JPNB was relieved to see Shadow of the Erdtree’s announcement, but also found it bittersweet.
The announcement of Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion was met with widespread adulation, but it held a special meaning for JPNB, a teacher by day who had committed to fighting Elden Ring megaboss Malenia, Blade of Miquella, over and over again until such a reveal. « I was on my commute to work listening to an audiobook when my friend called me on Discord, » JPNB told me of the moment he found out about the announcement. « I felt a giant sigh of relief over my body, but also a bittersweet feeling because I had been doing it so long. »
FromSoft fans are no strangers to mad displays of devotion (opens in new tab)—the games’ mechanically rich, challenging fights and cryptic, open-ended stories invite a certain obsession, enough to drive unending lore deep dives, datamining, and yes, boss challenge runs.
The Elden Ring Daily (opens in new tab) update was one such fan ritual that seems to prefigure JPNB’s output. It was, as the name implies, a YouTube series with a new video uploaded every day in the long silence after Elden Ring’s initial E3 2019 reveal. « There is no news about Elden Ring today, » most of the videos went, with scattered runtime spikes corresponding to breaking news giving way to a steady stream of actual updates as the game approached release.
One of JPNB’s inspirations for his own Elden Ring ordeal was « a student who was always trying to cut corners and put in minimum effort but somehow always got high scores.
