Longtime FromSoftware dataminer Zullie the Witch has come out with a new video showing off the close-up details of Elden Ring's two new NPC invaders. Knight Leontiel and Noble Broken Mask were both added to the game as part of Elden Ring's Tarnished Edition DLC.

Knight Leontiel is a straight "hey, I know them" reference to Lucatiel of Mirrah from Dark Souls 2, boasting an HD remaster of her signature conquistador fit and nimble greatsword. Take off the mask, though, and Leontiel practically is Lucatiel, even down to a burn mark over her left eye that corresponds to the hollowing rot Lucatiel suffered in Dark Souls 2.

Noble Broken Mask, meanwhile, may obliquely give us a better idea of what his base game counterpart and spiritual rival, Goldmask, is supposed to look like. Goldmask's model has a face, but it seems like a generic placeholder element. Broken Mask has an austere, pinched face with striking pale gold eyes, and Zullie points out that he bears a more than passing resemblance to the typically obscured faces of Elden Ring's perfumer enemies.

Zullie provides character creation slider information for the two so you can perfectly recreate either one as your own guy⁠—most FromSoft NPCs are made using the same tools available to players. This is not the first time Zullie has done this: She has previously made videos zooming in on Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree's NPCs. All the way back in 2016, she did the same for Dark Souls 3's cast.

Even with everything coming out right now, it's kind of a great time to revisit Elden Ring thanks to the Tarnished Edition. Even if you don't shell out for the new stuff, the servers will be more populated for the next few weeks than they likely ever will be again. And if you need help finding the new Tarnished Edition gear, PCG guides writer Sean Martin has got you covered.

Elden Ring is one of the best videogames I've ever played, and now, four years from launch, is possibly the last time you'll get to experience it as an event. The Tarnished Edition DLC looks small on paper⁠—two new classes and a smattering of armor and items⁠—but it is still something new, something unexpected added to our 2022 game of the year.

What in any other context might make for a Horse Armor-style embarrassment is one of the most exciting releases of 2026 for me, and I'm only, like, a quarter joking. Elden Ring is the type of game that made a couple borked quests getting patched into a massive communal treasure hunt. New weapons, armor, and classes at this late date feels like a profound gift, even if I'm paying for the privilege.

But, in addition to the material additions coming to Elden Ring, the Tarnished Edition DLC serves as an enticement to the playerbase, something to bring them back all at one time and bring life back to the Lands Between's ailing multiplayer invasions and co-operative boss battling.

I still remember how magical the first days of Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree were, the density of asynchronous messages and ease of matchmaking. The Tarnished Edition won't be able to match either of those highs, but its launch may represent the biggest spike in player activity we could ever expect to see in Elden Ring again.

If you've somehow missed the boat on this one since 2022, I envy the first experience you're about to have. Elden Ring's fantasy is somehow both mythic and anthropological, zoomed out, and deeply personal.

You're an anonymous warrior on a quest to become God's Husband (gender-agnostic). The God in question is a man and woman, separate but the same, consubstantial with, and plotting against themselves. Her pope is a giant turtle, and she is perpetuating a millennia-old conflict involving both racial animus and metaphysics. You can make her goth half- (single? step?) daughter God instead if you so choose.

It's all set in a world of literally impossible beauty, one of the best fantasy settings ever rendered in a videogame. It's dominated by the alien, iconic view of the Erdtree, an ethereal, skyscraper-sized growth that's visible from every part of the Lands Between. Elden Ring is, perhaps, one of FromSoftware's most bright and cheerful creations to date, but it's also one of the weirdest. In four years, it's lodged itself into my psyche like almost no game world I've ever seen.

But enough about all that nerd stuff: FromSoft had already ruined all other 3D action games for me by the time Elden Ring came out, and while it lacks the pure focus of Sekiro's perfect block symphony, I think it matches that more straightforward action game as a fantasy combat experience. Elden Ring is one of the broadest, deepest, and most exquisitely designed action-RPGs that's ever been made.

It even contains Sekiro in a limited sense: One of the character build options added in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is a perfect block mechanic lifted straight out of the ninja sim. Like no other game I've played, Elden Ring balances mechanically pure "it's your fault if you die" combat with a myriad of class fantasies and character build options. Knights, barbarians, spellcasters, rogues, priests, samurai, nude men with earthenware hats, you can inhabit any of these roles while engaging in some of the tightest, richest, and most challenging action combat put to silicon.

Which, funnily enough, feeds back into the relatively small additions of the Tarnished Edition DLC: When the mechanics in play are this good, with so much already up in the air, even a minute adjustment feels momentous. FromSoft has not released a full-fledged, solo/async experience like Elden Ring, since Elden Ring, and until it shows off what it's working on next, the Tarnished Edition release will be the closest thing we have to playing a new FromSoft joint at launch.

I have a love/hate/hate relationship with Elden Ring Nightreign, which also no longer seems to be getting updates. In addition to being a Switch 2 exclusive, FromSoft's upcoming Duskbloods looks to have more in common with Nightreign than Bloodborne, firmly in the realm of "a multiplayer thing." PCG contributor Tyler Colp's sense of FOMO withered on actually playing the game, and mine is rapidly following suit. With no FromSoft fix on the horizon to truly tickle my fancy, I can only turn, once again, to the Lands Between.

Hand Elden Ring players a handful of new armor sets and weapons and they'll spend the next week or more experimenting and crunching the numbers to find out how they stack up against everything else in the legendary action RPG.

That is all that's been happening in the last few days since FromSoftware dropped the Tarnished Edition, a $5 DLC pack with new starting classes, armor sets, and horse armor.

It took a little while for people to figure out where to find everything added in the DLC. FromSoft did what FromSoft does and snuck them into places you wouldn't expect. But now that everyone feels like they've found it all, including some minor additions that weren't announced, the testing has begun.

By far the most popular new weapon is a greatsword you can steal from a new NPC who can show up for a duel. Leontiel's Greatsword is a direct reference to a character from Dark Souls 2 and comes with a powerful new move that mimics real life bullfighters, or matadors. When you use it, your character holds out a red cloth before stepping around your target and thrusting the sword into their back. It's easily one of the slickest animations in the game and, unsurprisingly, has players eager to see how it fairs against bosses.

Reddit user SaxSlaveGael put it to work on the one bull-like boss in the game, titling their post, "There's Only One Boss that truly deserves the Matador Treatment". When used on old Gaius in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, the sword's Muleta skill works just like the real taunt that matadors do with the instrument it's named after. Gaius' boar was not ready for the feint and follow-up backstab. Is it the most efficient way to defeat the boss? Nope. Is it the sickest way to defeat the boss? Absolutely.

Another user, Ilamahradeys, took the sword for a spin against the Full-Grown Fallingstar Beast at the center of a crater in Mt. Gelmir. Their character must've been pretty over-leveled because one jab with the sword knocked off almost the entire health bar, instantly staggering the rock-like creature. I won't lie: Watching a boss as resilient and annoying as the Fallingstar Beast get completely dunked on, with style, no less, was one of the most satisfying things I've seen all week.

You'd think that in a game as challenging as Elden Ring players would only ever use armor for practical reasons. But, as is tradition with these games, "fashion souls" is more important to some people than pure defense. And those players are in love with the shiny new chestpiece from the Idus starting class. It's a svelte, polished chestplate that blends with a lot of other sets in the game. One player has it on to cosplay Casca from Berserk, while another is too distracted by the buff it seems to give to your greatest asset.

Elden Ring also attracts the tryhards who need to know how viable all the new stuff is for their 90th playthrough. There's a Reddit user who blasted through the game as the new heavy armor class. They say it's a particularly sturdy class that takes some time to fully come into its own. It's boosted vigor (health) and strength stats—two things melee-focused characters tend to stack—help it shine in the mid-to-late game when the nastiest bosses start showing up.

All of this has me excited to start up a new Elden Ring playthrough myself. The Tarnished Edition isn't a game-changing DLC by any means, but it has just enough new toys to play with to make me want to get in there and mess around. We don't always get a neat little package like this for only $5 and it's probably just enough to keep me busy until the flood of September games begins.

The new Torrent skins in Elden Ring's Tarnished Edition are tricky to find for bonuses that are meant to appeal to new players. It is FromSoftware we're talking about, though, so I can't say I'm exactly surprised they're a little tucked away. There are three Spectral Steed Regalias to find for Torrent in the Lands Between, plus new armor and weapons.

Spectral Steed Regalia: Tree Sentinel location

You can grab this Torrent skin after you beat the demigod, Godrick the Grafted, in Stormveil Castle in Limgrave. After the boss is dead, open up the throne room, and head through the right-hand doorway behind the throne. Elden Ring players will likely remember that this room has always been empty, but now you'll find a chest containing the Spectral Steed Regalia: Tree Sentinel, which makes Torrent look like the aforementioned mounted boss.

After you have a Spectral Steed Regalia, you can change it at any site of grace. Simply select "change spectral steed appearance" and pick the one you want. If you already have an Elden Ring character, or aren't making a new one for Tarnished Edition, you should be able to backtrack and grab this chest even if you defeated Godrick many, many moons ago.

Spectral Steed Regalia: Carian Silver location

You can find the Carian Silver skin for Torrent in Ranni's Rise in north Liurnia of the Lakes. It's in a chest in the main downstairs room, right by the site of grace. Obviously, you'll have to defeat Loretta in Caria Manor to get here, but otherwise it's easy to grab. This skin makes Torrent look like a Carian knightly steed.

Spectral Steed Regalia: Funereal Night

The final skin is the Funereal Night, though it's basically a Night's Cavalry skin. You can find this in the Altus Plateau, specifically, to the southeast of the Hermit Merchant's Shack site of grace in the city's outer ring. Follow the road southeast until you spot the sword war memorial on the cliff edge. The skin is by a small sword just off to the left side of it.

The new Elden Ring Tarnished Edition has arrived with two new starting classes, the Idus Knight and Heavy Knight, and also new armor sets, some new weapons, and Torrent skins for your trusty steed. You can get one of the new armor sets and weapons straight off by starting the game with either Idus Knight or Heavy Knight, but otherwise here's where to get the others.

It appears that the Tarnished Edition is also bringing a lot of DLC weapons to the base game, such as Backhand Blades, the Thrusting Shield, and the Great Katana, so I've added these too.

Idus Sword and Silver Grooved Set location

This armor is worn by the new Idus Knight class and there are two ways to get it. Firstly, you can choose this class at the start of the game to get the armor. This will also get you the Idus Sword weapon.

If you don't do this, or already have a character, you can purchase the set from the Nomadic Merchant in north Liurnia of the Lakes. This is the merchant on the east side of the ravine that leads to the Ruin Strewn Precipice, north of Bellum Church, southeast from Carian Manor, and west from the Grand Lift of Dectus. You can either get here through Bellum church via the plateau above, or ride to the end of the ravine and turn right up the slope.

You can also find the Idus Sword in southern Liurnia of the Lakes. Simply travel northwest from the Liurnia Lake Shore grace and look for it on a corpse by a tree, location marked above.

Hefty Scimitar and Heavy Knight Set location

This armor is worn by the new Heavy Knight class and, like the Silver Grooved, there are two ways to get it. If you choose this class as your starting, you'll get the new armor set as well as the Hefty Scimitar weapon.

If you don't start new, or want it on a pre-existing character, you can purchase it from the Isolated Merchant at the Isolated Merchant's Shack in the west of the Weeping Peninsula, south of the Fourth Church or Marika and the Witchbane Ruins, past the walking mausoleum towards the coast.

You can also buy the Hefty Scimitar from the Nomadic Merchant in the south of East Limgrave, to the northwest of Fort Haight.

Leontiel's Greatsword and Armor Set location

Leontiel's armor set is available in Caelid after you defeat Starscourge Radahn at Caelid Castle on the southeast coast. Once the boss is done, take Torrent and ride north from the Starscourge Radahn grace towards the War-Dead Catacombs. Along the way, at the spot above, Leontiel will invade, and you'll have to defeat her, which will earn you Leontiel's armor and her greatsword. Leontiel will also help you as a summon during the Radahn fight, which is a fun addition.

Golden Order Flail and Broken Gold Mask Set location

The final set is available in Leyndell, Royal Capital, in the Altus Plateau. You get it by casting the Law of Regression spell on the statue of Radagon, which you do during Brother Corhyn's questline. You can buy the Law of Regression spell by giving the Golden Order Principia prayerbook to Miriel or Corhyn, found on the upper floor of the arena where you fight the golden shade of Godfrey, First Elden Lord.

When you perform the spell at the statue, revealing Marika, you'll be invaded by Broken Gold Mask. Defeat him to get the Broken Gold Mask headwear, Gold Tattoo arms, legs, and chest, plus the Golden Order Flail. If you've already transformed the statue, presumably Broken Gold Mask will just invade when you get to the location marked above. If not, performing the spell again might do it. It's also worth noting that this invasion won't occur if Leyndell has transformed into Leyndell, Ashen Capital.

If you can't remember how to get here, from the Erdtree Sanctuary grace (where you fight the golden shade of Godfrey), head out the door, down the stairs, and go down the lift. Follow the path down the next staircase to the bottom, where you'll find the statue just ahead of you.

Reverse-Bladed Sword (Backhand Blades)

Yup, as long as you have Tarnished Edition, you can now grab a pair of Backhand Blades without heading into the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion—they're nice and easy to get as well. You can buy these at the Twin Maiden Husks shop in the Roundtable Hold as soon as you arrive. That means they're available early on, so you can finally run a Backhand Blades build from the start of the game pretty much.

Ritual Thrusting Shield

Another DLC "weapon" to arrive in the base game with Tarnished Edition is the Ritual Thrusting Shield. This is located in Caelid colloseum, which you can enter behind the giant jar. You may remember, but to access this location, you need to go down to Siofra via the Siofra River Well in the woods in east Limgrave, travel north along the entirety of Siofra, and then use two Stonesword Keys to unlock the lift at the far end.

When you emerge, head west from the Deep Siofra Well and follow the trail, being mindful of the magic golem archers, until you reach the colloseum.

Reed Great Katana

Last but not least, we have a Great Katana type weapon from Shadow of the Erdtree called the Reed Great Katana. You can get this in Dragonbarrow, very close to where Greyoll (the gigantic white dragon who can't move) hangs out. You'll want to climb the big mound of white scarlet rot growths to the left of where Greyoll rests his head, then look for the corpse on top with the katana. The mound is almost directly to the north of Fort Faroth, too, in case you've killed Greyoll already and can't find it.

As a big Elden Ring person with an additional 600 hours in Nightreign, the FOMO of FromSoftware's next multiplayer experiment, The Duskbloods, being a Switch 2 exclusive was hitting me hard. That is, until I actually played it: I spent the majority of the closed network test held over the weekend confused about what the hell was going on, and even when I finally learned, I wasn't particularly impressed.

To be fair, the network test wasn't built to make a great first impression. It was limited to one map, six playable characters, no build customization, solo queue only, and seemed to only have a portion of its intro tutorial. I also experienced borderline unplayable input lag from the Switch 2's docked and handheld modes, which meant I was fighting the basic controls for longer than I'd like.

Assuming the final game will have all of that fixed and more, I might end up liking The Duskbloods in the end. Elden Ring Nightreign didn't click for me for close to 20 hours, and when it did, I dug it so much I spent the first half of this year playing it daily, even climbing to the highest level of its ranked mode. The Duskbloods might reveal itself to be a masterfully created vampire multiplayer game, but as it stands right now I think it's an aimless mess of intriguing systems that don't cohere into anything worth PC gamers buying a $500 (for now) console for.

