Conference Agenda

Elden Ring is a game defined by illusions of juxtaposition. Implied forces of “good” are pitted against forces of “evil”; light seems to compete with dark in both narrative storytelling and game design; and the assumed forward march of time contrasts with the stillness of ancient relics, artifacts, and the distant past. The music and soundscapes of the game epitomize this juxtaposition of movement and stasis. While a large portion of the exploration gameplay state includes ambient drones performed by delicate strings and pads, the title theme and boss battles present epic orchestral arrangements emblematic of the high fantasy genre of RPGs.
Crucially, however, the game persistently destabilizes these oppositions. As players assemble the game’s fragmented lore through artifact descriptions and environmental storytelling, clear-cut distinctions between past and present become increasingly uncertain. In this paper, I analyze contrasts between movement and stasis in the exploration sounds and boss battle music of Elden Ring to show how sound and music align with the game’s core messages and themes about time, history, and power. I consider the music and sound design in Elden Ring as a curated illusion, like many elements of the game’s lore and narrative design. Incorporating Deleuze’s concepts of the “movement-image” and the “time-image” with Virilio’s philosophy of “dromology”—in which the movement of time causes stillness itself to become an artifact—I argue that the perceived contrasts in musical temporality reinforce the game’s core concept of time as an element of power that is manipulated, suspended, or distorted in such a way that the dominant ideology can present its narrative as eternal and natural.