A mystery is afoot in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Since release, players are investigating why the game suddenly makes your controller vibrate at seemingly random, in ways that it typically doesn’t. As you would expect from hardcore FromSoftware fans, people are theorizing all sorts of explanations– some of them mundane, and others, far more unusual.
The phenomenon was first noticed by gaming personality Lance McDonald, who posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he and others had noticed that the game would sometimes vibrate like a heartbeat, but he couldn’t figure out what had triggered it. The combination of a potential secret and evocative wording – surely an in-game pulse must mean something, right? – has the community talking. After all, many players are experiencing the same thing, but nobody is able to pinpoint a source. It’s starting to make people feel like they’re being gaslit. Is it happening, or are they imagining it? Does it even mean anything?
Monstrous theories
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The most popular, immediate theory to arise from these discussions is that the vibrations are being caused by specific attacks from Bloodfiends, those gray oafs who lumber around Prospect Town, among other places. Sure enough, on the PS5 at least, if you load into the area where the hulking beasts are in a fight against Messmer’s soldiers, you’ll sometimes feel a rumble on your controller.
The thing is, the pulse happens with no Bloodfiend in sight. I’ve noticed the vibrations after resting at a Site of Grace where there are no enemies nearby, Bloodfiend or otherwise. I had to ride Torrent, my trusty steed, for a decent while to find anything at all within the otherwise empty landscape near the starting point, which makes it unlikely that the rumble is related at all. But if it’s not related to an enemy or combat, then what’s going on?
Over at Screen Rant, they’re musing that perhaps the game is trying to lead you to a quest that involves an enormous enemy, Bayle the Dread – the DLC’s toughest dragon. Part of the reasoning is that the rumble seems to happen near Igon, one of the central characters in the dragon quest. Once you kill Bayle, you receive a heart, which could explain the vibration’s beating rhythm.
The problem with this theory is that while the idea of a pulse and a heart fit nicely together, every defeated dragon drops a heart, which are used for upgrades in the base game. It seems unusual that FromSoftware would throw in a detail like this just for one dragon, fearsome as it may be. And frankly, I’m not sure that the vibrations can really lead the player to their intended destination were this actually the case. After reading the Bayle theory, I tried finding the characters involved since I hadn’t encountered them yet. Even with a guide in hand, it took me a while to track down Igor’s location – meaning that the vibration did nothing to help me go toward this quest. At this point, I’ve also killed Bayle and every other dragons in the DLC, but the rumble still happens in the same places.
Mysterious or mundane?
Perhaps the easiest explanation is the most disappointing: the pulses mean nothing, because they’re a glitch. Most of the players who are reporting the vibrations appear to be on PS5 and the DualSense, which has a special feature that enhances the feedback provided by the controller. If this is the case, it’s reminiscent of the “secret door” that players found inside of Volcano Manor. The discovery initially seemed to signal something wild, especially because it took an entire month to find it. That, and it was an illusory wall – which always tease some kind of secret on the other side. Combined with the fact that you needed to hit the door 50 times to break it, fans ate it up like catnip.
In a game where sometimes a secret is hidden behind a random gesture that will unlock something dozens of hours later, the door’s existence seemed to align perfectly with FromSoftware’s sicko design ethos. But not long after the apparent discovery, players found out that the door didn’t mean anything at all. It was a glitch, and the “50 hit” thing wasn’t some unusually perverse mechanic meant to befuddle even the most dedicated fans. The door’s gigantic HP was merely the result of an error, and shortly after discovery, it was patched out of Elden Ring altogether.
While we might be seeing Occam’s Razor when it comes to Shadow of the Erdtree’s mysterious vibrations, there’s plenty of reason to believe it could mean something else. We’re talking about a game that gives you an item that “quivers” whenever you’re near specific mini-bosses; making the controller’s vibration seem like a natural extension of something that’s already in the game.
For now, nobody can explain what’s causing the heartbeat-like pulse with certainty. I’m guessing the enigma is more tantalizing than whatever is actually causing the pulse, though.
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