Elden Ring Director Hidetaka Miyazaki is familiar with the game’s Seamless Co-op mod and may have even learned a thing or two from it.
It’s Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree season and with the new DLC set to launch in less than a week, players are making their preparations. After a shock announcement that only a third of players had met the in-game requirements to access the expansion, more seasoned Tarnished set to work helping others with the required bosses.
Of course, if you’re looking for a bit of extra help yourself, asking an altruistic friend for a hand using Elden Ring’s co-op play isn’t a bad idea. Granted, it can be a little unwieldy — and even FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki seems to understand that.
Players on PC have access to an incredibly popular mod for Elden RIng called ‘Seamless Co-op’ that does make multiplayer with friends a little easier. In an interview with PC Gamer, Miyazaki revealed that FromSoftware was aware of the mod and actually saw some merit in the changes it made to the game.
Elden Ring’s base co-op experience is a little more forgiving than previous Souls titles but it does come with some limitations that could be frustrating to players that aren’t familiar with FromSoftware’s unique multiplayer style. The use of consumable items, restricting access to certain areas, and the loss of your faithful steed Torrent all come to mind.
Elden Ring’s Seamless Co-op mod does away with a lot of these frustrations by allowing up to five players to run through the entire game together if they choose to. A death won’t break your connection, map progress and Sites of Grace are shared, and everyone has access to Torrent. You might think such a drastic alteration to the Elden Ring experience might rub its creator the wrong way, but Miyazaki understands the demand for such features.
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“It’s definitely not something we actively oppose or want to downplay, wanting to go through the whole game together,” Miyazaki qualified. “In terms of where we were with Elden Ring, it was simply a case of wanting that more loose, casual style—drop in, defeat a boss, drop out. It doesn’t put any technical restrictions on the player, it just sort of lets them complete this focus and then move on, so to speak.”
This drop-in, drop-out style is a staple of previous Soulsborne titles, but the games have been trending towards removing more of the tedium with every new release. Miyazaki even clarified that the changes from Elden Ring’s Seamless Co-op mod could influence how the developer tackles co-op in the future.
“That’s not to say we won’t consider other ways like you and your friend played, from beginning to end, total co-op—that’s not to say we won’t consider ideas like that with our future games,” he allowed.
It’s certainly not a guarantee but the popularity of the Seamless Co-op mod should send a pretty strong message. It currently has over 3.6 million downloads, which speaks to a desire for this sort of experience.
Maybe if we ever get that elusive Elden Ring sequel, we’ll see something closer to this style of multiplayer.
