While this paleontologist doesn’t find Elden Ring’s monster designs all that realistic, he was impressed by FromSoft’s subtle storytelling and commitment to ‘speculative biology’

In the latest episode of our video series Reality Check, paleontologist Dr. Darren Naish returned to give his assessment of the monster designs in Elden Ring. While you might be unsurprised to learn that FromSoft’s opus isn’t exactly “realistic,” Naish praised the studio’s attention to detail and commitment to its fiction.

Case and point: The universally loathed Land Octopus. With an eye for environmental storytelling that would make a FromSoft lore YouTuber proud, Naish praised how the beasts are often found at shorelines or in shallow water, move like real-life intertidal octopi, and demonstrate adaptations to a more hybrid environment than real-life octopi.

Ditto for one of my favorite DLC bosses, Demi-Human Swordsmaster Onze. With evidence of tool use long predating the rise of homo sapiens, it’s really only a hop, skip, and a jump to a wee monkey man mastering The Blade⁠—and at that point, we’d all be in big trouble.

Other designs don’t quite pass muster, at least from an evolutionary perspective. The Golden Hippopotamus’ magical hedgehog spines strain credulity, as does Bayle the Dread’s ability to fly despite using his wing as a crutch for a missing leg.

But before you all go emailing Dr. Naish that those were clearly examples of the magic of the primeval Crucible, separate from biology, one: I already have, and two: The good doctor had nothing but praise for the depth of FromSoft’s fiction, and freely admitted that evolutionary feasibility is an understandable distant second to having cool, memorable monster designs.

For more Reality Check, you can follow PC Gamer on YouTube. We’ve also gotten real parkour athletes’ take on the clambering in Assassin’s Creed, as well as a psychologist’s assessment of drama and relationships in The Sims.