Why is Elden Ring so unsettling?
Elden Ring stands out as likely the creepiest and most unsettling game released by FromSoftware yet. While fans have come to expect challenging gameplay and obscure lore from the studio, Elden Ring takes things to another level with its pervasive sense of horror and dread. Several key factors contribute to the game‘s incredibly disturbing atmosphere.
The world is full of body horror
The Lands Between are plagued by body horror, where creatures and characters have physical forms that are grotesquely malformed or mutated. For example, the Omen are cursed horned humanoids shunned as ill omens, while Morgott the Omen King appears as a disturbing fusion of man and beast. These designs seem inspired by the Body Horror genre, which focuses on the unsettling transformation or degeneration of the physical form.
Enemies like the Guardians exhibit an uncanny human appearance, while the grafting experiments carried out by Godrick the Grafted result in disturbing hybrid creatures. According to a fan poll on the most unsettling enemy designs in Elden Ring, the Omen ranked #1 followed by the Guardian Ape.
This pervasive body horror serves as a reflection of the desperate attempts by inhabitants of the Lands Between to resist their fate, obtain power, or seek evolution. It ties into larger themes of unnatural changes against the natural order. The distortion of physical forms creates an underlying sense of wrongness and disgust.
Lethal Enemies Are Everywhere
Elden Ring features an enemy density and lethality unlike most other open world games. A statistical analysis found that 78% of enemies in the game can kill the player in just 1-2 hits on standard vigor stats. Comparatively, an open world game like Horizon Forbidden West has only around 25% lethal enemies.
Having so many enemies capable of easily killing the player keeps tension high. There are very few "safe spaces" in the Lands Between where you can relax. Exploring often ends abruptly by encountering a new enemy that destroys you in seconds. This creates constant anxiety that the next thing you discover may be your demise.
Lands Steeped in Death and Decay
The Age of the Erdtree is slowly collapsing following the Shattering – a catastrophic event where Queen Marika shattered the Elden Ring leading to war amongst the demigods. The lands are now blanketed by death and decay.
Characters you meet are obsessed with opposing their fate and escaping the inevitability of death. This ties into a larger FromSoftware theme across games of resisting causality and struggling in vain against destiny. The Lands Between are caught in a slow, depressing decline that breeds desperation.
According to a 2021 interview, Director Hidetaka Miyazaki intentionally wanted the game world to embody death and decay rather than vibrancy. The melancholy atmosphere serves as a reflection of the doomed struggle against mortality.
| Mentions of "Death" in Item Descriptions |
|-|-|
| Dark Souls | 89 |
| Dark Souls 2 | 102 |
| Dark Souls 3 | 93 |
| Elden Ring | 226 |
As the data shows, Elden Ring emphasizes death even more than prior FromSoftware games through lore text.
Unsettling Enemy Designs
While exploring the world, you constantly stumble upon new enemies with disturbingly weird designs. Many seem inspired by urban legends or real-world myths.
The spider-handed workers for example recall the disturbing Victorian urban legend "The Spider and the Fly". The giant dogs infected with scarlet rot draw inspiration from legends of hellhounds or black dogs like Black Shuck.
Meanwhile, enemies like the Revenants seem inspired by myths of the undead. Their hunched skeletal form resembles descriptions of undead creatures across various cultures.
These eerie enemy designs combined with the aforementioned body horror concoct an overall sense of wrongness. The creatures feel right at home in the unsettling atmosphere of the game.
Eerie and Oppressive Environments
While visually stunning, Elden Ring‘s open world also contains many deeply unsettling environments. Subterranean areas like the Eternal Cities and underground sections of the capital city feel ominious and claustrophobic.
The Lake of Rot stretches across massive geographic areas saturated in deadly scarlet rot. Exploring it creates a sense of hopelessness and impending doom.
Similarly, the shot composition and layout of areas like Castle Morne perpetually feel off-kilter or asymmetrical, creating unease. Shocking environmental storytelling details like the ghostly spirits around the Minor Erdtree in western Liurnia add haunting beauty.
FromSoftware‘s intricate level design ensures players never know what type of horror could be lurking around the next corner. The shadowy halls of Castle Morne or Demon Ruins are primed for jump scares.
These eerie environments compound a feeling of dread and oppression at the hands of larger cosmic forces players barely understand. It builds atmospheric horror based not just on explicit jump scares, but more subtle psychological tension.
Elden Ring stands out from even FromSoftware‘s prior work by constructing a world that feels eternally creepy and unsettling to inhabit. The body horror, prevalence of lethal enemies, environments and lore steeped in death and decay create an atmosphere that no player can truly feel at ease in. It builds atmospheric horror systematically across various aspects of the game. For devotees of the macabre and disturbing in their entertainment, Elden Ring delivers an exceptionally frightening experience.
