You can spot a late-game Elden Ring area at the start, and I totally missed it

I’ll never unsee it

It’s been long enough since I finished Elden Ring that I no longer remember many of the controls, which is a good place for me to be — it means I’ll be able to revisit the game with relatively fresh eyes sooner than later. After marathoning it, I’m excited to play again at a slower pace, and a recent discovery shared on Reddit has hyped me up even more.

For those of you who aren’t done with Elden Ring yet, let’s just say that a certain important late-game area can be spotted right from the beginning. It’s one of those things that’s easily overlooked even if you know what you’re looking for and have the full context.

There’s so much to take in at the First Step — it’s your first real chance to admire the scale of Elden Ring — and it’s easy to want to immediately head off in any given direction without fully processing the vista. From the outset, the radiant Erdtree dominates the landscape, Stormveil Castle also stands out, and the wandering Tree Sentinel is calling your name. But there’s another notable sight to latch onto if you look closely.

I had to hop into a new save and see it for myself — sure enough, it was always there.

**Spoilers below**

So, as it turns out, the Forge of the Giants is visible from the beginning of Elden Ring.

This find (shared recently by Reddit user icreievryteim) has appeared online before, and without someone else calling attention to it, I never would’ve caught it on my own. No way. It’s a small yet impactful detail that makes me appreciate Elden Ring even more.

400+ hours in the game and I just realized we can see the Forge of the Giants at the very beginning
byu/icreievryteim inEldenring

This is the beauty of a meticulous open world.

While the genre has become bloated and often overly familiar, in the right hands, it can still inspire some unforgettable moments. And speaking of amazing backdrops, if you played Elden Ring but never experienced Dark Souls III, you’ve gotta go back.

It’s wild to think about everything I went through to get from the First Step all the way up to the Forge of the Giants. Did… did anyone else excitedly leap to their death? Whoopsie.

When I commit to fully going through Elden Ring again, I need to go much slower and savor it, I know that much. That’ll be difficult in a powered-up gotta-go-fast New Game+ state, so rolling a puny new character seems like the ideal way to go for the freshest experience.

Now that the dust has settled and the community has gone to great lengths to find every morsel of intrigue, I’m sure I’ll notice a ton of stuff I missed the first time around.

We’re halfway through 2022 and it’ll be tough to top this game.