From Software Talks About Attacking Friends For Their Own Good And Other New Elden Ring Nightreign Ideas

Elden Ring Nightreign is the first multiplayer-focused game From Software has created and the first game directed by Junya Ishizaki, who was previously battle designer on Elden Ring. At a glance, it looks like Elden Ring repurposed for a quick-turnaround spinoff, but under the hood there's a lot more going on than you might think. We recently got a few hours of hands-on time with Elden Ring Nightreign, which releases in May, and came away keen to play more.

Following the hands-on session, we got to talk to Ishizaki about the game and some of the interesting design decisions implemented to make sure that it still looks, feels, and plays like a From Software title.

GameSpot: The first thing that stuck out to me was the style of play is very different from what I expected. I always approach From Software titles with a methodical and slow style. When I started playing this game, everything felt like it was in fast-forward so it felt very unnatural for a little while. Is that [impact on longtime fans] something that you thought about when designing the game?

Junya Ishizaki: One of the initial game concepts for Nightreign stemmed from creating a new sense of battle. I was a battle designer on Elden Ring and previous From titles; I wanted to take that in a new direction and try something new and fresh with the battle. But I wanted to do something new and expand on that. So, taking the battle systems of Elden Ring and expanding on those and changing the tempo was something we put great importance on when creating Nightreign.

What has it been like to have your scope expanded beyond the battle [elements of a game]? Now you are custodian of an entire gameplay experience.

Of course coming from a battle designer to a director of a game brings with it a lot more freedom. I have to make a lot more decisions. I have to look at a lot more of what's going on in other areas of the game. But this new freedom and this new scope is very liberating and very fun, but also quite challenging. Obviously there are many, many staff involved and a lot of people with different opinions that you have to take into account. But that aspect is especially interesting and it helped me to understand this new difficulty in making games. But it's not just about designing the battle, even on Elden Ring, while I was assisting with that. It was intended to make the game more interesting as a whole, so being able to translate that into a directorial role has been really fulfilling and really interesting.

I was trying to pay attention to how core principles or design decisions that are unique to From Software are manifesting in this game. One of the important ones is a sense of self-growth, where you learn and overcome challenges. From your perspective, where in Nightreign's gameplay loop is that found? And how do you account for implementing that when there are randomized elements?

First of all, thank you for your comments about our games. It sounds like you are quite familiar with them and you understand them to quite a deep degree. And as you say, this kind of self-growth of the player that we sort of put a lot of trust in them to learn and to overcome these challenges. That is a crucial aspect of Nightreign, as well.

We would say one way in which it differs from previous titles and Elden Ring is the player planning aspect. So in something like Elden Ring, it's a lot more of a long play. You have an extended experience and extended journey which culminates eventually in a boss battle. But for Nightreign, it's something that is a little bit more on the fly--it's a little bit more loose and it's a little bit more ad-lib. Players have to make these decisions and change their build and, maybe even their play style, on the fly while they're going through this gameplay loop. So we feel like this will provide a new way for the player to learn and to grow during their adventure with Nightreign.

Was the battle royale format always the framework that you wanted to work within or was there experimentation and you arrived at that format being the best place for your style of game and the game you wanted to make?

The battle royale-type structure was not considered to be the base of the game. It wasn't a starting point, it was something that sort of took shape, or elements of these games took shape during development of Nightreign. For instance, the Ring of Reign that closes in around the field is definitely something that players will be familiar with, but it wasn't there from the start. It's something that we implemented in order to encourage that movement and to guide the player's route through the map, and encourage their decision-making. That's something that we tried and we thought it worked well, so it stuck.

Many parts of what I experienced in Nightreign were the complete opposite of what I come to From Software games for. I'm one of those people who really loves the feeling of isolation and then I start playing this and immediately I've got two friends next to me. Was there ever a worry that this could impact the tone of the game or how From Software usually present their games in terms of atmosphere?

We definitely appreciate that players like yourself got into the tone and that sort of sense of isolation when enjoying these games. And we do want to feel like the tone is not too divided from Elden Ring in terms of atmosphere and setting. However, [for] players who might otherwise be intimidated by Elden Ring's structure and facing that deep dark world alone, we feel like this is an opportunity for them to find a more approachable experience and just jump right into the action.

And also, while it's designed as a multiplayer game and you are likely to find playing among other people, we do feel like this is a game that you can queue up for solo. And in matchmaking, if you have matchmaking set, you can all go your different ways on the map and you can spread out and do your own thing. You don't have to babysit one another, but eventually it will culminate in this shared experience of a cooperative boss battle. While it is a multiplayer game, we want this to feel like a loose and flexible experience that retains some of that feeling of isolation and feeling of going off into the unknown on your own, too.

One of the things that I thought was interesting was the way that over the course of a run I experienced pretty much every foundational and important aspect of a role-playing game experience and also a From Software experience. There was exploration, character development, a challenge to overcome, for example. I know this is something that you've talked about before but what was the thinking behind that and how difficult was it to achieve that?

One thing about these games is that there's an awful lot of weapons and equipment and player actions to choose from. And when making Nightreign, we wanted to figure out a new way in which players could have access to these and enjoy these in a different way. Of course, each player has their own preference and maybe they go into the game with a prerequisite of what sort of character they're going to build and what kind of weapon they want to use, so obviously they will have a lot of things that they're unfamiliar with and that they don't necessarily like using or don't necessarily go in with an intent to use. But we wanted players to feel more comfortable and like they were able to approach the things they don't know and aren't familiar with a lot easier in Nightreign. We wanted to keep this large selection of weapons and abilities very open and available to use, and free for players to experiment with and mix and match with. We wanted this to be one of the driving factors of Nightreign's gameplay.

