for breaching this unusual new land, and why they have left parts of their body scattered across the landscape in the form of golden crosses for us to unearth.

Some characters in the open world wish to worship and reunite with Miquella, while others hold a bloodthirsty grudge and would rather see him murdered than salvaged. Your job is to parse through the dialogue and make your own decisions, and Elden Ring is not interested in letting you know which is the correct course of action. I only stumbled on a handful of narrative revelations throughout my preview, and have no idea where things are going, but FromSoftware is telling an isolated narrative that builds on the base game, but also stands mightily on its own.

Some of the characters I encountered included Freyja, a bitter warrior who once fought alongside General Radhan, and Ansbach, an older gentleman who served in the ranks of the mysterious Lord Mohg. There was also a very polite merchant called Moor.

Shadow Of The Erdtree Is More Of The Game You Know And Love

Putting aside the gorgeous landscapes I bounded across, Shadow of the Erdtree is more of the Elden Ring you know and love, and aside from a few mechanical additions, rarely makes an effort to abandon that identity - but rarely does it need to. There is a profound masochistic joy to be found in walking in any direction to encounter a strange new creature to battle, no clue if it will take twenty hits to kill me or just one.

With only one way to find out, it wasn’t long until I slipped into the same routine of curiosity that spurs on every playthrough of a Soulsborne game I’ve ever had. To challenge myself and invite success and failure with every move I make, knowing that in order to make it in Elden Ring I need to embrace every unknown, walk down every staircase, and turn corners even if death awaits around it.

What makes me envious is all the things I didn’t have time to discover, or find out existed from fellow writers and content creators after we’d stepped away from the controller. I had missed out on vast underground cave systems, hidden areas of already massive castles, as well as all the parts of the realm we simply weren’t allowed to access until the full release. You could play through Elden Ring several times and still miss something, and the same is true with its first expansion.

Some of the quotes I found upon Miquella’s golden crosses include “I abandon my arm here sinistral” and “I abandon here the first of the flesh of my body” My guess is that all six crosses will eventually form some sort of passage that actually makes a lick of sense.

I’ll delve into the combat and boss battles in Shadow of the Erdtree in a separate article, but from three hours into the expansion, it already feels like a victory lap for FromSoftware. Who knows if it will make a sequel in the future or build on this universe further, but after creating its magnum opus in the 2022 original, Erdtree is a traditional yet ambitious expansion that takes everything that game did well and amplifies it.

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Elden Ring

RPG Action Systems 5.0/5 10.0/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 95/100 Critics Rec: 98% Released February 25, 2022 ESRB M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence Developer(s) From Software Publisher(s) Bandai Namco Entertainment, From Software Engine Proprietary
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With worldbuilding from Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin and developed by FromSoftware, Elden Ring is a masterpiece in what has become known as the 'Soulslike' genre of action role-playing games.

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