Today’s obscure news: FromSoftware seems to have soft-launched its biggest dragon yet in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, and I have a feeling you can measure the studio’s success based on how long their winged beasts are.
YouTube channel Zullie The Witch, who specializes in everything to do with FromSoft’s beloved hits, recently published a video delving into a mysterious dragon found already-dead in the Land of Shadow, which might just take the crown as the new largest beastie from the studio’s catalogue.
The Dragon God from Demon Soul’s used to have that honor, as the bulky beast was roughly 182 meters when measured from nose to tail, according to Zullie The Witch. If you wanted to include mythical creatures that are no longer breathing, however, then the dried corpse of Gransax that’s sprawled across Elden Ring‘s Leyndell, coming in at roughly 328 meters in length, would be the biggest.
That’s all come into question with the release of Shadow of the Erdtree and its new, unnamed dragon that’s so large, the studio sketched its rotting corpse into the in-game map. Check out the video below to see the poor thing dead, tongue sticking out and eyes vacant.
Shadow of the Erdtree’s new contender is apparently about 10.7 times larger than the Jagged Peak Drake, with an estimated size of 392 meters. When Zullie The Witch expands the smaller drake to size, the menace makes Shadow of the Colossus’ boss fights look like canon fodder. Lucky it’s dead in the expansion, right?
I do find it funny that there’s almost a mini arms race within the studio to one-up their own dragon sizes. How much bigger can these things get though? Maybe the next FromSoft game will have us scaling a mountain that’s – oh snap – secretly a slumbering dragon. What about an entire dungeon set within the insides of a dragon, à la Gears of War 2’s worm level, showing off everything the beast has consumed for thousands of years? An entire game on top of a moving dragon? I think we’ve stumbled on the “ideal fantasy RPG” director Hidetaka Miyazaki was talking about.