Elden Ring adds ray-tracing at long last

Elden Ring's Melina. Image: FromSoftware

After initially being promised close to launch, Elden Ring has finally received its ray-tracing update a little more than a year later. The patch was stealth dropped in the truest sense of the word, with only a same-day Twitter post to clue players in. A direct comparison reveals the difference to be… fairly minimal, in truth. As a game that uses mostly flat, neutral lighting outside of a few certain set pieces, there was no way it was going to benefit from ray-tracing in the same eye-popping way that, say, Cyberpunk 2077 did. Still, it's a nice bonus for owners of next-gen consoles or beefy PCs… if they don't mind the framerate hit, that is.