What does impress me is how bizarre The Duskbloods is as a videogame in 2026. At times it felt like playing a PlayStation 2 game I brought home from Blockbuster with an offbeat multiplayer mode someone cooked up before battle royales and hero shooters codified a framework for how it's done. Tutorial popups will tell you things like, "To obtain Virtue visit Sites of Ritual to pledge yourself on the Eve of the Third Moon before the final Bestowal." That's the kind of needlessly opaque but deliciously evocative language I love to see in a FromSoft game, but it also does absolutely nothing to prepare you for what it's like to actually play it.

The simplest way I can describe The Duskbloods is by using MOBA words. It's a game about killing creeps to level up and collect Virtue points as you prepare for the final PvP team fight (or free-for-all in solos) at the end of every match. Enemy players are there to gank you or be ganked by you as you race to become the strongest combatant in the lobby. Otherwise, collecting Virtue is your entire goal from the moment you and seven other players drop into the map and the first round begins. The rest of the game's systems are there to disrupt you on your quest to farm as much Virtue as possible so you don't get kicked, or culled, from the match early.

Even though I expected the PvP aspect of The Duskbloods to be the worst part as someone who avoids it in FromSoft's other games, it's actually so meaningless for the majority of a match that I almost wish there was more reason to hunt down players, but it's huge risk with little reward. Dying to other players doesn't do anything but set you back on your Virtue farm. It's more lucrative to play it like you're speedrunning a normal Souls game with opportunities to PvP every now and then if you want.

On paper, the Nightreign player in me should eat that up. This is a game where everyone can triple jump and air dash like it's nothing. Over the course of my matches, however, I never fought anything that required more than your usual attack-and-dodge approach. Most monsters die in a few hits and the bosses ping-pong between players while everyone spams attacks into them until they die. I can't tell which ones, if any, are supposed to be fodder like in a MOBA or challenging foes that reward you for memorizing their moves. At times, the hardest fight was with my eyelids, as I farmed the same mincemeat enemies over and over again. The routine is only occasionally broken by another player engaging a boss that lets everyone join under a temporary truce to help fight it. My hope is that the final game has more of these moments that rely on having a handful of players participating.

The Duskbloods desperately needs more reasons to care about its cast of certified freaks and their unique skills that aren't purely PvP-focused. I love that I can turn it into a third-person shooter as Sniper Layla and press a button to make a gatling gun burst out of her chest, but standing still as you one-shot weak enemies gets stale real quick. Trang Lanh's invisibility skill is largely useless against monsters who all have big attacks that'll hit you anyway, which just reduces her into a weaker melee character. Even everyone's favorite walking submarine, Zork, plays like your typical heavy-armored Souls character until other players show up and you actually have a reason to rocket yourself into them (AKA "Zorking it").

Recruiting enemies as allies by yelling at them until they surrender is also great, as are the unique Kin you can have by your side. I found a shirtless man named Baritone who stood by me and sang to give me a defense buff and a small snake girl inexplicably named "Gargoyle" who healed me. You can level these weirdos up and have them tank tougher monsters for you, which ends up being pretty important as you get deeper into a match. The Kin are Elden Ring's Spirit Ash summons if they were smarter and permanent—a really fun idea that I hope future character kits can build around. Unfortunately, the Kin feel ill-equipped for the speed of PvP fights, even sometimes sabotaging you by ruining a sneaky ambush by sprinting straight into battle.

Even with its problems, I am fascinated by FromSoft's irresistible premise: a bunch of vampires from different eras and factions fighting on the eve of an apocalypse to give themselves up to a giant moon dripping with blood. I would like to know why there is a steampunk airship in the sky and why one of the bosses looks like Bloodborne's Lady Maria riding on a headless horse. There are echoes of other FromSoft games imbued into the world, but so far it's only enough for director Hidetaka Miyazaki to remind us that better games exist.

I used to be a believer that The Duskbloods would eventually make its way to the PC, but recent comments from Miyazaki seem to imply Nintendo's involvement was so pivotal to the project that I wouldn't be surprised if the exclusivity is indefinite. We've got another Bloodborne on our hands, apparently.

So with us computer-havers being denied the chance to play The Duskbloods with better framerates and no paid subscription, maybe we're not missing much. Its best ideas fall flat in a game that is mostly about farming enemies like you're on a quest in an MMO from 10 years ago. Nothing about it grabbed me and I'm worried it might end up being the first FromSoft game that I simply skip.

It's weird to say that FromSoftware, a studio previously known for its singleplayer gauntlets (and very good mech series), has made some of the decade's most solid middleweight multiplayer games. But given Elden Ring: Nightreign's success, and the fact that The Duskbloods is shaping up to be pretty solid—boo, Switch 2 exclusive, boo—it's a true statement.

You might be wondering, then, if the undisputed king of gritty singleplayer RPGs where you dodge roll sometimes has gone all live service on us. Not so, says president Hidetaka Miyazaki, the combo of Nightreign and Duskbloods is literally just a coincidence.

Speaking to IGN, Miyazaki says: "It's not necessarily some big reveal saying this is the direction we plan to go in moving forward. We still have a heavy focus on single-player content as well. This is just something that happened to work out the way it did. It's funny, because there was never really any big plan that these two games would both release next to each other."

That's not to say FromSoftware hasn't been enjoying itself, though—Miyazaki seems enthused by the opportunity to break from the formula every once in a while: "Personally, it's very fun to make a multiplayer game like this. It's not something we've done a lot and we're looking forward to seeing players' reactions and getting feedback."

But that enthusiasm doesn't override his love for what FromSoftware is provably good at: Making you throw your controller because goddamn Promised Consort Radahn's lazers keep filling up the goddamn screen and how am I supposed to dodge that, this is bullcrap. Ahem.

"If anything, it's like the more you work on something multiplayer for a long time it scratches that itch only to want to make something single-player again," Miyazaki concludes—which is great news for me, as I'm personally excited to get stuck into whatever the next Elden Ring is. Sekiro 2, maybe? A parry-loving cretin can only hope.

Ahead of The Duskbloods' network test next week, veteran Soulsborne YouTubers VaatiVidya and Oroboro have uploaded long gameplay videos and explainers for the Switch 2 exclusive PvPvE game, while IGN and Automaton have published new interviews with project lead and Soulsborne commander-in-chief, Hidetaka Miyazaki.

As a veteran Souls sicko, here are my biggest takeaways from the footage and conversations around the game, which we'll surely get on PC eventually, right?

It's structured like Nightreign

Instanced, run-based gameplay. A timer ticking down as the difficulty/stakes increase. Characters with set fantasies/abilities (maybe even equipment?). While the objectives and specifics may differ, Duskbloods' overall structure feels like an evolution of Nightreign's. Out of the gate, though, Duskbloods will have three maps⁠—one more than Nightreign even after its Deathly Forsaken Hollows DLC.

It's more PvP-focused than Nightreign, but has options for PvE-likers

Rather than hunting down your fellow players like in Tarkov or Marathon, a Duskbloods match sees you trying to complete more PvE objectives than the other players in your lobby. Objective completion raises your "Virtue" score, and the high scorers at the end of each timed round survive to the next. It looks like there are PvP map events and optional objectives, and the default final battle is a PvP slugfest between the players who made it to the end.

Vaati mentioned, though, that there's an unlockable option to make the final battle a co-op PvE boss instead, more akin to Nightreign's Nightlords. On the opposite end, there's an item to heighten the PvP focus, giving you Virtue for hunting down and killing another player in the lobby.

The Bloodborne (and Souls) of it all

It wouldn't be FromSoft if we didn't see returning motifs and designs in a new context. It's been part of the conversation from the beginning, but Duskbloods really does look like a Bloodborne sequel:

• Those hooded ogre guys sure do look like the Church Giants from Bloodborne.
• The map shown in the preview screams Yharnam, particularly the scenic view of the clock tower.
• There's a cathedral roof boss whose arena bears a striking resemblance to the Dark Souls Gargoyles or Bloodborne's Martyr Logarius.
• I spy Elden Ring/Bloodborne whirly saw weapons.
• There's a cathedral interior straight out of Upper Cathedral Ward.
• Gotta have a fight in a field of white flowers.

Shadow of the Erdtree vertical design is the future

Rather than the sprawl of Elden Ring's Limgrave/Limveld, Duskbloods' one revealed map has the breathtaking vertical density of the Land of Shadow from SotE, or Nightreign's Great Hollow. The former is, I think, the best level design we've yet seen out of FromSoftware. The latter, unfortunately, is a great zone let down by Nightreign's frantic time restrictions. We'll see soon how well this style of level design fits The Duskbloods.

What about sustain and follow-through? What about singleplayer? What about PC?

FromSoft has a poor track record of support and balance for its multiplayer. This has been less of an issue⁠—or at least, easier for me to forgive⁠—when this multiplayer is supplemented to some of the best singleplayer action-RPGs in the industry. But less so with, say, Nightreign feeling like a dead game just over a year after launch.

I once again find myself hoping, praying, crying, pissing, and shitting for the next Big Thing, Complete Package from FromSoft, be it an Elden Ring sequel, Armored Core expansion, or secret third thing. Surely there's something closer to completion than not that we can see soon?

And, of course, the Switch 2 elephant in the room: Whatever Nintendo offered to sweeten the pot, this game would find its truest home on PC. I hope we see that version soon, rather than Duskbloods imitating Bloodborne in the worst way possible. Whatever comes next, stay tuned for our coverage of Duskbloods' upcoming network test.

Seasoned FromSoftware investigator Lance McDonald has shared a recently uncovered early internal showcase of Demon's Souls, FromSoft's crucial pivot point between King's Field and Dark Souls, and the progenitor of its own subgenre.

The demonstration consists of a PowerPoint presentation deck and early gameplay trailer. It was shown at "Gameshare 4," an internal Sony event held in May, 2007, almost two years before Demon's Souls' initial release in Japan.

The real highlight is that two minute gameplay showcase, possibly the earliest look we've ever gotten of Demon's Souls in action, with key differences from the final game. First and most striking: There are a few sequences in a first-person camera mode à la King's Field, FromSoft's spiritual predecessor to Souls. It makes for a distinct minority of the footage's runtime, and seems to have been an optional mode you were meant to toggle between.

It also ties into what strikes me as an equally profound, but less immediately grabbing difference: Demon's Souls' early 3D camera was locked behind the player model, which always faced away from the camera⁠—it reminds me of the Jedi Knight games, for a frame of reference.

This would have complimented the first person mode better than the final camera, but it would have also made for a radically different overall experience. The Souls series of today is defined by a camera that can freely rotate around the player and lock onto enemies⁠—it's the bedrock of the games' positioning-based combat.

The demo takes place in an early version of Demon's Souls' tutorial area. The Vanguard Demon is shown in his same arena, practically unchanged compared to the final game⁠—indeed, his moveset and animations have survived all the way to Elden Ring with the Erdtree Avatars.

The Dragon God's arena is open-air in this version, a volcanic crater instead of the magma cavern of the final game. The trailer also features enemies not seen in Demon's Souls' release version: Bipedal snake men resembling the man-serpents of Dark Souls. FromSoft loves revisiting a motif.

There are plenty of interesting nuggets in the PowerPoint as well, read in the video by John Linneman of Digital Foundry. Here's what stood out to me:

• Some striking concept art, including the Flamelurker boss and an open, grassy area with a weird, big hole at the center⁠—the ominous valley and strange rock formations weirdly remind me of the fingerprint ruins from Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.
• FromSoft and Sony clearly felt Demon's Souls' asymmetric multiplayer was its ace in the hole (and/or potentially confusing), and spent a lot of runtime explaining it.
• They presented it as a midpoint between MMOs and pure singleplayer games, joking that it would destroy your life less than the former (complete with a reference to South Park's "Make Love, Not Warcraft").
• A real "Oh, bless their hearts" development roadmap that predicted completion in June, 2008. Demon's Souls launched in Japan in February '09.
• Repeated references to a "worldwide release," underlining the bad feelings that must have resulted over Sony only publishing Demon's Souls in Japan.

Overall, what was at the time an anodyne bit of internal corporate communication is now an invaluable piece of videogame history. Demon's Souls was a crucial transition game that could have just as easily become a fondly-remembered but little-played cult classic.

It almost didn't make it to America and Europe, and there was no guarantee that it would prove one of the most influential games on the coming decade. Now we understand how close it was to being a very different experience.

First reported by GamesRadar, former Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida is apparently just like us: He loves Bloodborne, and he doesn't get why Sony and FromSoftware haven't done anything with it since its November, 2015 expansion, The Old Hunters.

Yoshida's remarks were part of his keynote address at Japan's CEDEC Industry event. Yoshida structured the talk around impactful, memorable games he encountered over the course of his almost 40-year career with Sony⁠—this included his first hands-on experience with Demon's Souls, and Sony missing out on the chance to publish Dark Souls.

"This game has a lot of fans all over the world, and it still doesn't have a PS5 version," Yoshida said regarding Bloodborne. "PlayStation's first-party team is releasing a ton of remasters, so why don't they release this one? There's no PC release.

"I am often asked why these haven't been released, but it's a complete mystery. Maybe they'll come out in the future. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll make a special edition. Maybe they won't. As a huge fan, I hope it will come out."

There's certainly a degree of "buddy, wasn't that your job?" energy to a former Sony executive lamenting Sony's lack of action, but it makes more sense considering the timeline and Yoshida's portfolio before his 2025 retirement. He switched to being head of PlayStation Indies in 2019, just four years after Bloodborne's release and before the start of the PS5 generation.

I'm a simple man, and all I've ever wanted is Bloodborne as it was, but playable at arbitrary resolutions and framerates on PC. The notion of a remaster never appealed to me, but that doesn't even appear to be on the table anymore after Sony had its go-to remaster studio, Bluepoint, devote its resources to a God of War Multiplayer game before shutting it down. Even more mystifying has been the lack of a 60fps or 4K patch for, at this point, PS4 Pro, PS5, or PS5 Pro.

And at this point, I don't think the discless, PC-scorning, maximum customer value-chasing Sony of 2026 could produce a version of Bloodborne superior to PS4 emulation. You need a hearty rig⁠—Steam Deck is unfortunately out⁠—but Bloodborne emulation looks like it's in a shockingly strong place. I just need to set aside the time and startup energy to dump my old Blu-ray copy one of these days.

It seems like it was only yesterday we were getting leaks from the Elden Ring film set, and now you're telling me Alex Garland and co have wrapped filming? Time sure does fly when you're doing pretty much the same thing day in day out.

We know that filming is over thanks to a now deleted Instagram post shared by prop artist Sean Schofield (via IGN):

"Dear cast and crew, thank you for your incredibly hard work on Elden Ring. Your skill, dedication, and all-round professionalism were integral in bringing this unique project to life. We wish you a well-earned rest. Thank you and very best wishes, Alex, Allon, Matthew, Peter, Andrew, and Charlie."

It's no wonder that the image was promptly deleted—if the movie has already wrapped filming it means that they somehow only needed six months to capture everything as production on set began in Spring earlier this year. Now, I'm no filmmaker, but that seems like a pretty quick turnaround.

"Dream job to end all dream jobs," Schofield captions the photo. "Six solid months of blood, sweat, and tears making the coolest stuff ever, working alongside the best of the best. Can't share anything else for a very long time, but I couldn't be more proud of what we did."At least we know it went well.

Now filming has stopped it does mean, however, that the team has over a year for post-production work, since release is slated for March 3, 2028. It's pretty unsurprising that the team would need more time for special effects than for filming thanks to the, likely substantial, amount of CGI which will be needed to bring George R. R. Martin and Miyazaki's story to life.

This will likely be the last shred of information we get concerning the Elden Ring film for some time now. If you find yourself really yearning for more live action tarnished, then just search up all the set leaks which came out when production first began—there's a lot to see.

