Elden Ring’s First DLC ‘Shadow Of The Erdtree’ Gets A Breathtaking New Trailer And The Perfect Release Date

The new trailer for Shadow Of The Erdtree, the first expansion for 2022’s GOTY Elden Ring, is one of the best video game trailers I’ve ever had the good fortune of watching. I am left in awe—and perhaps a little panic at the prospect of facing down all these new boss fights, many of which are shown along with new spells and weapons and enemies and areas to explore. It’s a lot to digest.

Here, give it a watch, foul tarnished:

This looks massive, almost more like a sequel than an expansion—though Elden Ring itself was so gargantuan we know this cannot be the case.

The game also has a release date: The first day of summer, June 21st, which is basically a birthday present for your humble narrator. I’ll celebrate my birthday the day before, and Empyreans willing I’ll have already dug deep into a review copy by then so I can tell you all how it is, though we all already know it’ll be brilliant. FromSoftware has never let us down before.

Here are a bunch of images, both official and screenshots from the trailer. If you follow that thread you’ll find all sorts of deep-dive lore stuff from yours truly.

All of this makes me want to hop back into Elden Ring after a long hiatus. Honestly, the brilliance of the Souls games has kind of ruined a lot of gaming for me outside of my competitive stuff like Call Of Duty, Valorant and such. The “Souls-like” genre never really scratches that weird itch, no matter how close they get on an aesthetic level. You can always sniff out the imposters.

I still enjoy a lot of other things like turn-based RPGs—Baldur’s Gate 3, for instance—or JRPGs like Persona 3. And I’m very much looking forward to Dragon’s Dogma 2, since that series is almost as weird and fascinating as Dark Souls, but does its own thing with combat and leveling. But I doubt any other game of 2024 will capture my heart quite so fully as Shadow of the Erdtree, even if it spits it out repeatedly.

In Shadow of the Erdtree, players will find themselves seamlessly traveling between The Lands Between and the Land Of Shadow, filled with all sorts of new wondrous horrors and horrifying wonders. You can pre-order the game here. I have shamelessly splurged and grabbed myself one of the Collector’s Editions, with comes with a splendid-looking statue of Messmer the Impaler:

This will go nicely with my Malenia statue. And all my other Souls figurines. And look, it’s a great birthday present to myself.