Wandering through the wastelands of Elden Ring with no one but your loyal horse-goat-steed-thing to keep you company, it isn’t difficult to let the silence of the surrounding nature turn from something serene and peaceful to something decidedly more foreboding or even sinister. Of course, when the game's sprawling lands are also filled with an endless amount of creatures that would like to kill you, maybe it’s wise to be a bit wary. Still, fear of destruction and death is not very likely to stop most players from seeking out every bit of human (or, at the very least, friendly) interaction available, even if all it amounts to is some stranger referring to you as "maidenless" and then otherwise ignoring anything else you do.

To say it’s a lonely life, traveling through the ruined world of the Lands Between, is an understatement. While the world is vast and filled with secrets to uncover, less can be said when it comes to friendly faces. A diverse array of monsters and other enemies is accessible from the beginning, but what little joy is found in the form of true friends is often fleeting. Freeing a giant warrior jar from a hole in the ground is liberating and comedic in the moment, especially when it turns out he’s just as surprised to find an ally as you are, but the interaction only goes on to heighten the loneliness of the world when Iron Fist Alexander (otherwise known as Alexander, Warrior Jar) will not follow you on the rest of your journey. Meeting up with him later provides a jolt of excitement, though it arrives with the realization that a giant talking jar is one of your only companions in this world.

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Image via BANDAI NAMCO

The thing is, though, none of this is necessarily bad. Despite the many battles and bloody deaths the player may encounter throughout the game, there’s also a contemplative and solemn atmosphere that pervades the whole of Elden Ring. Riding through fields and forests, traveling through ruined towns -- all of it affords the player a chance to look around and experience the surroundings in a way that few games do. Rather than lay out a narrative word for word, told through copious NPCs or annoying companions, Elden Ring’s story unfolds in its emptiness, a trail of destruction and chaos that the player explores, all the while occasionally coming across characters that feel like true inhabitants of a broken world rather than just background additions or quest markers.

Perhaps the only other game in recent memory able to invoke such a feeling is Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which offers a similarly broken world for the player to traverse for hours on end. While the play and story styles are obviously quite different from each other, a similar sense of loneliness can be found in both games. Yet Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has something that does not exist in Elden Ring -- something that helps to lift the heavy cloud that hangs over certain areas of Hyrule and the absense of which deepens the solitude that cloaks the Lands Between. Whereas all the towns of Elden Ring are nothing more than ruins, sometimes haunted by a terrifying creature of ill-intent, the towns of Breath of the Wild teem with life. Shops, inns, markets, and homes are all filled with bustling villagers and even children, who can often be found running around and playing games in the streets. Sure, plenty of ruins litter Post-Calamity Hyrule as well, but a handful of healthy vibrant towns offer the player many chances to rest and recover in between adventures and to have interactions with people living more peaceful lives in a post-war world.

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Image via FromSoftware

Elden Ring, on the other hand, offers no such sanctuary, save for the Roundtable Hold, a place where various NPCs gather and the player has a chance to rest and restock. Yet, even here, danger lurks in lower levels and there is no true settlement or homestead to be found. The towns that can be found throughout the Lands Between are nothing more than shells of their former selves; there are no villagers or busy marketplaces. Instead, monsters slink through abandoned buildings, and bosses wait around corners for the moment to strike.

The player is truly an outsider to this world. As a member of the Tarnished, a people once banished from the land only to return upon its collapse, the majority of interactions in Elden Ring are violent and fraught with danger. Time and time again, it is driven home that few creatures in this world are willing to make peace, and even fewer are willing to make friends. By the time the player leaves Limgrave and Stormhill, the first few opening areas of the game, their encounters with NPCs often become riddled with anxiety. Who’s to say the next person you meet won’t try to stab you as soon as you’re in range? Trust becomes hard-earned and, even then, it isn’t hard to imagine that you might be abandoned by those you’ve come to call "friends." Even Melina, the young woman who offers to stand as your maiden and provides you with your only true and steadfast companion, Torrent the Spirit Steed, is predisposed to leaving the player if the right (or wrong) conditions are met come the end of the game.

While some may find this feeling of alienation and isolation unsettling, it truly is a remarkable way of setting the stage for Elden Ring’s story. In a game where the entities of the world have fallen into a cycle of endless death and destruction in a bid to claim power as their own, the player’s solitude is an illustration of how quiet the world can fall in the wake of war. For all that the player finds and fights and survives, it's in the moments of silence, when they have only themselves and their horse as company, that the history of Elden Ring’s world and the consequences that befell it truly come to light.