First reported by 4Gamer (with translation by Automaton), former Sony Interactive Entertainment executive Shuhei Yoshida recently spoke about Sony's decision not to publish Demon's Souls in North America, which led FromSoftware to partner with Bandai Namco on its breakout 2011 hit, Dark Souls.

Yoshida provided the keynote address at this year's CEDEC industry conference in Japan, where he spoke about some of his experiences working close to the top of Sony's games business. Sony published Demon's Souls in Japan⁠—hence its console-exclusive status to this day⁠—but declined to bring the game overseas.

According to Yoshida, Demon's Souls' initial Japanese run only consisted of 20,000 copies shipped, and it was not expected to break even on development costs. Trying the game for himself in 2008, a year before launch, Yoshida said he failed to make much progress after two hours, and described his conclusion as "what an unfriendly game." To be fair to Yoshida, this is more or less identical to my first experience with Demon's Souls as well.

But Demon's Souls went on to have strong sales and word of mouth in Japan, leading Atlus and Bandai Namco to handle its distribution in other regions. Realizing that FromSoft was onto something special, Yoshida said that Sony offered to publish its next game, Dark Souls, but it was too little, too late. FromSoft gave Sony's lack of support on Demon's Souls as a reason for declining the offer, and Bandai Namco would go on to reap the rewards, publishing the Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Armored Core series.

For his part, though, Yoshida seems to have a similar conclusion to the one I do about this situation: “I’d like to believe⁠—although it might just be wishful thinking⁠—that our not remaining involved ultimately led to a better outcome for the game industry and for gamers.”

Sony would famously get another bite at the FromSoft apple with 2015's Bloodborne, a highlight of the studio's catalogue that remains trapped not only on PlayStation, but the PS4 specifically. If Sony'd had a stronger relationship with FromSoft from the beginning, it's possible the studio would have never broken containment from PlayStation, and PC gaming would be poorer for it.

In a new message on X, "The Everything App," FromSoftware has revealed the final names and stats of the two additional classes coming in Elden Ring's $5 Tarnished Edition DLC. The Idus Knight looks sick as ever, while the Heavy Knight appears to have gotten the gentlest, most tender of nerfs since we saw their stats leak from a Tarnished Edition playtest last year.

The Heavy Knight will start at level 10, as opposed to eight in the playtest, with their two extra levels shaking out as a plus one to their Faith and Mind stats. Hardly ruinous, and I think HK will still be a new top pick for a very specific niche of builds (Hulk smash), but the change stands out to me all the same.

Due to Elden Ring's one stat point per level system and exponentially increasing cost to level up, it's beneficial for a class to start as low level as possible, avoiding any points lost to "junk" stats not used by your build. Buildcrafters got all in a lather about HK's aggressively min-maxed stats, and now those stats have been ever so slightly less min-maxed.

It's an almost imperceptible change for your average player, but may factor into speed or challenge runs and the like. Otherwise? Heavy Knight = big guy + big sword (of the "curved great" variety) + big armor, and both of those bits of gear are new to the Tarnished Edition.

The Knight of Idus has always been more exciting to me: An agile swordsman class to give the base game Samurai some competition. They start with a scandalously swagged out new armor set, a shield of indeterminate extraction, and the previously Shadow of the Erdtree-exclusive Milady light greatsword, an extremely cool weapon that used to take hours of gameplay to acquire.

Stat-wise, Idus strikes me as a slight upgrade to the Samurai (to the same degree that the Heavy Knight was slightly nerfed): More Faith and Strength, less Arcane, Vigor, and Int, but also a lower starting level of seven.

They also introduce the nation of Idus, which has never before been mentioned in Elden Ring, and will likely be the exclusive domain of the item descriptions for the knight's armor pieces⁠. Never change, FromSoftware. The DLC will be made available on PC the same day as the Tarnished Edition's Switch 2 release: August 28.

Knight of Idus stats

• Level: 7
• Vigor: 10
• Mind: 12
• Endurance: 11
• Strength: 13
• Dexterity: 15
• Intelligence: 8
• Faith: 11
• Arcane: 6

Heavy Knight Stats

• Level: 10
• Vigor: 14
• Mind: 8
• Endurance: 17
• Strength: 15
• Dexterity: 11
• Intelligence: 7
• Faith: 8
• Arcane: 9

FromSoftware president and game director Hidetaka Miyazaki is one of the most revered names in today's games industry. Even figures like legendary former Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada hold him in high esteem: Recently asked on X about his opinion of Miyazaki, Harada said the Dark Souls creator is a "rather unique, yet extremely serious game developer."

But while he called Miyazaki's career "remarkable," Harada said it's one that isn't fully appreciated by those touting FromSoft's achievements, because more attention is paid to the breakout sales successes of the Souls games than the gradual growth of the developers that made it possible.

What makes Miyazaki's career "so unique," Harada said, is that the FromSoft director was a relative latecomer to game development. After working as an Oracle account manager, Miyazaki made an abrupt decision to pursue a game dev career at age 29 after becoming enraptured with Ico on a friend's suggestion. Given his lack of industry experience, few companies were willing to consider his application—but FromSoft did.

"It's remarkable that someone who wasn't even a game developer during the dawn of the polygon era eventually became one of Japan's most representative game creators," Harada said. "In other words, compared to the rest of us from the same generation—including myself—his career path is exceptionally unusual. Most notably, unlike many of us, he was not working at one of the major development studios that held a significant technological advantage during the early polygon era."

First working as a designer on Armored Core: Last Raven, Miyazaki would later shift into a director role on Armored Core 4 and For Answer—and eventually, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. While Dark Souls' ascendance as a global phenomenon might have seemed like it emerged out of nowhere, Harada said his tenure as Bandai Namco producer and marketing general manager—a tenure that overlapped with the Souls series and Elden Ring development—allowed him to appreciate how FromSoft had honed its craft as a studio.

"From that perspective, I can say that Dark Souls didn't suddenly become a massive success overnight," Harada said. "It was the result of everything Miyazaki and his team had built up through their previous titles."

According to Harada, the acclaim that FromSoft enjoys feels like "almost complete reversals in attitude" compared to "the days when [Miyazaki] and his team were struggling the most." It was a contributing factor to his own exhaustion with people who he says can only judge a game's merits "by saying things like, 'That title cost X billion yen to make and sold Y million copies.'"

"There were so many people who couldn't appreciate the journey or the growth of the developers themselves," Harada said, expressing surprise that "even if people couldn't properly evaluate that journey, nobody seemed interested in trying to understand the process of how those developers gradually reached where they are today."

He made sure to clarify that he wasn't talking about fans, indicating that there may have been some on the business side at Bandai Namco who didn't have much patience for game devs' long-term professional development. (Given today's wide-ranging Xbox layoffs, that's evidently an international issue.)

As for Miyazaki himself, Harada says the FromSoft director seems to have a pervasive case of impostor syndrome. According to Harada, Miyazaki's discomfort with appearing in video interviews is due, in part, to a feeling that his own understanding of game development "is still shallow" and that he's not in a position to speak about the discipline authoritatively—a notion that the Tekken boss thinks is absurd.

"It's common for well-known developers to say, 'I still have a long way to go,'" Harada said, "But whenever someone like him says that, my reaction is always, 'Come on, if you say you're still not there yet, then the rest of us won't feel qualified to talk about games at all.'"

You remember Elden Ring, right? Pretty good game, pretty successful, won a few awards? Well, forget about all that: A Reuters report says a substantial number of shareholders in Kadokawa Corporation, the parent company of Elden Ring developer FromSoftware, want to give CEO Takeshi Natsuno the boot because, simply put, he's blowing it with Elden Ring.

Natsuno appeared to be in a strong position atop the company, earning the support of 90% of the company's shareholders at Kadokawa's 2025 annual general meeting. But Oasis Management, described in the report as "one of the most active activist investors in Japan," is now Kadokawa's largest single shareholder, with nearly 14% of the company, and it wants Natsuno gone.

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The problem, ironically, is Elden Ring's success. I may have (also ironically) undersold it just a bit up above: Elden Ring had sold more than 30 million copies as of April 2025, three years after its release, and the Shadow of the Erdtree punched out 10 million more. Add another five million copies of the multiplayer Elden Ring Nightreign on top of that, and you've got yourself some enviable numbers by any measure. But as Janet Jackson once famously asked, what have you done for me lately?

The problem is "profit leakage," essentially meaning that Kadokawa under Natsuno's leadership has failed to capitalize on Elden Ring's success to make more money—in particular, it's let money slip through its fingers by partnering with external publishers for game releases. Elden Ring, for instance, is published by Kadokawa (via FromSoftware) in Japan, but Bandai Namco is the global publisher.

In a press release calling for Natsuno's ouster earlier this month, Oasis described FromSoftware as a "crown jewel asset," but said Kadokawa "continues to leave a meaningful share of the economics from [its] titles with third-party publishing partners, creating a significant and ongoing loss of value for all of Kadokawa stakeholders."

"Oasis has long advocated with Kadokawa privately and directly for a more ambitious approach to capturing the full value of FromSoftware’s success," Oasis wrote. "Management itself previously committed to self-publishing under its prior mid-term plan, and raised money in 2022, diluting shareholders, to self-publish. But CEO Natsuno has since retreated from that commitment without providing shareholders with a clear explanation, economic framework, or decision criteria for how and when Kadokawa will improve gaming economics.

"Oasis is not saying that every title must be self-published immediately. Rather, Oasis is asking for transparency, discipline, and a credible plan for how Kadokawa will capture more value from one of the most important assets in the global gaming industry."

Beyond Natsuno, Oasis believes "Kadokawa also requires broader improvements in governance, capital allocation, cost discipline, and Board oversight." But he's the top dog, and that's where you start with these things.

Elden Ring isn't Natsuno's only problem: A 2024 data leak cost the company millions, which apparently didn't go over super-well with anyone, and shareholders are also reportedly unhappy that a hoped-for (by investors) acquisition by Sony turned into a relatively small-potatoes "strategic alliance" in which Sony took 10% of the company. It came to light in a new Reuters report that Natsuno did in fact survive the AGM and will maintain his position, but the actual results of the vote won't be known for several days; if his support has dropped off sharply, Natsuno may be forced to implement many of the changes desired by Oasis and other activist investors anyway.

In an email statement to Japanese gaming site Denfaminico Gamer, FromSoftware boss Hidetaka Miyazaki indicated that the studio has unannounced new projects in the works, while largely demurring from making a comment about recent investor drama at FromSoft's parent company, Kadokawa.

I've relied on machine translation to parse Denfaminico's article and Miyazaki's email response. The developer stated he was not in a position to discuss recent action by activist investors in Kadokawa, but said he was "generally satisfied with the development environment" under the anime publishing giant, and that the studio was "able to freely create the games we want to make without excessive interference."

"I believe that maintaining such an environment in the future, allowing us to concentrate solely on game development as much as possible, is of utmost importance to both myself and to us at FromSoftware," Miyazaki told Denfaminico Gamer.

It's understandable the developer would be reluctant to say much else about Kadokawa's current situation. As reported by Automaton, Hong Kong-based hedge fund Oasis Management purchased a majority share in Kadokawa, and is pushing for its current CEO to be fired.

With regards to FromSoftware, Oasis was critical of Kadokawa allowing it to work with third party publishers like Bandai Namco, instead of having the developer publish through Kadokawa itself.

Miyazaki did drop a little crumb of something at the end for the fans, though. "We want to assure you that we will continue to work harder than ever to create truly valuable games," said Miyazaki. "We hope you will look forward to our upcoming titles, both those already announced and those yet to be announced."

It's not much, but it's something. Currently the only upcoming project FromSoft has announced is the Switch 2-exclusive multiplayer game, Duskbloods, but it's felt like the studio must have something else in its back pocket to reveal soon. Whatever FromSoft's next big thing is, I'm hoping we see it in some form before the end of the year.

We included Elden Ring and Armored Core developer FromSoftware among our notable Summer Game Fest no-shows, and that's not technically true anymore: The studio piped up during today's Nintendo Direct to say, "Yeah, Duskbloods network test sometime this summer, I guess."

The Switch 2 exclusive's new trailer is even more cryptic than its first. It's the sort of mood piece that would make more sense as an initial teaser than a follow-up.

We got a few shots of gothic exteriors and stained glass windows, then close-ups of John Bangs (give this fella a haircut!) and some manner of rat man with glowing tattoos (I like the cut of his jib, at least). The narration? You better believe it's ominous and incomprehensible.

FromSoft's playing the hits, Duskbloods is not beating the Bloodborne 2 allegations, and I'm just miffed that this next game from one of my favorite studios is an exclusive (however temporarily) for the Switch 2, a worse handheld PC shackled to Nintendo's domineering software walled garden.

It feels like it's just about that time, you know? "Freaky teaser trailer for FromSoft's next big thing" o'clock. Elden Ring Nightreign certainly isn't getting support, so the studio can spare that manpower. Duskbloods' Nintendo-exclusive, multiplayer nature makes it feel like it can't possibly be FromSoft's next big thing, could it?

I'm still lighting a candle for an Armored Core 6 expansion-sequel in the series tradition, which seems less and less likely with each passing year. If nothing else, at least we have Elden Ring's Tarnished Edition DLC to look forward to. Bandai Namco has yet to reveal a price, but the pack will add two new classes, plus a number of new weapons and armor on August 28.

Original Story: Bandai Namco has revealed that the Switch 2 "Tarnished Edition" of Elden Ring will finally launch on August 28. But who cares about that⁠—the company's press release also confirmed that the Tarnished Edition's new goodies will also be coming to the PC version on the same day.

The Tarnished Edition was initially supposed to be a launch game for the Switch 2, but amid reports of booboo performance at preview events, it was unceremoniously booted into 2026 with no firm launch window. No skin off my back, but the delay took the Tarnished Edition patch on other platforms with it.

And there's some juicy stuff in there, like two new starting classes: The big boy Heavy Knight and the dexlord Knight of Ides. The former is an Iron Tarkus-looking lad with new armor and a new weapon, a never-before-seen curved greatsword, but paradoxically, he doesn't have a shield. Heavy Knight had the community in a tizzy with an early peek at his strength build-centric, powergaming-friendly stat spread.

I'm more excited about the Knight of Ides, though, who starts the game with some badass-looking armor and the killer M'lady light greatsword, a standout weapon from the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion that previously took dozens of hours to acquire. I've been holding off on a new playthrough so I could rock with the Knight of Ides.

The Tarnished Edition will also come with other new weapons and armor, like Lucatiel of Mirrah's set from Dark Souls 2, and I've got my fingers crossed that FromSoft has been holding some surprises in reserve.

If you've ever played one of FromSoftware's oeuvre in front of another Souls fan, you already know what a scourge backseat gaming is. Now imagine you're a streamer playing in front of thousands of folks who are convinced they know better than you. Well, one streaming fan has created a lightweight tool that allows backseat gamers to prove on-stream they're as good as they say.

Vtuber girl_dm_ recently showcased the aforementioned in-browser tool during a Dark Souls 2 stream. The streamer explained on X that the tool "takes a clone of my latest save and gives a chatter eight minutes to show me what they want me to do." The result is then broadcast live, picture-in-picture style, to her adoring audience.

Called 'backseatNOW 9000,' the tool was made by one of the Vtuber's community members, and works without the viewer needing to download anything extra. Girl_dm_ explains, "It’s essentially pulling my save info, putting it to the host computer (which is running a legal copy of the game), and [allows] the chatter to remotely play for their limited session—it's Temu Google Stadia with a browser source viewer for me as the streamer."

For those who may have forgotten, Google Stadia launched in 2019 and promised a game streaming revolution. The subscription-based service offered playable games streamed over the internet without the need for pricey hardware. Its streaming library included both big-budget blowouts, titles exclusive to the platform, and limited time demos, but the service ultimately shuttered in 2023.

