There is something comfortingly familiar about the blood-red YOU DIED message that punctuates one’s bloody adventuring in Elden Ring, as it had done in Bloodborne, and Dark Souls 3, and all the rest unto the beginning of time. Of course, death is not the end, because this is fundamentally a religious system, however bleak; and is one of the most interesting modern examples of how videogames, as a cultural form, exist to re-enchant the idea of religion itself.
