Among the Elden Ring game files, over 100 icons of the NPCs and enemies that populate the Interregnum have been found, thus suggesting that in FromSoftware’s plans there was initially the intention to insert a sort of bestiary or archive with information on the monsters faced and the characters met.
The discovery was made by Twitter user @JesterPatches. In total, he claims to have found 128 icons. In many cases, there are two forms, one clearer and the other with the darkened icon, as if to differentiate the NPCs and enemies already encountered from those yet to be discovered. Then there are 64 unique icons that vary between regular soldiers, nobles, animals and demi-humans. Instead, images relating to the major bosses of Elden Ring are missing.
So there are 64 unique icons. Ranging from regular soldiers, nobels, to animals, demi-humans, even Godskins and a few I don’t even recognize, but I don’t see any major bosses in here.
My favorites so far what I would assume are “Caelid Dog”, “Caelid Crow” and the “Pigeon”. pic.twitter.com/1kPKKCxMaN
— JesterPatches (@JesterPatches) March 27, 2022
The hypothesis is that the icons in question could be linked to a sort of archive/bestiary in which the player could consult the information about the characters and enemies that populate the Interregnum. But these are just suppositions and who knows if we will ever find out the truth.
Certainly, it is not the first nor the last time that a studio starts working on elements that they later decide to discard, with the “skeletons” that remain hidden in the game files. For example, still remaining on the Elden Ring theme, a video demonstrates that Torrente originally could attack enemies and had many more animations.