Elden Ring Nightreign is carrying over a lot from its predecessors, but it's also saying goodbye to an iconic messaging system that's been a part of some of FromSoftware's most popular games.
Elden Ring Nightreign's one and only trailer had so many familiar sights. The Lands Between. Some returning enemies. Bosses ripped straight from Dark Souls, like the Nameless King. But it also featured an equal amount of all-new stuff, from three-player co-op to an entirely new structure set across three in-game days.
Those differences extend to some fan favorite features, however. "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, per machine translation. In games like Dark Souls, you'd be able to leave small messages on the ground that would then show up in other players' games.
- Elden Ring Nightreign went roguelike as the focus was "condensing" the RPG experience down, not because FromSoftware was "chasing a trend"
- Elden Ring: Nightreign ties the worlds of Dark Souls and Elden Ring together for the first time, as iconic Souls characters make their way to a new "branch" of The Lands Between
Why is the feature being removed if it's so beloved, then? Because Nightreign has players fight through rounds that take roughly 40 minutes to tackle, leaving little time for anything but bashing enemies. Ishizaki has talked before about how Elden Ring Nightreign is essentially a "short RPG" that condenses what FromSoft does best into quicker multiplayer rounds. That new structure also means that fallen foes won't revive mid-match, even when you stop off at a site of grace, to keep everything moving.
I'll miss seeing notes from other players, whether they're tricking me into jumping to my death, leaving trolling messages, or legitimately trying to help me overcome a challenge. But I guess you'll have two other player's voices in your ear the entire time - as long as you actually play in co-op - so it's not too much of a loss.
This might be a good time to get to grips with the best FromSoftware games.
