Let me just say it: Elden Ring blew me away. I’ve played a lot of games over the years, but few have burrowed into my brain the way this one did. It wasn’t just the world, or the mystery, or the boss fights that made me feel like a tiny ant under a god’s boot — it was the freedom, the sense of wonder, the feeling that this was what gaming was always meant to be.
It didn’t hold my hand. It didn’t shove a hundred map markers in my face. It just said, “Here’s a broken, beautiful world. Figure it out.” And I did. Or at least I tried. And failed. And tried again.
Now, hearing that games like Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet are taking inspiration from Elden Ring? That’s got me genuinely hyped.
Elden Ring Didn’t Just Raise the Bar — It Rebuilt It
By September 2024, Elden Ring had sold 28.6 million copies — which is bonkers when you think about where FromSoftware started. That’s more than any single Last of Us game, by the way. It was a breakout hit that didn’t feel like it wanted to be a breakout hit. It stayed weird. It stayed cryptic. And people loved it for that.
You don’t sell almost 30 million copies of a game this brutally honest without starting a ripple effect in the industry. Now everyone’s saying they’re “inspired by Elden Ring,” and for once, I hope they actually mean it.
The Secret Sauce: Trusting the Player
What Elden Ring did — and what so many modern games are scared to do — is trust the player. It drops you into The Lands Between and says, “There’s stuff to do. Go find it.” That kind of freedom is rare. It made every discovery feel earned, every shortcut feel like a secret, every victory feel like mine.
It’s not just open-world for the sake of scale. It’s open-world with purpose. It lets you choose your path — whether that means stumbling into a cave with a nightmare centipede or taking a detour and ending up in a place you absolutely were not ready for. And that’s what made it special. The world didn’t need you — it just existed. And that made it feel real.
Breath of the Wild Walked So Elden Ring Could Get Weird
A lot of people compare Elden Ring to Breath of the Wild, and I get it. They both throw you into vast, mysterious worlds and tell you, “Figure it out.” But Elden Ring is… darker. Stranger. It’s like someone made BotW while sleep-deprived and haunted by cosmic horror.
And it works.
The freedom in both games is similar, but Elden Ring brings this raw, gothic energy to exploration that I’ve never felt before. And it’s clearly sparked a trend. You’ve got Baldur’s Gate 3 giving players insane flexibility. Disco Elysium trusting you to have existential breakdowns in the middle of police work. Even Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks like it’s leaning in. The tide’s turning.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Might Be the Best Kind of Weird
That’s why Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet caught my attention. On paper, it sounds like something wildly different from Elden Ring: set in space, dripping in retro-future vibes, inspired by Akira, with a soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and a cast that includes Tati Gabrielle and Kumail Nanjiani. It screams stylish, narrative-driven sci-fi.
But then you hear it’s also drawing from Elden Ring, and suddenly you’re like: “Wait… what?” In the best way possible.
Because it makes you wonder: how do you blend Elden Ring’s freedom with Naughty Dog’s polish? Their games are gorgeous and cinematic, but they’ve always been linear. Think Uncharted. Think The Last of Us. Beautiful stories, but you’re on rails.
Inject some Elden Ring chaos into that formula? Now we’re talking.
Let Games Be Messy, Let Them Be Free
Look, I’m not saying every game needs to be a 100-hour epic where the lore is buried in item descriptions and half the bosses are nightmares with 18 legs and too many arms. But I am saying that more games should try to let go. Let players poke around. Let them get lost.
Because when developers let go of the need to control everything, players get to feel like explorers again.
That’s what Elden Ring gave me — not just cool gear or epic fights — but wonder. Real, honest-to-god wonder. And if that’s the future we’re heading into? Count me all the way in.
TL;DR: I love Elden Ring, and I’m so ready for the wave of weird, risky, exploratory games it’s inspiring. Bring it on.