Elden Ring preview — Ringing in a new age

If there’s one thing I can easily state after six-ish hours of Elden Ring hands-on preview time on PC, it’s that the game is very definitely a ‘Soulsborne’ game. In fact, I can go one step further: it’s pretty much a Dark Souls game. Shields are useful. Combat is… well, not ponderous, but weightier than Sekiro or Bloodborne. Poise, staggering, and item weight are things of huge importance. In a lot of ways, Elden Ring feels like Dark Souls 4 with the names swapped out. I mean, the spell styles (Sorceries and Incantations) have different names and are mashed up a bit, but they’re effectively used the same way. Bonfires are Sites of Grace, and Souls are Runes, etc. But for all of that? If this is Dark Souls 4, then it’s had a lot more meaningful additions than we saw at any time between Souls and Souls 3.   Elden Ring: Previewing the Lands Between The biggest change is the shift to a mostly open-world format, and this happens nigh i…