Elden Ring Nightreign won’t have the best features of Dark Souls, but for good reason

I love FromSoftware’s approach to multiplayer design. Instead of waiting in a lobby with friends or accepting an invitation to join a game in progress, the online studio functions with its own personality. You can watch spectral recordings of fallen players, offer to help those in need where they need it most, and, my favorite by far, write letters on the ground. These can be useful, pointless, or outright fool you, and it’s this dynamic that makes FromSoftware games, from Dark Souls to Elden Ring, feel truly alive. For this reason I regret to inform you that these messages will not be returned Elden Ring NytrinBut this is for good reason.

We’re finally in a year Elden Ring Nightreign release dateand programs Roguelike The evolution of its formula is one thing I can’t wait to try. You and up to two friends will explore the parallel world of Limveld, a procedurally generated open-air dungeon that exists for three days. Unfortunately, these differences mean removing the ability to write messages to other players, something we’ve been doing since Demon’s Souls, from Elden Ring Nytrin.

“You can still see the ghosts of other players, but the ability to leave messages has been removed,” Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki told IGN Japan in a new episode. interview (via twisted voxels). “The reason for removing the message function is that in this game, where each session is about 40 minutes long, there is no time to write your own message, and no time to read messages written by others.”

Nightreign replaces Elden Ring’s slow, exploratory pace with much faster co-op play, so I can see why FromSoftware removed the messaging system. I’m sorry to see this feature go, but when you have less than an hour to explore Limveld and fight as many bosses as possible, reading a note calling a turtle a dog is just a waste of time, I guess.

Ishizaki also calls Elden Ring Nightreign a “compressed RPG,” where the long-term ups and downs of your adventure are condensed into a much shorter time frame. That’s why each Nightreign session is randomly selected, as eight bosses stand in your way and you’ll have to defeat them to get closer to the big bad.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to View Elden Ring Nightreign within a few days, with network testing to follow in February 2025. It’s not clear exactly what the Nightreign demo will contain, but we know that FromSoftware is using it to evaluate Cooperative gameEarly communication features.

If you picked up the latest FromSoftware game over the festive holiday, take a look at our list of all the games Best Elden Ring Designsbesides The best Elden Ring weapons To bring battle.

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