We’ve now had a day to digest the first trailer for Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, but there’s still a lot of hardcore initial analysis going on in the FromSoft community. One of the funniest things pointed out so far involves one of its most memorable boss cameos, and it looks like it might be hiding something pretty hilarious.
In case you missed it, we now know that Shadow of the Tree will arrive on June 21, 2024, giving people a few months to prepare and maybe spend a full day slaughtering Mogs repeatedly. It also leaves plenty of time for people to try and figure out what we’re up against, or how strange the backstories behind certain enemies might be.
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FromSoft YouTuber Zullie The Witch, one of the people behind Elden Ring, dug into the trailer to try and uncover some interesting details, and their video on the subject includes some cool ones you might not have seen yet place. One of them is the flying boss that first appears at 1 minute and 20 seconds into the trailer.
“The boss’s horns and leonine face feel like they might be related to omens or accidents,” Zulli writes, “but there’s something fishy about its anatomy.” What do they mean? Well, “If you look closely at some of the footage, it appears to have several bodies underneath its robes, with arms and legs clearly visible.”
Yes, he is the boss of FromSoft. So Zulie thinks there are two options to explain why it has more feet than a football team – it could be a classic anatomical mess/hodgepodge, or “it could just be a bunch of people in costumes.”
As some people pointed out in the comments on the video, Boss’s design seems to take some cues from the lion and dragon costumes used during traditional Chinese celebrations, such as Lunar New Year parades, making it similar in style to at least some people’s . The costumes or puppets mean something. Obviously, we won’t know for a while, but I really hope it’s just some little guy with a creative and dramatic flair.
Elsewhere in the video, Zuri also points out that some of the creatures in the trailer, like the strange salamander that bites someone’s head off, bear loose resemblance to some of the unused models and concept art from Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls . Oh, and they mentioned Marika’s curtains, because of course they did, noting that the sky around the big tree resembled them.
If you’re looking for some top Elden Ring tips to help you prepare for Shadow of the Erdtree’s arrival, be sure to check out our recent interviews with some of the streamers who are beating the game in unorthodox ways.