Elden Ring players may well have found Miyazaki's secret 'small element' and turns out it's had a clue to the DLC since launch

GamesRPGElden Ring: Shadow of the ErdtreeElden Ring players may well have found Miyazaki’s secret ‘small element’ and turns out it’s had a clue to the DLC since launchWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Fromsoft)

Hidetaka Miyazaki, president of Fromsoftware.

Putting that in front of the internet sleuths is akin to waving a red rag to a bull, and sure enough Elden Ring’s players seem to have delivered. Don’t ever expect Miyazaki to confirm whether this is what he was referring to but, as something that arguably couldn’t be understood until recently, it’s one hell of a candidate.

“A tall, medium-sized wooden shield. Light for its size, and easy to handle.

“Thought to represent a surreptitious prophecy of cardinal sin, the lit candle-tree design was forbidden.”

It’s the second half that has the Tarnished frothing at the mouth, because the trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree shows that this “candle-tree design” is the symbol for Messmer’s faction. Messmer is the ruler of the Lands of Shadow and is being set up as some sort of Lucifer-like figure within the game’s world, and the trailer shows various of his troops bearing weapons and armor with the candle-tree.

We may well have to wait for the DLC to find out exactly what the “surreptitious prophecy of cardinal sin” will be but, given the combination of fire and tree here, it’s no great stretch to think that Messmer may well be all about burning Erdtrees. The “surreptitious” aspect in particular suggests that Messmer and his lot have been wiped out from history in the original game’s world, a trick that Miyazaki and company have pulled several times before in the Souls series to tremendous effect.

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So Elden Ring’s had this little pointer to the main antagonist force of Shadow of the Erdtree since the start. Fans have been cranking up the specula-tron since the trailer dropped loads of details (as have we), June 21 cannot come soon enough, and all this time there was a clue hidden on a generic wooden shield that most of us didn’t look twice at: Miyazaki has done it again.

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