Elden Ring Release: A Community Gone Hollow

Elden Ring front

If you check this website, you’ll see that as of today, February 28, it has been 630 days since Elden Ring’s announcement at E3 2019. However, there has been such a stunning silence thereafter from the game’s developer, FROMSOFTWARE, that a community of maddened souls rally around one crestfallen belief: There will never be an Elden Ring release date.

Elden Ring Community
Credit: FROMSOFTWARE

With an uproarious “OHHHHHHHHH!,” you will see them everywhere the fabled game is mentioned, these lost Hollows that make up a 101,000 strong community (as of this writing) that at times appears more akin to a cult. How did this commune fall so deep into the dark?

“I doubt you could even imagine it…”

When the trailer first dropped, r/eldenring were ecstatic. Finally, the next new project from their revered Hidetaka Miyazaki, President of FROMSOFTWARE, had been revealed. Not only was it Miyazaki’s project, though, as Elden Ring was being made with assistance from George R.R. Martin.

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With HBO’s Game of Thrones having just wrapped up its final (controversial) season, Martin was already at the peak of geek adoration. But when r/eldenring got a hold of the trailer, a new kind of worship began.

Elden Ring Meme
Credit: u/sushi-bucket

It look innocent at surface-level. A meme making fun of the marketing department here, a joke about the game releasing at the heat death of the universe there, Look a bit deeper however, and you will see the nigh-religious repetition, ceremony, and speech patterns across the comments sections of every piece of content.

Mostly reciting lines from Elden Ring’s one and only piece of marketing, its teaser trailer, the Hollows of r/eldenring have an unspoken set of rules, a code by which the entire community operates. There’s a method to their madness.

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“Happy new year everyone. I look forward to working with you again this year. Above all, please take care of yourself and have a good year.”

Official communication from anyone actually working on the game is met with reverence, and absolute devotion. If there is anything to be picked apart, any insane vague connections to Elden Ring that can be found, the community will find it. Even in innocuous New Years wishes like the above Tweet, users tried to locate patterns in the letters, and new meaning in the words.

The fan-made content surrounding the game since its release has been impressive, and the community at r/eldenring has been no small part of that. They are rabid fans, and advocates for the good word of Souls-like enthusiast and YouTuber VaatiVidya, who ran a contest specifically for fan-made Elden Ring content in the past.

r/eldenring was there every step of the way, creating fake screenshots, fake bosses, fake areas to explore. Fans came together to discuss whether Glaive Master Hodir, a boss that literally does not exist will have three phases to his boss fight, or four. There is an idyllic version of the game, a figment of the imaginations of over 100,000 Hollows, searching the sky for “that which commanded the stars.”

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When judgement day comes, and the inevitable Elden Ring release date is revealed, one can only imagine the stir this great melting pot of forlorn souls will come to endure. Will their faith in its non-existence be shattered, or will they remain in the Dark, past the point of Hollowing, little more than just a mob to farm?

Dark Souls 3 Deacons of the Deep
Credit: FROMSOFTWARE

Do you believe the game exists? Have you felt yourself go Hollow? Let us know, here or at our socials, at The Click!

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