As game streaming services live or die by the stability of the user's internet connection, many of Stadia's big promises about cloud-gaming were left largely unrealised.

But let's get back to the 'Temu Stadia' setup, which also has its own techy quirks. For one thing, mouse and keyboard controls are currently not an option. For another, a backseat gamer will need to lock their mouse to play. You're also slightly limited in what controller you can use to backseat, as the PS5's DualSense does not currently play nice with the tool.

As for streamers, the tool does require more than a bit of setup. For instance, girl_dm_ uses Streamer.Bot and a Blackmagic streaming encoder for her fairly complex, interactive streams.

This also wouldn't be much of a tool for streamers without some basic community management features. To begin with, would-be backseaters can only log in to the tool via unique credentials that girl_dm_ sends herself, and which are only valid for their eight-minute session. Anyone attempting to hijack the stream via the tool gets a chat timeout for a week.

Hiccoughs and setup aside, the implementation of the tool is pretty elegant. I know my introduction suggested something a little more ego-based and competitive, but it's way more positive in practice.

Souls games are known for being labyrinthine in structure, with many easily missed secrets along the way. This tool allows experienced Dark Souls 2 gamers to guide first-time player girl_dm_ to the coolest corners of Drangleic, and serves as a shining example of the community at its best. Now, I wonder how backseat gamers will fare with that Dark Souls 2 path tracing mod.

Back in February some amazing footage emerged of path tracing implementation in Dark Souls 2. At the time I was pretty impressed, but I didn't have my fingers crossed that the ambitious mod—which is an update to the beloved DS2Lighting Engine Mod—would be available to the public anytime soon.

I was wrong: the DS2LightingEngine mod on Nexus Mods was updated today with path tracing implemented. It's compatible with the Scholar of the First Sin version of Dark Souls 2.

The mod actually released on Discord late last month but is now more widely available on Nexus for people who might not be actively following its development. It's a beta, so you should expect some hiccups here and there, but it's an impressive feat and it brings the often scrappy-looking RPG to life.

It's worth pointing out, as per mod creator Ragevitamins on the DSLightingEngine Disord, that path tracing will inevitably make Dark Souls 2 more challenging, which I'm sure is music to the ears of sickos the world around. If there aren't light sources the game's going to be dark, meaning you'll need to use in-game light items like Prism Stones, torches, or the Cast Light spell if you can't see anything. "If there is a cave without [a] possible light source, it means you must be prepared for the dark."

That's fine: if you don't want punishing realistic lighting the earlier, non-path tracing version of the mod is still available on Nexus. But if you do use path tracing, Dark Souls 2's once-touted survival elements come to life with tech that FromSoftware would not have had access to in 2014.

While development continues—this new version of the mod is after all in beta—it's a great result for Dark Souls 2, which the modding community has obsessed over for 12 years by dint of its famously lacklustre launch state. Pre-release footage of the original game showed dynamic lighting the likes of which was completely absent in the final game; modders have not only added those features over time, but improved on them exponentially.

If you want to see the mod in action, YouTube LobosJr demonstrates it, with the added bonus of having a randomisation mod installed:

The ongoing project to port The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind into Elden Ring—recognised by UNESCO as the eighth wonder of the world*—is one of the more Herculean projects currently bubbling away in the mod scene, and it just got a new update. Long story short: this thing is nuts (complimentary).

In a new video, cheekily dedicated to one particular commenter who declared the project would never get done, author InfernoPlus walks us through the progress he's made on Elden Wind (my title, not his, probably because it sounds like a medieval doctor diagnosing a gastric issue) and, my friends, I'm impressed.

InfernoPlus takes us on a whistlestop tour of Seyda Neen—Morrowind's starting area—and Balmora. Buddy, let me tell you: as a guy who has seen a lot of the original Seyda Neen and Balmora in his life, that sure is Seyda Neen and Balmora. Our boy's done a sterling job. You can buy some starting gear from Arrille and pop into Addamasartus to free the slaves held there.

In keeping with the true Morrowind experience, InfernoPlus quickly gets impaled by one of the slavers, though it sounds like that's because he hasn't really futzed around with their stats yet. Still, it's authentic.

We've also got Tarhiel falling out of the sky and, over in Balmora, the ability to join the Fighter's Guild and kill some rats. And then kill some people, which is just as much an escalation here as it was back in 2002.

The part that really brings a tear to your eye, though, is the fact that NPCs can call you fantasy slurs ("Fetcher," in this case) and stab you simultaneously. It really is Morrowind, folks.

So it's done now, right? All good to go? We can play?

Ah, well, not quite. There's still plenty of stuff left to put in before the mod can see the light of full release, not least of which is proper volunteer voice acting rather than the charming Microsoft Sam-style voice NPCs use now.

Still, what is in there is amazing. InfernoPlus has managed to get a full-on crime and punishment system going, a process he likens to "Teaching a dog calculus," and there's weapon enchantment and skill training too.

I guess that guy who said the mod would never be finished might be proved right yet, but what's already here is really impressive.

*This is not true, but envision a better world with me.

We all have our guys, the true freaks and sickos online who it feels like only we know about, whose trials and travails move us in ways we can scarcely explain. Replica sword reviewers, world-class competitors in niche sports, historical reenactors with hearts of gold⁠—you know, your guys. One such guy, for me, is eauvni, a YouTuber who silently and implacably keeps playing Elden Ring Nightreign alone, then uploading the VODs.

Crucially, eauvni is very good at Elden Ring Nightreign, and will upload multiple runs a week, like clockwork. They rotate through the entire cast, but seem to have a particular affinity for the Sekiro-parrying Executor. All of their runs have been in the mega-hard Deep of Night mode since its release at the end of last year, but they've exclusively uploaded VODs of Depth Three of Five in recent months.

My guess would be that, even at this skill level, solo Depth Five just isn't fun⁠—even Sekiro/Souls no-hit maestro Ongbal has said as much (in the description of a successful Depth Five solo run, naturally). My understanding is that the jump in difficulty from Depth Three to Four is the most pronounced in the game, with enemies dealing twice as much damage in Four vs. Three⁠—and that's on top of the three depths worth of DoN advancements over the base game already.

The Depth Three/Four barrier is what separates the freaks from the perverts among Nightreign players, while the Four/Five divide splits the perverts and the reprobates.

The individual videos are prime "have something on in the background while you do something else" material for me, but as a whole, eauvni's body of work is kind of staggering as a record of obsession: Dozens and dozens of Nightreign runs, all on the same two maps with the same bosses. I've played a fraction as much of this game as eauvni, and there's a point where you start to see the Matrix code, you recognize different map seeds and can even anticipate individual boss placements.

And all to seemingly no end: Eauvni has reached Depth Five and turned back, content to keep fighting more manageable versions of the same pool of base Elden Ring bosses. They already have mathematically perfect relic builds for every character. There is, seemingly, no further support or content for the game planned in the future, nothing to anticipate or prepare for. Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

I can relate to this obession, even at a much lower skill level: Almost every day for our lunch break, PCG writers Tyler Colp, Sean Martin, and I do a Nightreign run. We are in the latter half of Depth Four, coming up on Depth Five, and I have never felt more hated by a game.

Eauvni's "Thank You Nightreign Compilation" is very illustrative: Even more than FromSoft's other games, whether it's glitches, enemy AI, or RNG odds, there's a spite lurking beneath Nightreign. It feels like there's a malicious intelligence working against you at all times. This only makes eauvni's stoic, meditative repetition all the more disquieting to me.

Their recent no-damage run as Executor is a real heater: Eauvni has a habit of level one bum rushing bosses I'd be hesitant to tango with at the end of a run. They began this latest video with a ballsy, flawlessly executed level two takedown of a red (read: turbocharged) Erdtree Avatar at the top of Limveld castle. Elsewhere, they've 1v1'd the memetically difficult Bell Bearing Hunter at level one so many times, it almost doesn't feel worth commenting on anymore.

My friends and I aren't as good as eauvni, but part of me is worried that Nightreign will ruin normal FromSoft games for us and other disturbed Deep of Night holdouts: When I finally replay Elden Ring again with the Tarnished Edition patch allegedly due out this year, will it just feel too fair and well-balanced for me to enjoy? When I'm not instakilled by an overtuned area of effect attack in FromSoft's next mainline release, will I miss the thrill?

We've been getting heaps of behind-the-scenes leaked footage and images for the upcoming Elden Ring movie directed by Alex Garland, who last time we checked was on his seventh playthrough. We've seen stills of the sets, an image of Marika with not one, but two braids? Interesting.

But the biggest news we've had so far is undoubtedly the 37 seconds of footage depicting none other than the Loathsome Dung Eater hanging from the stocks in what looks to be a town square while getting pummelled with rotten food by angry onlookers. That's it. It's quite literally just 37 seconds of people hurling food at the poor sod and screaming from the top of their lungs.

In the game, Dung Eater gets hanged in front of a crowd at Leyndell, the royal capital, during the introductory cutscene. But again, if it's anything like the game, this won't be the last we see of him as you can find his apparition in one of the backrooms of the Roundtable Hold and his real body beneath Leyndell in the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds where he was jailed among other noble Omen, (those horned dudes no one seems to like, sorry Morgott).

But why was he hanged? Well the Dung Eater may be iconic among Elden Ring fans, but he's not a very nice fellow. Before his hanging, he was a Tarnished who murdered and defiled victims with the seedbed curse, severing their connection to the Erdtree and cursing them to come back as Omen.

But who knows what shape the film will take or how closely it will coincide with the narrative from the games. While it may not follow how the game plays out (imagine it just being a 60-hour silent playthrough), I do reckon there won't be any changes to the canon, what with Garland clearly being such a huge fan.

So far, the mood of fans after seeing the Dung Eater clip seems to just be elated. The comments under the leaked footage are full of people praising the legendary "Pee-Pee Poo-Poo man" or the "Darstardly Doo-doo Devourer", all fond nicknames. While others take it more seriously: "Amazing shot! Can't wait to see this all coming together", before someone else brings it back down to earth: "If they actually say 'The Loathsome Dung Eater' in this movie it's going to be my personal Chicken Jockey."

I hadn't actually thought of this, but there are a lot of opportunities to send cinemas into the same chaotic haze the Minecraft movie did if Garland plays his cards right. The Loathsome Dung Eater is just one example of this; others include the Radahn Festival, "Bear Witness", or quite literally anything written on Scriptstones, whether that be "Fort, night", "Try finger, but hole", or just "Dog". I'm definitely going to watch the Elden Ring movie, though. I'll just need to mentally prepare myself for another Chicken Jockey moment.

FromSoftware's continued silence on a series tradition expansion/mini-sequel to Armored Core 6 remains one of the great tragedies of my life, but the game's fan community has stayed vibrant. AC buildmaster and YouTuber Thryfe recently stole my heart with a fantastic Sailor Moon "cosplay" mech.

Thryfe's whole deal is rolling out creative or novelty builds for AC6 PvP. This has usually taken the form of recreating ACs from previous entries of the series, like No Count, Noblesse Oblige, and White Glint from Armored Core 4. Thryfe first rolled out his Sailor Moon build last July, but has recently highlighted it again via YouTube Shorts.

The attention to detail on the paint job is what really sells things for me, particularly how well Thryfe mapped the distinctive color scheme onto an incongruously harsh, industrial mech shell. He made some really inspired choices with the parts, too. What usually scans as some kind of armored tabard on the Alba legs makes for a perfect girlypop skirt in this context.

The Alba arms' shoulder pads easily scan as a blouse's short sleeves, and I never would have thought to repurpose the insectoid Verril head as a face with pigtails. The Moonlight sword was also a great choice: Its striking curve and sleek profile give it more of a fantasy vibe than any other weapon in AC6. The build also does great work in PvP, as the main body of Thryfe's video demonstrates. After some post-launch buffs, that Moonlight sword can be built into as one of the best stagger punishes in the game.

Mech building is one of the best parts of Armored Core, combining the joys of RPG character building with the sort of vehicle customization I associate with a racing game garage. The stats of your individual mech parts matter much more than armor in FromSoft's Elden Soulsborne games, so I find I have even more respect for a well-executed Fashion Core that can still hold its own in high-level PvP⁠—In Elden Ring, it's all about the fashion, so you really don't have an excuse to dress shabbily. If you'd like to see more AC6 builds from Thryfe, you can subscribe to his channel on YouTube.

Whether you think Dark Souls 2 is FromSoftware's worst Souls game or its best (as many diehard fans believe) it's undoubtedly the game that had the roughest development in the series. The sequel went through a mid-development reboot that resulted in a complete story overhaul, as well as the various level design quirks evident in its strange, surreal world.

One of the byproducts of this reboot was a host of cut content, ranging from small items to parts of levels to giant crab bosses. But one of the largest cut sections is an enormous sewer map that was ultimately replaced by The Gutter, a similarly subterranean area that connects The Grave of Saints and Black Gulch.

While various cut areas of Dark Souls 2 have been unearthed before, this sewer level has remained hidden until now. YouTuber and FromSoft enthusiast Doneda succeeded in restoring the cut sewer area, posting a video in which he explores the location in detail.

As Doneda explains during the introduction of his video, the areas that appear in most FromSoft games are dictated by the asset format MapStudioBinary (or MSB). Modders can use various tools to manipulate these file formats, which is how Doneda was able to unearth the sewer area.

As you'd expect, the cut map is incomplete, devoid of enemies and a lot of the more granular details you'd expect to see in a FromSoft game (like giant clusters of jars to roll through) But it is partially textured and mostly interconnected. It's also absolutely vast.

The bulk of the video is dedicated to Doneda poking around it, and it takes him almost an hour to do so even without any enemies to battle along the way. Some of the map has an almost temple-like design, with Doneda wandering beneath vast vaulted ceilings and domed towers. But as with the final version of the Gutter, Dark Souls' Blighttown is a clear inspiration, with the midsection of the map featuring a jumbled, ramshackle shanty with vast superstructures visible in the distance.

There are a couple of areas worth spotlighting. One, which Doneda describes as "maybe the best part of the cut map" is a tavern hidden within the Blighttown-ish section. Aside from the fact that it's one of the map's more complete areas, it's also neat to see a dedicated recreational space in a series that tends to be all tombs, torture chambers and poison swamps.

Another, more traditionally Souls area is what initially appears to be a boss arena. Passing through a placeholder fog doorway, Doneda enters a chamber flanked by two enormous statues, with a central dais surrounded by what initially look like swords. As Doneda notes, however, they are more likely to be unlit candles. Either way, these objects call into question whether this actually is a boss arena, as all those sword-candles would get in the way of a fight. Perhaps, then, it's just where you were supposed to meet an important character.

Aside from seeing what could have been for DS2's Gutter, the video also provides a fascinating insight into the design of Dark Souls 2. Right at the outset of his guided tour, Doneda encounters a pathway that isn't connected to the rest of the map, and notes that the designers were likely undecided on how exactly the player should proceed at this point.

In a way, it serves to highlight Miyazaki's own point that Dark Souls 2 "carried the rest of the series forward" in terms of all the things the team figured out over the course of that project, and how some of the studio's best work in games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring might not exist without its difficult gestation.

A forthcoming Bloodborne film adaptation will be an "R-rated animated feature" co-produced by YouTuber JackSepticEye, Variety reports. In case you're doubting the veracity of this, Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group president Sanford Panitch made the announcement himself during CinemaCon today, which is currently taking place in Las Vegas.

According to the report, the adaptation will be just as gruesomely violent as the games, news that is sure to delight sickos worldwide.

