Dark Souls and Elden Ring developer FromSoftware seems to be firmly in its multiplayer era with the announcement of its new game, The Duskbloods.
The Duskbloods was one of the biggest surprises of the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct. I don’t think I ever would have had a Nintendo-exclusive FromSoftware game on my bingo card, but I certainly wouldn’t have had that FromSoftware game being a development on the longshot that was Elden Ring: Nightreign.
Nightreign, you may remember, is a three-player multiplayer experience (though you can play it solo, but not in pairs). Continuing along that theme, The Duskbloods is a “PvPvE-based multiplayer action game” for up to eight players, according to a post on FromSoft’s website (translated via Google). Now, my personal vendetta against almost all kinds of extraction shooter (I’m of the opinion that Escape from Tarkov, Dark and Darker, and Hunt: Showdown ‘completed’ this particular genre) means that I’m not super-down for that, but what I am interested in is the fact that this is a newly-emerging pattern for FromSoft.
Of course, there’s been multiplayer in Dark Souls for years, but the entire Soulsborne ‘series’ is certainly multiplayer-first. Elden Ring blurred those lines, but Nightreign started the process of erasing them entirely. Now, The Duskbloods is a whole new IP (despite how much it looks like Bloodborne) based entirely around that multiplayer setup. It’s not an optional extra like Elden Ring’s, but clearly a core part of the experience. That marks a whole new frontier for this acclaimed studio, and it’s one that I’m fascinated to see play out.
