In a shocking break from tradition, Elden Ring Nightreign will not feature the infamous poison swamps of past Souls titles. This is according to FromSoftware’s advertising and production manager Yasuhiro Kitao, who spoke about the game during a Famitsu livestream on February 13.
Towards the end of the broadcast, Kitao did a brief Q&A, during which he confirmed that Elden Ring’s new co-op survival spin-off will not include any poison swamps. Amusingly, he offers a very straightforward reason for their absence – it’s because Hidetaka Miyazaki is not involved in the game’s development.
While they may be the bane of players’ existence, Miyazaki is famously obsessed with poison swamps, which he has spoken about in past interviews. Back when Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was announced, he told Eurogamer that after “introspection and reflection,” he realized how much he liked making them, and thus the DLC came to feature one too.
On the other hand, Miyazaki is taking a back seat for Elden Ring Nightreign, with Junya Ishizaki (who was a level designer for Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne and Elden Ring) taking over as director. While Ishizaki has received Miyazaki’s blessing to include some Dark Souls bosses in Nightreign (like Dark Souls 3’s Nameless King), it seems FromSoftware’s head is not directly involved in development, which, as Kitao puts it, meant “there was no one to push for a poison swamp.”
Elden Ring NIGHTREIGN is scheduled to launch on May 30 for the PC (Steam) and PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S.
