All hail Elden Ring’s ever-growing map

Elden Ring is one of the most controversial features. The game is less arcane than previous FromSoftware titles, but it still gives you items, quests, and mechanics with very little explanation. I am in love with how well it sometimes deploys that obscurity. Elden Ring's map is one of my favorite pieces of the game, because it has become one of the best examples of an open-world convention.

If you're still in the early areas of Elden Ring, you should skip this post because I'm going to talk about a mechanic that relies on mystery. If you've played a bit of the game, you'll know what I'm talking about. Elden Ring's map offers a constant give-and-take of showing players new spaces to explore, then pulling back a curtain to more places that they didn't know existed. It hides information only to reveal it in a way that is satisfying and in keeping with the world's vast scope. It's not just an interface element, it's a meta-game.

The basic elements you can find in many games are included in Elden Ring's opening map. There is a square with exposed terrain around where the player starts, icons marking fast- travel points and special locations like tombs, and fog in the places you haven't yet explored. You can find map fragments that include depictions of forests, buildings, and caverns if you want to explore them.

The map is large by standards, but not large. You can fill in gaps by running around and hunting down the fragments around the blank space on the sides. It helps that Elden Ring's opening area is a conventional-looking fantasy playground, so it's easy to feel like you know what's going on.

In a very early area, you can find an item that will take you to a new location. After out running enemies that are stronger than your character, you open your map and try to find your bearings. Suddenly, you realize that you ended up in a place that wasn't even in your guide. The map is bigger.

Elden Ring is a puzzle where you find new corner pieces. Exploration stretches the boundaries of the map until it fills your screen and forces you to scroll. Some of the fogged-out areas that are accessible after you first see them aren't accessible until long after you collect fragments. There is a second map underneath the main map. All the caves and other sub-areas marked as icons are not counted. I once spent a good half-hour failing to find a building clearly indicated at my location, forgot about it for several dozen more hours, then emerged from a boss dungeon to discover that the building was on a higher, previously unseen level.

The revelations help pace the experience so that it doesn't feel overwhelming. The world isn't just bigger than you think, it's designed to appear in constantly growing chunks where you can see the entire starting area of the latest mega. My character would have cried and curled up in a ball if I knew how small Caelid and Limgrave would be.

There is a reasonable criticism of Elden Ring's map key and interface in general, and FromSoftware has added some new elements since launch. The map is not coyness or frustration for its own sake. It's a joyful exercise in the power of unknown unknowns, but at this point, seeing it get any bigger might break me.