Elden Ring lets you fast travel from (almost) anywhere in its wide open world.
As first reported by Game Informer earlier today on August 27, Elden Ring shakes things up with a fast travel system absent from previous FromSoftware games. Whereas past games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls only allowed the player to move between checkpoints like bonfires while they were at said map points, Elden Ring allows players to warp straight to checkpoints from nearly anywhere.
The one catch with this system is that you can't warp in or out of dungeons. It's only while you're exploring the vast open map of The Lands Between that you can warp to any of the checkpoints that you've previously discovered. In fact, these checkpoints are called Sites of Lost Grace, quite the elegant name compared to Dark Souls' bonfires.
However, Eurogamer managed to get a few intriguing map-related comments from an interview with FromSoftware's Yasuhiro Kitao. "We feel like this aspect will be preserved, and even once you get to that information through the fragments of the map, you'll think 'oh that may be an interesting area to explore over here,'" the developer said of maintaining an air of mystery even with the new fast travel system.
"Once you go there, you'll find it has its own multi-tiered-ness, its own three-dimensionality, that will hopefully be interesting to explore," Kitao concluded. It's also worth mentioning that these previews reveal the player can set manual waypoints anywhere on the open map of The Lands Between. These markers then take the shape of a pillar of light while you're playing the game, naturally guiding you to your destination.
From the sounds of things, Elden Ring is certainly shaping up to be something special. FromSoftware's next venture launches next year on January 21, 2022, and it'll be arriving on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.
For more on the upcoming game, head over to PLAY Magazine's Elden Ring preview from earlier this year.