Perhaps the most surprising news is JackSepticEye's involvement, though given his 31.2 million YouTube subscribers, maybe it's not so surprising. The Irish content creator, whose real name is Seán William McLoughlin, has racked up nearly five million viewers for his Bloodborne playthrough, and it's apparently his favourite game. Whether that's enough to make him fit to help adapt one of the most beloved games of the 21st century, I guess we'll find out.

JackSepticEye will co-produce with Sony Productions and Lyrical Animation, which is also working on a Death Stranding adaptation and Hell Followed With Us, which is based on a YA "dystopian fantasy horror" novel.

No word as yet on when this film will hit cinemas or streaming services, but it's part of a significant push on Sony's part to turn its games into movies and TV: The Last of Us comes immediately to mind, as does God Of War. Sony is also working on a live-action Legend of Zelda film.

Whatever the case, Bloodborne still isn't on PC and it's becoming increasingly unlikely that it will given Sony's reported U-turn on porting its exclusives. Thankfully, emulating Bloodborne is becoming more and more seamless by the day.

Now this is what I'm talking about: Modder Ionian-MikiriyAKATotallyNotShinobi (god damn that's a mouthful) has come out with a banger on the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Nexus: Jet Set Sekiro, a custom skateboarding level where you shred around the Fountainhead Palace like the spirit of 2002 never died.

The channel Mod Server on YouTube has a great video of the thing in action: It retrofits Sekiro's normal animations for skateboarding gameplay, with a new movement system that functions exactly how you'd expect.

The new level, which appears heavily based on (if not just reusing the layout of) the base game's Fountainhead Palace, sees you rolling around and collecting spray paint canisters to graffiti tag select spots on the map.

It's a delightful little mod, and feels very much in line with the history of skateboarding games writ large. I'm thinking of how Darth Maul was an unlockable character in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, or Spyro the Dragon's various skateboarding levels in Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon. At a cosmic level, I feel like there's a kinship between Japanese action and skateboarding games, similar to the one between hip-hop and kung fu movies.

This isn't the first crossover between skateboarding and FromSoft specifically: I fondly recall the Firelink Shrine modded map for Tony Hawk's Underground 2 by sockpuppetkingdom. It paired beautifully with the Solaire player model by Syeo. The difference this time around is that Ionian-Mikiriy brought the skateboarding to FromSoft, and not the other way around.

In other videogame skateboarding news, one of our favorite games of last year, Skate Story, is on sale for $16 on GOG. Please do not pirate it, no matter what its creator Sam Eng says.

Our first glimpse of Alex Garland's upcoming Elden Ring movie might be in a TikTok video shot by a lucky fan in the UK. Not only is it unmistakably a near-exact recreation of the ruined churches from the game, there's evidence that it's being built in a popular filming location.

Throxtv, an Elden Ring fan and Twitch streamer, posted a short video on Friday of a ruined stone building with a statue of a woman that looks exactly like the churches of Marika found throughout The Lands Between. The open field it's sitting in resembles the game's opening area, Limgrave, minus the fences surrounding it.

In a follow-up video posted earlier today, Throxtv showed off the opposite side of the church and the other props nearby. Wagons, barrels, and stacks of cinderblocks can be seen, along with construction equipment. The cinderblocks bear the logo of Hedgehog Construction, a company known for providing "specialist scenery construction for film and television", according to its website.

Hedgehog Construction also happens to be near the Windsor Great Park, which is a popular filming location for television shows and movies, like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Throxtv wouldn't reveal the exact location of the set to PC Gamer over direct messages, but the park would be my first guess.

None of this confirms the set has anything to do with the movie, though. It could be part of a marketing campaign for the upcoming Tarnished Edition of the game, or something else unrelated. I reached out to A24 to ask if it would confirm that the set is related to the film and will update this post if I hear back.

Throxtv provided PC Gamer with a third video of the set that was taken earlier today by a friend. It appears the church has been camouflaged by a tarp to protect it from photos, and has two people standing outside—presumably to stop anyone else from trying to take a peek.

Meanwhile, Elden Ring fans are busy speculating what the movie could be about now that they've seen something as recognizable as a church of Marika. Very little else is known about the approach director Alex Garland will take with it. The filmmaker is a noted fan of the game, so much so that he whipped up a 160-page script just to convince FromSoftware and Bandai Namco that he should be the one to handle it. But apart from his credentials, the rest of the film, including where and when it takes place, is unknown.

Independent entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider reported last year that actors Ben Whishaw (Skyfall), Kit Connor (Heartstopper), and Cailee Spaeny (Civil War) were "in talks" to star in the film. However, A24 hasn't said a word since its initial announcement.

All I know is that the set is absolutely a church of Marika, and one that has a statue that is more or less intact compared to all the broken ones that inhabit the DLC. Specifically, it looks like it could be the third church of Marika, but it's really far too early to know how it will be used in the film—if at all—at this point.

Longtime FromSoftware dataminer Lance McDonald has unveiled his latest discovery from deep in the bowels of Elden Ring, a WIP base game cutscene featuring DLC antagonist Miquella the Kind, who remains one of the most enigmatic characters in any FromSoft game.

The cut scene (cut cutscene?) shows Miquella planting a sapling Haligtree⁠—the endgame dungeon where you fight Malenia⁠—then watering it with his own blood. It takes place in a modified version of Malenia's boss room, further solidifying its connection with the origins of the Haligtree. Miquella's character model appears to be the same as the one from his final scene in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.

I can't tell if this is Miquella's same voice actor as in Shadow of the Erdtree, Naomi McDonald (no relation). His voice sounds more childlike and feminine, but that could be a matter of delivery. McDonald, for what it's worth, has an impressive range: You may remember her as Stone Trader Chloanne in Dark Souls 2 or Johnny the Godling from The Witcher 3.

While the exact order of the voice lines is not certain due to a missing intermediary file, McDonald played them in the order that they are listed in Elden Ring's files:

"Young seedling, young seedling, grow larger, stronger. My dear twin, accept this gift, a gift of abundance. My last drop of dew. Let all things flourish, whether graceful or malign. If thou coveteth the throne, impress my vision upon thine heart. In the new world of thine making, all things will flourish, whether graceful or malign."

Yep, that's FromSoft dialogue alright. According to McDonald, this cutscene would have played when you received part of the Dectus Medallion from Gideon Ofnir at Roundtable Hold, almost like a teaser for the Haligtree subplot. Here are a few of my takeaways, as a freak for the lore:

• This scene presages the SotE denouement in a number of ways: The empty throne, Miquella's kneeling position and obscured face, his addressing a demigod sibling, and the scene's nature as a relative non-sequitur.
• Miquella is speaking to Malenia in the second sentence, but from "if thou" onward, seems to be speaking to the player instead.
• That, coupled with the odd repetition of "graceful and malign" so close together, has me wondering if the first half pertains to this scene, and the second to something else.
• Miquella waters the tree with his blood, then is later absorbed by it before getting kidnapped by Mohg.
• It's okay, Miquella brainwashed Mohg. It wasn't Mohg's fault. Mohg: Cleared of all charges.
• You can see the outline of an earlier, more benevolent characterization of Miquella from before the DLC, one with a greater emphasis on his utopian, egalitarian vision, rather than the ruthless things he would do to secure it.
• Miquella's reference to "abundance" caught my attention. A cut "Abundance and Decay Twinblade" was datamined years ago, shortly after Elden Ring's launch and long before Shadow of the Erdtree was announced. Its item description directly connected it to Miquella's cut content. Its model was later reworked into Euporia in Shadow of the Erdtree, further legitimizing the earlier datamined version.

It's hard to be impressed by new Dark Souls feats in 2026 because the feats have become ludicrous. "Dark Souls 2 player beats its hardest boss on NG+7 by wearing his clothes and committing seppuku 47 times," reads a headline from June. "Dark Souls completed by throwing literal crap at bosses," was a thing that happened in 2022. That's not to mention all the dance mat and music peripheral challenges.

Which is why I'm drawn to the relative simplicity of this latest feat. YouTuber Zeldasouls has beaten Dark Souls at soul level 1 without using dodge rolls or ranged weapons. In the run embedded above, every boss is beaten under these limitations.

When I say "simplicity" I mean it's a pretty straightforward challenge as far as Dark Souls challenge runs go in 2026. There's no headline-grabbing twist, it's not completed on a set of bongos, but it's nevertheless bullshit hard. I don't think I could beat the Asylum Demon without dodge rolling, for example. I don't think I'd get far without ranged weapons either, which under Zeldasouls' conditions includes not only bows and magic projectiles, but also throwable items.

Just to be perfectly clear, here's the full list of conditions as per Zeldasouls:

• No levelling up
• No bows, crossbows, ranged consumables
• No ranged pyromancies, sorceries or miracles
• No rolls
• No jump rolls
• No back steps
• No quit outs to de-aggro enemies or reset player position
• No hits from enemies
• No staggers from enemies
• No deaths incurred by enemies (except for the first Seath encounter, which is a scripted death)

So basically: you're at a severe-verging-insurmountable disadvantage.

"I genuinely do not have the words to describe how I feel now that this is over," Zeldasouls writes on YouTube. "I spent countless hours grinding, coming up with strats, failing, suffering, raging, all over the course of the last two years. This is undoubtedly the hardest hitless run ever done in dark souls 1, and possibly in the entire souls series.

"Thank you to everyone who watched me attempt this run over the years. Most people will only see the end result of my blood, sweat, and tears."

You'll probably need to be a Dark Souls fanatic to endure the full playthrough: due to the limitations Zeldasouls has to take it extremely slowly, practicing a molasses-slow abundance of caution even in early areas like the Undead Burg. Still: If you've got three and a half hours, it's a gruelling watch.

Modder Transquility on the Elden Ring Nexus has restored Merchant Kalé's NPC quest in our 2022 game of the year. There was originally a lot more to the early game vendor's character, and I think it could have been a standout part of the game. Spoilers for Elden Ring and the cut quest ahead.

Kalé doesn't have much to do in the release version of Elden Ring: He's memorable, being the second NPC you run into, and he offers an intro of sorts to wolf knight Blaidd and Ranni's sprawling questline. But as dataminer Sekiro Dubi revealed shortly after Elden Ring's launch, Kalé was, at one point, meant to be the driving force behind the hidden Frenzied Flame ending⁠—the one where you commit omnicide⁠—taking up the role occupied by "Shabriri Grapes" Hyetta in the final game.

The upshot is that actor Nabil Elouahabi delivers one hell of a performance, starting out as the affable merchant we know but devolving into despair and rage as he discovers how his people were wronged by Marika and her Golden Order, ultimately urging you to take up the Frenzied Flame to avenge them.

This quest more explicitly contextualizes the people you find buried alive under Leyndell⁠—context that's buried in item descriptions in the final game, classic FromSoft⁠—and it offers a reason to pursue the Frenzied Flame ending beyond just "being evil" or completionist gamer curiosity. Melina's pleading with you not to meet the Three Fingers takes on a different cast in conversation with Kalé, whose rage and indignation over the fate of his people undercuts Melina's optimistic humanism.

It's great stuff, but the only way to experience it until now has been Sekiro Dubi's 20-minute video featuring Elouahabi's datamined voice lines. Transquility has reimplemented the quest, so it's now fully playable. Elden Ring mods are pretty simple to install and use, too: The Mod Engine 2 utility required here runs a separate executable offline and has modded saves separate from normal ones, keeping everything kosher with Easy Anticheat.

Writing this just now, I felt a stirring of hope that FromSoft might reimplement Kalé's quest in some form in the upcoming Tarnished Edition update to Elden Ring. Remember how that free GOTY update was supposed to come out last year? I don't care how booboo the Switch 2 port of Elden Ring runs, I've been putting off a replay with those new weapons and starting classes for too long!

The Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice anime is ticking along nicely—after a brief hubbub about potential AI use (which the director was quick to dismiss, and I never held much stock in any way, smear frames look weird), talk about the series, dubbed Sekiro: No Defeat, mostly quietened down.

Well, it's all livened up again, thanks to both a recent Variety interview with its director, and a new trailer that looks—for lack of a better word—sick as hell.

While the trailer from six months ago was certainly nothing to sniff at, suspicious smear frames notwithstanding, this new one gives off a much stronger visual identity. Scratchy, loose linework and kinetic action combined with some lovely painterly backgrounds—the words 'controlled messiness' come to mind.

Which is somewhat fitting if you're trying to replicate the frantic pace I felt while fighting most of the bosses, several of which can be spotted here—Owl can be seen in several scenes bodying/throwing the poor Wolf around, Genichiro's flinging lightning again, and is that Gyoubu Oniwa I spy? (as he breathes, you will not pass the castle gate).

This kind of trailer-combing has, per the aforementioned Variety review, been of some concern to the series' director Kenichi Kutsuna:

"FromSoftware, they make such high quality game experiences, and they've established this community and fandom worldwide," he explains. "So we understand that the potential audience for what we're making in this anime is going to put this under the microscope, and it's going to be a very, very—I don't wanna say harsh or strict lens, but you could say the audience will be looking at it.

"So I of course, am nervous if we are able to answer that level of resolution that they perhaps might be looking for. But I think we've done everything we could from the production side in terms of maintaining a level of quality that wouldn't tarnish the FromSoftware and 'Sekiro' brand."

I don't think there's any risk of tarnishing going on here, after all, this isn't Elden Ring, ohoho. But in all seriousness, I'm more bought in than I was before. As for what game ending the anime will be bending towards, Kutsuna states that it'll be just as open to interpretation:

"[Sekiro] allows a lot of interpretation on the players' part in terms of how they want to proceed through the game. And those who have played will know that type of experience. So, in taking that and transforming it into an audio-visual adaptation, we wanted it to be open to interpretation in a similar way that the game presented itself to its players."

Sekiro: No Defeat doesn't have an official release date yet, but it'll be coming this year. In the meantime, I'll be preparing myself by watching those sickos no-hit Genichiro off his stupid, lightning-infested tower again.

It might finally be time to accept that a Bloodborne remake isn't happening, at least not anytime soon. According to a report from Bloomberg, the project almost happened, but FromSoftware are the ones that ultimately turned it down.

A Bloodborne remake has been demanded by fans for so long that Sony's remaster studio, Bluepoint, figured it was inevitable that it would be given the job, especially after its very successful Demon's Souls remake in 2020. But Sony tasked the studio with making a live service God of War game instead.

When Sony abruptly ditched its live service initiative in early 2025 and cancelled Bluepoint's God of War game, Bluepoint was left to search for other projects. It approached Sony again to pitch its idea for a Bloodborne remake, and Sony was receptive: The only reason it didn't happen, according to the report, was because FromSoft didn't want it to happen.

Bloomberg doesn't have the details on why FromSoft turned it down, but points to a comment by former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida in an interview with Kinda Funny about FromSoft president Hidetaka Miyazaki wanting it to happen, but not wanting "anyone else to touch it." Miyazaki has previously said he's not "opposed" to a PC port of Bloodborne, and acknowledged that other FromSoft developers want to make one, but if Miyazaki is insistent on doing it himself, Yoshida believes Sony would respect his wishes even though it owns the rights to the game.

Bluepoint was still looking for something to work on when Sony announced last week that it would be shutting the studio down, laying off what will be reportedly about 70 people.

Yoshida is also the person who has spoken about a dispute between Sony and FromSoft around the release of Demon's Souls on a podcast last year. Sony, owning the rights to the Dark Souls progenitor, wanted to work with FromSoft on a sequel, but the studio was "so disappointed" with how it was treated it chose Bandai Namco as a publisher instead.

Sony and FromSoft's partnership for Bloodborne might've been a sign of some kind of resolution between the two, or merely a compromise, if it's true that Miyazaki doesn't trust it enough to handle a remake. Miyazaki told Game Informer earlier this year that "Bloodborne is a special game for me," and that it's "perhaps the strongest reflection of my type of flavoring of a game that one can experience."

