Dark Souls III. The game was developed alongside Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which Miyazaki also directed. He explained that although the combat in Elden Ring has similarities to Sekiro, neither game directly inspired the mechanics of the other. FromSoftware was able to develop both games simultaneously using a "co-director" structure, in which each of the developer's games had a staff member acting as director through its first stages of development. Miyazaki would then later provide direction on the game's mechanics, art, and music. The design team of Elden Ring concentrated on environmental scale, roleplaying, and storytelling as the main elements. Developers credited the scale as responsible for creating a sense of diversity, and intended for the roleplaying elements to allow for a variety of player interactions with the environment. Increasing the scale of the game required the creation of a several explorable structures, which the team conjoined in the open world. Miyazaki mentioned Shadow of the Colossus, The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher 3, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as design influences for Elden Ring. He also credited RuneQuest, The Lord of the Rings, and Michael Moorcock's novel The Eternal Champion as inspirations for the game's story. Elden Ring original soundtrack was composed by Tsukasa Saitoh, Shoi Miyazawa, Tai Tomisawa, Yuka Kitamura, and Yoshimi Kudo. Elden Ring was revealed during the Xbox games conference at E3 2019. Some information about the game had been previously leaked online due to a vulnerability of the servers at Bandai Namco Entertainment. The game was widely anticipated on announcement, but no further material was released until another trailer was shown in June 2021. Playtesting was facilitated by Bandai Namco, which released the game initially as a closed beta in November 2021 that players could sign up to test. The game was delayed to February 25, 2022, after its previous release date on January 21, 2022. Elden Ring had performance issues at launch, with complaints of deficient frame rate being common. Bandai Namco would address some of these issues through software patches and updates. An expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, was announced on February 2023 for release at a later date. Reception Elden Ring received "universal acclaim" according to review aggregator website Metacritic. On Twitch, it drew nearly 900,000 viewers within 24 hours of release, making it the third-largest debut on the platform after Lost Ark and Cyberpunk 2077. The game's open