The day before Elden Ring’s release, Nikita fled his country.
Early in the morning of February 24, an airport in his home city of Bucha, Ukraine, was bombed by Russian forces. Within days, Russia had invaded the city, looted houses and massacred more than a thousand people (opens in new tab)according to reports by the BBC and other media about the war.
“We woke up in the morning and heard explosions. They killed a lot of people on the street trying to find food,” says Nikita. “People were stuck in the city for about two to three weeks without food, water and electricity. They were eventually evacuated, but it was terrible and many of them now suffer from PTSD.”
Nikita, 21, and his four family members escaped by car from Bucha (located about 30 km west of the capital Kiev) and drove to the Polish border on the first day of the attack. They took alternative routes to avoid encountering Russian troops. “I almost passed out from the stress,” he said. Left behind was his gaming PC with a freshly unlocked copy of Elden Ring.
Several of Nikita’s friends were left behind when the city was destroyed. They told him that soldiers were shooting the locks on doors and breaking into their homes. The house Nikita left had an armored door, and he says he told his friends who remained in town that he hid a key so they could come in and use the food and supplies that had been left behind.
“I had to face the reality that I most likely won’t be coming home anytime soon.”
At the end of March, Bucha . was liberated from Russian troopsbut Nikita, and many of the millions of other Ukrainians who fled their homes, still don’t believe it’s safe enough to return as the war continues to unfold.
Ten days after his escape, Nikita resumed his work as a 3D artist Create VTuber Models (opens in new tab) (articulate avatars used instead of a webcam) for streamers. He spent the past five months working on a thin laptop he borrowed from his sister to make models for about $200 each. He said it was “not a big dream, but something to focus on” as he and his family jumped from hotel to hotel before finding a home in Warsaw.
revived
Nikita has been playing games on PC for about 14 years and while he is primarily an FPS player, the Dark Souls games stayed with him.
“I was in school when I saw Dark Souls 1 played by my favorite YouTuber,” he said. “I was afraid to even touch it, but I finally downloaded it and I got hooked. I played everything [the Souls games] except for consoles because I don’t have a console. Dark Souls 1 and 2 are my favorites. Sekiro was also very cool, but I like dark fantasy more.”
When FromSoftware announced its open-world version of Dark Souls with Elden Ring, it searched for every detail, every leak, and every trailer it released. “I just like dark fantasy and that game seemed like a dream to me,” he said.
Nikita tried to play Elden Ring on his sister’s laptop, but couldn’t get past the main menu, so he waited until he could afford a gaming PC. Meanwhile, Elden Ring took hold of the entire gaming culture in a way that few game launches do. It seemed like everyone was playing it and sharing memes, discoveries and glitches, and even non-players heard stories like that of the game’s legendary folk hero “Let Me Solo Her”.
“It frustrated me because everyone was having fun and I couldn’t join the party.”
FromSoftware’s puzzling action RPGs, especially the Souls games, are full of secrets, and wringing those secrets out is a communal experience. Part of the fun of playing them is sharing discoveries online and seeing what others have discovered.
Nikita missed the peak of that community activity around Elden Ring, but he was determined to make his first playthrough a new experience. He kept social media closed and, despite his love for streamers, avoided watching anyone play Elden Ring. “It frustrated me because everyone was having fun and I couldn’t join the party,” he said.
During those first few months in Poland, Nikita still hoped he could go back home and pick up where he left off.
“I wanted to play games, work and go to the gym,” he said. “I had to face the reality that I most likely won’t be coming home anytime soon. I had an online job that helped me stay afloat and mentally stable because I could focus on one thing instead of every day to think about war.”
Nikita continued to make VTuber models, struggled with frequent crashes on his borrowed laptop, and saved $3,800 that allowed him to build a PC that would make his 3D work easier and play Elden Ring much better than the rig he left behind. The new PC packs an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, a Core i7 12700k, and 32GB of memory packed into a bright orange chassis.
“I went for a smaller case, the [Cooler Master] NR200 one so I can carry the PC in the bag or something like that later when I go back to Ukraine,” Nikita said.
He posted the news (opens in new tab) on the Elden Ring subreddit (the post has since been categorized as “little effort content” and deleted) and it quickly exploded. “Get up, tarnished,” some of the commentators cheered as Nikita prepared to take his first steps in the Lands Between. Some sympathized with his experience and expressed their solidarity with the Ukrainians.
“Life is back to normal, except I live in a completely different country.”
FromSoftware fans are always ecstatic to live vicariously with someone playing a FromSoftware game for the first time – to see someone else’s perspective on a game they love – and Nikita’s story is quite exceptional in terms of avoidance stories. of spoilers to experience a new game. Despite this, Nikita said he hadn’t expected such a vehement response to his post.
The Elden Ring community is “one of the friendliest out there,” he said. And despite everything, returning to the hobby he loves feels like a return to normalcy.
“I had to move five to six times [during the] spring and that made me very stressed,” said Nikita. “Now I do what feels most comfortable to me and that is sit at home and draw VTuber and play games in between. Life is back to normal, except I live in a completely different country.”
Nikita has already started exploring Elden Ring’s sprawling opening region, Limgrave. He said the patrolling Tree Sentinel and his armored horse had killed him so many times that he decided to deviate from the main trail to Stormveil Castle. He enjoys the game, but says it’s hard not to feel a little sad, given everything he’s been through.
“It feels nice to be doing what I love again, it doesn’t matter if I do it at home or somewhere else,” he told me. He will return to Ukraine in the future, he said, “even if it will be in 10 years.”
Nikita chose to play as a Wretch, a class in the game equipped with nothing but the cloth wrapped around their bodies. I asked him if he intentionally started out as a Tarnished who is implied to have lost everything before waking up in the Lands Between. He said he didn’t; he just wanted to keep his options open for any weapons or armor he finds on his journey.
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