Watch the First Gameplay for Elden Ring, Coming in January 2022

Elden Ring finally has a release date: January 21, 2022. At the Summer Games Fest kick-off on Thursday, Dark Souls maker FromSoftware revealed the first gameplay trailer for its next game — a collaboration between game director Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin — coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X. Console owners won't have to buy Elden Ring twice, as the game will support free upgrades for those going from PS4 to PS5, and “Smart Delivery” if you're moving from Xbox One to Series S/X. More details on Elden Ring will naturally be revealed throughout the rest of 2021.

With Elden Ring, FromSoftware promises open-ended gameplay and a world whose fate you get to choose. You can decide to run straight at your opponents in battles or you can make use of Elden Ring's stealth and combat systems to come out on top. To fit, Elden Ring has role-playing aspects that allow players to develop these kinds of different playstyles. You can pick between a variety of weapons, magical abilities and skills that can be earned across its world. As for the fights themselves, you will naturally face all sorts of monstrous beasts and weirdly shaped creatures, including fire-breathing dragons.

Along your journey, you will meet a number of characters who have their own motivations for helping you or hindering you. And as you complete adventures, unlock the land's secrets and myths, you will get to decide what happens to this fantasy world envisioned by Miyazaki and Martin. The world of Elden Ring also has a natural weather and time-of-day progression, which is to say that it will have a 24-hour day-and-night cycle interspersed with weather phenomena such as rain, storms, and snow. The Elden Ring landscape is littered with “grassy plains, suffocating swamps, lush forests, spiraling mountains, and breathtaking castles.”

You can explore Elden Ring by yourself, or you can choose to do so as a squad of up to four players in online co-op multiplayer. It will likely work in a similar fashion to other FromSoftware titles, but we can't say for sure until we have more details on that front.

“With Elden Ring, we have applied all our dark fantasy and action-RPG expertise cultivated throughout the Dark Souls series, in order to create a bold, classical evolution of the genre,” Miyazaki said in a prepared statement. “We've crafted a rich world with a staggering sense of scale, based off of legends written for the game by George R. R. Martin. Elden Ring is a world full of mystery and peril, ready to be explored and discovered; a drama in which various characters flaunt their own mystique and ulterior motives. We sincerely hope you enjoy experiencing it for yourself.”

Elden Ring is out January 21, 2022 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.

Why did LG give up on its smartphone business? We discussed this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Later (starting at 22:00), we talk about the new co-op RPG shooter Outriders. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.