It sounds like it's going to be up to Miyazaki and Miyazaki alone for whether or not we ever get a remake of one of the greatest action RPGs of all time. I have my issues with Bluepoint's Demon's Souls remake when it comes to the modernized aesthetic compared to the original game, but I would've happily taken a Bloodborne remake of any kind from a studio with such a strong track record.

In November 2024, developer Maxime Foulquier posted footage of Bloodborne Top Down Arena, a fan tribute mixing FromSoftware's relentlessly goth setting with Vampire Survivors mechanics. The project looked kinda cool, if not a little close to its source material.

Foulquier went quiet on the project after posting that video, and as it turns out, for good reason: In March 2025 he received a sternly-worded letter from lawyers representing Sony. Rather than announce straight away that the project was done for, Foulquier decided to wait.

"I didn’t say anything in March 2025 because I decided to repurpose all the assets I had created for that project into a new game set in my own universe, inspired by Bloodborne," Foulquier wrote on X, where he has also posted an image of the cease and desist letter. "My plan was to reveal the letter once the game was ready to communicate.

"Unfortunately, plans have changed. I’d rather speak about it now, as my disappointment is immense. The disappearance of Bluepoint is a tremendous loss for the industry and for the dream of a Bloodborne remake."

Foulquier posted the letter just after Sony confirmed it will close famed remake studio Bluepoint. It has long been hoped—but never hinted at by Sony—that Bluepoint might work on either a Bloodborne remake or remaster. A pipe dream for sure, but Bluepoint did remake Demon's Souls and Shadow of the Colossus, two other Sony-owned games with severely loyal followings.

With the closure, one of the Bloodborne community's most powerful coping mechanisms has been dashed. It was for the hope of a Bluepoint-fronted Bloodborne remake that Foulquier received the cease and desist letter with equanimity.

"I was incredibly excited about this project and worked on it a lot in my spare time," Foulquier wrote. "Then I received the letter you can see here. I told myself, 'Okay… I expected this might happen. Maybe it’s because a real Bloodborne remake is actually in development, with Bluepoint leading it for the PS6 launch?'"

It's not the first time Sony has killed a fanmade Bloodborne project: Bloodborne Kart was, as the name implies, a kart racer set in Yharnam, before Sony's lawyers got involved. It's now called Nightmare Kart.

"Why are you making such absurd decisions, Sony?" Foulquier wrote. "Shutting down such a talented studio while you’re not even making a Bloodborne remake and on top of that, sending cease and desist letters to small fan projects? Are you serious?"

While we wait, perhaps futilely, for Sony to decide it wants to make a lot of money from a cherished classic, Bloodborne PC emulation has made a lot of progress of late.

FromSoftware's King's Field was an astonishingly immersive RPG for 1994, a dark fantasy where every object was something that could be examined up close and from all angles. Every herb. Every skeleton. Every treasure chest and trap.

These first-person visual wonders weren't contained within some artificially restrictive turn-based RPG, tile-based dungeon crawl, or hemmed in by an intrusive framerate-saving UI. Players were free to explore the deadly domain however they pleased. Monsters could sneak up from behind, ledges could be cautiously peered over, painful surprises could swoop in from above, and coins could be collected off the floor.

That turned heads at a time when Chrono Trigger was still months away from making its Super Nintendo debut, even if the latter proved to be more timeless. But what kept people playing King's Field long after, through sequels and spiritually similar FromSoft RPGs and even into fan games created years later, was the series' enthralling atmosphere and unforgiving difficulty. The chance to be left alone in the dark and made to wander an environment so hostile there was a real chance the ground underfoot could kill, or approaching the wrong thing from the wrong angle could prove fatal.

The awkward controls, with camera movement tied to the PlayStation's shoulder buttons (a necessity in pre-analogue pad times, yet retained after) and sword swings imagined as slow, stamina-sapping motions, were features, not bugs. It should be difficult to hit something crawling along the floor. Spotting a monster hanging from the ceiling should take conscious thought and additional effort. Fighting should feel tense and deadly.

Like the Souls games that came after it, the series challenges players to defy seemingly impossible odds. Every step forwards through these tantalisingly freeform and often unmapped places feels like a small victory. Half-revealed mysteries and well-hidden secrets give seemingly simplistic stone corridors and magic swords meaning, every small and often charmingly lo-poly detail one part of a larger tapestry.

Something glinting in the distance is an invitation to push ahead, in spite of the dangers.

Thankfully this ethos is more than gaming history. Fans have eagerly picked up where FromSoftware left off, creating a new batch of nightmarish horrors and inhospitable locations for PC gamers to pick their way through. All of the following take King's Field's template and run with it, emphasising their own favourite aspects of the series' timeless design.

Lunacid: Atmosphere is everything

After the end of the world.

Developer: Kira LLC | Release date: 2023 | Steam Deck: Verified | Link: Steam

• King's Field + Ultima Underworld
• Controls like: A sports car fresh off the lot (as long as you put points in the Speed stat)

Lunacid does an incredible job of capturing one of the most alluring yet intangible parts of King's Field's style: an almost soul-crushingly melancholy mood. Playing this feels a lot like turning up to your own post-apocalyptic funeral, where everything's already broken and it's too late to fix it. And somehow the game manages to convey this feeling while using fewer polygons for an entire room than AAA games expend on someone's left nostril.

Everything feels old and worn and never less than deeply unsettling, the low level of detail only encouraging your imagination to fill in the polygonal blanks. Silent micro-stories are found everywhere, past tragedies hinted at through subtle visual choices. Disfigured bodies sit in serene prayer. A sea of blood stretches out into the dark, gravestones jutting out above the surface. Cloth bandages are found inside filthy straw-strewn cells.

Lunacid runs as deep as the choking shadows found around every corner. Every suspicious nook seems to hide a secret. Sanity can have an impact on how tangible certain beings are, and even the phases of the moon matter, strengthening and weakening certain monsters. Nothing is as straightforward as it seems, every new session leading to some new discovery or unexpected (and probably deadly) surprise.

Verho - Curse of Faces: The joys of an unfolding landscape

Enthusiasm for exploration.

Developer: Kasur Games | Release date: 2025 | Steam Deck: Verified | Link: Steam

• King's Field + Dark Souls 2
• Controls like: A sensible station wagon in a forsaken kingdom

There's all of the classic FromSoftware paraphernalia in here—a slightly awkward magic system, highly stylised NPCs with no real faces, aggressive plants, poison lakes—but what makes this game stand out is how interconnected it all is. Right from the start there's always some shortcut-creating ladder to kick down, a locked door to keep in mind for later, or a fast travel-enabling magical statue to make a slightly desperate dash for as monsters close in behind. Every step forward is an opportunity to either build a convenient path back to safety, or forge ahead into the unknown, torch in hand. With time and practice an initial panicked sprint past dead bodies and previously unseen monsters becomes a place to fight through for key items, then a place to cautiously explore for unlockable paths and links to new areas, then somewhere to farm monsters for XP and boldly explore for secrets.

Enigmatic NPCs can often be found sitting by campfires or resting in quieter spots, ready to give these areas context, or to offer a reason to push on into dangerous territory. Maybe they can open an otherwise impassable door if they're given a special item found in a dangerous area, warn people away from a nearby deathtrap, or offer tantalising hints for upcoming mysteries. There's always a new road to travel, a new opportunity to explore.

Monomyth: Improvisation and interactivity above all

It's supposed to be on fire. Honest.

Developer: Rat Tower | Release date: 2024 (early access) | Steam Deck: Playable | Link: Steam

• King's Field + Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
• Controls like: American muscle in a demolition derby

Monomyth may eschew the faux-retro look used to great effect by many Field-likes, but is no less atmospheric or authentic for its modern extravagances. Flames cast long shadows in the gloom, magical auras distort reality itself, and cool mists pool around armoured ankles. More impressive than the graphics is the fact that none of this additional detail is just for show. Enemies can see better in well lit areas, which can lead to some interesting torch-pilfering/light-dousing tactics. Bloodstained bandages can be washed in clean water, and a fish can be cooked simply by placing it near a fire or grill and then waiting for the heat to work its magic, the food visibly charring in the process.

Creative exploration isn't just possible, it's encouraged. Boxes can be stacked and stood on, creating shortcuts that officially don't exist. There's a good chance a locked door can be picked open, or even smashed to pieces or set alight. A metal cup on a desk is more than simple decoration—it can be picked up and hurled through iron bars, triggering the pressure plate on the other side, creating an unscripted workaround.

The correct solution to any problem is simply whatever happens to work.

Caput Mortum: Using friction as a feature

Better for being awkward.

Developer: WildArts Games | Release date: 2025 | Steam Deck: Playable | Link: Steam

• King's Field + Amnesia
• Controls like: A WWII anti-aircraft gun

Captum Mortum eagerly embraces the idea of being awkward to play, choosing to map turning and vertical camera movement to a controller's shoulder buttons (as King's Field games did) so the right analogue stick can dedicate itself to manoeuvring the player's right arm. It's deliberately clunky and difficult, and so much better for it. This virtual body is a physical presence; a clearly defined object within this alchemically-themed world, with all the natural limitations and restrictions that go with it. This means items can be out of arm's reach, even if they're within what every other game would insist was some kind of permissible interaction range.

It's not enough to jab "open" when near a door, the hand must be made to reach towards the handle first.Of course it should—how else would a door open? In other instances physical gestures must be mimicked with reasonable accuracy, and washing a wall with a sponge to reveal hidden secrets is an involved, manual act, rather than some forgettably generic command.

It's all the small things most games smooth away until they're easily ignored or forgotten, brought to the foreground and made interesting again. Simple interactions become satisfying tasks, and what would be stock actions elsewhere are transformed into unique, personal acts.

Labyrinth of the Demon King: Be afraid

Very afraid.

Developer: J.R. Hudepohl | Release date: 2025 | Steam Deck: Playable | Link: Steam

• King's Field + Silent Hill
• Controls like: A sedan whose wheels are spinning in the mud as someone tries to carjack you

King's Field games were always scary, but this game takes that fear and then turns it up to 11 by adding a generous helping of Silent Hill to the mix. Anything that isn't swallowed by shadows is smothered by a thick layer of fog, and everything close enough to see is covered in dark rust, black mould, stale blood, or some unholy combination of all three. Fleshy growths pulsate. Monsters have skin where their eyes should be. Eyes where their skin should be. Not enough flesh on undead bones. A skin-crawling need to scuttle.

It's more than just dirty, it's actively repulsive.

Running away from these terrors is rarely an option within the often narrow confines of the game's old prisons and ancient Japanese buildings, and combat is tense and involved. Enemies skew fast and aggressive—so aggressive they'll regularly fight and kill each other—and aren't afraid of closing the distance or attacking from around a corner with little warning. Weapon swings tend to consume a lot of stamina, meaning blows must be well-timed to avoid being left vulnerable, and learning when to kick enemies away needs to be mastered as quickly as possible. This is about as close to a playable nightmare as RPGs of any kind can get.

Dark Souls 2 is the second-best Dark Souls game and that's fairly uncontroversial. But it's also famously the most ugly. Chief among the complaints people have about Dark Souls 2, is that the game's original lighting engine—the one FromSoftware went to great lengths to show off back in 2013—was entirely absent in the final game.

In pre-release footage, Dark Souls 2's lighting always looked a tad ambitious for a seventh-gen console game. It was meant to be an important aspect of gameplay, necessitating the use of torches in dark areas, whose fire would cast dynamic shadows and reflections. When the game actually released on consoles it looked flat, murky, and torches were never a necessity. It was kinda similar even when it hit PC with the Scholar of the First Sin edition, so for those looking for something more akin to that pre-release footage, the DS2Lighting Engine Mod has been a go-to.

Now the team responsible for that mod is experimenting with path tracing and the results are pretty phenomenal. Check out this footage from the Shaded Woods:

The Shaded Woods is probably one of the ugliest areas from the original game (you can check out bits of it in this video), though some would argue Earthen Peak deserves that distinction. I'm not being contrary when I say that there's something kinda charming about Dark Souls 2's utilitarian ugliness, especially in hindsight, but path traced Shaded Woods is so richly atmospheric that it's possible to say it's pretty without kinda lying about it.

The path tracing applies to everything, including spells, and there are some other videos doing the rounds also. Check them out below:

Elden Ring Nightreign was a major shakeup to the formula FromSoftware cultivated over several Dark Souls games, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring—while each of those games is a departure from the last, Nightreign's multiplayer focus and battle royale-inspired format make it a different beast altogether. But even though it was less of an RPG than the studio's past games, it's getting a pen and paper counterpart of its own.

As reported by Polygon, the adaptation was announced on January 26 and will be published by Group SNE, the same folks behind Sword World RPG, Record of Lodoss War, and tabletop adaptations of Dark Souls and Elden Ring. These are Japanese games, and not to be confused with the English-language Dark Souls RPG or Elden Ring board game, which were published by Steamforged Games.

Now, Dark Souls and Elden Ring are easy to picture as roleplaying games. If my understanding of FromSoftware's RPGs isn't outdated, I think it's safe to assume the party is made up of extremely grim-looking knights and wizards who go around killing poetically tragic beasts and monsters while rolling around a lot. Sounds like a good time.

Nightreign, though, is made distinct by its format moreso than its world. In this pen and paper game, will the party be chased around by an ever-shrinking storm? Will character creation limit players to the hero-like nightfarers? We don't know anything about the game yet so it's hard to know for sure, but if I can turn into a giant wolf-man, that's all the convincing I need. If only I spoke Japanese.

The above announcement states that "publication is scheduled for spring 2026," so if you're keen to give the game a shot, you won't be waiting too long. In the meantime, there's always the Forsaken Hollows DLC to catch up on.

"Who would win in a fight, this guy or this guy" is one of the most worthy questions you can ask, so I love those YouTube channels that do NPC battle royales⁠—the Oblivion Imperial City Arena walked so these guys could run. The channel "Elden Ring Fights" is exactly what it says on the tin, and it recently uploaded a banger: Dark Souls' Artorias vs. the bosses of base game Elden Ring.

FromSoft dusted off the venerable swordsman to serve as a boss in Elden Ring Nightreign's recent Deathly Forsaken Hollows DLC. He's effectively been "ported" to Elden Ring's iteration of the FromSoft game engine, allowing Elden Ring Fights to pit him against the Lands Between's finest.

And boy, for a battered veteran coming out of retirement, Artorias fares better than all those tomato cans they kept setting up in front of Jake Paul. Artorias went on an absolutely brutal tear through the bosses of Elden Ring: Early terrors like Margit and Godfrey don't stand a chance, with single hits from Abyss Artie chunking their health bars. If you have a real job and don't like watching 30-minute YouTube videos, here are the highlight battles I'd recommend skipping to:

• 8:22 - Maliketh the Black Blade
• 13:31 - Dragonlord Placidusax
• 16:53 - Radagon & Elden Beast
• 24:06 - Malenia

All four of these were fun to watch because they're quite dynamic, close fights. Maliketh delivers one of only two L's to Artorias, coming from behind in spectacular fashion in his second phase. I don't think I've ever once felt in control of the Maliketh battle across five playthroughs, and if he had a beefier health bar, I think he'd be the toughest guy FromSoft ever made.

Malenia is Malenia: The fact that she can be flinched gives her a huge disadvantage in these boss vs. boss battles, which do really boil down to facetank DPS races. But her health back on strikes, plus the (mostly) uninterruptible Waterfowl Dance, make up for it.

