Elden Ring Trailer Artist Posts Concept Art, Says There’s No Hidden Meaning Elden Ring Community Goes Wild

An artist who worked on the Elden Ring trailer posted concept art designed for it – and made it clear that he had no intimate knowledge of the game. Of course, being Elden Ring, the community became crazy of joy. Posted on his Artstation account, Gabriel Björk Stiernström showed several concept elements, as well as observations on why they were ultimately not used in the trailer for the game’s E3 announcement. On the Elden subreddit Ring, Stiernström posted a statement to contextualize the work – and cool down any speculation about potential new details hidden in the art. He ends this statement by saying, “You can read as much concept art as you want, but I really don’t have any knowledge of the game.”

The footage includes various takes of the hammering scene we see in the trailer – including a version of the scene covered in tree roots that has been described as “too many dark souls” – different interpretations of the scepter and dais used in this scene, and an “exploration concept” for what the final blow effect might look like (below).

Stiernström explained the process of his work at Digic Pictures, the company tasked with helping create the pounding scene in the E3 teaser, saying, “I had no idea what I was working on.”

“Most of them were designed for internal discussions at Digic Pictures between the art director, director, producer and directors,” Stiernström continues. “When they were happy with something, they then shared those concepts with the customer. In the end, FromSoftware was more or less providing us with the bulk of the concept art in any case.

“I received a brief for each task, but ideas change during production, as does the brief. What you do today is irrelevant tomorrow. Sometimes a brief is very clear and other times it is open to interpretation. We try to provide our expertise on how we can convey the mood and style that clients are looking for through lighting, animation, composition, camera angles, focal lengths , colors, etc.

Famous, with so little to do since this teaser arrived, the Elden Ring community is incredibly hungry for new details, even creating an entire story for the game itself in the meantime. So even though it might not be the real Elden Ring, this art is about as close as we’ve come to the official footage since that trailer. As you can imagine, fans enjoyed it, many thanking Stiernström for the post, calling the artist a hero, and praising the art itself.

Of course, others took this as an opportunity to make self-deprecating jokes at the expense of the community, with memes galore popping up shortly after the post was posted.

And, of course, there were still those who, despite Stiernström’s warnings, would go looking for information. GoatKiddclxvi wrote: “Roots everywhere! Indeed, the scene is set in a tree! Man this is crazy, thank you very much”, to which ForeverEqual replied: “This is what I noticed for the first time times. That pretty much confirms the tree theory! “(This theory being that the game is inspired by Yggdrasil, the world tree of Nordic folklore).

Others took the unexpected message to mean that the internal NDAs around the game were coming to an end, meaning they may have more news in the near future. LentStories wrote: “The fact that he posted this on his official portfolio makes me think he doesn’t do it without some sort of permission; either an end of NDA or direct permission from Fromsoft. Both give me some hope for more news. “

Even more striking, the dominant response, in all of the articles I have read, has been positive. It’s truly a joy to read the Elden Ring subreddit today, as people celebrate something new to look into and integrate it into the self-reflective tradition built by the community. If this is the answer to concept art for a trailer, I can’t wait to visit after FromSoftware finally reveals more.

So what do we actually know about Elden Ring? We know it’s a Soulslike open world from Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones writer George RR Martin. Miyazaki says it’s an evolution of Dark Souls, and we know Xbox boss Phil Spencer played it. Other than that, it’s largely a blank page. Hoping that 2021 will be fulfilled.

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s News Editor. Follow him on Twitter. Any advice to give us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected]