Elden Ring Nightreign isn't messing with a good thing, so you can expect some gnarly swamps to ruin your day and honor FromSoftware tradition. Lovely stuff.
Speaking to PC Gamer in magazine issue 405, director Junya Ishizaki shares that the map sometimes sees "large-scale changes to terrain in the form of procedurally appearing volcanos or swamps or forests."
"We wanted the map itself to be a giant dungeon, so players have the chance to traverse and explore a different way every time they play," he says. "You have to choose the boss you want to face at the end of the third day.
- Elden Ring spinoff Nightreign is a co-op roguelike with battle royale and Monster Hunter juice, but FromSoftware says it's "not what we'd consider a live service game"
- Elden Ring Nightreign went roguelike as the focus was "condensing" the RPG experience down, not because FromSoftware was "chasing a trend"
"Once you've made that choice, maybe you have an idea of how you want to strategize against that boss, and this might change how you approach the map. We wanted to offer players that agency, to decide 'I need to go after a poison weapon this time to face this boss.'"
So there you have it, while Elden Ring Nightreign does throw in some roguelike and co-op elements to freshen things up, it doesn't dare go without offering a horrible ol' swamp that'll likely leave you greatly poison debuffed. You don't really see a FromSoftware game without a poison swamp, so why start now, I suppose?
Elsewhere in his chat with PC Gamer, Ishizaki says that tossing some roguelike elements into the pot was a way of "condensing" the RPG experience down rather than "chasing a trend" – not that there's anything wrong with that.
Elden Ring Nightreign is due to release this year.
