Elden Ring: Nightreign ties the worlds of Dark Souls and Elden Ring together for the first time, as iconic Souls characters make their way to a new "branch" of The Lands Between

Elden Ring: Nightreign appears to bring the worlds of Dark Souls and Elden Ring together for the first time, as eagle-eyed fans have spotted iconic Lordan residents in The Lands Between.

Elden Ring: Nightreign was announced at The Game Awards last night - it's a standalone, three-player adventure played in 40-minute bursts, but its trailer also revealed something particularly interesting for Dark Souls lore-heads. Iconic characters from the Souls trilogy were spotted in the video - the Firekeeper from Dark Souls 1 and the Nameless King from Dark Souls 3 were both spotted in the video.

Clearly, the question is whether this means that the worlds of Dark Souls and Elden Ring are interconnected. Clearly, they're not the same worlds, but it's undeniable that these characters are out of place in Nightreign. The answer to that question, however, is a bit complicated. In an interview with IGN, game director Junya Ishizaki says that "we'd like fans to think of Nightreign as an Elden Ring spin-off," where "the story is completely separate and parallel to the world of Elden Ring's."

If you need a lore reason for that, you'll find it in the shattering. Ishizaki and co "didn't want to encroach" on the story of Elden Ring too much, so Nightreign will "coexist" in a "completely separate branch of the Elden Ring story," which the Shattering is a key part of, essentially splitting the worlds into parallel versions of one another. Automaton also suggests that those Dark souls enemies are "representing creatures that have strayed from another universe" - guest stars, rather than the lead antagonists, it seems.

Given the Sekiro vibes that are also present in Nightreign, this might be a good time to get to grips with the best FromSoftware games.