Elden Ring director on why Dark Souls bosses appear in Nightreign: ‘I thought it’d be fun’

As Elden Ring Nightreign previews begin to slowly trickle out ahead of its May 30 release date, battle designer-turned-director Junya Ishizaki sat down with GameSpot to discuss some of the more interesting choices the FromSoftware team made with the spin-off, including the decision to incorporate old bosses from the Dark Souls franchise. “The primary reason for these existing bosses in Nightreign is from a gameplay perspective,“ Ishizaki said. “Of course, with this new structure and with this new style of game, we needed a lot of different bosses. We needed a lot to add to this mix, so we wanted to leverage what we deemed appropriate from our previous titles.” This makes a lot of sense, considering FromSoftware’s established reputation for smartly using old assets in new games. They needed bosses for Nightreign, they had a bunch already developed from previous projects, so why not provide a little fan service? Speaking personally, however, Ishizaki offered an even more succinct explanation: “I thought it’d be kind of fun.” [Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djtsw5k_DNc] Elden Ring Nightreign’s reveal ignited a firestorm of discussion. Not only is a new FromSoft game always exciting, but the pre-release teaser also included footage of reused Dark Souls bosses like the Centipede Demon, the Duke’s Dear Freja, and the Nameless King. Fans immediately began theorycrafting lore reasons for these throwbacks. Was this evidence, as IGN proposed, of a FromSoft multiverse? We’ve seen hints in the past, such as the character Patches showing his sneering face in the studio’s games for decades, and Nightreign was considered by some to be further proof that these connections were more than a matter of thematic consistency or even just mere Easter eggs. But nope! Sounds more like FromSoft simply needed to fill out the boss roster, and Ishizaki thought bringing in Dark Souls bosses would be fun. As someone experiencing severe multiverse fatigue thanks to an entertainment industry loathe to develop new ideas, I’m totally okay with this explanation. In his preview for Polygon, entertainment editor Austen Goslin described Elden Ring Nightreign as “a game for the speed demons and the degenerates” that “feels like a carefully thought out, official version of the randomizer mods that FromSoftware players have used for years to keep the games they love fresh.”