Elden Ring is now officially less than two months away from its February 25th, 2022 release date. As part of the obligatory hype machine, creator and FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki was interviewed by EDGE magazine (issue 367). Miyazaki-san answered several questions, including why there are no rings that players can actually wear in Elden Ring.

　　There are a couple of reasons for this choice. The first is that, yes, we explored rings as equippable items a lot in our previous games — Dark Souls, particularly — and so talismans this time allowed us to approach those ideas in a different way, with a greater variety of designs. And the second reason is that, of course, rings do exist as physical 'finger rings' in this game, but more as unique items that are involved in the story and unique character events. So we wanted them to have a special positioning within the world of Elden Ring and also to be something different from a design standpoint in relation to the talismans.

　　Miyazaki then went on to say something slightly surprising. While Elden Ring is essentially his ideal game, he likely won't play it because he feels it wouldn't feel like a fresh experience, having spent so much time working on it.

　　You know, I probably won't end up playing Elden Ring because it's a game I've made myself. This is sort of my personal policy. You wouldn't get any of the unknowns that the fresh player is going to experience. Like I said before, it wouldn't feel like playing. But if I did, then this would be close to the ideal game I'd want. I don't approach it in terms of "This is the kind of open world game I want to make; it's just that the open world enriches this ideal experience I'm trying to achieve. To give some very simple examples, if I was to explore this world, I'd want a map — a proper map. Or, you know, if I saw something over there, I'd want to actually be able to go over and explore it. And I'd want to fight with a dragon in an epic arena. Things like this. It's very simple stuff, but Elden Ring allows a lot of these things to become a reality for me, creating something that's very close to my ideal game.

　　Elden Ring will be particularly satisfying for the explorers, according to Miyazaki. That's partly thanks to the variety FromSoftware was able to put into the game.

　　We wanted to create this world that was full of the joy of exploration of the unknown. So we wanted to create lots of enticing things for the budding adventurer. And we wanted to prepare lots of these mysterious situations that players would read about or hear about and want to go looking for and want to go exploring. Variety is something we strived for when creating this game, and something I believe we've managed to achieve.

　　Another noteworthy tidbit from the interview is that mounted combat won't be enforced on players in any way. It should be considered as just another viable strategy among many.

　　Which one of the Elden Ring topics discussed by Miyazaki-san excites you the most ahead of the game's launch?