E3 - Elden Ring

After a few years of radio silence, we finally get a good, rolling, look at Elden Ring, the latest game from Hidetaka Miyazaki and FromSoftware. At first glance this latest iteration of the studio's finely tuned dark fantasy template looks to be selling itself on an idea of vista - vast, horizontal, expanses to plunder, necessitating a phantom steed. A closer look at these gameplay clips reveals, not just context specific jumps and launches but, at least when riding your horse, a double-jump mechanic. These stacked, player inputted, leaps imply vertical exploration, an entirely new dimension of nosing about that, more than likely, builds on the pagoda sneaking seen in 2019's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

E3 - WIDOW'S WAIL

Elden Ring presents an interesting tension, how do you juggle the contribution of superstar writer George RR Martin with a game design approach that tends to be wilfully obscure, if not outright open to interpretation? Hidetaka Miyazaki's next game promises a massive field of landmarks to conquer, a customisable main character, and a story that steers Tolkienian anvils of power down dark, dismembered directions.