Elden Ring Nightreign Director Interview Part Two: Why There’s No Poison Swamp and Future DLC

Elden Ring and its DLC shadow of the Erdree were phenomenal successes for Fromsoftware, which allowed the studio to grow beyond its follow-up, but niche to explode in the dominant current. His spin-off, Elden Ring NightergAdopt a different approach with a cooperative multiplayer development and a reproducible racing gameplay.

Nightreign is a daring direction for the studio, which had succeeded with Dark Fantasy Play-Player Adventures like Bloodborne and the series of Dark Souls games. Most of its successes were led by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of the formula of difficult third -person combat games. The new multiplayer game, Nightreign, is based on the success of Elden Ring by remixing its elements in a new rapid action game format.

As a new direction, Nightreign is the start of the realization of Junya Ishizaki, who had worked on many from from Fromsoftware earlier and was the combat director on Elden Ring. During video chat, Cnet was able to speak with Ishizaki of his reflections on Nightreign and many other subjects. In First part of our interviewWe have discussed how things changed during the development of the game, the abolition of falling damage to the collapse of several cards in the last one we see today. And, yes, how he solo all the bosses of the game.

In the second part below, we discuss the favorite Nightfarer class of Ishizaki to play and the least favorite boss, as well as DLC information and what Fromsoftware has learned that it will take place in future games (as, potentially, the Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive Duskbloods To come next year).

Of course, we also had to ask the question of the poison marshes.

David Lumb: I have the impression that I need to ask questions about the absence of another element that has been present in many other software games: where is the Nightreign poison marsh?

Junya Ishizaki: I think the main reason is that it is not a title of Miyazaki, which could be an explanation. Jokes aside, I think it’s just a fortuitous game development factor and what’s going on in the idea of ​​idea and what comes out. So who knows what could happen in the future with Nightreign?

DL: Considering Elden Ring, Bloodborne and two of the three Dark Souls titles are Miyazaki games, what makes Nightreign an Ishizaki game?

Ji: I think that one of the aspects that does not necessarily distinguish me from Miyazaki, but that I like to consider as my specialty, is that I like the priority to the “feeling of play” more than many things – these detailed and refined things, like what happens when a player falls from a height and touches the soil? How is supposed to feel? And how does it translate into a good gameplay and in the comfort of players?

So, as you know, Nightreign has no fall damage, but there are ways to behave by the characters when they have hit the ground with different heights and what you can do to counter this. So these are areas that I like to look at – the relationship between the player and the controls and how it translates into the game of the game.

DL: It is A question I asked in Miyazaki-san last year When the DLC Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdree, was released: from all the Fromsoftware games on which you worked, who is your favorite child?

Ji: This is a difficult question. I worked on Dark Souls 1, 3, Bloodborne and Elden Ring, of course. I think I would say that the project with which I have the most memories is the original dark souls. This is the first project in which I got involved at Nromsoftware and it was my first foray into the development of serious games, learning game systems and architecture and all aspects of what is happening in these games in this company and what we wanted to transmit to the user by gameplay.

Learning all of this was extremely precious to me. Of course, I was new at the time, so I was very serious to help him succeed.

DL: During my races in Nightreign, I came across memorable bosses of Dark Souls like the buzzed dragon. How did you choose which of the many bosses of the Dark Souls series to include?

Ji: From the point of view of the gameplay and our sense of, first of all, would it be a good choice for the world and the structure of Nightreign. It is the same for bosses that also appear from the world of Elden Ring. That they adapt and use the basic Boss battle format of Elden Ring, we wanted to make sure that they also adapt to the framework and the nighterign gameplay, and to that to make the experience fresh.

DL: Speaking in terms of multisgments, it’s great to see Dark Souls bosses in Nightreign, as well as characters’ costume skins that seem directly out of Bloodborne. When are we going to see the armored core crossover?

Ji: We have a very high level of respect for the games that other directors and other creators of the company created and we never wanted it to look like a random bag approach. We have very good memories of each of these titles and there was a very meticulous selection which took place to choose the right adjustments and what we thought could be interesting for Nightreign. We did not want it to feel too light of an effort – we wanted it to feel like a little love, care and respect.

As for the question of an armored nucleus or a mecha crossover … Who knows? It is very difficult to say right now what the future could contain for the company. I think if someone was so inclined, he could tackle a crossing of worlds in this way. But right now, there is really no suspicion.

DL: Now, I need to know more about how you played your own game. What is your Nightfarer Nightfarer class? And what is your least favorite boss?

Ji: I must say that my favorite nightfarer, from the character’s point of view, is probably the goalkeeper. I like to have the impression of protecting the team and that I am a strong anchor, very inflexible in my approach to any enemy that I clashed. But he also has interesting aspects for him. He does not feel like a full -fledged reservoir, he feels a little more flexible than that.

In terms of pure gameplay, I like the duchess. It is really fast, fun to dodge with it, effectively uses the attacks of teammates and, I think, it is very intuitive for me to play. This is the kind of character I would choose in another game. I can really immerse myself in the gameplay without worrying too much about what is going on.

As for my least favorite boss fight, I obviously love all boss fights too [laughs]. The one with whom I have the most problems is full, in a way a Centaur type character missing an arm. He really asks me to keep my toes and stay focused. It’s delicate for me.

DL: Interesting, he definitely wiped the ground with me when I went against him – and I appreciated how difficult it was without seeming. In general, did the players respond to the game as you expect or have you surprised you?

Ji: The overall response to the network test and the game cycle was incredibly solid. I am really happy to see all the comments we have obtained and we have a lot of good points to learn and examine in terms of balancing the difficulty of the game, to raise the tops and to refine the stockings to the exit.

Personally, I like to play multiplayer games and be part of this community discussion, so see it take off with Nightreign, see what players thought they were [overpowered] Or what was Meta or what was going to be the new meta when a new character was released – it was really fun to see. It really made me happy to see these kinds of opinions of division and discussion. I can’t wait to see everyone playing it at launch.

DL: Large Segue – What is the future of Nightreign? Does that include more content beyond the announced DLC?

Ji: For future content, we have already announced DLC, that we are currently being developed. The content for this will focus on the new playable characters mainly and the new Boss meetings, so please wait impatiently.

And then of course, beyond that, we cannot say definitively for the moment, but we will continue to support the game with fixes and updates depending on what we see data from players and players’ trends. So stay tight in the game and monitor the balance changes that must be made and generally support the game as we did with our previous titles.

Elden Ring Nightreign was launched on May 30 for the PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X / S and Xbox One consoles for $ 40. Having the original Elden Ring is not necessary to play this game.