Finished Elden Ring but never played Dark Souls? Now's the time

So, you’ve finally completed Elden Ring. After dozens of deaths to every one one of dozens of bosses. After untold moments where that infernal golden tree looks like it’s just over the brow of the next hill only for you to get waylaid up a mountain – or for a whole new land to emerge between you and your goal – your beautiful, arduous journey is over.

The completion of a From Software game can be a strange time, the initial elation of victory fading into an existential emptiness as boss patterns in other games suddenly seem a little too predictable, and quest markers in mainstream RPGs feel a little on-the-nose (giving you the sobering epiphany that most open-world games really do take you for a fool).

But with Elden Ring already being FromSoft’s best-selling game to date, I’ve deduced that many – if not most – of its players are yet to play its distant predecessor Dark Souls. If you’re one of these people, then upon completing Elden Ring there’s only one true way to fill that void (no, I’m not talking about Godfall).