Don't let it see you. Once you are seen, there is no escape. It cannot even be touched.
These are the messages scrawled on the ground when you enter the Abyssal Woods in Shadow of the Erdtree, displayed at the forest's border with all the warmth of a buckshot-peppered "trespassers will be shot" sign. Beyond those warnings, the woods loom over you, formed of towering tree trunks that fade into a swirling haze of cancerous mist, the sunlight warped into something yellowish-green. The whole place looks diseased and sickly. Roots buckle the ground, shot through with red veins that glow dully through the bracken. Still, there's no real sign of conflict - no claw marks or burnt undergrowth. Though actually, there's no sign of any life at all. No songbirds, no squirrels, nothing. There is no nature in these woods. The implication of that is… troubling.
Planting a marker on the map ahead to be my guiding star, I decide that the best course of action is to just power through on horseback at a hundred miles an hour. Let whatever "it" is see me, what do I care? By the time it thinks to give chase, Torrent will be a blur on the horizon. Or at least, that should be the case, except when I try to call on my trusty friend, I'm betrayed by a message as blunt as it is horrifying.
"The spectral steed is frightened and cannot be summoned."
Torrent, who was perfectly willing to charge toward giants, dragons and gods alike, is refusing to deal with what's ahead. Oh-kay. Oh no. Oh christ.
You're sure of a big surprise
The Shadow of the Erdtree Abyssal Woods sequence is the most overtly horror-themed moment I can remember in a recent FromSoftware game, a fascinating subversion where the creators push the existing mechanics to their limits to create a whole new kind of experience. Now, horror has always been a part of their wheelhouse - Bloodborne is obviously a long, twisted love letter to a particular brand of cosmic horror - but it's not overtly part of their RPG mechanics. You're always holding tempered steel in one hand and arcane lightning in the other, and there's a difference between feeling weak and feeling vulnerable - even at your most pathetic, you're still a warrior.
But in the Abyssal Woods, that's all different. The peril turns out to be strange creatures which the player must stealthily avoid, crouched down in the long grass. If you're spotted, they flit at you with horrifying speed, grabbing you to inflict the fatal Madness condition. No attack will hurt them - at least as far as I knew then - and they move much faster than you do. You have to stay out of their sightline.
Now, in my Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree review, I acknowledged that the actual mechanics of this sequence are pretty rudimentary. No way to hurt your attackers means that the vast majority of gameplay is suddenly irrelevant, and if there was a clever way to stop them, I never found out what it was. Not only that, but them being so much faster means that trying to flee is an exercise in futility. The moment you're spotted, you might as well drop the controller and let them fill your brain with liquid insanity - it's flawless stealth or nothing.
Still, the tension built up before that moment is palpable. The woods do magnificent things with scale: everything here is so big that you feel miniscule by comparison, and the few regular enemies around are mostly giant rats - again, making you feel like you've been shrunk. Meanwhile, the backing music is a pervasive, minor chord wail that feels like we're about to stumble across the Monolith at any moment, setting your nerves jangling. It's not just visuals - Miyazaki's team has real horror chops.
Gazing into the Abyss
FromSoftware's history of playing with its established core mechanics is a slightly fraught one that's resulted in both success and failure over the years. One stumble that immediately comes to mind is the Bed of Chaos in the first Dark Souls, a built-up boss fight that turns out to be a clumsy platforming challenge. Meanwhile, gimmick or puzzle bosses like Sekiro's Folding Screen Monkeys or Demon's Souls Dragon God are rarely anybody's favourite parts of their respective games, even if people don't always actively dislike them. But then again, the Looking Glass Knight in Dark Souls 2 having the power to summon player invaders is a great twist on the online mechanics.
Erdtree suddenly drops the usual act of cryptic, piecemeal storytelling to grab you by the shoulders, stare you in the face, and whisper: "there is no escape."
From this purely mechanical perspective, the Abyssal Woods is probably a rough C+. Weeks after the ordeal, once Erdtree was out publicly and had been scrutinised by the internet, I found out there was actually a way to kill the monsters, but it's not especially fun or interesting to do. Still, while the payoff is a bit lame, that's practically standard for horror games, which so rarely manage to hold the thrill after the worst has happened. And limp conclusion aside, that buildup of tension before then is something you can feel prickling your skin like static.
I'll also argue that part of that tension comes from the bluntness of the messages telling you what's ahead. These more explanatory elements of Erdtree have polarised critics a little, but while I think the sticky notes in the forges that highlight enemy weak points aren't necessary, the warnings of the Abyssal Woods are a lot more chilling. A betrayal of FromSoftware design philosophy? Perhaps, but I think these notes being so uncharacteristic of Elden Ring is what makes them so disconcerting. Erdtree suddenly drops the usual act of cryptic, piecemeal storytelling to grab you by the shoulders, stare you in the face, and whisper: "there is no escape."
So Erdtree not acting coy or playful about information all of a sudden threw me off guard, the mixture of urgency and inherent wrongness not ruining the experience, but instead enhancing it. Not to mention that the fact I couldn't see what the message was warning about made it so much worse; the forest now felt like a hunting ground for some unseen predator.
The Abyssal Woods aren't FromSoftware's greatest moment by any means, but in this sequence we see the seeds of the kind of game I'd love to see them try to make next. Less combat, less action, a game that puts warfare to one side and focuses on horror and a protagonist who can't depend on violence as a solution. After all, Miyazaki has always been a master of atmosphere above all else - and what makes a horror game greater than that?
For some more spine-tingling creepfests, check out our list of the best horror games.
