Draugoth
Gold Member
President Hidetaka Miyazaki he thinks about that way of experiencing the game is legitimate and may take inspiration from mods like this for future titles:
Elden Ring did make that aspect of the co-op experience quite a bit friendlier than it was in prior FromSoft games; in Dark Souls, for example, you had to use a consumable item to be able to summon another player for help, a limitation Elden Ring greatly eased up on with its crafting system. It also introduced the concept of "summoning pools" to concentrate players' summon signs, making it easier to quickly find someone to assist in a tough battle.
Those are nice changes for players who only occasionally want to dabble in co-op, but for me that's quite a different experience than going on an entire journey with a friend, which I've done for the entire Dark Souls trilogy (and now a good chunk of Elden Ring). So I was pleasantly surprised by what Miyazaki said next:
"It's definitely not something we actively oppose or want to downplay, wanting to go through the whole game together," Miyazaki said. "In terms of where we were with Elden Ring, it was simply a case of wanting that more loose, casual style—drop in, defeat a boss, drop out. It doesn't put any technical restrictions on the player, it just sort of lets them complete this focus and then move on, so to speak."
Elden Ring did make that aspect of the co-op experience quite a bit friendlier than it was in prior FromSoft games; in Dark Souls, for example, you had to use a consumable item to be able to summon another player for help, a limitation Elden Ring greatly eased up on with its crafting system. It also introduced the concept of "summoning pools" to concentrate players' summon signs, making it easier to quickly find someone to assist in a tough battle.
Those are nice changes for players who only occasionally want to dabble in co-op, but for me that's quite a different experience than going on an entire journey with a friend, which I've done for the entire Dark Souls trilogy (and now a good chunk of Elden Ring). So I was pleasantly surprised by what Miyazaki said next:
"That's not to say we won't consider other ways like you and your friend played, from beginning to end, total co-op—that's not to say we won't consider ideas like that with our future games."