Elden Ring follows the FromSoftware series formula of having the bosses be a centerpiece of the game. Bosses can block the player’s path, acting as the barriers to entry for later parts of the game, or they can be optional and hidden behind conversations and obscure clues. Seeking out and defeating these bosses is the true player objective in these games, no matter what the story is. Elden Ring has the most bosses of any game in the series, and each one suitably provides the player with a challenge or spectacle when fighting them.
Elden Ring is unique as an open-world FromSoftware game, which provides players the opportunity to go off the main story path and defeat smaller dungeon bosses and level up without having to grind respawning enemies. Elden Ring’s world bosses still pose a challenge to players, however.
An encounter with one of Elden Ring’s dungeon bosses ended in a perfectly timed server issue for Reddit user Dragonhorn25. Fighting against the Ancient Hero of Zamor in one of Elden Ring’s many catacomb-style dungeons, the boss uses a shockwave-type attack that would usually knock the player backwards. The explosion of this shockwave attack however was perfectly timed with a server disconnection for the Reddit user, making the boss appear to have a fourth wall breaking attack and prompting Dragonhorn25 to title the clip “Move seems a little broken, but ok.”
It’s unlikely the boss attack actually had anything to do with the server disconnection, although the attack’s room-filling light effect could have been too much input for the game on an already faulty server connection. The comments of the post are full of people joking about the game-breaking attack and how it wouldn’t be too out of character for Elden Ring’s notoriously hard boss fights. As Elden Ring often reuses many of the less story-centered enemies and bosses, one commenter joked that the later version of this boss uninstalls the game with this attack.
Fans joke about a fourth wall breaking boss fight in Elden Ring, but FromSoftware games do have an interesting relationship with the fourth wall. FromSoftware games require shared knowledge, hence the Elden Ring message system that allows players to communicate. The developer knows that no single person could find everything themselves and doesn’t shy away from letting players help each other. Yet every one of these multiplayer systems have rigorous in-game explanations. Even the player respawning after death, which most games just accept as a video game necessity, has been a part of the lore in every FromSoftware game since Demon’s Souls.
FromSoftware games are famous for punishing difficulty and dramatic boss fights. It’s become the player base’s natural response to make jokes about Elden Ring bosses and bizarre moments that can happen while players are repeatedly fighting them.
Elden Ring is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
