Elden Ring cutscene discovered 4 years later leaves fans awestruck

The area containing Elden Ring's most infamous boss battle once held a touching cutscene that fleshed out Malenia's backstory

After a massive expansion and an entire spinoff game, you'd think that there couldn't possibly be anything new to discover in the world of Elden Ring. Fans have already spent years perusing game files for hidden lore details, if not outright reconstructing cut content from the dark, open-world game. Yet here we are in 2026, still discovering new, never-before-seen material hidden within FromSoftware's beloved RPG.

The material comes from the Soulslike expert Lance McDonald, the same man behind massive discoveries like Bloodborne's cut alpha maps. This time, McDonald takes a look at an unused map file pertaining to the game's Haligtree location. It's the same place where the player would normally find and fight the notorious sword master, Malenia. As lore sickos are aware, the Haligtree was planted by Miquella with the hope of replacing the Erdtree, an entity that rules over the land. In the DLC, the idea of Miquella rebuilding the world in his image is explored even further, eventually concluding with the player killing him.

All of this happens under the guise of Miquella wanting to save his twin sister Malenia from dying because of an otherworldly rot infestation. This aspect of the story is also largely surmised by the player based on item descriptions. Apparently, though, FromSoftware once considered making many of these connections far more explicit to the player. In the cutscene McDonald presents, we can see Miquella actually planting the Haligtree.

It's a short but haunting scene where a bleeding sapling takes root as the Empyrean demigod dedicates the Haligtree to his twin. The segment was intended to play right after the collection of a medallion key that opens the Haligtree area. "My last drop of dew," the cursed twin says. "Let all things flourish, whether graceful or malign. If thou covetest the throne, impress my vision upon thine heart, in the new world of thine making."

It's a fantastic and melancholic sequence that is arguably better than some of the video exposition that FromSoftware actually included in the game. Instead, Elden Ring takes a much more subtle approach to its storytelling, leaving the player to draw their own conclusions about the lore. To FromSoftware's credit, being forced to use my imagination was likely a key reason that the story stuck with me so deeply. It's hard to say if this cutscene was omitted intentionally, to achieve a specific storytelling result, or if there was a game production issue that forced FromSoftware's hand.

Still, players are as baffled as they are amazed by this recent discovery.

"Imagine having to cut something that good," one commenter wrote on YouTube.

"Honestly this would've been a better cutscene than the dlc ending cutscene," another opined.