Of course, just because of the wealth of parameters in this game, you have to choose your character attributes, you have to choose your weapon, how that weapon performs, that weapon's attributes. One of the challenges involved in implementing this was [how it] creates a whole lot of moving parts. And while we wanted to streamline that in a way, if you streamline and cut back too much that starts to lose the fun and lose the element of interest and surprise. And so it was a difficult balancing act to try to get these two things to live in harmony with one another, the streamlining and this experimentation. But we feel like we've landed in a good place with the final product.

When I was picking a character, it felt like I could identify certain archetypes of characters that I'm familiar with: healer, soldier, tank, and so on. But then when I got into the game and noticed there were very few restrictions on what I could use and how I could craft that build from that point on, it was an interesting experience because then I felt a little more free to experiment. At the same time, I was a little confused about what my role should be on the team. Do you expect people to try and fulfill roles or do you expect people to just build who they want and try to find the synergy?

Yes, this is something we were conscious of during development. Of course, you have some of these character archetypes, like the guardian, who, just from their looks and from their abilities and from the outset, you understand, "Oh, this is probably closest to a tank-type character." Players want to dive in with that mindset and this was, of course, intentional. But we didn't want players to feel restricted by that archetype or by that role. We wanted to keep the essence of these games that allow you to be loose and change up your play style, change up your equipment on the fly, and change as you go through. We wanted to really emphasize that with Nightreign, so we didn't want to restrict that too much. So while players can approach this from a role-playing or a team role aspect, we didn't want to restrict them too much in that sense. We wanted to keep it quite flexible. This was very intentional.

How did you come up with the abilities for the Nightfarers? Some of them are really interesting. Like Duchess, for example, being able to repeat damage. The Recluse has a really cool ability where you siphoning magic from around you and building a spell. Where did that idea come from? And if it's just, "my brain," then silly question on my part.

Yeah. Essentially these ideas came from myself and the team. We tried our best to think up some original and unique abilities for each character. A lot of us, myself included, play a lot of games. We love gaming, we love doing battle with these enemies in different ways [in] different titles. And so when we designed these characters and these abilities our main focus was, "Well, what's fun about using them? Why do we enjoy the feeling of using these abilities?" With the Recluse, they're a magic-oriented character. So what's fun about using magic? It's using your intelligence. It's using your brain, and figuring out the enemy's weak point, and figuring out how to use your magic effectively. So a lot of the characters were designed, and the abilities were designed with this at the forefront; just thinking what's fun about being this role and how we can effectively translate that into game feel.

The mechanic of having passive buffs that apply regardless of whether you have the item actively in use is also interesting. I have a one-track mind, so if I know I like great swords, anything that doesn't look like a great sword is getting filtered out of my brain, usually. But with this system, I was forced to pay attention to everything. And, even if I had no intention of using it, I'd still grab things because there was a buff I wanted. What was the thinking behind that?

The passives that you speak of tie back to the aspect of balancing the game between the overwhelming amount of parameters and wanting to have a fun feeling of experimentation and changing on the fly. The passives were something that offered that variety and that ability to experiment. It's something that we landed on quite early in development [and] we wanted to keep that going forward as a solution to that balance problem.

Also, from a balancing perspective in terms of the meta gameplay, we want players to feel like there was something there that they could tap into, get really crazy combinations, and figure out how they could synergize their build with these passives and their equipment and their abilities. This was just another element that allowed us to really imagine the player possibilities.

Attacking your teammates also heals them when they're downed. I had this moment where I was trying a katana but I had a halberd in my back pocket specifically just to revive my teammate because it has a good sweeping attack and, if I needed to, I could hit them from a distance while also hitting the enemy, which was really cool. How did you come up with the idea of attacking your friends to heal them?

When designing the revival with this being a multiplayer game and having allies close by in mind, we did consider several traditional methods such as approaching your downed ally and holding a revive button--things like this. But we felt like a lot of these didn't quite maintain that sense of tension and that sense of focus in battle that we wanted to keep; that flow of battle in Nightreign. So when considering this, again, from a character perspective and what feels good, one of the more obvious conclusions we landed on was, well, we have a wide variety of attacks and abilities, why don't we try to leverage those? And this is just something that we tried throughout the course of development and it felt like it was working well. People responded well to it, and so we started to build on that.

We've seen things from other From Software titles appear in Nightreign, most notably the Centipede Demon and what looks like the Nameless King and such stuff like that. Is there a concrete explanation for why this is happening and is it part of the story or is it just one of those things where it's for gameplay reasons or it's a good use of assets that already exist?

The primary reason for these existing bosses in Nightreign is from a gameplay perspective. 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.

We obviously understand that our players have a lot of affection for these characters and they have a lot of fond memories of battling them in these games, so we didn't want to encroach too much on that lore aspect. We wanted them to make sense within the atmosphere and vibe of Elden Ring Nightreign.

But mainly from a gameplay perspective, we wanted to incorporate these bosses, make adjustments to them to suit the gameplay of Nightreign and to make sure they felt at home. But it was more so from a numbers perspective. And just to add to that quickly, also from a personal standpoint, I thought it'd be kind of fun. So that's one simple reason why we included some of these old bosses.

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