What Elden Ring's Seamless Co-Op Mod Means For Future FromSoftware Games
A popular mod for Elden Ring has completely revamped its cooperative multiplayer systems, and its reception could affect the development of future games by FromSoftware. For over a decade, FromSoftware's action RPGs have used the same, rather obtuse multiplayer functions, with slight differences as the studio's signature formula evolved. Many Elden Ring players have found the vanilla co-op mechanics too restrictive, and have opted to download the Seamless Co-op mod in order to freely explore The Lands Between alongside a group of friends.
Like many aspects of Elden Ring, its multiplayer gameplay has its origins in 2009's Demon's Souls. A game filled with convoluted systems like manipulatable World Tendency, Demon's Souls was the first experiment for a multiplayer system that would become popular with dedicated fans as it was further refined through Dark Souls and Bloodborne. While connected to the game servers, bloodstains, messages, and fleeting apparitions encroach from the worlds of other players. Dark Souls vaguely provided an in-universe explanation for the multiplayer mechanics, claiming the White Soapstone allowed and Undead to become a phantom and manipulate Lordran's distorted flow of time to assist others in combat.
Related: Elden Ring: The Shattering Was Even More Brutal Than You Think
The limitations of these multiplayers systems worked in synergy with these earlier games' more linear designs. Typically, if one was summoned for co-op, the objective was to reach the end of the area and help the host player defeat the boss, with Souls (or Blood Echoes in Bloodborne) and restored Humanity being the reward for succeeding. Elden Ring's co-op still helps players level up, but the barriers erected around a
Read more on screenrant.com
