Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki is making the rounds to promote the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC but there’s one subject he refuses to discuss; its length.
Being a game developer is hard under any circumstances. Time and again, it’s been shown that dealing with players is every bit as scary as dealing with layoff-happy tech CEOs. Attaching a specific name and face to a game invites all criticism related to it to be focused directly on one person.
That’s especially the case when the marketing for a game doesn’t track with the finished product. Miyazaki isn’t exempt from this either, but not because he’s over-promising on FromSoftware games. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Hidetaka Miyazaki dodgy on Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s length
Miyazaki declined answering questions regarding the length of Elden Ring’s DLC in an interview.
In a wide-ranging discussion with Game Bonfire, Miyazaki talked about everything related to Shadow of the Erdtree as well as topics like the state of the Soulslike genre. The topic of the DLC’s length came up and Miyazaki declined to answer. The reason? The negative reaction over his estimates on how long it would take to complete Elden Ring’s base game.
“I feel like I can’t really answer questions about its length. Before the release of Elden’s Ring, I said in an interview that it would take about 30 hours to beat the game. After it was released, everyone said that I was lying, but I wasn’t lying at all. As developers, we continually practice the game. We’re too good, so how quickly we win has no value as a reference,” Miyazaki said.
That 30-hour estimate was definitely on the short side for most players. Players who didn’t simply go from Godrick to Rennala, then sprint to Leyndell, then to the Mountaintop of the Giants and back likely spent double or triple that. Completing the game was a significantly longer task, often taking well over 100 hours.
The issue, according to Miyazaki, is that everyone else just needed to get good.
How long will the Elden Ring DLC be?
The Elden Ring DLC is likely to take around 30 hours to complete, depending on players’ skill and thoroughness.
While Miyazaki hasn’t offered an estimate on the DLC’s length, he gave an estimate on its literal size. He stated that the area added in the Shadow of the Erdtree is comparable to Limgrave.
Limgrave had one Legacy Dungeon with Stormveil Castle, eight smaller dungeons, and more than 20 bosses in total. Assuming Shadow of the Erdtree is similarly dense, that means there’s going to be plenty of content to keep players busy.
Players won’t be able to just rely on their wildly overpowered character to get through the game, either. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will effectively reset players’ characters with a new level-up system. This means players need to be like Miyazaki and get good once again.
