Elden Ring, released in 2022 by FromSoftware, who also brought us the Dark Souls and Armored Core series, is a sprawling action RPG where you play a “Tarnished” who must venture through the Lands Between to repair the titular Elden Ring. To repair the ring you must recover the shattered pieces from a variety of Demigods, and once complete this enables the player to become the Elden Lord. Critically adored, the game has an ardent fanbase who love its setting, mythos, punishing combat and its music.
The game sports a sprawling, near three and a half hour long soundtrack composed by Tsukasa Saitoh, Shoi Miyazawa, Tai Tomisawa, Yuka Kitamura and Yoshimi Kudo and now Bandai Namco, the game’s publisher, and production company Overlook Events bring us the Elden Ring Symphonic Adventure, a two-hour long live concert experience where the music is synced to video of the game, the highlights of the story presented from beginning to end, covering the major plot beats and boss fights. Playing in France, England, Thailand and Singapore, we caught the performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
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It’s an impressive technical achievement, with the video, orchestra and lighting all working together to create a unified performance that walks the audience through the world of the game. It features almost fifty different tracks from the game, spanning atmospheric pieces, thundering boss music, and sad, wistful laments. Pieces performed include ‘Elden Ring (Main Theme)’, ‘Limgrave’, ‘Margit, the Fell Omen’, ‘Morgott, the Omen King’, ‘Godskin Apostles’, ‘Maliketh, the Black Blade’, ‘The Final Battle (Radagon/Elden Beast)’ and many, many more. It’s a compelling blend that any fan will find utterly mesmerising. It is, however, somewhat confusing for anyone unfamiliar with Elden Ring. While a solid effort is made to ensure that the story can be followed, the reliance on footage of cut-scenes and boss battles can be difficult to follow for anyone unfamiliar with the story and lore.
While that doesn’t detract from the music itself it does damage the immersion a tad when you’re left trying to understand the actions being shown on the screen and how it all fits into the rather esoteric story that’s being told. That said, it could be argued that an event like this is designed to appeal to the game’s fans first and foremost, and you’re not likely to get many people attending who aren’t at least passingly familiar with the source material.
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The showing we attended wasn’t sold out, but it was well-attended, with plenty of Elden Ring shirts on display among the audience. It’s a shame that there didn’t seem to be any specific game-related merchandise for sale anywhere that we could see, and there was no show programme on offer as there was at the Paris show. There was a minor technical niggle in the second half after the interval when the video briefly froze, but other than that it was a stellar performance that ended with a standing ovation from the crowd that was more than deserved.
If you get the chance to see this show in any of the other countries where it’s scheduled to play, or any other show put on by Overlook Events, we’d strongly recommend you look into tickets. They put on shows covering video games, animated movies, films and more so there’s bound to be something for everyone no matter your musical tastes.
The Elden Ring Symphonic Adventure is touring until June 2024.
