Elden Ring has been delayed by a month and a beta test is coming in November

The release date of FromSoftware’s highly anticipated Elden Ring has been delayed by just over a month.

“Elden Ring will release on Feb 25, 2022, as the depth & strategic freedom of the game exceeded initial expectations,” reads a message released on Monday via the game’s official Twitter account. “Thank you for your trust & patience.”

In June, it was announced that the game would be released on January 21, 2022 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC.

Coinciding with news of the delay, publisher Bandai Namco has also announced plans to host an Elden Ring beta test next month on PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

Players hoping to participate in the closed network test can register their interest before November 1 for the chance to do so.

Testing sessions are scheduled to take place from November 12-15.

A short clip showing Elden Ring gameplay footage leaked online over the weekend. It shows the player looking around a rocky environment with a large fortress in the background.

In June, FromSoftware premiered the first Elden Ring footage since the game’s announcement two years earlier.

Elden Ring takes place in a world called the Lands Between, which was created in collaboration with Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who was tasked with creating the game’s lore.

Players are free to customise their character using a character creator similar to that found in the Dark Souls series.

Whatever their appearance and chosen attributes, they will take on the role of one of many Tarnished individuals, whose ancestors were exiled from the Lands Between many years ago.

But when the Elden Ring is shattered, they get the chance to return and conquer the land they were once banished from.

The Lands Between is mainly made up of six large areas ruled by demigods, characters also written by Martin, who serve as the game’s main bosses and don’t have to be tackled in a set order. Elden Ring supports fast travel and will also include a hub area accessible partway through the game.

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Martin stated in an interview in June that his work on the game had finished years ago.

“My work on it was actually done years ago,” he said. “These games, they’re like movies, they take a long time to develop.

“Basically, they wanted a world created to set the game in. World building is a big factor in fantasy and science fiction. You’re not only talking characters and the plot, but the setting is almost as important as everything else: Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age, the foundation universe of Isaac Asimov.

“I worked up a fairly detailed background for them and then they took it from there. So really it’s been several years since I last seen them but they would come and periodically show me some monsters they’d designed or the latest special effects, or [other] cool things.

“The game has been slowly developing and now it’s coming out in January, I believe, so I’ll be as excited as anybody else to see it.”