ELDEN RING
FromSoftware's open-world Souls game, with no easy mode and 25 million copies sold -- proof the industry badly miscalibrated what audiences would engage with if given the chance.
- //Sold 25 million copies with no easy mode -- the fastest-selling FromSoftware game by a significant margin, directly against two decades of AAA industry wisdom that difficulty limits mainstream audience size.
- //Has more built-in difficulty management than any previous FromSoftware release: Spirit Ash AI companions for most boss fights, co-op summon signs, and an open world that lets you overlevel almost any encounter.
- //Won Game of the Year at every major ceremony in 2022.
- //Lore and world history are delivered almost entirely through item descriptions and environmental design rather than explicit exposition.
- //Directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, with world-building contributions from fantasy author George R.R. Martin.
ELDEN RING is FromSoftware's open-world action RPG set in the Lands Between, a densely imagined world built around a shattered Erdtree and a broken Elden Ring, where you explore, level up, and fight your way toward becoming Elden Lord. It carries the punishing, death-and-retry combat philosophy of the Dark Souls series into an open structure, meaning you can overlevel almost any encounter by exploring elsewhere first, and it comes with more built-in difficulty tools than any previous FromSoftware release -- Spirit Ash companions, co-op summon signs, and full freedom to sequence-break the intended progression. It sold 25 million copies with zero easy mode, becoming the fastest-selling FromSoftware game by a significant margin and directly disproving twenty years of AAA industry wisdom that difficulty is a barrier to mainstream audiences.
One of the best games of the last decade. The lore delivered through environmental design and item text, the density of interconnection that rewards genuine attention, and the specific emotional arc that death-and-retry structure produces -- none of it requires an easy mode to appreciate, and the difficulty is doing real design work, not gatekeeping for its own sake.