Placidusax and Elden Beast are notable for being come-from-behind victories for our boy in blue. His AI clearly wasn't designed to handle their mobility or brutal AoE attacks, not to mention the Radagon - Elden Beast fight's marathon nature. And yet, he still squeaked it out. The Fire Giant fight is similarly close, but it's a slog to watch.

I have absolutely no respect for Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy, née Praetor. He's a big dumb blob of snake with two health bars and an AOE fire damage effect, resulting in an unentertaining, unearned victory over Artorias. That's a Mickey Mouse title belt he's wearing, I tell you.

But this video also doesn't tell the full story: We don't know how Artorias fares against Shadow of the Erdtree bosses. Another Elden Ring Fights video shows him getting beat by Carian Knight Rellana in a different context, which doesn't bode well for his chances elsewhere. Still, Artorias risks sullying his legacy as a fighter, preserving a 20 - 2 - 0 record by not taking fights he might lose.

A whopping 16 main Armored Core games have released since 1997, but only 2023's brilliant Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is officially available on PC. Until now, that is: a second Armored Core game just released on Steam courtesy of Japanese publisher G-Mode, and it's going for the bargain price of $11.

Alas, Armored Core: Mobile 3 is not likely an instalment the masses will embrace. It was originally released for flip phones in 2007, and further complicating matters, it was a Japanese exclusive. While that's not exactly the case now—you can easily go and buy Armored Core: Mobile 3 on Steam right now—few will have the patience to play it without English subs. Indeed, no major efforts have been made to modernize this ancient artefact, though it does appear to have controller support.

Here's the trailer:

If that's not enough to discourage you, it's pretty cool to have this curio made available again. It takes place between Armored Core Nexus and Armored Core Last Raven, both of which were offshoots of Armored Core 3. They released for PlayStation 2 in 2004 and 2005 respectively (PS2 owners ate well: a huge seven Armored Core games released for the platform).

The format is pretty much identical to the main Armored Core games: players customize their mech, all the better to complete a series of discrete missions "across various scenarios, including assaults and defenses in urban areas and open wastelands".

Why this mobile port instead of the more palatable console instalments? It's never been officially addressed, but the publishing history of the Armored Core series is a tangled web, with stakeholders including Sega, Sony, Ubisoft, the now-defunct Agetec, as well as current custodians Bandai Namco. Given how voluminous the series is, that's a lot of admin work for something that probably won't ever achieve the level of success of a Dark Souls or Elden Ring.

If you're curious to see how the port plays, YouTuber Cleric Armored Core recorded this stream recently:

Elden Ring: Nightreign has been collecting some dust in my library recently—not for any particular reason, I got 66 hours out of the dang thing, I'm just a human being with limited time, MMOs to keep up with, and, like, chores to do (I am aware this is quitter talk).

I might, however, blow off the dust and give it another whirl, because my favourite boy, the Executor, just got a huge sweep of buffs. Oh, and also, like, Guardians and Revenants and Raiders, but who cares about that—my Sekiro-loving heart just got everything it ever wanted.

I'll just be going through the Nightfarers caught up in the patch 1.03.2 buffs one by one, starting with my favourite: The Executor's Cursed Sword skill, the thing that lets you parry, is now a lot stronger. Higher critical hits, better guard boost, more stagger damage when you deflect, and deflecting successfully while on low stamina won't result in a guard break anymore.

I'm yet to test this myself, but the implication is that even on zero stamina, if your timing's good, you can just ride the lightning and never die. My timing is not good, so I imagine I'll be dying a lot, but the aspiration of a clutch moment or two is something to shoot for. The Cursed Sword's weapon art will now also have Skill Power and Attack Power boosts applied to it correctly.

Lastly, Executor received boosts to its ultimate ability that should make it hit harder—as well as a temporary immortality window while transforming, making it a better 'oh crap' button.

Guardians are a little more straightforward—their guarding's better, go figure. Raiders are enjoying faster attacks, a new effect on their Fighter's Resolve passive that makes them hit harder after taking damage for a short time, and their Ultimate should hit in a wider area, now. And finally, Revenant's summoned spirits now scale with the levels in the Deep of Night mode, making her more useful in high-level play.

All in all, cause for celebration. It's nice to see FromSoftware helping out some of Nightreign's underdogs, and I'm not just saying that because I secretly want to be playing multiplayer Sekiro. I mean, I am saying that, but the main gladness I feel is due to FromSoftware's adherence to the "buff, don't nerf" philosophy. It's better to make underperformers feel powerful than to kneecap what other players are finding fun, especially in a co-op game.

Granted, this is FromSoftware, and FromSoftware is habitually obtuse, so there aren't any specific numbers in these patch notes, and we'll have to find out how effective these buffs are in play. Otherwise? I'll be heading back for a few more rounds of frustration very soon. You can read the full patch notes on the game's official site.

In dark times, the indomitable human spirit continues, relentlessly, to triumph. Such is the lesson imparted to us by Dr Doot, the sax symbol who most recently graced our pages for 100%ing Silksong using his trademark saxophone controller and declaring it's not even the hardest game he's sax'd.

Well, chalk up another win for the Dootster. As noted by GamesRadar, the good doctor has completed his no-hit run of Dark Souls the first, attaining hitless victory over Gwyn, Lord of Cinder with a song in his heart and also in his saxophone. Combine that with his previous no-hit wins in Dark Souls 2 and 3 (and Elden Ring, by the by) and you've got the full combo: a hitless, sax-based run of the entire Souls trilogy, a feat presumably unparalleled through all human history.

To be fair, Gwyn went down like a chump. Dr Doot was using a sorcery build that made total mincemeat of the old guy. Rather than a nailbiter finish, it was more of a one-punch (one-doot) man situation. Still, our hero was rightly pleased with his achievement.

"The World's First Sax-Controlled Dark Souls No-Hit Run has been DOOTED!" wrote Dr Doot in a post on X. "I just beat Dark Souls without getting hit by a single enemy/trap while playing the game on an electric sax!!! I now can officially say that I have beaten THE ENTIRE DARK SOULS TRILOGY HITLESS ON A SAX!!!"

If you're curious as to how this works, it's actually pretty simple. Each note on the Doc's sax is tied to a different input. So you might blow an A to advance and a D to hit. If you knew which note was tied to which symbol, you could presumably envision every move he's doing from audio alone in your mind palace. I don't know why you would, but you could.

Anyway, next up on Dr Doot's playlist is a 112% Hollow Knight run played, of course, on sax. In other news, I've resolved to never say I'm good at a videogame ever again.

It's funny, but I didn't even enjoy Elden Ring Nightreign at first. Like most FromSoftware fans, I was resistant to the concept of an Elden Ring spinoff you're supposed to play almost entirely in multiplayer. I also recognised its obvious limitations. Despite being a roguelike all about team interplay, as you use your limited time to accrue as much power and pertinent passives as possible while journeying to battle the Nightlord, one thing stuck out to me: It doesn't have comms.

Unless you're playing with friends through Discord, you have to limit your interactions to tagging. Predictably, this leads to endless frustrations and horror stories about incompetent teammates, plenty of which you can find if you peruse the game's subreddit. It's an important flaw to recognise, because if I didn't have two other FromSoftware-fanatic friends with which to play Nightreign, I would've quit.

As you can see from all the clips I've shared below, Nightreign with comms, where you can strategise as your run progresses and share gear more easily, is night and day in comparison to no-comms Nightreign. My recommendation here is primarily based on that caveat. If you have others you can share this game with (especially if they played Elden Ring or Dark Souls), you'll have a really good time, excepting the usual blood, sweat, and tears you'll pour into its hardest bosses.

So how does Nightreign work? You play as a group of Nightfarers (characters with specific skills and stats) who drop into a map with random landmarks, where you're expected to gather runes to level up and gear to make you more powerful. At the end of each night, a death circle will begin to close, culminating in a night end boss. After two nights, you'll face a Nightlord—a challenging large-scale boss battle. While you can wipe during a run and be just fine, if you all die to a night boss or the Nightlord? It's game over.

Elden Ring Nightreign is exactly what you'd imagine from a FromSoftware multiplayer game, and that's both good and bad. A great deal isn't explained—to this day, I'm still learning new info about which passives can stack and how they work.

While not quite as hilariously unbalanced as Elden Ring was, Nightreign is still unbalanced as multiplayer games go. Hell, until recently, one of my teammates' builds in Deep of Night (the endgame mode) revolved around using one very specific flail because its skill does obscene damage for seemingly no reason.

My favorite character, Raider, has an ultimate ability which essentially breaks the game, summoning a giant rock that characters and bosses clip through, and doesn't even protect you properly against ground-based threats while standing on it. Does this hilarious jank stop me using it in the middle of a boss fight and enjoying the utter chaos it causes? Of course not. See below:

Nightreign is a bad multiplayer game when you judge it within the context of most other multiplayer games, but the flaws I'm describing above are things I personally wouldn't ever want to change about FromSoftware's game design. I love the way in which Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne all obfuscate info and leave it up to you to work most things out. I also love the hilarious imbalance and jank of Elden Ring and the total nonsense it leads to.

In many ways, Nightreign acts as a victory lap for Elden Ring. Yes, a lot of it is reused content, bringing many bosses, enemies, weapons, and assets from that game, but remixing them into a big bubbling pot of roguelike chaos. If you're someone like me, who has an almost categorical knowledge of Elden Ring (I guided it at launch) it's a really fun time as you're able to actively apply that know how during each run.

Whether we're talking skills, weapons, boss weaknesses, or spells, Nightreign is such a fun game for those who were really into Elden Ring, but also love the role hard-won knowledge has always played in FromSoftware games. When you throw Dark Souls bosses into the mix, too, plus Nightlord invasions, random events, and the Shifting Earth (which changes the map entirely), you've got a game that fans can really sink their teeth into.

I think that's the real reason Nightreign grabbed me so hard this year. FromSoft players are a bit starved for the genuine article at the moment. Sure, we've been eating good this year with Soulslikes such as Lies of P's Overture DLC or The First Berserker: Khazan, but my brain longs for a big proper Bloodborne or Souls that I can just drink in and frontload into my noggin. Nightreign feels particularly well coded for Souls sickos looking for their regular hit.

FromSoft has also done a really good job supporting the game and fleshing out content. After launch we got the Everdark Sovereigns, superpowered versions of the Nightlord bosses with additional mechanics, and this made for some quite challenging yet fun bosses to work away at. Deep of Night was also added—an endgame mode that gets progressively harder as you gain XP, but that also offers new powerful passives and relics (which make your loadout). One particularly great modifier that can appear in this mode removes all map markers, so you're left to navigate by knowledge and line of sight alone.

Though it was initially expected for next year, we also got The Forsaken Hollows DLC. While it didn't add the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC weapons, spells, and skills everyone was craving, it did bring a new map, two new extremely fun Nightlord bosses, and two Nightfarers, both of whom fill particular niches that were lacking in the game. The Scholar especially helps make Nightreign's items actually worthwhile, levelling them up as he uses them.

With the release of the DLC, I think it's likely that FromSoftware will move onto pastures new next year, but if you're like me, hungry for the next Souls, Bloodborne, or whatever it may be, Nightreign is in the best state it's been since launch, with tonnes of content, Nightfarers to pick up and learn, and bosses to battle. If you've got one or two Elden Ring-loving friends and you're looking for something to play this festive season, I would absolutely recommend diving in.

It's become increasingly apparent over the last few weeks that someone at FromSoftware carefully observed all the strategies players were employing before the Forsaken Hollows DLC dropped, and they were taking notes. The new map and bosses are a big middle finger to people who got comfortable with the old meta.

Many Nightreign players, including myself, got used to running similar setups for boosting damage output as much as possible without having to waste too much time in a run. The shrinking, battle royale-style circle doesn't give you a lot of time to dawdle, so the meta revolved around a specific relic that gives you attack power for defeating summonable bosses around the map via evergaols—which is far easier than searching for bosses and hoping to find good random rewards.

Here's the thing: The new map in the DLC features zero evergaols. The relic that lots of players have relied on to easily route through the map is unusable if you want to do the new stuff. You have to actually explore again and figure out an efficient route every time you drop in, which is made even tougher by how labyrinthine the layout is.

The reason I think this was an intentional move is because FromSoft also included some smaller changes that basically make up for this, one of which just came out earlier this week.

Defeating one of the new bosses, The Balancers, gives you a relic that can boost the damage of the special skills on weapons by a significant amount (about 20%). Defeating the enhanced version of that boss, which just debuted this week, gives you an almost identical relic that can stack with the other one. There isn't a single combo of relics in the game that matches the 40% damage boost you can get by equipping both of them before a run.

The new relic is so good that YouTuber Youwy, who does all the math to determine the best builds, calls it broken in his latest video. Players have already identified some of the best weapons to use it with, like the Halo Scythe that lets you fling out holy discs in quick succession. Executor players in particular benefit the most from the relics because they naturally find katanas, and one of the best weapons skills comes on a katana.

Considering the DLC also adds the only character in the game who benefits from picking up consumable items off the ground—items everyone previously ignored—it feels like FromSoft specifically added stuff to shake things up and break players out of their habits. And it seems OK with adding something super powerful as long as it encourages you to engage with a part of the game you wouldn't normally care as much about.

For a game that was never promised regular live service updates and is an experimental multiplayer spin-off from a developer that primarily works on singleplayer RPGs, the DLC has been surprisingly successful at keeping the game fresh no matter how many hours you've already sunk into it. FromSoft has also suggested that more updates are coming. They might not be full-on DLC, but hopefully it's more stuff like this that gets everyone working together to find out the next best way to survive the night.

You know a FromSoftware game is going to be good when your first reaction to it is anger, frustration, and utter despair. I've had an adverse reaction to the start of every Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Demon Souls, proclaiming to anyone who'd listen that I'd never touch any of these games again, only to then put hundreds of hours into them. I'm nothing if not consistent.

Elden Ring Nightreign was no different in this respect. Dropped into the chaos that is Limveld, I had no idea what was going on or why I had just spawned next to one of the Godskin duo at an evergaol. It was a rough entry into the game, and I hated it, but then I played another round and started to join the dots together. Snap to 200 hours later, and I had beaten all the Nightlords and their Everdark variants, but games were strangely easy.

Well, FromSoft must've heard all my bragging because the latest DLC, Forsaken Hollows, launched last week, and it's rough. I've been repeatedly stomped on by the two new nightlords, the Balancers and Dreglord, whether I'm playing one of the new nightfarers or not. I can't even get past the second night boss sometimes—why is that Demon Prince so angry, and who thought it was a good idea to let Curseblade and Divine Beast Warrior team up?

But the difficulty of the latest DLC hasn't stopped a shedload of dedicated nightfarers from diving in and putting themselves through the wringer. "2 million nightfarers in search of the Forsaken Hollows," an official blog post says. "For every nightfarer who joined the hunt against the Dreglord, we offer our immense gratitude."

I don't want to speak for everyone playing this DLC, as not everyone welcomed the update with open arms, but while I initially bounced off Forsaken Hollows as I do with every FromSoftware game, I've come to love it for its difficulty. The new map is only just starting to click as I learn where I can and cannot go, what's the best order to go about exploring the map, and which points of interest are actually worth my time. But starting again from scratch has actually been really rewarding.

It's no longer a guarantee that I'll hit level 15 before I reach the nightlord, or that I'll even make it past the first or second night boss. There's no more floating through fights—you need to make every hit count.

There's no telling how long this will actually last, though. Like with the base game, all it takes to master FromSoft games is some dedication, grit, and practice. Players will likely turn getting through the new map and bosses into an art form very soon, but I'm just going to embrace the chaos until that happens for me.

On December 1, Bandai Namco released an assortment of Elden Ring Nightreign player statistics to celebrate the release of The Forsaken Hollows DLC. There are some interesting omissions, like the popularity of each nightfarer (but we can extrapolate from the data we do have), as well as some surprising reveals.

