Rogue Nameless KingThe Nameless King and older Souls bosses will show up in Elden Ring Nightreign for exactly the reasons you thinkYour first guess about the reason why you're going to be fighting classic Souls games bosses in Elden Ring Nightreign is probably the correct one.Image credit: FromSoftware News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on Feb. 13, 2025 Elden Ring Nightreign is quickly becoming one of the years most anticipated games, and with good reason. But it also represents an entirely new type of game for developer FromSoftware, one that freed it up to try things some would consider sacrilege.Case in point, all the classic Souls bosses fans have spotted in various Nightreign trailers. These are just some of the bosses youll be going up against in the game, of course, but why not just limit the pool to bosses from Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree?To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The answer, somewhat disappointingly, has nothing to do with lore and story. Elden Ring Nightreign game director, Junya Ishizaki, told Gamespot in a new interview that FromSoftware knew fans have favourite bosses from past games, and simply wanted to bring them back, and update them so that players could take them on them again.The primary reason for these existing bosses in Nightreign is from a gameplay perspective, Ishizaki confirmed.Ishizaki also pointed out, as you might have already guessed, that the roguelike format of Nightreign requires a lot of novel content, as players are expected to go through the game multiple times across different in-game days. Thats precisely why FromSoft decided to dig through the archives to see which bosses could work in the new format.We obviously understand that our players have a lot of affection for these characters and they have a lot of fond memories of battling them in these games, so we didn't want to encroach too much on that lore aspect, he added, immediately shooting down all your lore theories. Which reappearance from a past game will be the most surprising? | Image credit: Bandai NamcoOf course, these wont be identical to their counterparts in the original game. Ishizaki explained that some tweaks have been made so they better fit the gameplay of Nightreign. The character freedom and speed in Elden Ring would trivialise many of the classic bosses that struck fear in the hearts of players then, so these new versions will likely be faster and more aggressive to match.But it was more so from a numbers perspective, he added. And just to add to that quickly, also from a personal standpoint, I thought it'd be kind of fun.Elden Ring Nightreign just had its release date confirmed. The game arrives May 30 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. We played it, and Alex had a lot of praise for how well it makes use of its unusual structure and what you can expect when you actually get your hands on it.