Elden Ring might have one little secret left, Miyazaki says, and I hope we never discover it

While players have scoured and stained every inch of the Lands Between in the two years since Elden Ring launched, they might not have uncovered every secret just yet. With a June release now confirmed for Shadow Of The Erdtree, the long-awaited expansion, director Hidetaka Miyazaki has now hinted that we Tarnished may have missed something. One small secret may yet remain, assuming he's not pulling another prank, or maybe not. Honestly, Miyazaki should say it has hundreds of undiscovered things. Keep everyone guessing. Communal Internet knowledge has ruined the mystique of video games.

In a recent interview with the Ian Games Network, the Elden Ring and Dark Souls director said the devs "are always surprised and delighted by how much the players do discover, and how much these communities work to uncover these secrets". IGN say, in their own words, that Miyazaki said he "doesn't think there's anything that hasn't been discovered by now". And then, somewhat contradictorily, he suggested maybe there was something.

"For me personally, there is a small element that I feel has not yet been discovered. So, whether that's up to user interpretation or up to just further investigation and playing, that's something I'm looking forward to." He added, "I think it's a question of when and not if, but there may be something small still missing."

Who knows what it might be. Did people miss one detail of a character's backstory? Is there a curious interaction with a niche item somewhere unlikely? Does one weird guy have a special weird chuckle? And this is assuming he's not pulling another prank, as he said he did with the Pendant in Dark Souls. That optional starting item states plainly that it does nothing but a million conspiracy theories have spun up about what it might do, or possibly did do earlier in development. That wild speculation was spurred on by an interview where Miyazaki he'd take the Pendant or nothing as his starter. Unless it was a double prank.

I hope we never find out what this potential Elden Ring secret is. The presence of a mystery is valuable. Uncertainty is a rich experience. A world you do not fully know is a world which can still surprise you. Secrets just haven't been the same since the Internet came along to map, markup, dissect, datamine, categorise, and canonise everything. I'm glad that potentially at least one mystery has so far defied Wikification, and surely that chase is fun for secrethunters too. But don't worry: my uncle who works at FromSoftware says actually Elden Ring still has seven undiscovered secrets.