Miyazaki refuses to disclose the playtime of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

No die-hard fan of FromSoft would be unaware of the upcoming DLC: Shadow of the Erdtree for Elden Ring, as the game is hailed as FromSoftware's most ambitious title yet. Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree is also said to be the largest DLC FromSoftware has ever produced, and everyone is eagerly awaiting news about this game's DLC.

In a recent interview on the zhuanlan social media platform, Miyazaki addressed some of the hottest questions about Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, which were translated and compiled by swordandflower from twitter:

In this interview, Miyazaki was asked questions about the playtime of Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree , the reasons behind the decision to only make one big DLC for Elden Ring, and many other questions surrounding the DLC.

"Elden Ring focuses on world exploration and a sense of adventure," Miyazaki said. "In order to provide the players such an experience, it's necessary to build a vast and expansive area. So instead of breaking such an area up into multiple DLCs, it would be better to develop a massive DLC." He explains that if they were to sell multiple smaller DLCs like in their previous Dark Souls titles, it would be a disservice for the player's freedom to explore and sense of immersion.

However, when it came to questions about the DLC's playtime, Miyazaki decided... not to answer, saying: "About the playtime... I probably shouldn't be the one to answer this question; in a previous interview, I said that Elden Ring would only take about 30 hours to complete the main gameplay, but after the game was released, everyone said that I was lying and that the actual time to finish the game was quite different haha." He said that as game developers, they have been constantly playtesting the game over and over again, so naturally, they know everything about the game, so their playtime is no longer accurate for reference.

This answer from him is understandable because fundamentally, Elden Ring is an open-world game, so if you already have all the knowledge about the game when playing, obviously the playtime will change a lot because now you just need to take the most powerful weapon in the game and sequentially skip unnecessary bosses. One noteworthy thing is that Miyazaki has previously said that the map of Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree will probably be larger than that of Limgrave - the largest area in the original game, so you can expect the playtime to be around 40-50 hours or more from the DLC, but this also depends on each individual's playstyle.

Miyazaki also confirmed that the DLC will feature many weapons, Ash of War, and new spells, the difficulty will be comparable to after you defeat Radahn and Mohg in the base game, so "even the veterans in main game would have a new and exciting experience to develop a potential new playstyle." The base game NPCs will not directly feature in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree but instead will focus on its own cast of NPCs.

Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree is scheduled to be released on June 21, and because this is the only DLC that Elden Ring will receive, the anticipation for the quality of this DLC is unimaginable. Make sure to use our trusty price comparion tools to secure the best deals for Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree today.

And if you don’t own the base game yet, grab a Elden Ring CD key to play the expansion.