Elden Ring Is Brutally Difficult But You Can Pause It With This Trick

Playing video games is a great escape from reality, but sometimes reality seeps into your fantasy. Spouses or significant-others needing your attention, pets or kids requiring your parental guidance, or parents demanding your filial service—whether you're a kid, adult, or elder, it's likely enough that you're going to be interrupted while gaming occasionally.

That can be a frustration in Japanese developer FromSoftware's recent games, because classically, the Souls titles have never had any ability to "pause" the game. While tapping a button to put a gap in the action has been a staple feature of home video game systems since the early 1980s, FromSoftware's dark fantasy titles haven't implemented the function largely due to their nature as online games. If you can pause, you can't be invaded by another player seeking to add your skull to their pile.

Note that the reason this works is because Elden Ring does not allow invasions when playing solo, which means there's no risk of unapproved or unannounced multiplayer activity. This change has been somewhat controversial, with a few veteran players decrying Elden Ring as being for "casuals" since the game's famous player-vs-player combat is now entirely opt-in.

As should probably be obvious, this trick will not work while you're engaged in multiplayer, so unfortunately, you're back to trying to explain to mom or the missus that you can't pause a multiplayer game.