Elden Ring may be stopped in its tracks.
Intense and frightening, Elden Ring is an unforgettable experience. As challenging as the game is, there’s no shame in taking a break to collect yourself or deal with real-world distractions.
Elden Ring doesn’t feature a typical pause button like developer FromSoftware’s prior games in the Soulsborne series. This did not seem to be the case at first. Playstation 4 owners don’t need to apply a mod to temporarily suspend Elden Ring, according to YouTuber IronPineapple, who identified a method that doesn’t need for modifications and can be used on consoles as well.
The Lands Between will not stop if you open your inventory, however using the help button and then selecting the “menu explanation” option from the submenu will keep the game frozen until you quit. You’ve just figured out how to take a break in Elden Ring, so congrats! A struggle on par with taking down the game’s first boss, Margit the Fell Omen, who is as tough as nails.
The bad news is that this pause feature requires six button clicks and speedy navigation through three menus. The first few times you do it, it takes a few seconds, but it’s not an instantaneous procedure. Trying to stop a fight when you’re in the heat of battle will almost certainly result in you taking a lot of damage.
Even though it’s a pain to have to go back to a respawn spot every time you want to take a break from exploring the overworld, this handy pause feature will do the trick when you need it. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as handy as the standard one-button pause in most other games.
It’s also not a good idea to get too used to halting Elden Ring in this manner. When you visit the “menu explanation” screen, the game world freezes. This seems to be an error. It doesn’t take Elden Ring any time at all to go through any other option. Once FromSoftware learns about this secret pause button, they’ll almost certainly release a patch to remove it.