Elden Ring is the most recent Soulsborne title to come out of FromSoftware, the creators of the genre, and this shows through in a variety of ways. Not only does the game add a number of new features, but it also tackles the premise of struggling to survive in a dark fantasy world filled with terrifying monsters from a new, more hopeful angle. Now, one Elden Ring fan celebrates the game's more optimistic tone with a gorgeous harp cover of the final boss music.
Previous FromSoftware titles have leaned into the mournful tone for their soundtracks, which often results in final boss themes that sound genuinely depressing. This is fitting for games like Bloodborne that end on a deliberately ambiguous note. However, Elden Ring is something else, and it takes a correspondingly different approach to the final boss theme.
The final boss of Elden Ring is fought to the ringing tones of "The Final Battle," composed by Tsukasa Saitoh. This epic song is a remix of the game's iconic title theme with all the chanting, horns, and strings that entails. YouTuber Anna Ellsworth decided to try and capture the sheer epic momentum of the song with a single acoustic instrument in a video titled "elden ring - the final battle // harp cover."
Usually, the song is played by what seems like a whole orchestra, all of the instruments cheering the player on as they prepare to slay a deity. While the end goal of godslaying isn't exactly new to the FromSoftware catalog, the overall feeling of hope certainly is. Anna Ellsworth's take on the song is much softer and a bit more somber, but it too reads as surprisingly hopeful. This may serve as a reminder to gamers of all the good people they've met in Elden Ring--the characters they're fighting for when they confront the final boss.
In the video, Anna Ellsworth sits at the harp and is shown plucking the strings, eyes fixed on the instrument. This both proves that was actually playing the cover and serves as a surprisingly atmospheric demonstration of the effort required to do so. Much like Elden Ring demands incredible effort from players in order to clear, playing the game's songs also demands skill and mastery. The YouTuber states in the video description that this cover did add a significant amount of reverb to try and mimic the OST version of the soul. Either way, the result is something the Elden Beast would likely be pleased to have playing during its boss fight.
Elden Ring is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.