A dataminer has uncovered what they believe is a pivotal but unused cutscene hidden in Elden Ring’s files — and it could shed new light on the game’s lore.
Lance McDonald, a content creator and dataminer famed for his behind-the-scenes work on the likes of P.T., Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, has discovered a secret scene thought to have been cut from the final version of the game.
Warning! Spoilers for Elden Ring follow:
“This is a look at a never-before-seen map file where a cutscene was filmed for Elden Ring, which showed Miquella planting the Haligtree, as well as the process through which, during earlier development and testing, this cutscene was intended to have been played,” McDonald explained in the video description. “Finally, the similarly never-before-seen cutscene itself is shown.”
McDonald believes that not only has he discovered a cutscene showing Miquella planting a Haligtree, but he thinks he has the matching “unused lines of spoken dialog.”
“Without the intermediate cutscene file to connect these together, it’s difficult to know for sure which of these are intended for playback during this specific video,” he added, but did play the lines in the order they appear over the cutscene. You can watch it here.
The lore behind Elden Ring is very much in the eye of the beholder, but it’s thought the Haligtree was planted by Miquella in the hope it would overrun and replace the famed Erdtree, after which he would be able to rule the land. It seems to be in roughly the same location as where we take on Malenia, to whom the Haligtree sapling is dedicated… but it seemingly didn’t grow.
How do we know this? In the Haligtree Knight Armor’s item description, it says: “Armour worn by knights sworn to the Haligtree. Its left breast is emblazoned with the crest of the Haligtree. Though watered with Miquella’s own blood since it was a sapling, the Haligtree ultimately failed to grow into an Erdtree.”
As for why this could have been deleted? Given that it has both dialog and a fully rendered cutscene, we can only guess that it was either cut for length — which seems unlikely, given action-RPGs can be hundreds of hours long — or because director Hidetaka Miyazaki has proven time and time again that he’d rather hint at Elden Ring lore than fully spell it out for us, hiding clues throughout the game, sometimes in plain sight.
“It blows my mind how we’re finding big chunks of interesting cut content even four years after the game released,” said one fan on McDonalds’ video. Another simply wrote: “I swear From[soft] cuts the coolest things.”
“It’s really heartbreaking to see this act of love, when you know how everything went wrong afterwards with Miquella, the Haligtree and the Order of abundance,” added another. “Kind of like a nostalgic reminder of what could have been. Still, I’m not surprised they didn’t include it, since the cutscene would have been too straightforward in its storytelling for FromSoft.”
“Wow, this made me realise how different Elden Ring once was. It seems like the story at one stage had a lot more coherence and detail,” commented another fan.
Perhaps Elden Ring fans will get a better sense of the story from the upcoming movie adaptation, which is directed by Elden Ring superfan Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War). Last week, an Elden Ring fan appeared to give us a first look at the set, which appeared to include a game accurate statue of Marika.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
