Elden Ring received a brand-new hotfix, patch 1.07, very recently, and it appears to include a few noteworthy references to raytracing and a number of new maps. The game was released to almost unanimous praise earlier this year, and though both raytracing support and a full-fledged expansion pack have already been hinted at, FromSoftware is yet to officially comment on either of these major new features.
Namely, FromSoftware initially announced ahead of the game's launch that Elden Ring would receive some manner of raytracing support sometime down the line. The existence of a full expansion pack hasn't been commented on, but a series of leaks from a few months back heavily hinted that something major was being worked on in the background. Both of these items have been directly referenced in patch 1.07's files.
According to Lance McDonald, who first discovered the relevant code, Elden Ring's latest update added a series of menu strings that outright reference the existence of a raytracing feature of some sort. The specifics are still unclear, but the obvious suggestion is that From Software is working on the feature without drawing undue attention to it before it's ready. The second part of McDonald's leak is that update 1.07 also references two new maps that do not currently exist in the available game data, and may be related to Elden Ring's purported Barbarians of the Badlands DLC.
While the fans' wishlists for Elden Ring DLC is growing longer and more comprehensive with each passing day, FromSoftware is yet to provide any context as to what, exactly, said DLC may entail. Leaks imply that they'll explore what happened before the game's main narrative kicked off, and how Godfrey and his band of warriors survived during their long exile in the Badlands, but FromSoftware is known for its penchant to dismantle expectations, so it's worth keeping a pinch of salt at hand just in case.
Elden Ring is already winning GOTY awards from some institutions, cementing the game's massive influence on the gaming industry over the course of 2022. It seems all but certain by now that FromSoftware has got a major new expansion pack in production under wraps, and announcing it would certainly give the seminal RPG yet another round in the limelight. The big question, then, is whether the DLC will be getting announced this year, or if the developers would prefer to start making headlines again in 2023.
Far as its implementation of raytracing goes, it may be worth pointing out that Elden Ring has a number of technical issues on PC. Specifically, Elden Ring sometimes struggles to hit 60 FPS, and raytracing is only going to make the game more taxing to run. Whatever the case may be, the information McDonald has uncovered suggests that From Software may be making its move relatively soon.
Elden Ring is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.