Elden Ring does have an in-game “pause feature” after all, if you mess with menus

FromSoftware’s games are so brutal that they don’t even let you pause the action. If you need to stop and take a breath, grab a drink or a snack, you need to make sure that you are well and truly safe and nowhere near any enemies. That, or just quit the game.

Elden Ring is no different and while it has been praised for its challenge, there are some who yearn for a traditional pause feature. There’s even a PC mod that adds one, although console players are out of luck — at least until now. It turns out there is a way to pause the game without quitting it or installing a mod.

As demonstrated by user Iron Pineapple on Twitter, while it requires a bit of menu navigation, it’s still pretty simple to do. Just open your inventory and select Menu Exploration. Doing so will bring the game to a complete halt. So, even if you’re being pursued by enemies, you can pull this off and not worry about being unceremoniously killed in the meantime.

It’s possible that this is an oversight on FromSoftware’s part and it will patch it out at a later date, since it does go against the entire point of the game. Speaking of future updates, it’s believed Elden Ring will receive DLC after a player managed to get into the Limgrave Colosseum, an otherwise inaccessible area, sparking theories of it being used for PvP combat.