Elden Ring Brought Back Cut Content & Solved A Dark Souls Mystery

A long unanswered Dark Souls mystery has been solved by looking into the files of the Elden Ring boss the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. FromSoftware built Elden Ring with the DNA of the Soulsborne series, using past models and animations from those games to fill out the massive world of the Lands Between. But in some cases, the material used in Elden Ring is actually cut content that never made its way into the game it was originally supposed to be a part of, which is what happened in the case of the Ulcerated Tree Spirit.

Dataminers of the Soulsborne series have been able to sift through files within the games to uncover assets that went unused by FromSoftware prior to Elden Ring. While these files often reveal little other than a generic name for an item or an enemy, they spark the minds of the players within the community to figure out what the file was originally meant for and whether it will later come to life in a future DLC or game. Whether it ends up being the former or latter of these possibilities, fans who get their hopes up about these discoveries are often not let down. FromSoftware has an "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" mentality, which means it tends to utilize assets from the past even if they went unused when initially created.

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This is precisely what happened with a Dark Souls 3 data file referring to a monster named SnakeSoul. While the file conveyed little information about the enemy, YouTuber Zullie the Witch remembered two important references to snake-like creatures in Dark Souls 3: the Pus of Man and the figure of a spiny serpent in a leaked alpha screenshot of the game. Considering that the Pus of Man - a black, serpentine substance that grows out of characters like the tutorial boss of Dark Souls 3 - was not SnakeSoul and differed from the alpha screenshot, Zullie believes that the SnakeSoul must have been the Ulcerated Tree Spirit from Elden Ring.

Looking at Zullie's video, it quickly becomes apparent that Elden Ring's Ulcerated Tree Spirit could well have been Dark Souls 3's SnakeSoul. First, parts of the Ulcerated Tree Spirit mirror those of the Pus of Man, namely the claws, head shape, and the yellowish fire it spits out. However, the Pus of Man is smooth and black, while the screenshot from the Dark Souls 3 alpha showed a snake with spines reminiscent of the branches sticking out of the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. Zullie deduces from this that the SnakeSoul must have thus been a different form of the Pus of Man that went unused in Dark Souls 3 and was saved, and likely modified, for a better-fitting context in Elden Ring. The video can be viewed below:

FromSoftware's reuse of assets in Elden Ring has been able to create exciting moments such as this one, where fans can find answers to the most elusive mysteries of the Soulsborne series. Some may still find that the degree to which the developer has used preexisting material has made the game unoriginal. Nevertheless, the cut content from the past has made Elden Ring a more lively and interesting open-world experience.

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Source: Zullie the Witch/YouTube