Scaling up

One conspicuous omission is the ability to climb. There’s plenty of verticality here, with magic whirlwinds to launch you and your trusty steed out of canyons, but you can’t clamber over a chest-high wall, let alone haul yourself up a ruined temple. It’s a necessary limitation, preventing you from leapfrogging meticulous setpieces or taking the direct route to a collectible – From has always delighted in positioning something valuable just out of reach. Given Elden Ring’s other debts to the likes of Breath Of The Wild, is its exclusion a matter of obstinacy, or a fascinating microcosm of the new game’s efforts to forge a path between opposing design philosophies?