Unless you’ve not looked at a calendar for the past year, or have been stuck in some sort of hellish nether-realm betwixt life and death (the lockdown jokes write themselves, I know), you’ll know that FromSoftware’s next punishing RPG Elden Ring is out on Friday. It’s only February and yet we already have one of the most anticipated games of the year knocking on the door! To celebrate the newest addition to the Soulsborne family, we’re using this week to post lots of cool articles about FromSoftware’s lovely, grim, difficult games. That’s right: welcome to Souls Week on RPS. Most all of us here at RPS are fans of FromSoft’s work, and we’re beavering away writing about Elden Ring as we speak - why, just listen! You can hear the slap of our big flat tails and the gnawing of our big frong teeth as we get to work. I can see you shiver with antici- -pation already, and RPS is here to whet your appetite even further. We’ll be posting an array of articles all about Soulslike games to make you ponder and wonder. What’s the best bit of Soulslikes? How was the weird lord text of Dark Souls localised to English? What kind of pot even is Pot Boy? Check back on RPS and you might find answers to these questions and more. I can even give you a sneaky spoiler to the question “will RPS have a review of Elden Ring?” because yes, yes we will. Keep checking the Souls Week tag to see when we add new articles - or simply come back to this page, which we’ll keep updated with the new posts as they go live. Soulsbornes are hard, but finding cool writing about them doesn’t have to be!
Elden Ring and Souls Week on RPS
The best bit of Dark Souls isn’t the boss fights, it’s everything else Soulsthusiast Caelyn Ellis puts forward a convincing case for why the bosses should be the least of your concern in a game like Dark Souls, and why it works so well as an RPG. Caelyn’s boil down of what makes an RPG an RPG, reducing it to its essential salty reduction, is a very interesting one, and it’s an angle I hadn’t considered before. The jolly co-operation of localising Dark Souls Edwin Evans-Thirlwell has a truly fascinating interview with Ryan Morris, lead translator at Frognation, and the reason why you read things like “archtrees” in Dark Souls. He talks about the process of translating FromSoftware’s strange world from Japanese into English - including, among other things, Solaire’s weighty praising of the sun. What kind of pot is Elden Ring’s pot boy? We asked an expert I was sitting at my desk one day yelling “We don’t need art! We need pictures of pot boy!” at Nic Rueben, when Nic calmly replied “Ah, but what kind of pot is pot boy?”. Little did I know that Nic would actually interview Adam Sutton, Iron Age and Roman Pottery Specialist, to get credible answers. Not to be missed for fact fans Elden Ring review: an unmissable jaunt through the most impressive open world to date The embargo has lifted, and we are treated to Souls superfan Ed’s thoughts on Elden Ring. Spoilers: he likes it. But that’s the only spoiler you’ll get, because Ed has scrupulously avoided any for this review, opting to wax lyrical in general terms about Elden Ring’s fabulous open world adventures. An ode to cutting off boss tails in Dark Souls We’ve republished this classic Edders supported-funded post so everyone can read it - a beautiful tribute to lopping off a big baddie’s tail in Dark Souls, and how it feels more personal and satisfying than e.g. making a boss weapon. I’ve asked if he lopped off any tails in Elden Ring, but he’s so dedicated to NO SPOILERS that he won’t even tell me anything in personal conversations. Making Souls games accessible isn’t the same as making them easy Before the inevitable firestorm of easy vs. difficult starts vis. Elden Ring, we wanted to get in early with a thoughtful and well-sourced feature from Geoffrey Bunting, emphasising that adding accessibility options isn’t the same as making a game easy, or watering down a developer’s vision.
