While Elden Ring: Nightreign is certainly a cause for excitement for fans of developer FromSoftware’s work, the director Junya Ishizaki has spoken about how the developers are also excited about the May 30th launch. In an interview with GamesRadar, Ishizaki said that he felt “very excited, a little nervous going into this final week.” However, he also said that he is “confident,” and that he is “still finding it very fun to this day.”
Despite the excitement, however, Ishizaki has said that the studio is still hard at work on the game. While the main work behind the title may be done for now, the Elden Ring: Nightreign team is still working on making smaller tweaks to because, according to Ishizaki, the current workload “is all about the game balance at this point.”
“We really try to tweak things until the last minute,” Ishizaki said. “We’re busy fine-tuning, getting the most out of any single session. We want players to feel happy and comfortable in each session, so we’re really trying to get that player comfort and that play feel just really fine-tuned until the very end.”
This emphasis on ensuring good game balance likely comes from the fact that Elden Ring: Nightreign isn’t designed as a solo game like its predecessor and namesake was. Rather, it’s a multiplayer title for groups of up to three players who will get to take on various challenges from throughout FromSoftware’s different works. The multiplayer aspect likely adds more pressure on the studio to ensure that players don’t get too overpowered too quickly, but that they also don’t feel like the game design ensures their weakness.
Speaking of multiplayer balance, Ishizaki spoke last week about how the studio got so swept up in its decision to make it a 3-player co-op game that it accidentally ended up ignoring players who would prefer to play in groups of two without having a random other player join in through matchmaking. He said that, while the studio is currently focused on releasing the game and making sure it plays well, it will be looking into adding a duos mode later.
“The simple answer is that this is simply something that was overlooked during development as just a two-player option, so we’re very sorry about that,” said Ishizaki when asked about the lack of an option for two-player parties. “As we said before, we set out to make this a multiplayer co-op game for three players, balanced for three players, so that was the main focus and it’s at the core of Nightreign.”
“Of course, I myself as a player understand that and often want times where I’m just playing myself, so this is something that we considered from the start. And so we did put a lot of effort into creating this experience that was playable for solo players in as much as the rules and new systems allowed.”
Elden Ring: Nightreign is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. For more details leading up to its release, check out the recent trailer.
