Elden Ring Nightreign director says it wasn't always a PvE battle royale game: "That's something that we tried and we thought it worked well, so it stuck"

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FromSoftware didn't start Elden Ring Nightreign's development with the idea of borrowing from the battle royale genre, though some on-the-fly experimentation worked so well that the team decided to stick with it.

Like other popular genre stapes like Fortnite or PUBG, Elden Ring Nightreign features a big ol' ring of death that'll scooch you along. While it's a design trick that works nicely to shape the experience FromSoftware is after, making an Elden Ring battle royale game certainly wasn't what the devs initially set out to do.

"The battle royale-type structure was not considered to be the base of the game," director Junya Ishizaki tells GameSpot. " It wasn't a starting point, it was something that sort of took shape, or elements of these games took shape during development of Nightreign.

"For instance, the Ring of Reign that closes in around the field is definitely something that players will be familiar with, but it wasn't there from the start. It's something that we implemented in order to encourage that movement and to guide the player's route through the map, and encourage their decision-making. That's something that we tried and we thought it worked well, so it stuck."

It's not the first time Ishizaki has spoken about borrowing from popular genres in Elden Ring Nightreign. As we previously reported, Ishizaki also said that borrowing roguelike elements wasn't about chasing industry trends but throwing something into the pot that made sense regarding the type of experience FromSoftware wanted to offer.

How does it all come together? According to our Elden Ring Nightreign preview, like a mod. That's a compliment, we promise. Regardless, you'll be able to see for yourself soon. If you're not dipping into the Elden Ring Nightreign beta, you can play FromSoftware's latest when it releases on May 30.

Playing Elden Ring Nightreign solo sounds like a bad idea to me, but the director says "you don't have to babysit one another" and "you can all go your different ways."