A Hero-Based Co-Op Survival Roguelike Boss-Run Game Is Not What I Expected The Next ‘Elden Ring’ To Be

I have such mixed feelings about the new game FromSoftware revealed at The Game Awards this year. Elden Ring Nightreign looks like a ton of fun, but it sure isn’t what I’d expect or even hope for from the creators of Dark Souls.

Nightreign is a bit of this and a bit of that all stuffed into the framework that is a Souls game. There is no campaign. This is a three-player cooperative roguelike, where players pick premade heroes, loot up during the day and prepare for a boss fight at night. Fighting and surviving three rounds of this—roughly 30 minutes—is how you win. Players can revive one another and work together using their gear and powers to overcome terrible foes.

There is randomness. The map will change as will enemies and loot. You level up using runes, but there’s no finesse to it. Leveling up just levels up your power, so players won’t have to worry about how they build out a character.

In the trailer, you’ll notice there are more than just Elden Ring characters and bosses. The Fire Keeper and The Nameless King both make an appearance. That eagle seems to be a pretty clear reference to the Pursuer from Dark Souls 2. There are even little hints at Bloodborne in there, with one character who looks quite a lot like Lady Maria showing up, though her(his?) face is turned away from the camera.

What I would love to see with this game is it evolve into a PvEvP style game, where players could fight both bosses and enemy teams. That could be designed in lots of different ways. They could even model it after Destiny 2’s Gambit mode.

None of this is what I’d expect from FromSoftware but I’m still excited to play. I like the idea of smaller, more digestible play sessions with friends, though if I had a magic wand it would be a Seamless Co-Op mod made official for both PC and consoles, making it easy to just play with friends through all stages of Elden Ring.

This is also very clearly a side project. Hideo Miyazaki isn’t in charge of this one. Rather, Junya Ishizaki has taken the lead. Ishizaki has worked on lots of Souls games in the past and his resume should give fans hope. He was a level designer on Dark Souls and a level designer and battle designer on Bloodborne. He was a combat designer on Dark Souls III and Elden Ring. This project is his brainchild, telling IGN that he “took the idea to Miyazaki-san, who gave it the green light. He was a little involved in that initial concept phase of the game but after that he gave full reign to me.”

Ishizaki also notes that this is not a live-service title or battle royale (despite a circle that slowly tightens the map).

I admit to feeling both disappointment and excitement. You never want to see a game’s success lead to studios making huge changes to something you love, so learning that a new Elden Ring is coming out—this is a standalone game, not DLC—but that it would be a co-op boss fighting game certainly took the wind out of my sails. On the other hand, FromSoftware has never let me down. Or at least not too bad (Dark Souls 2’s changes to the beta will forever leave me saddened). I have faith in this studio and even though this isn’t the game I hoped for, I’m hoping it will be a game we can all genuinely enjoy when it releases sometime next year.