With Elden Ring: Nightreign‘s release date of May 30th being dropped on February 12th, and Elden Ring content creators releasing their videos on playtests hosted by Bandai Namco, online news outlets and Elden Ring content creators are racing to report what’s in the game. With all this new information, how are fans feeling and how do they hope the game will turn out?
What Is Elden Ring: Nightreign?
If you haven’t been keeping up with the news coming out around Nightreign, starting with its announcements at this year’s game awards, let’s catch you up. Nightreign is an online roguelite action/survival game, which is a major first for FromSoftware. Once each day is over, the game will force you to fight a boss to progress to the next day. Once all three days are complete, you will have a shot at defeating one of eight “Nightlords.” Vaatividya, the Souls games’ unofficial lore keeper, has a great in depth video about it which you can find here.
What We’ve Been Told to Expect
One of the most controversial elements shown so far is the inclusion of old Dark Souls bosses and characters. Namely, The Nameless King, the Centipede Demon, and The Dukes Dear Freja. There have been mixed reactions to this, with many on sites like R/Eldenring and R/Nightreign on Reddit saying that this feels cheap and like a cash grab. Meanwhile, others are interested to see how this will all fit into the lore.
FromSoft anticipated this, and in this IGN interview with director Junya Ishizaki, confirmed that the two worlds are completely parallel. But, this could just be because Nightreign takes place in an alternate timeline from Elden Ring. Also, the recycling of bosses has been confirmed to be because this is intended as just a short spin-off game, which is supposed to tide players over until the next full game is released.
What Is the Community Saying?
Well, to start off on a good note, there’s a lot of excitement. Despite the confirmation that the Elden Ring and Nightreign stories are completely different, the lore keepers of the community are still excited for the new stories and lore insights that the game has to offer. Although, there is hesitation. Due to the trimmed down gameplay mechanics and fast paced gameplay, there probably won’t be much lore development besides what most players will see in an average playthrough. Due to the reuse of assets and mechanics, many (including outlets like PC Gaming and Gamesradar) are likening this to a very well developed Elden Ring mod, although it differs from person to person whether or not this is a good or bad thing.
What Do We Want to See?
Well, in the end, it differs from person to person. After all, the Souls and Souls-like games made by Fromsoftware are all RPGs, meaning that every person’s playstyle is different. Because of that, their interest in the different aspects of the game are going to be unique as well. Like said earlier, additions to the lore would be very cool. With the timeline diverging during “The Shattering War” of Elden Ring, we could see some cool lore developments with that. With random loot tables, game-breaking builds like those that can be made in Elden Ring will be much harder, although the community is certainly up to the task.
Finally, most just want a well developed game. Like stated before, FromSoftware games are finely tuned masterworks which endure for over a decade after release. And hopefully, Elden Ring: Nightreign will follow this outstanding tradition of excellence.
