Become Elden Lord: Elden Ring's launch trailer showcases surreal beauty of Lands Between and its unique inhabitants

Players can barely keep their excitement contained as the long-awaited Elden Ring is merely a few days away from launch. The game has been crowned the Most Anticipated Game of the past few years, and the hype surrounding it is at an all-time high.

To further tease fans and provide a glimpse of the world they will step into, Bandai Namco released the official launch trailer a few hours ago. And that has pushed the community into overdrive.

Elden Ring is gearing up to be an ode to the Souls lovers, and the surreal trailer just furthered that notion.

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"Make of thyselves that which ye desire": Players eagerly wait to step into the world of Elden Ring as the Tarnisheds

The official launch trailer of Elden Ring gives the players a peek at the different landscapes of the Lands Between and the awakening and calling of the player's character, the Tarnished. A creature that many think is influenced by the Moonlight Butterfly shows up in the trailer as the Tarnished battles it in a surreal space.

To see Melina Elden Ring, click here.

Dragons and serpents feature heavily, while gamers are also treated to a humorous scene of a giant lobster or crayfish-like creature as the voice-over says, "Never met someone with a taste for prawn I didn't trust."

General Radahn (Image via Bandai Namco)

The cinematic showcases the unique settings of the Elden Ring world — from lava to mountains to underground caverns and much more. General Radahn is prominently shown in a short sequence as he beckons the players to the Radahn Festival, a celebration of war.

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Symbolism in Elden Ring

"This game looks like a celebration of all that came before, the fire esthetic from dak souls, the giant serpent looks like a Japanese myth monster from Sekiro, the black moon on the horizon and all those weird dimensions look like right out of Bloodborne, all piece together with a great cinematic feel. Just fantastic."

Popular YouTuber TriG's comment on the launch trailer, aptly titled "Rise, Tarnished," perfectly encapsulates what Elden Ring entails. It is a meeting point of influences, a confluence of all those great games and cultural products that came before it — Dark Soul, Skyrim, Bloodborne, Berserk, to name a few — and an interweaving of mythological stories and symbols.

Maybe if someone scratches their head searching for meaning, they can draw connections with the imageries shown in these trailers to real-life concepts. The Erdtree, an object that players must have seen by now and one that looms over the skyline and the story, reminds fans of Yggdrasil, the world tree.

View the Elden Ring PC here.

The official logo for the game, when turned upside down, looks like a tree, but more interestingly, the symbol harkens to the notion of the Borromean rings or the Borromean knot. Now, this particular knot has its roots in the Nordic valknut, associated with the god Odin, and also the symbol of the Christian Trinity.

The Erdtree and the logo (Image via Sportskeeda)

A Borromean knot is a linkage of three rings in "such a way that no two rings intersect" and the "cutting of any one ring will liberate all of the others." The presence of the fourth ring in the logo can symbolize the four co-op players working together, where one's failure affects everyone, as mentioned in this Reddit post.

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The world of Elden Ring

Since the Shattering, the chaotic world of Lands Between has led to the recall of the Tarnisheds, once banished from the realm after falling from the Ring's grace. They will be seeking to reunite the Great Runes, the shards of the Elden Ring, in a quest to become the Elden Lord.

In true FromSoftware fashion, the trailers have not betrayed the cohesive lore that users could have learned from. The non-linear nature of storytelling they have championed in their other offerings will shine through Elden Ring. That essentially means that it will take some time to unpack the narrative residing within it.

Click here for Elden Ring Xbox.

What will be the story of the Tarnished? It remains to be seen. But fans need fret not, for Elden Ring will arrive on February 25 for Windows, PS4 & PS5, Xbox One & Series X|S. The wait is almost over as the most anticipated game in recent times nears its release date.