Man, I love the way FromSoft does the lore for its games.
Like Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, Elden Ring will be a souls-like game that is not part of the overall Dark Souls mythos, but shares a lot of gameplay elements. While I haven't committed to getting a PS5 just yet - and honestly, I might wait until there's a "full edition" of this game with all the DLC content bundled in before I get it, if I have the patience - I do think Elden Ring is going to be a mandatory part of my library.
Here, we get the clearest idea of the lore behind Elden Ring - the ring may have been a physical object, but more importantly it was the embodiment of the order of the world. We see that things went to hell when someone (who remains unidentified) stole a rune from it - the Rune of Death.
These games have always had some justification for why your character comes back after each death. Rather than retconning those away like most games (just resetting you to your last "save,") these incorporate the deaths as canonical, but have a mechanism by which you come back. In Dark Souls, the curse of undeath afflicts you, and your soul is drawn back to the mystical bonfires. In Bloodborne, you're tied to the Hunter's Dream, which somehow whisks you away from true death to set you out on your hunt again (and given that the entire game might take place in some kind of dream-reality, it evokes a certain dream-logic).
Here, I think the idea that the Rune of Death has been taken suggests that death in that world no longer works - people who die rise again.
The shattering of the order, then, has led to strife, as demigods war against one another for power. Over on VaatiVidya (one of the best sources for FromSoft analysis) he pointed out that the demigods, similar to Gwyn's children in Dark Souls, all have a common prefix, with characters like Godfrey, Godwin, and other names that start with a rather on-the-nose prefix.
That, then, makes the appearance of the two figures (whose names I can't recall right now) who are locked in constant battle suggest there are other pieces at work, as I believe neither of them (the woman with the prosthetic arm and the enormous dude with the two ultra greatswords) have "god" names.
I really love how FromSoft games introduce these complex interwoven factions, where it's not really clear how they intersect and what goals each has. For example, in Bloodborne, the School of Mensis sure seems to be super-evil, but are they enemies of the Choir (the people who, I believe, are the secret governing council of the Healing Church), or are they allies? And how do the Witches of Hemwick play into that?
I suspect that we're going to see a few obvious big bosses - those demigods - but then we're going to encounter a number of secret factions with their own agendas.
The blue storyteller who narrates this trailer seems to be our ally, but she ends the trailer by talking about how the "Elden Lord" is coming to restore order... unless you (we) plan to take the crown.
Man, what does that mean? It seems to suggest that there is some prophesied figure who will bring balance to the world again, but it's distinctly not us. What does it mean to be the Elden Lord? We're "tarnished," which seems to be something of a lowly position similar to Unkindled Ash from Dark Souls III. Whereas the player character in the first Dark Souls game is the Chosen Undead - a foreseen savior whose destiny is to link the fire once again - the third game has us playing a character who apparently failed to do that before, thus giving us a bit of an underdog status. Here, likewise, we're "Tarnished," which seems to go against the shininess of the true lords. How, exactly, did we attain that status? Are were mere mortals, or are we, ourselves, some kind of demigod who fell from grace?
There's such an enormous amount to unpack here. One thing that really excites me aesthetically is that the big general guy is said to have "conquered the stars," and appears to be linked to various gravity-based spells. There are also, apparently, telescopes you can find around the world that might be linked to him. I've always been a huge fan of the aesthetics of astronomy and space, and I believe there's some reference to a "cosmic age" before the Erd Trees - I've even seen some speculation that Elden Ring is secretly a science fiction story, though I have yet to see convincing evidence of that.
Anyway, the game looks amazing.
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