Elden Ring's environmental humor is part of what makes it great

Elden Ring is brutally hard, but it's also quietly hilarious — and Polygon's Jenna Stoeber breaks down exactly how FromSoftware pulls that off.

The video argues that FromSoftware has mastered environmental humor and joke-telling through level design and enemy placement rather than cutscenes or dialogue. Elden Ring uses the world itself to set up and deliver gags, making the comedy inseparable from the gameplay.

FromSoftware has always threaded dark absurdity through its Soulsborne titles, but Elden Ring — built on an open world co-designed with George R.R. Martin — gave the studio more space than ever to scatter these moments across the Lands Between. The result is a game where dying to a ridiculous trap feels as much like a punchline as a punishment.

The full breakdown is in Polygon's video, which is worth a watch if you've ever been killed by something and immediately started laughing about it.