Elden Ring is a stunningly beautiful game composed of wide vistas that look ripped from the romantic period of art. It also has a lot of cute dogs and terrifying enemies. By default, you have to use the Telescope item and disable the UI to take photos, but now you can install a mod that puts a proper photo mode into the game.
Frans "Otis_Inf" Bouma has released unofficial photo mode tools for Elden Ring, which will be free until March 10. Like with the mod that lets you pause the game and the cheats you can use, you have to play the game offline to avoid getting banned while using it. But if you can deal without player messages and co-op, you can boot up the mod to move the camera freely around the environment, make yourself invisible to enemies (like Margit, the Fell Omen), change the FoV, hide the UI, and pause the game.
Be sure to follow the instructions in the mod folder to run it. It requires you to drag a file into your Elden Ring install directory that renames a file to disable Easy Anti-Cheat and forces the game into offline mode. It's reversible by dragging the file back out, but mandatory before you boot the game up so you don't get banned from playing online in the future.
It's a risk worth taking, because Elden Ring deserves to be captured via a photo mode. Our own Fraser Brown argued for this earlier this week: "The lack of a photo mode is so much more noticeable and regrettable in Elden Ring not just because it's so damn striking—it also gives you the space and time to explore its sights without risking death with every screenshot."
It's worth making an offline-only character to run through the game and snapshot all the beautiful trees and ruins. And with the pause feature, you might be able to capture your imminent death to all of the horrifying monsters in it too. Elden Ring was meant to be gawked at, and I'm glad we can finally do that—even if it means breaking the rules a little bit.
I just hope Bandai Namco doesn't make Bouma take the tools down when they eventually require a subscription to their Patreon, which Crytek did earlier this year.
