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Elden Ring’s first expansion Shadow of the Erdtree will also be its last.
FromSoftware is ready to move on from Elden Ring after the release of its first expansion Shadow of the Erdtree, according to a recent interview. Game director Hidetaka Miyazaki spoke to Zhihu to confirm that the highly-anticipated paid DLC will be Elden Ring’s, “first and last,” expansion as FromSoftware prepares to move on to other projects.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree launches on June 21, 2024.
More Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree details revealed
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will officially be FromSoftware’s first and last expansion for the hit game, which is likely what fans had been expecting all along. It took two years for this expansion to arrive after Elden Ring’s launch, and it’s unlikely that the developer is keen to spend another two years producing a second one. The DLC should still satisfy longtime fans of the Souls series, as it’s set to be FromSoftware’s biggest expansion of all time.
In the interview, Miyazaki declined to provide a rough runtime for the DLC, stating that he learned a valuable lesson after announcing that the base game would take 30 hours to complete before it was released. In reality, most players ended up putting in tens of hours more than that in their first playthrough alone.
Additionally, the director confirmed that Shadow of the Erdtree owes its massive size to the studio opting to make one big DLC over several smaller ones. This way, FromSoftware can give players a large open region of the map to explore, instead of bite-sized pieces of it released over the course of a few years.
Miyazaki also noted that Shadow of the Erdtree will have its own ‘level element’ separate from the base game, which gives players a new way to level their characters even if their builds are maxed out. However, this mechanic can be toggled off for players who just want to start from scratch like in the base game.
Shadow of the Erdtree will also add eight new weapon types to the game in addition to an all-new cast of characters, due to the fact that Miyazaki couldn’t trust players not to kill NPCs in their own playthroughs and break continuity with the DLC. Other characters mentioned in Elden Ring lore like St. Trina will seemingly play a larger role in this expansion as well.
Much like every other FromSoftware game, Shadow of the Erdtree will have several different endings depending on the choices players make during the story. However, none of these endings will be conclusive enough to close the book on this world for good. Miyazaki confirmed that FromSoftware is leaving the future of Elden Ring open for future additions to its lore, even if that happens in other forms of media.