The biggest shock for me is that the memetically terrifying Bell Bearing Hunter isn't even in the top three for deadliest field bosses: He's beaten by Erdtree Avatar, Draconic Tree Sentinel, and Royal Carian Knight in rising order. I'm curious if this is in terms of absolute bodycount or proportional to attempts on the boss⁠—either way, it could very well be that, as word of the Bell Bearing Hunter's difficulty spread, players just stopped trying to fight him⁠—my crew skips him nine times out of ten.

The Erdtree Avatar is an absolutely wild pull for number three. It's one of the slowest, most predictable bosses in the game, but that could very well be its secret weapon: It's surprisingly tanky and hard-hitting in Nightreign versus its original Elden Ring appearance, best saved for late in a run, and I've absolutely underestimated it before.

Draconic Tree Sentinel is a brute, a beast, and a cretin. I hope he chokes on his sniper fireball one-hit kills. As for the Carian Knight⁠—Loretta from the base game⁠—she's certainly challenging, but I never would have picked her for the number one spot. Shout out to the castle-defending Pot Trolls at number five: I hate you guys so much.

The top two emotes make me very happy: The "I'm just gonna take five" Spread Out, and the "T-pose for dominance" Golden Order Totality at second- and most-used respectively. My own Nightreign crew has made it a habit of T-posing at the end of every successful run.

There have been 1.2 billion revives in total, which is a suitably big, impossible-to-imagine number. Bamco laid out the most popular skins for each nightfarer in the blog post as well. If we take them as proxies for the respective character's overall use⁠—assuming no surprise variables like a huge gap in popularity between skins, say⁠—that gives us the following power ranking for the nightfarers:

1. Wylder, 18 Million (Abysswalker)
2. Ironeye, 17.3 (Sellsword)
3. Recluse, 11.2 (Darkness)
4. Duchess, 10.3 (Darkness)
5. Raider, 9.6 (Remembrance)
6. Executor, 8.7 (Darkness)
7. Revenant, 8.6 (Darkness)
8. Guardian, 4.1 (Dawn)

Poor Guardian, I will never play as you. It's hard to imagine the avian halberdier's lot improving either: Both new nightfarers introduced with The Forsaken Hollows whip ass. I was having plenty of fun with the bizarre support/damage hybrid Scholar, but the Undertaker is where it's at: Mobile, powerful, aggressive, and boasting an ultimate ability I hope never gets nerfed.

The Undertaker Remembrance is fairly simple compared to many of the other Nightfarers in Elden Ring Nightreign. There's only one step that's likely to trip you up, as you help this corrupted abbess search for the Scholar in Limveld. The reason this step is so hard is because it's entirely inaccurate; the Scholar is actually in The Great Hollow event.

I guess that's technically in Limveld, even though it's an entirely different map. As you'll quickly discern from the Remembrance entries, the Undertaker is a nun who started consuming the night corruption, hence the rather questionable screenshots circulating of her licking night juice off the wall while the Scholar watches her. Hey, who am I to kink shame?

As well as a walkthrough for all quest chapters, I've also included info for what you're supposed to do after Chapter 6 to get her Remembrance skin and ending.

How to complete Undertaker's remembrance in Elden Ring Nightreign

As usual for Nightreign Remembrances, you'll first need to undertake some expeditions with the character to earn Memory Fragments, unlocking subsequent Remembrance chapters. For Undertaker, I just completed a couple of Tricephalos expeditions and that got me Chapter 2, and then Chapter 3, where the first Remembrance quest begins.

Undertaker Remembrance Chapter 3

This Remembrance is pretty straightforward. Upon entering it, you'll find yourself in a room with the Iron Menial. Speak to him and he'll turn hostile, whipping out some knives and trying to shank you. After you've killed him, you'll have to work your way through the Roundtable Hold, murdering the other Nightfarers:

• Kill Executor just outside the door to the room
• Kill Guardian and Recluse in the main room with the roundtable
• Kill Wylder near the Visual Codex
• Kill Raider and Ironeye in the DLC chapel

After this, you'll wake up in the chapel and can speak to the Iron Menial again to apologise. Now, you need to:

1. Squash the purple orb on the wall behind where the Iron Menial was
2. Lick the wall… yup
3. Find the Scholar in the grounds of the Roundtable Hold marked on the map and speak to him

He'll explain he's leaving the hold in search of something and will give you the Leather Monocle Case relic. This has:

• [Undertaker] Physical attacks boosted while assist effect from incantation is active for self
• Extended spell effect duration
• Physical attack up +2

You're likely wondering what in god's name that first passive means—effectively, this relic is about self-buffing with Sacred Seals, either via weapon enhancement or HP/damage negation spells. This takes advantage of Undertaker's high faith stat, prolongs said spells, and gives you extra attack while they're active.

Once you've finished speaking to the Scholar, you can exit via the nearby portal to complete this chapter.

Undertaker Remembrance Chapter 5

After you've acquired another couple of Memory Fragments by undertaking expeditions, unlocking Chapter 4 and then Chapter 5, you'll be given another task. Enter the Remembrance and then:

1. Speak to Duchess and exhaust her dialogue
2. Offer a prayer in the DLC chapel
3. Speak to the Iron Menial

He'll explain that a new Shifting Earth event has occurred (The Great Hollow) and that the Scholar is probably chilling out there. You'll get the objective "Search for the Scholar in Limveld", which is absurdly inaccurate. He isn't on the Limveld map; he's in The Great Hollow map, so you'll want to launch an expedition with the event active. If the event is no longer around, remember that you can activate any Shifting Earth event using Sovereign Sigils at the sigil store, provided you've beaten an Everdark Sovereign to unlock it.

Once in The Great Hollow, head to the big castle in the northwest of the map (with the red flag icon). The video above shows you how to access where the Scholar is, but in case you can't view that, I'll lay out instructions below. Since there are Fire Knights and enemies up there, digest these instructions before you try doing them, as you won't have time to stop and read.

1. Head to the main entrance to the castle and then go left around the outside until you find the jump pad (marked on the map)
2. Jump up onto the balcony and go through the door on the left
3. Jump up onto the specimen hanging from chains in the centre of the room and head right onto the rafters to find a hole in the wall you can go through
4. Follow the corridor to find the Scholar trapped in a big crystal and interact with him to take the Primal Core

You don't have to complete the expedition for this to count, but make sure you don't quit out. Basically, just die to the first night boss and you can return to the hold with the objective still complete. Now speak to the Scholar back in the DLC chapel to get the Night-Hued Glass, Bundled Paper, and Undertaker's Chalice once you exit the Remembrance.

How to get Undertaker's Remembrance skin

Once you've completed Chapter 5 and reach Chapter 6, you'll have to do a few things to finish off her Remembrance and get her special skin. It's important to note that these aren't guided parts of the Remembrance, you just have to do them. These are:

1. Defeat Heolstor while playing as Undertaker in the Night Aspect expedition.
2. When you enter the Roundtable Hold ending sequence you'll find you have the Dismembered Finger item in your inventory.
3. Head to the corpse you activate the end the game, but instead, discard the Dismembered Finger next to it (literally drop the item near the corpse as you would with a weapon you don't want). If you've done it right Undertaker will say "That will do".
4. Activate the corpse and finish the game.

When you return to the Roundtable Hold, you'll have unlocked the Remembrance skin (the key difference being that Undertaker has a different necklace) and the Glass Necklace relic, which has:

• [Undertaker] Activating ultimate art increases attack power
• Successive attacks boost attack power
• Ultimate art auto charge +3

With that, you've complete the Undertaker's Remembrance. Now time to do Scholar.

If you've just started playing Elden Ring Nightreign's new Forsaken Hollows DLC and you're already looking for how to unlock Scholar and Undertaker skins, then congratulations! You've got your priorities right. Fashion first. What's the point in slaying the Dreglord if you can't slay where it truly matters?

Both the new Nightfarers have four skins each, consisting of the usual Dawn and Darkness attire, as well as two Dark Souls skins, a battle which the Undertaker has definitely won. The Dawn and Darkness outfits are kind of hit and miss depending on your preferences, but there are lots you can choose from, so you should find one you like. Here's how to unlock the Elden Ring Nightreign DLC skins.

How to unlock the Elden Ring Nightreign DLC skins

Similar to the Dark Souls outfits in the base game, you'll actually have to do some stuff in order to unlock both the regular outfits for the Scholar and the Undertaker and their own Dark Souls skins.

• To unlock the Dawn and Darkness skins for both the Scholar and Undertaker, you need to defeat the Balancers boss. This is the first boss of the DLC that becomes available once you unlock Forsaken Hollows. They aren't too tricky to beat provided you know the Balancers weakness plus some tips to deal with them.
• To unlock the Dark Souls skins for both the Scholar and Undertaker, you have to defeat the Dreglord, the second boss of the DLC. You will have gotten a small preview of this big fella when you fought him to unlock the new characters. He'll unlock once you've defeated the Balancers and, though he doesn't have a weakness listed, fire can stun him at certain moments, and deals additional damage, as does holy.

The Dreglord is a fairly tough and long fight, in many ways a battle of attrition similar to taking down Heolstor, so this will be your biggest obstacle to unlocking and enjoying the Scholar and Undertaker's Dark Souls skins.

Once done, you can purchase the outfits at the mirror for either Murk or Sovereign Sigils (which you get for defeating Everdark Sovereigns). You can also buy them from the sigil store instead once you've unlocked that via defeating a sovereign.

Finding out the Balancers weakness in Elden Ring Nightreign's new Forsaken Hollows DLC will give you a better shot at beating them if you're struggling. I personally think this mob boss is one of the coolest in the game, part-Deacons of the Deep from Dark Souls 3, part-Cleanrot Knights from Elden Ring. This group of glaive-wielding valkyries can gang up on you if you're not careful.

After you defeat them all, they do an Abyss Watchers from Dark Souls 3, creating a super version of themselves with enhanced attacks. All the other Balancers will get back up, too, meaning you have to balance dealing with them and the main aggressive entity.

It's a fun yet chaotic fight, so here's what they're weak to, as well as some additional tips to help you beat them if you're struggling.

Elden Ring Nightreign Balancers boss weakness and tips

The Balancers are weak to sleep. You can see the symbol of the closed eye if you examine them in the expedition menu at the table, so you'll want to look for ruins on the map with this same symbol. Sleep ruins usually have a Runebear boss and will often reward you with weapons that inflict sleep.

If you smash containers in the ruins and search the chests in the cellar, you'll also find Soporific Grease, which can apply sleep to your weapon, as well as Sleep Pots you can throw. The new maps also have sleep cathedrals, so watch out for those.

Grease or Sleep Pots are definitely your best best, especially as there's only one weapon in Nightreign that's guaranteed to apply sleep; the Sword of St. Trina. In many ways, sleep is just as hard a weakness to cope with as bringing madness weapons for Libra, since it's mainly down to RNG whether you find an appropriate ruin or happen to find that sword.

It's also a challenging boss weakness because it's not an affinity. Except for poison against Gaping Jaw, and Libra's madness, all the other Nightlords are weak to damage types, rather than status build-up. That said, ailments usually have a very precise effect against bosses that are weak to them.

If you poison Gaping Jaw, for example, it gets staggered and has to stop to vomit the poison out. If you inflict madness on Libra, he stops casting spells and goes into his slightly easier to deal with rampage mode. In this case, sleep will put Balancers into a slumber, making the fight a little less chaotic. Here are some additional tips:

• I haven't worked out whether the Scholar can link status effects on enemies, but if so, you should be able to sleep all the Balancers at once. Either way, the Scholar is definitely a strong pick for this fight, as linking the Balancers will let you damage them simultaneously. Since the Scholar can upgrade items through use as well, he'll also be better at using Sleep Pots.
• Due to the number of grab attacks the Balancers do (especially after they buff their attack), and the fact that Undertaker gets a free art cast when she dodges a grab attack, she's also a strong pick if you've cracked those attack timings.
• Remember that killing the central most-aggressive Balancer with the enhanced attacks will stun them all, but before long, it'll reincarnate as another of the Balancers. With all that in mind, the best tactic is to kite the main one while the rest of the team take out the others.

Also make sure you communicate (if on comms) when that main Balancer suddenly switches aggro to another player. It's a chaotic fight, but easily survivable provided you know who the most aggressive Balancer is attacking.

So you're wondering why you've suddenly been reduced to 50% HP while trying to explore The Great Hollow map? Elden Ring Nightreign's new Shifting Earth event has a special (and somewhat annoying) mechanic called the 'crystal curse', which inflicts a half-health reduction whenever you enter the castles or ruins in each corner of the map.

This isn't ideal since those areas contain the best weapons and are the most lucrative when it comes to farming runes and gaining strength to face the new night bosses. Below, I'll explain what you need to do to complete the event and remove the curse so you can take on those areas at full HP.

How to complete The Great Hollow in Elden Ring Nightreign

Except for giving you an entirely different map, The Great Hollow event inflicts you with the crystal curse, a debuff that reduces your HP to 50% when you enter one of the region's big strongholds or castles. You can try to take these on at half health, but it's a challenge.

Instead, to complete The Great Hollow and shatter the crystal curse, you have to find and break four crystals around the map. There are usually eight of these altogether, and they each look like a giant glowing blue crystal, pictured below. When you get close, you'll get the option to interact and 'Resonate', which will break the crystal. You'll get the message that the great crystal (that big purple thing marked towards the centre of the map) is cracking, and with the fourth, it'll shatter.

You can find these crystals on the first day, which is ideal if you want time to raid castles, but if you can't, the crystals will be marked on the map when day two starts (like formidable foes are). I recommend smashing as many as you spot while running around, and then finishing them off at the start of day two. It's unclear whether these crystals appear randomly each run, but I would assume so.

After you've smashed the crystals, you'll have to head to the broken great crystal in the center of the map, which will now be marked with a little red flag like Shifting Earth event objects usually are. Travel there and grab the buff from the central crystal, pictured below, to "Gain the power of the great crystal".

This buff breaks the crystal curse, but also increases art charge rate when you've used all your flasks. Now you're free to battle through the castles, forts, and ruins in each corner of the map at full HP.

Working out how to unlock Undertaker in Elden Ring Nightreign is actually a lot simpler than it was for previous characters like Duchess. This nun is set to be one of the most powerful characters in the game alongside Wylder, entering a state where she can surge-sprint without consuming stamina as well as get an enhanced dodge.

She can also use her art whenever another character uses theirs, which is pretty cracked if I'm frank. You'll need to unlock both Undertaker and Scholar, as well as defeat two Nightlords (including Gladius), if you want to access the new Balancers boss and The Great Hollows Shifting Earth event, so you'll need to do this first before you can start Forsaken Hollows properly.

How to unlock Undertaker in Elden Ring Nightreign

To unlock Undertaker in Nightreign's Forsaken Hollows expansion, you first have to defeat Tricephalos, the first expedition which culminates in the Gladius boss. Once you return, you need to:

1. Speak to the Iron Menial by the roundtable in the main room (this will automatically happen when you spawn in if you've completed Tricephalos)
2. Go to see the Small Jar Merchant in the west wing of the Roundtable Hold and speak to him
3. Interact with the door he indicates by him to be summoned into a boss fight with the Dreglord (with Undertaker fighting it already)

Now, it doesn't matter whether you defeat this boss or not. Either way, a cutscene will play introducing you to the Dreglord, and then you'll be teleported back to the main room of the Roundtable Hold. Return to the door by the Small Jar Merchant to find it open and head inside. You'll find the Undertaker just in front of the altar, so speak to her to unlock her. You can also speak to the Scholar at the same time to unlock him.