A complete recap of all the infos, leaks, fake leaks and rumors we got so far :

Happy new year fellow hollows ! 9th of January will mark the 7th month since Elden Ring was revealed to the public, at E3 2019. Even though nothing official was announced yet, a lot of stuff has been said about this very anticipated game. "Leaks", "Rumors", theories about the release date, etc... I wanted to make a post to recap (almost) every information, either true or false, that was shared on the internet about Elden Ring.

/!\ I will not adress fake lore. I do like fake lore, but this is not the point of this thread. I want to talk about info regarding the possible release date of the game. /!\

I will divide this post in different sections :1 - The official Stuff2 - "Leaks"3 - Rumor elements4 - Speculations & conclusion

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PART 1 : THE OFFICIAL STUFFa) Our Beloved Trailer.

On June 9 2019 at the MS E3 press conference, Elden Ring was officially revealed to the public (I will adress the first Omni leak in part 2). The trailer is 2 mins and half long, and is a cgi trailer that shows 6 characters (either bosses, ennemies or npcs ?). The music is epic, but overall, the story that it tells remains quiet mysterious. We just know that the "Elden Ring" is something very important, and that it has been shattered. The trailer displays the logos of xbox one, playstation 4 and pc.

b) The xboxwire interview

On June 10 2019, right after E3, xboxwire released an interview featuring Miyazaki talking about ER. Here is a quick summary of this interview : ER's development started just after development for the Ringed City (released 27 march 2017) ended (so Q1 2017) // Developped at the same time as Sekiro // 3rd person action rpg // GRRM wrote the overarching Mythos // Open world // Dark Fantasy...

c) IGN interview

On June 21 2019, IGN also released an interview with Miyazaki san talkin about Elden Ring. This interview is like a more detailed version of the xboxwire interview, with some new informations : horse riding, no heavy populated towns...

d) Elden Ring social medias : Twitter, Instagram

All the accounts were created right after the trailer was unveiled. The social medias were basically reposting the trailer in different formats, wether it be quotes or screen captures. At the moments, all the accounts have stopped posting. Last post for each media : twitter 28/06/2019, instagram 26/09/2019.A concept art was unveiled on June 10, featuring a new character holding some sort of "bonfire sword".

e) Elden Ring's official website

I'm not exactly sure when the official website openned, but I think it was during June 2019. The site recaps all the official info listed above, but in japanese. It also features a gallery with screenshots from the trailer and the concept art.

PART 2 : THE LEAKS

a) Spawn wave video

Back in March 2019, spawn wave made a video featuring some informations coming from Liam Robertson (big source of gaming scoops and other stuff). The first informations described the game as such : an open world game where you can go in different kingdoms, in no particular order, to slay rulers and steal their powers. He also mentions that this project involves GRRM.

b) GRRM posts on his own blog that he has been working for a japanese game

In a long post he wrote on May 20 2019, GRRM tells his fans what he has been doing recently. He drops the very simple line : I’ve consulted on a video game out of Japan.

c) Omnipotent teasing the E3 trailer

The first "leak" about Elden Ring was posted by user Omnipotent (who had already leaked some Fromsoftware elements in the past) on the resetera forum. On May 31 2019, in a thread (started on 4 May 2019) talking about what Fromsoft could show at E3 2019 (either a Sekiro DLC or a new game), Omnipotent made a post basically stating "yes, there will be a new From game presented at E3 2019". He wrote this big post after a couple of mini posts teasing the community. This big post also features a lot of weird elements to speculate on. This resetera thread was abandonned, and a new thread was created. Omnipotent didn't make any other big post after the trailer droped. He even banned himself from the forum, but came back early December. He made a couple of posts since, but nothing as substantial as before.

c*) The infamous ExHanzo leaks and other fake leaks*ExHanzo was a reddit user who made a couple posts claiming to be Elden Ring leaks. He made 2 notable posts that became quickly very controversial, talking about lore, game mechanics etc... Some people calling them bullshit, some believing in them. But what really grabbed the attention of the community was a post he made in august (that was deleted), stating that the gameplay trailer would be revealed at the Game Awards, not at Gamescom or TGS, and that the game would be released in April 2020. As you all know, nothing was shown at the Game Awards... and ExHanzo deleted his reddit account right after the event. If you are interested in reading those leaks, youtube Prod talked about the second post in this video, and you can find his first post here. He also posted about the lore here.

