The director of Elden Ring Nightreign has revealed that the world of Elden Ring will collide with Dark Souls in the upcoming spin-off game.
Some Souls fans have long suspected that while Elden Ring and the Dark Souls games are set in different universes, they do share a multiverse, potentially alongside FromSoftware’s other games.
This has mostly been shot down in the past due to different games belonging to various publishers but with the reveal of Elden Ring Nightreign, it has been confirmed that characters from Dark Souls will finally invade the Lands Between.
The game’s trailer, revealed at the Game Awards (2024), showed the legendary Dark Souls 3 boss, The Nameless King, battling Tarnished in Elden Ring Nightreign, revealing the crossover. But this moment finally confirmed the long-held fan theory that FromSoftware’s Souls games are part of an interconnected multiverse.
Parallel world
While some feel like the inclusion of Dark Souls 3 bosses is simply FromSoft reusing assets from older games – something they’ve done before; we now know that this is not the case. At least not entirely. Officially, this is indeed the Dark Souls and Elden Ring crossover many fans have hoped for and not just a re-skin of older bosses.
In an interview with Famitsu, Elden Ring Nightreign’s director, Junya Ishizaki, revealed that Elden Ring Nightreign is set in a parallel world to the original Elden Ring and that the Shattering War caused a fracture in reality that spun off into multiple universes.
In this one, characters from Dark Souls were pulled through time and space and found themselves in the Lands Between, a world not too different from their own.
Speaking about the crossover, Ishizaki said, “It is a parallel world. The common point is that there was once a Shattering War in the Land Between, and words and settings from Elden Ring appear, but other than that, it is a different story.”
He continued, “Enemies from the Dark Souls series will appear, but only a little. In terms of the setting, they are drawn from another world due to the influence of the King of Night, the original villain. In Elden Ring Nightreign, we value the sense of chaos that various things attack at night.”
“In that sense, I thought it would be interesting to have enemies from another world appear, so I got permission from Miyazaki and Yui Tanimura, the director of Dark Souls 2, and decided to have them appear.”
Multiverse of mayhem
Technically, as Nightreign is set in a different world to the Elden Ring and Dark Souls we know, it can reuse the characters without treading on the already-established lore of either franchise.
Both have experimented with time travel shenanigans in the past, so it’s not a huge stretch to create a universe where characters from both games can co-exist. Dark Souls 3 saw the end of time for that world, with eons of history merging together during its Ringed City DLC.
This saw multiple characters, separated by thousands of years, thrown into one place before the Ashen One, the playable character, made the decision to either doom, save, or alter reality, with the ultimate fate of the world remaining ambiguous.
It was implied that the Ashen One had the ability to reshape the world in some way now that they were masters of “The Flame” – the dominant force in the world that governed most of reality.
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The Elden Ring plays a similar role in that game, with the Shattering War alluding to that item becoming broken. The demigods of the Lands Between go to war with each other over the shards of the Elden Ring, knowing that whoever has the most has the most control over reality.
These two time and space-bending events create the ideal circumstances for a crossover between the two games, so it will be fun to see if FromSoftware decides to link them in Nightreign. And if the new Night Lord villain has any connection to previous characters from either Elden Ring or Dark Souls.
Of course, the most cynical among us will still interpret the crossover as just an excuse for FromSoftware to re-use assets from Dark Souls to bolster Nightreign’s gallery of bosses. And from a gameplay point of view, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
However, the trailer also shows lots of new enemies, proving that Nightreign is much more than a cash-in. And why shouldn’t FromSoftware use Elden Ring Nightreign as a playground where characters from across their games can co-exist? Especially when many of us already suspected they were connected.
A theory confirmed
In truth, FromSoftware has been teasing connections between the Souls games for years. Dark Souls itself started out life as a sequel to Demon’s Souls until complications between publishers necessitated it become its own franchise.
With Elden Ring and Dark Souls both being Bandai Namco properties developed by FromSoftware, these were always the two games that had the most in common, and without any ownership rights proving to be a barrier, the most chance of crossing over.
Like Dark Souls, Elden Ring’s Tarnished suffers from an undead curse, both worlds’ pantheons went to war against Ancient Dragons, and characters like Patches show up in each. Various themes are also often repeated, with some references being far too similar to be a coincidence.
These connections have often been explained away as simple nods to what’s come before, a little fan service for long-time players. This was also the official line. But with Elden Ring Nightreign, we suspect they’re about to be much more than that – and may always have been.
A shared Souls multiverse has always been a dream for many fans, and even if it was never official and only existed in Hidetaka Miyazaki’s head, many of us subscribed to the theory and saw the breadcrumbs he was putting down.
The fact that one is about to become a reality is the ultimate validation for those of us who have long been seen as the tin foil hatters of the Soulsborne community. It’s going to be fascinating to see how they build this multiverse, even if it’s only in Elden Ring Nightreign.
Of course, a Sony buyout of FromSoftware could change everything, but with Nightreign confirmed, there’s lots to be excited about.
