Elden Ring launched with significant performance issues across all supported platforms, as has been reported. What's surprising, however, is the relative lack of in-game bugs and gameplay issues. It may just be that Elden Ring's hype is drowning out smaller concerns, or From Software may have created a polished gameplay experience. No game is ever perfect, however, and one Elden Ring player has evidence in the form of a video capturing his character being trapped in the air.
The short video has Elden Ring's Tarnished setting out in the open world and summoning the game's mount, Torrent. Everything appears to be normal up until Torrent fully appears and the player sits atop the beast. That's because instead of sitting on Torrent, the player instead appears to stand up in the air. Instead of freefalling, however, Torrent dissipates and leaves the player floating. It's as entirely absurd as it sounds.
To add insult to injury, instead of leaving the player floating in the air forever, Elden Ring "corrects" its mistake by simply killing the player. There's no warning or otherwise. One second the player is struggling in the air, and the next they're turning to dust with From Software's iconic message "You Died" on-screen. Considering just seconds earlier the player was alive and in no danger, it's quite the turn of events.
Since the player died in a harmless situation, recovering their Runes is likely to be no problem at all. Instead, the real frustration with the situation is that there's no explanation whatsoever for how the bug happened. It was just a normal example of the player mounting up. Perhaps the player also pressed another button while mounting or perhaps the game lagged and tried to perform an input in an incorrect game state. Regardless, From Software has its work cut out for itself when figuring out the cause of this bug.
Funnily enough, this isn't the only example of the bug occurring, either. There's another video shared by the YouTube channel Deku showing the exact same issue. A player mounts and the mount disappears underneath them, leaving them floating in the air. They then die shortly thereafter, like a From Software fix for players being in an illegal state.
Despite being uncommon and relatively harmless, the bug does stand out. Amid all the other Elden Ring news coming out, a bug of any kind is going to be interesting to see. Odds are there will be more to find and share in the future. For now, though, Elden Ring's most notorious gameplay bug appears to be the case of the disappearing mount.
Elden Ring is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