Some other leaks emerged from 4chan, but were basically a recap of ExHanzo's posts, and didn't bring any new controversial material. I think there was also a 4chan leak claiming that Elden Ring will feature some sort of "rape scene", but then Omni came back on resetera and said that all of this was false. There were also some other reddit users acting like insiders, and predicting the gameplay reveal to be at the game awards.

PART 3 : RUMORSI'm calling rumors elements that are essentially very different than leaks, and that haven't been proven wrong yet.

a) Benjamin Roach

Benjamin Roach is a professionnal level designer from Australia. He was noticed then hired by From after recreating a part of Farron Keep in Unreal Engine 4. He finished this project on september 22 2016 (source youtube). If you go to the "about" section of his artstation profile (scroll a bit), we can see there that Elden Ring is featured as a 2020 product. I know that this doesn't prove anything, but it is still a rumor element.

b) New year cards

As you all may know, Fromsoftware made a new year card campaign, that featured some wallpapers for smartphones. When you registered (you can still register actually, it's free), you were given the option to chose between 3 games : Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Sekiro, and Elden Ring. It was possible to pick the 3, which is what I did. We received the wallpapers today by mail, and each wallpaper features a copyright year. Sekiro and MWCxd have a 2019 copyright, and Elden Ring has a 2020 copyright.

Here is the official US law when it comes to attach a year to a copyright : The general rule is that the year to include in a copyright notice is the year of first publication of the work*. First publication is* when the work is made available to the public without restriction*.*

BUT, there are exceptions : A copyright symbol isn’t usually used on an unpublished work but may be used, and instead of year of publication, the year could be the year the author distributes the work in some manner*.*For exemple : the reveal trailer features a ©2019 at the end. So technically, even if the card features a ©2020, it still doesn't exclude a 2021 release (sob).

c) Jason Schreier tweet about the release window

If you don't know who Jason Shreier is, he is a game journalist working at Kotaku. Now before you start thinking about the "gaming journalist memes", Mr Schreier loved Sekiro, and thinks that Bloodborne is incredible. He is also renowned for the reliability of his statements and sources.On June 1st 2019, Jason S. responded to a tweet posted before E3, asking if the following games : Cyberpunk, Ghost of Tsushima, FF7 remake, The Last Of Us 2 and "GRR Martin Fromsoft game"(ER was not revealed yet but leaked on resetera by omni, and GRRM implication leaked by spawnwave) will be released in the first half of 2020, to which Jason S. responded yes. So far, he was right about Cyberpunk, FF7 and The Last Of Us. Ghots of Tsushima will come out in "Summer 2020" so we can't really state that he was right about this one. You can find this tweet here.

d) Shpeshal Ed rumors about the gameplay reveal

Resetera user Shpeshal Ed says in a podcast (1:51:35) he was told by an xbox employee that Elden Ring's gameplay will be revealed during an xbox series x event that will happen before E3 2020. He speculates that this event could happen either in April or May He also mentions in another podcast (1:15:34) that Microsoft asked Bamco to delay the gameplay reveal for their event.

Keep in mind that all these infos do not prove anything. They are rumors, and there is no possible way to prove them wrong or right at the moment.

PART 4 : SPECULATIONS & CONCLUSION

Let's say that every rumor is true (i know this is stupid and no realistic lol) and that Elden Ring will come out in the first half of 2020. Since it has to come out after the xbox event (let's say April, xbox one event was in may 2013), that means Elden Ring could be released in May or June ? If the reveal is in April, that leaves no room for communication and marketing... If you compare it to any other game that was announced for 2020, Elden Ring is definitely in a weird position.There is also the fact that ER was announced as a current gen game, kinda like Cyberpunk and Ghost of Tsushima, which leads me to think that both the playstation 5 and xbox series x will have backward compatibility ? Or will all these games have another release for next gen consoles ?

Personally, I was expecting a September or October release. I know a lot of people are thinking about a 2021 release, and I don't have anything to prove you wrong if that's your opinion. But I don't see From skipping 2020 without releasing anything. Or maybe they have a new armored core in the oven that will come out this year ?

Thank you for reading, and please don't hesitate to comment if I missed anything or if I got something wrong in this big post. I tried to feature every source, but I couldn't find the 4chan leaks.