Presumably much to Miyazaki's dismay, Elden Ring Nightreign is decidedly void of poison swamps: 'Maybe no one wanted to include it'
As we know all too well at this point, Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki freaking loves a poison swamp. They've become a staple of FromSoftware's environments, a lovely poisonous debuff enveloping you while scraggly little creatures try to chip away at your health even further. Back in 2022, he said he «rediscovered» his love for a good old toxic bog, adding «I know how people feel about them but I suddenly realize I'm in the middle of making one and I can't help myself. It just happens.»
He then admitted last year that maybe he went a little overboard with chucking them in every single game, though of course there was still one in Shadow of the Erdtree. One upcoming FromSoft game that notably doesn't include a poison swamp, however, is Elden Ring's roguelike spinoff Nightreign.
That's probably because, as Kitao Taidai joked, Miyazaki isn't the one rubbing his purple-tinged hands all over the game. As reported by Famitsu, Taidai approached the subject of Nightreign's poison swamps, or lack thereof, during a livestream of the game over on YouTube. «There aren't any,» Taidai told viewers (via a machine translation). «This time, the director is not Miyazaki, but [Junya] Ishizaki, who has been the battle director of Elden Ring, so maybe no one wanted to include it.»
Ouch, a devastating blow to Miyazaki's neverending love for bubbling, venomous marshlands. It does make a lot of sense that if any Souls game was going to be missing one, it'd be Nightreign. The game's focus seems to be leaning a lot more heavily towards being a fast-paced slashfest—hell, our Morgan Park surmised it was closer to Fortnite than it was to Elden Ring when he had a hands-on with the game earlier this month—and I can imagine forcing players to trudge through toxic sludge isn't the kind of thing you need when trying to pull that off.
It does feel like a tiny bit of a shame though, but I'm sure Miyazaki's DNA will be running through Nightreign even without him at the helm. I would love to tell
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