As excited as I am for Elden Ring Nightreign, I’m even more thrilled about what it could bring to a possible changes in Elden Ring Nightreign that make it unique from the original title.

In the new entry, players will have to explore procedurally generated versions of the Limgrave area in the Lands Between – though, in Nightreign, this area is called Limveld. You will have to endure three in-game day cycles that are threatened by an enclosing circle, much like zones in a battle royale title, defeating a boss at the end of each day. This will allow you to prepare to face the final boss at the end of the three-day cycle. While you will be able to play solo, FromSoftware incentivizes you to play Elden Ring Nightreign with friends.

Elden Ring's Sequel Should Have Open-World Multiplayer

The Game Could Learn From Nightreign

While Nightreign will be centered around this unique coop experience, core soulslike games developed by FromSoftware don’t often pay too much mind to the multiplayer aspect. There is a multiplayer experience in games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, but it has never been fully implemented – coop play is often limited to specific areas and paths. With the release of Nightreign, however, I hope that an Elden Ring sequel will take that into consideration and implement an open-world multiplayer experience. The title allows players to summon allies in certain areas, often in legacy dungeons or boss fights.

This could be improved by allowing players to explore the entirety of the open world with allies. The idea isn’t to change the formula that has made the 2022 title so successful, but expand upon it, giving players more options and a way to enjoy it entirely with their friends, should they desire to do so. One of FromSoftware’s long-lasting flaws is how limited its multiplayer experience is, but with Nightreign focusing on that alone, it could be a lesson on how to implement that on a wider scale with an Elden Ring sequel or any other core souls games.

A Fully-Fledged Multiplayer Soulslike Experience In Elden Ring 2 Could Be Revolutionary

Exploring With Friends Would Be Memorable

The implementation of a fully-fledged multiplayer experience in an Elden Ring 2, for example, could be revolutionary. While the coop mechanics have improved drastically over the years, culminating in the fairly well-developed coop of Elden Ring, players are still unable to explore the open world with friends. Being able to do so in a sequel with the same gameplay and map design could make for a fun experience. The coop experience is often limited to some of the tougher areas, where progression is straightforward and battles are difficult. In that sense, coop in Elden Ring helps a lot.

However, the fact is that some open-world areas are just as tough, if not tougher, than legacy dungeons and boss fights. I, for instance, have a really hard time beating Furnace Golems in Shadow of the Erdtree’s open-world sequences, finding them to be much tougher than Bayle the Dread or even Messmer the Impaler. If I had coop available more freely throughout the open world, my friends and I could venture through the whole game, side by side, aiding each other, rather than having to schedule our arrival at a specific area, simultaneously, to only then play together.

With Nightreign, FromSoftware is having a marvelous way of testing its coop limitations and improving them. These teachings could then be applied to the Elden Ring sequel, for example. Certainly, I understand that the structure of progression between these two titles is drastically different, especially when considering that the souls game’s map often changes with events that occur during the story. Even so, there are great ways of allowing players to progress on their adventure together and share the same narrative experience. FromSoftware could, for example, impose some distance limitations between players, so that they move together.

This type of lesson from the coop in Elden Ring Nightreign could impede players in the traditional souls format to stray too far away from each other in a game with an open-world map and, subsequently, ensure that one player doesn’t unlock something for the other that isn’t experiencing it at the same time, for example. Facing the first Tree Sentinel along with a friend likely wouldn’t change the outcome of the battle, but the shared experience would be memorable. The enhanced multiplayer in an Elden Ring 2 could make it more enjoyable for some players, without sacrificing its essence.

Improved Multiplayer In An Elden Ring Sequel Wouldn't Diminish The Game's Challenges

The Solo Experience Wouldn’t Be Affected

This is because the structure of the game wouldn’t have to be modified. The game could still retain its high level of challenge, for which it is known. Players who die in a fight could still have to wait to respawn, for instance. Furthermore, enemies’ health and stats could continue to scale based on the number of players in the multiplayer party, much like they do in boss fights in the current souls games. This would make the Elden Ring 2 be on the same level as the original title, though allowing players to venture through it together.

The idea that souls games have to be experienced alone can also be true for those who prefer it that way. While the multiplayer experience could be enhanced, the game would still continue to allow solo progression, as most souls titles have always allowed. Those who prefer to carefully explore the open-world map on their own, facing enemies on their own pace and steadily learning attack patterns to move forward, would still be able to. Much like how Elden Ring is nowadays, they are free to not engage with the multiplayer experience whatsoever.

I believe that Nightreign could be a great title to provide this souls-aligned multiplayer experience to players, though its gameplay loop is very different from what traditional souls offer. Even so, there are great lessons to be learned from Nightreign, such as how far FromSoftware can go when it comes to server capabilities for multiplayer, as well as solutions to make a fully-fledged open-world multiplayer experience viable in a future Elden Ring sequel, for example.