A new trailer for Elden Ring Nightreign has been released and it's, uh, an interesting one. Titled the "Bring Me To Life" trailer, it's packed full of gameplay that's cut to go alongside Evanescence's legendary song of the same name, very much like an AMV.
"Summon one another as spirits, cross the gaps between worlds, and engage in jolly cooperation." The immortal words of Solaire of Astora have echoed across FromSoftware's Souls series and beyond. It's a rallying cry to band together during adversity; a reminder that, no matter how impossible a challenge, the wider community is just a summon sign away. Until Elden Ring Nightreign, its multiplayer elements have historically amounted to transient encounters with strangers that either help or harm.
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Elden Ring Nightreign is weird. But not in a bad way. FromSoftware has taken Elden Ring as a foundation and joyfully experimented with all its individual components to create something new. Something weird. Something great. The result is a small but punchy experience, rogue-like in nature and rough around the edges. It's also, at least to me, a perfect send off for Elden Ring and The Lands Between.
Elden Ring had a starting class named the Wretch that gets a club and some ratty underwear filled with dreams and nothing else, and there's something special about the first few hours in Limgrave playing them, scavenging your first pieces of mismatched armour and build-defining treasures. The first time you hit a site of grace, that initial stat boost feels like a deific power surge. Insomuch as Elden Ring's most memorable stories run tangential and emergent to its static lore, this early fraught scramble is the player's self-woven tale at its most captivating. Soon enough, though, the feeling is gone. You're as powerful as god, desiring nothing but more bulbous Albinauric skulls to toss on the pile.
Elden Ring: Nightreign feels unique among FromSoft's modern catalogue for its flippant attitude toward a convincing sense of place, and so regrettably sacrifices much of its studio's identity as committed worldbuilders, even while amplifying some of their more peculiar and interesting beats. It's tempting, then, to ask why it exists in the first place. On a generous day, I'd say that Nightreign exists to recreate - over and over - that same, wretchedly gratifying early-game feeling. Where every scrap of progress feels like a milestone, dull smithing stones shimmer like silver, and each incremental bonk stat increase is a hero's journey in miniature.