Elden Ring’s Nightreign: Bidding Farewell to FromSoftware’s Beloved Narrative Style

Elden Ring Nightreign is inheriting a great deal from its forerunners, but it is also bid farewell to a legendary messaging system that has been a small part of FromSoftware‘s most popular titles. 

The sole trailer for Elden Ring Nightreign showcased numerous recognizable elements. The Lands Between. Familiar adversaries returning. Bosses plucked directly from Dark Souls, such as the Nameless King. Nonetheless, it also displayed an equal measure of fresh content, including three-player co-op gameplay and a completely new structure spanning across three in-game days. 

These alterations extend to several fan-favorite features, however. “You can still observe the apparitions of other players, but the option to leave messages has been eliminated,” Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki informed IGN Japan, according to machine translation. In games like Dark Souls, players could leave little messages on the ground that others would see in their gameplay. 

So why is this feature being discarded if it is so cherished? Because Nightreign involves players battling through rounds that take approximately 40 minutes to complete, leaving minimal time for anything besides fighting foes. Ishizaki has previously mentioned how Elden Ring Nightreign is essentially a “brief RPG” that compresses what FromSoft excels at into rapid multiplayer rounds. This new structure also means that defeated enemies will not respawn mid-match, even if you pause at a grace point, to keep everything moving. 

I will miss encountering notes from other players, whether they are luring me into a fall, leaving jests, or genuinely trying to assist me with a challenge. However, I suppose you will have two different players’ voices in your ear the entire time – as long as you play cooperatively – so it’s not too significant of a loss. 

This may be an excellent moment to familiarize yourself with the best FromSoftware titles.