Elden Ring’s earned a place in gaming history as an open-world with an astounding amount of detail, and a complex approach to its lore that leaves a lot of its interpretation down to the player who discovers it. And while we thought we scoured both The Lands Between and The Lands of Shadow quite thoroughly, there’s always somebody who’s bound to dig deeper and unearth something new for us to marvel at.
This time, it’s dataminer Lance McDonald, who has uncovered an unused cutscene that showcases the moment Miquella planted the seed of the Haligtree at Elphael. If you need a refresher, Miquella intended for the Haligtree to be the source of a cure for Malenia’s Scarlet Rot, a debilitating condition that she managed to survive for a while before unleashing it upon Caelid in her battle with Radahn during The Shattering. She was returned to its roots, corrupting the tree and lying in wait for her brother, seemingly unaware that he had been abducted by Mohg, the Lord of Blood, who had his own plans for the Elden Throne.
“This is a look at a never-before-seen map file where a cutscene was filmed for Elden Ring, which showed Miquella planting the Haligtree, as well as the process through which, during earlier development and testing, this cutscene was intended to have been played.”
Miquella’s intentions seem pure, although his methods were revealed as rather misguided during our time with Shadow of the Erdtree. It’s still nice to think of a time before The Shattering when the twin prodigies worked to better their own lives as well as the ones of the people around them. It’s also really cool to see the early origins of a tree that served as the backdrop of one of the most iconic boss battles we’ve had over the years.
Elden Ring is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC. It’s also coming to Switch 2 with the Tarnished Edition out sometime this year.
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