An Elden Ring dataminer has managed to access the game’s cut colosseum content. Sekiro Dubi has made plenty of videos on Elden Ring and the possibilities of what could have been, but their coverage of the game’s colosseums raise a few interesting questions. Many are wondering whether this truly is cut content or a nod to future DLC.
FromSoftware titles are no stranger to cut content. From the Land of the Giants’ removal from Demon’s Souls to the numerous boss fights that didn’t make the cut in Dark Souls, the developer tends to leave a lot of interesting ideas behind during development. That isn’t an uncommon practice when making games. Elden Ring is a special case in this instance, if only because the colosseums in question are dotted across the game.
A deep dive into Elden Ring’s cut colosseums
In total, you can find three different colosseums on the map in Elden Ring. There’s one in Limgrave, another in Caelid, and a final one in Leyndell Capital. They’re all fundamentally identical and have a few things you can interact with. And while some have managed to poke around them in-game, it wasn’t clear what they were meant to be used for. The one that Sekiro Dubi’s video focuses on is located in Limgrave.
The video goes into great detail about what these colosseums could have been used for. It talks about their relation to Elden Ring‘s lore, and how they were able to reconstruct the map. They used DSMapStudio, an editor that lets you extract maps from the game and see debug elements. Using this, they were able to figure out where certain key items were meant to be, like the Site of Grace that appears as you enter the door.
A short walk along the halls from the Site of Grace eventually takes the player to the actual arena. The video then showcases a fight between two enemies that you would seemingly encounter here. It’s clearly content that wasn’t finished, but this stuff conjures up very interesting ideas. These areas could simply have been locations for optional boss fights. They could even have been places where some quest lines would converge. As it stands, we have no idea what the original intent behind these would have been or what they could be in the future.
Cut content, or future DLC?
Some figures in the Souls community believe that these colosseums could still be used for future DLC. The running theory at the moment is that we may go back in time to the glory days of the Lands Between. The player would be able to travel back to the time when these arenas were originally in use. FromSoftware’s done it before, particularly with the Artorias of the Abyss DLC for Dark Souls. They’ve even done this sort of thing in both Bloodborne (sort of) and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
At the end of the day, it’s fascinating to think about what could’ve been. And the fact that Sekiro Dubi was able to reconstruct these areas is impressive in itself. Time will tell whether FromSoftware has more plans for these areas in the future. Who knows, we may see more from the colossseums in Elden Ring soon. In the meantime, you can check out an upcoming mod that looks to improve Elden Ring‘s co-op features.
