While the originalDark Soulstrilogy are rich single-player experiences, filled with challenging combat and interesting lore, something about Bandai Namco and FromSoftware’s games that fans adore are the multiplayer elements. Friends canteam up to fight the bosses ofDark Souls, slightly lessening the challenge, or they can fight each other to the death through the game’s PvP modes. For manyDark Soulsfans, the multiplayer of the games can be as integral to the FromSoftware RPG experience as anything else.
It seems though, that theDark Soulstrilogy may be getting rid of its multiplayer elements. In January of this year, multiplayer functionality was temporarily removed fromDark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered, Dark Souls 2,andDark Souls 3. Though, this removal may not be temporary after all, as looking at the Steam pages for the games has shown fans that the multiplayer tag is missing from all the games previously listed. FromSoftware is likely anticipating that most fans will be enjoying theElden Ringmultiplayer, rather than that of previous titles.
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Yet, for fans who may have wanted to do a co-opDark Soulsrun down the line with friends, removing the multiplayer functionality from the games is quite problematic. While the multiplayer tag has been removed from the games' Steam pages, theDark Soulstrilogy still has reference to multiplayer in the product descriptions of each game. Some fans are hoping that the removal of the multiplayer tags is just another part of the process in fixing theDark Soulsmultiplayer, which faced a security breach followingan exploit inDark Souls 3found early in 2022.
However, if the multiplayer tags needed to be removed from the games, this raises the question of how severe the issue is withinDark Souls’multiplayer. WithElden Ringlikely being a priority for FromSoftware, it’s entirely possible that the multiplayer issue within theDark Soulsgames will persist until the hype around the studio’s most recent release dies down. While theDark Soulsgames can still be enjoyed as a primarily single-player medium, the removal of a feature that fans once enjoyed isn’t going to go down well among the community.
In the meantime,Elden Ringoffers fans a multiplayer experience, building on that of theDark Soulstitles. Allowing for up to three players to face the game together,Elden Ringsees some improvement on the traditional FromSoftware multiplayer formula, and has seen some unique and hilarious moments pulled off both in PvE and PvP.
The Dark Souls Trilogyis now available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
