Elden Ring Nightreign Includes A Few Dark Souls Bosses

Summary

FromSoftware and Bandai Namco announced a brand-new Elden Ring spin-off at The Game Awards 2024.
Dubbed Nightreign, it's a more traditional co-op experience in which you and two friends hunt down monsters in The Lands Between.
Interestingly, a few of the bosses and even one of the NPCs appear to be lifted from Dark Souls.

What if 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring had traditional co-op, you fought iconic 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dark Souls bosses, and it was a roguelite with a shrinking battle royale zone a la Fortnite? I haven’t slept, I’m crashing from the misplaced Half-Life 3 hype and four cans of Monster (yes, it’s me — Sam Porter), and part of me thinks 🤪this is a fever dream. But no, it’s real.

Last night, Bandai Namco and FromSoftware announced 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nightreign, a new spin-off of Elden Ring launching next year. It recycles so much that the fast turnaround is hardly surprising, and I’m a little wary of how well it’ll capture the meticulous handcrafted genius of past FromS🌞oftware games because of it. But hey-ho, getting to gank bosses with your pals is a good time.

As it’s an Elden Ring game, I’d assume the things being recycled would be Elden Ring bosses. But as I said — there are some iconic Dark Souls enemies thrown in for good measure. You probably noticed the Nameless King hurling lightning spears from the back of his🐠 dragon, but there are a few other cameos in the trailer.

Centipede Demon Is Back, And… Oh God, Is That The Duke’s Dear Freja?

Elden Ring Nightreign Spider highlighted with an orange circle next to an image of a spider from Dark Souls 2.

Firstly, we see a spider scurrying through a blood red river, and I’d recognise that fiend anywhere. In my fiﷺrst-ever Dark Souls 2 playthrough, I was guided by a very patient friend who — foolishly — made me use a Bonfire Ascetic to enter New Game Plus in the Brightstone Cove just so I could get a unique item that I ultimately never used.

For the uninitiated, that area is full of spiders, and ends with a big ugly spider boss. Absolute nightmare fuel to arachnophobes, and I sp𒀰ent over a week in that cove over the Summer holidays, so I know the spiders pretty well. And that spider in the Elden Ring trailer? That’s a Parasite Spider.

Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot of three players fighting a giant spider in the woods.

It has the same jagged, spiked front legs, and while it’s hard to make out in the red tinted lighting, it also appears to have the same beige-yellow body. What’s terrifying about these spiders is that they flood the arena when you’re fighting The Duke’s Dea💛r Freja — a giant, two-headed armoured spider that shoots laser beams and can only be damaged by hitting one of its noggins.

On the Steam store page, you can find a screenshot (em༺bedded above) of that exact boss.

Elden Ring Nightreign Centipede Demon next to the Dark Souls version.

The second familiar face — if you can call it that — is the Centipede Demon from the very first Dark Souls. It looks to be a much less tedious fight here, as i🍎t's battling players in a lake of water. In the original, you fight this Chaos abomination in a giant thick pool of magma that A) slows you down, and B) deals a me💎tric ton of damage over time. I’ll take the water, thanks.

In Dark Souls, you lure this awkward gangle of limbs over to a stone platform and hack away, hoping it doesn’t retreat into the lava where you can’t really follow it. And yes, it’s a mandatory bat✨tle. You have to fight the Centipede Demon to enter Lost Izalith proper, w🌟hich is also bathed in magma, but, thankfully, the demon drops the Orange Charred Ring to help you walk across it.

The Nameless King Is About To Traumatise Another Generation Of FromSoft Fans

Elden Ring Nightreign The Nameless King side-by-side with the original Dark Souls 3 version.

As I said, it’s pretty hard to miss this appearance in the trailer since they have such a recognisable silhouette. But for those who haven’t played 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dark Souls 3, strap in.

The Nameless King was the answer to ꦿa long-running mystery teased in the first Dark Souls: who is Gwyn’s banished son, and why was he stripped from the annals of history? The Nameless King ꦐis he, banished for taking the side of drago𓃲ns, and he is a mean SOB.

The first part of the fight is essentially a dragon battle (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:which are already tough in Soulslikes), except with a god throwing lightning at you tossed in for good measure. The second part sees that god very, very angry that you killed his dragon, now attacking you on foot. It’s one of the most infamous fights in thꦬe entirety of the Dark Souls trilogy, and even in a more traditional co-op game with Elden Ring’s flu🐻id movement, I can’t see him being an easy target.

Is That The Fire Keeper?

Elden Ring Nightreign NPC wearing a hood with a part of their ornate mask highlighted in orange, next to an image of the Firekeeper from Dark Souls 3 in Firelink Shrine.

The most bizarre appearance in Nightreign’s trailer is what appears tꦿo be the Fire Keeper, albeit in a white robe rather than her usual black.

For context, the Fire Keeper is Dark Souls 3’s version of Melina, building ever further on the Maiden in Black archetype from way back in Demon’s Souls (the Doll in Bloodborne is another examp🌺le). Through her, at the aptly named Firelink Shrine hub, you can level up and even steer the game towards different endings.

A mysterious new NPC introduced in Nigh♏treign’s reveal has a very similar ornate mask and hairstyle, obscured by their hood. I doubt this is the same Fire Keeper, since it takes some suspension of disbelief and big, unfathomable stretches of the lore to connect Dark Souls to Elden Ring, but it’s fun to dig into the trailer and find these familiar figures all the same.

It’s clear that Nightreign was made quic🧜kly and cheaply, especially💯 since it was developed in conjunction with the game-sized expansion Shadow of the Erdtree, and so reusing assets like this makes complete sense.

We saw traces of this already in the base Elden Ring, with several reused animations, the old chest model, and even enemies like the giant rats and basilisk putting in an appearance. Hell, the Asylum Demon from Dark Souls is just the Vanguard from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Demon’s Souls, which later became Elden R𝕴ing’s own Erdtree Avatar. This is just keeping wit🎃h tradition.