Elden Ring Nightreign Director Explains Why Dark Souls Bosses Are in the Game

Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki has opened up about why the forthcoming spin-off will feature bosses that were previously seen in the Dark Souls series. When Nightreign was first unveiled roughly two months ago at The Game Awards, longtime Souls fans were quick to notice that the Nameless King from Dark Souls 3 briefly appeared in the trailer. Naturally, this quickly brought about questions related to the ties between Elden Ring and Dark Souls, which were previously thought to be completely separate universes. Now, Ishizaki has explained why the Nameless King and other bosses from the Dark Souls franchise are coming to Elden Ring Nightreign, and it seems to have far less to do with anything associated with lore.

Speaking to GameSpot, Ishizaki said that the main reason Elden Ring Nightreign is bringing back some popular FromSoftware bosses from the past is to serve its gameplay. Given that the format of Nightreign is different from other FromSoft action games, the title needed to have far more bosses than a normal Souls game would. Instead of designing all of these bosses from the ground up, which would take quite a long time, Ishizaki and those working on Nightreign decided to incorporate bosses from older games when it seemed fit to do so. This has resulted in Nightreign having a mix of wholly new bosses and ones that older fans have likely battled previously.

“The primary reason for these existing bosses in Nightreign is from a gameplay perspective,” Ishizaki explained. “Of course, with this new structure and with this new style of game, we needed a lot of different bosses. We needed a lot to add to this mix, so we wanted to leverage what we deemed appropriate from our previous titles.”

“We obviously understand that our players have a lot of affection for these characters and they have a lot of fond memories of battling them in these games, so we didn’t want to encroach too much on that lore aspect,” he continued. “We wanted them to make sense within the atmosphere and vibe of Elden Ring Nightreign. But mainly from a gameplay perspective, we wanted to incorporate these bosses, make adjustments to them to suit the gameplay of Nightreign and to make sure they felt at home. But it was more so from a numbers perspective. And just to add to that quickly, also from a personal standpoint, I thought it’d be kind of fun. So that’s one simple reason why we included some of these old bosses.”

Related: Elden Ring Nightreign Preview: Everything a Spin-Off Should Be, and More

While this answer might not be the one that fans wanted when it comes to expanding the mythos of Elden Ring and Dark Souls, it’s one that is understandable for FromSoftware’s design approach to Nightreign. For now, it’s not known how many bosses from Dark Souls (or other FromSoft properties) might end up appearing in Elden Ring Nightreign, but this process of discovering the each returning boss will be part of the fun when the game drops.

As of today, Elden Ring Nightreign finally has a release date and will be arriving on May 30, 2025. When it does launch, Nightreign will be available for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.