The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for Elden Ring will be here within the month, and we still know very little about what to expect. We’ve seen a couple of bosses, a few snippets of weapons, and a confusing story trailer, but the most info we’ve been given so far has come from a hands-on preview from PlayStation.
So many weapons… So much movement
Have you ever seen those videos of people modding Elden Ring to play like a Dragon Ball Z character? The character models fly and flip and attack with furious speeds, but it just doesn’t look quite right in the Lands Between.
Sure, FromSoftware has given players the ability to summon meteors from the sky or vanish before reporting a short distance, but player movement has always felt restricted. There’s a reason why agility isn’t a stat, and that’s reflected in Elden Ring’s combat. You strafe. You roll. You wind up an attack. And you retreat.
But that is about to change when players enter the Realm of Shadow. Eric Whelan, the Content Communications Manager at PlayStation, partook in a hands-on preview of the DLC and recently reported on what he was allowed to see. And in a few cases, we were allowed to see as well.
Whelan touched on new enemies, a couple of locations, two boss fights, and the overall feel of the Realm of Shadow. But the most interesting tidbit was when he dived into the new weaponry.
“Shadow of the Erdtree will introduce around one hundred new weapons for players to discover,” Whelan wrote. “Players can also discover eight brand-new weapon types. The details on many of these types were being kept under wraps for now, but I was given access to one: Martial Arts.”
This was first revealed during the gameplay trailer (at around 1:55) and was further confirmed via a video inside the PlayStation blog post where Whelan’s character dashes toward a baby Deathbird and hits it with a wild combo. It honestly looks like gameplay from a different game, as there’s nothing quite like this in Elden Ring’s base game.
“This new category allowed me to go into combat bare-handed, swinging heavy punches and slamming kicks into my opponents. Just like other weapon types, Martial Arts can be assigned a Skill to suit your playstyle, and mine saw me taking a leaf from some of the bossesā books by leaping through the air and landing a flurry of kicks on my enemies,” Whelan detailed.
What’s more exciting is that “Martial Arts” is a weapon category, which means we’ve only seen one of the various forms this new combat style can take. Of course, we likely won’t see more of it until the DLC is here. That said, the wait is nearly over.
