Souls dataminer shows why Elden Ring's asset re-use is actually awesome

pcgamer.com:

Elden Ring: in case you haven't heard, it's the bee's knees. One of the great and unexpected pleasures I've found in the game is seeing the echoes, large and small, of the Soulsborne games that led up to this point. When Elden Ring was first revealed its re-use of assets even became a silly controversy, with some sorts rather put-out that FromSoftware might, god forbid, re-use a perfectly functional sword swing animation rather than making a whole new one.

Thing is, Elden Ring is a masterclass in how to re-use assets, and this is arguably the only reason it exists in the form it does. The game is simply mammoth, and all players will have had these wild moments of taking an elevator or slipping into a cave and finding a whole new sprawl to search. FromSoftware has been building on this foundation since Demon's Souls (2009), and subsequently created five more games in a similar vein before Elden Ring. Every single one of them feeds into the Lands Between in some way.

Longtime Souls dataminer ZullieTheWitch is one of the most legit sources of information about these games out there: this is the individual who managed to create chalice dungeon glyphs that allowed players to fight unused bosses in Bloodborne. One of the things that's especially interesting about Zullie's work is they dig-out the unused stuff, which can often be in a near-final state, and each Souls title has its own assortment of what-might-have-been surprises buried in the code.

Zullie's posted a new video making a comparison that, I think, showcases the way FromSoft uses what it's got, and demonstrates why calling this asset re-use is really rather misleading. Asset re-use sounds like you just pick up a boss off a shelf and whack it in the new game. Whereas