Elden Ring Nightreign Boss Calls It an “Opportunity” To Escape the Soulslike Prison Hidetaka Miyazaki Trapped FromSoft In

FromSoft’s massive success can be easily attributed to Hidetaka Miyazaki and his showcase of brilliance during the development of all the Souls games. But, with Elden Ring Nightreign on the way, the upcoming game’s director has revealed it might finally be time to do something out of the ordinary for once.

The release of Demon Souls back in 2009 has snowballed down into the long-running legacy of the Souls games made by the studio. The genre also enjoyed its peak with the launch of Elden Ring. Interestingly, Nightreign is here to offer players a different experience than before using the same foundations.

Looking at anything from the Dark Souls trilogy to Elden Ring, one would find so many similarities at once, including the same punishing level design that is made interesting with the help of an intricate map the player can explore. While the formula seems to work every time, there does not seem to be much of an innovation with the genre’s core value.

Maybe that’s why Junya Ishizaki, the director of Elden Ring Nightreign, felt it was about time that FromSoft offered something else to the players. Revealing in an interview via IGN, he stated the following:

We’ve always been seen as a company that makes these Soulslikes or this kind of traditional formula of Soulslike games and so I saw this as an opportunity to do something different. To challenge both myself and the company to build something new while still using what we’ve cultivated with our previous titles. Also personally, I enjoy these co-op multiplayer experiences and I wanted to make something that was very much focused on that with Nightreign.

The director discussed how the studio has been inherently working on delivering games that used the same old ‘traditional formula’. He further unveils how he took it as a challenge, not only for himself but for FromSoft as a whole to deliver something different this time around.

So far, Hidetaka Miyazaki being the president of the studio has seemed pretty disinterested with the idea of introducing proper multiplayer features in Souls titles. 

Fortunately, fans have always found a way around this with the help of modding that allowed them to play with friends. Elden Ring in particular took off with the seamless co-op mod, which allowed two or more friends to explore the uniquely crafted open-world map of The Lands Between.

It remains possible that the studio saw the opportunity and decided to go ahead with the Elden Ring Nightreign project. The upcoming game is not only FromSoft’s first step in introducing a co-op experience but also helps them deliver something apart from the long-running Souls genre.