Elden Ring modder turns one boss’s attack into an absolutely gorgeous explosion

First off, my apologies for reminding you that you’re probably missing Elden Ring a lot right about now. Even though I sadly don’t bring you news regarding the upcoming DLC, I think you’d like to know that Twitter user twistedgwazi modded Elden Ring to turn one of the great dragon Placidusax’s attacks into the most spectacular explosion I’ve ever seen in a game.

Consider putting on your sunglasses before witnessing what lies below — even if just to look cool:

That’s not even a cutscene. That thing is happening in real-time — provided your PC can handle it. We still don’t get to experience that ourselves as the mod isn’t out yet, but twistedgwazi has released a breakdown of how he got it to work.

The process looks pretty complicated, and, in twistedgwazi’s own words, it involved “actual f*cking witchcraft”. It turns out that the difficult part wasn’t the visuals, but the audio. Long story short, they needed to add three invisible entities to the arena to get the sound to work on that THX level that this thing requires. One of these entities has the job of moving really fast toward the player, and another is there just to play really loud sounds.

Oh yeah, there’s also the fact that one of these entities has the power to turn a billion degrees per second.

At first, this feels like yet another peculiarly awesome Oppenheimer crossover event. But its inspiration actually comes from somewhere else.

It’s probably going to sound obvious to everyone who’s seen it already, but twistedgazi made it to honor the surprise megahit that is Godzilla Minus One. [Editor’s note: Oh hey look, it’s me.]

the atomic breath in minus one was actually the inspiration for this; the lightning strikes in the beginning were meant to mimic the back spikes clicking into place, and the audio cutting out just before it hits was based on godzilla’s spikes going back down as he fires the beam

— twistedgwazi (@twisted_gwazi) February 4, 2024 twistedgwazi also stated that this nuke isn’t just a one-off, but rather part of a more extensive mod that revamps a great part of Caelid, adds a bunch of spells, skills, and remixes every(*) boss in the game.

this is part of my upcoming unnamed elden ring mod that will extensively overhaul caelid. it’ll add dozens of new structures, overhaul existing ones, remix every* boss in the game, and add many new spells and skills. if you wanna help playtest it once its ready, let me know!

— twistedgwazi (@twisted_gwazi) February 3, 2024 You can play Elden Ring on PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC while you keep faith in the release of the long-awaited The Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC.

Tiago Manuel

Tiago is a freelancer who used to write about video games, cults, and video game cults. He now writes for Destructoid in an attempt to find himself on the winning side when the robot uprising comes.