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I have only ever quit two games out of pure fear. The first, Alien: Isolation, I noped out of as soon as Creative Assembly's horror masterpiece introduced multiple Queens into the fray. The second is a little more unexpected, given its fearsome reputation as a stone-cold classic: after about 20 hours, I dropped Elden Ring for a full year.
Yes, the game is hard as nails – but that's not why I left it collecting digital dust on my PS5's hard drive.
After the announcement of the Elden Ring movie, I decided to dip back into The Lands Between and firmly remembered why I left it all behind. It terrified me. Not always in a conventional sense, mind you, but I've always been a little tentative when it comes to the unknown in video games. I am, admittedly, a hand-holder at heart.
Stepping back into Elden Ring where I left off – Raya Lucaria Academy and the fringes of the surrounding Lakes – with rusty skills, no found map, no guidance (this is a walkthrough-free zone, thank you very much), and a hostile world of gruesome creatures and Lovecraftian monstrosities that want to kill me at every turn didn't exactly fill me with joy.
As I inched towards the exterior of the cavernous buildings, I was met by a true jump-scare. A Runebear – a Lesser one, to my embarrassment – thrust its claws into me and left me shorn of Runes and my shame. I'm not sure I'll ever return to the underside of that bridge.
But then it dawned on me: Elden Ring is meant to scare me. I'd even go one further and say it's at its best when it's a full-blown nightmare. My earlier hours, too, were packed with spine-chilling moments that dwarfed my return's ursine-shaped terror. The Ulcerated Tree Spirit slashing at me in an optional first dungeon when I was hopelessly out of my depth; the sneaky, iconic chest switcharoo that dumped my Tarnished in unfamiliar territory close to Caelid in the opening minutes; whatever Godrick the Grafted is supposed to be. It all painted a picture of a world that didn't want me there or wanted me dead. Neither did much good for my nerves.
The secret to Elden Ring's success, then, isn't that it's a heroic adventure or a power fantasy. Instead, it's a war of attrition; FromSoftware's open-world masterpiece is a brutal struggle, one where you're constantly on the back foot and never want to see what's around the corner.
Reign over me
Which brings me to A24's Elden Ring movie adaptation. There has been plenty of discussion already about what the big-screen take should look like, with a particularly vocal sub-section of fans pining for a story based on Vyke, the Tarnished who came closest to taking on the mantle of Elden Lord before the player's character rocked up to The First Step with naught but a wing, a prayer, and a Site of Grace's light to follow.
Of course, director Alex Garland is no slouch when it comes to horror himself, and might even be the perfect pick to helm the Elden Ring movie. Why? Discounting his dozens of hours amassed in reaching New Game Plus six times over in Elden Ring, his work on 2022's Men showcased his keen eye for repulsive body horror (the Green Man isn't a sight you'll forget quickly), as well as the sort of oppressive, haunting tone that mirrors my own experience nudging around a greyed-out map in Elden Ring and being frozen by the thought of an otherworldly nasty lunging at me from the shadows.
Garland, too, has shown he is frequently malleable, flexible, and experimental with his choice of genre. Men may lean more into the folksy, peculiarly British sort of horror found in something like The Wicker Man, but the director's ever-changing work elsewhere – the unabashed, noisy grittiness of Warfare, the mind-bending Ex Machina – proves he has a firm grasp on any genre he sets his mind to.
Rise of the Beast
Garland's less celebrated work as co-writer on the criminally underrated Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and 2013's divisive Devil May Cry quasi-reboot already suggests he can appeal to a range of players, while understanding how the environment – as is the case in Enslaved's grassy world reclaimed by nature – can very much act as a secondary character in the same way Caelid's scorched skies or the brutal, enclosed architecture of Stormveil Castle's grounds will live long in my memory.
In truth, I would be disappointed if Elden Ring is a 1:1 adaptation or a similar analogue to the Tarnished's journey towards the Elden Beast. I also don't think gamers are necessarily content with straightforward adaptations anymore. They've been there, played that. The likes of Sonic, Minecraft, and Mario have proven to be triumphs by using their source materials as a launchpad for adaptations that realize the leap from consoles to cinemas requires transformation, not merely treading the same ground.
Similarly, a heavier horror twist on Elden Ring offers something different – a journey through game director Hidetaka Miyazaki's suffocating saga that taps into something I've been too scared to admit until now: Elden Ring is not-so-secretly a horror game, and it deserves a movie to match.
For more, check out the upcoming video game movies and new PS5 games that are just over the horizon.
