I finally beat the last boss of Elden Ring: Nightreign a while ago.
Years ago, I worked a job that meant getting off work around 8pm or later every Friday. The nature of the job meant that Friday was a long day, and one way we coped with that at the gig was with basketball. We went to a lot of Warriors games on their championship run, but that wasn’t the only special treat. To mark the end of a long day at the end of a long week, a couple of us would get into a car and drive to a gym one or two towns over. In that gym were a bunch of other workaholics and basketball sickos, all of them waiting for enough people to show up (2, 4, 8, 10!) to get a real game in instead of endless warmups.
Pick-up basketball is a beautiful thing. There may be a couple people who might as well be in NBA shape for how good they are compared to everyone else, but generally, you’ve got a lot of folks who are medium-good, but maybe have a specialty that gives them confidence.
People pick teams based on experience and vibes. People play their positions, but are otherwise hard to consistently predict. You’re golden when you see familiar faces wearing jerseys. But you don’t always get to have that experience, so you gotta be willing to put the ball in the hands of randos, too. Maybe the short guy can shoot, maybe the tall guy has handles. I’ve met monster centers at pick-up games, dudes who are maybe 5’8″ but have practiced nothing but rebounding and boxing out regular degular guys like me for thirty years. The LeBron Jameses of boxing out.
Playing with randos is fun in a different way than with the homies. You know what the homies can do, and you have a shared language to lean on. Aaron Accountant is great from outside, Gary GameStop is good at drawing double teams, and Bobby Burger King isn’t good at shooting but is good at setting picks. You can plan around it. With randos, you gotta trust them, and the revelation that comes from that trust can be a lot of fun.
Can this guy actually drive when he calls for the ball? Can the cat who called point thread the needle and feed you when you’re open? Is this 6’4″ dude ever gonna dunk or is he here to hold up the ceiling?
It’s a gamble, and when it pays off, it’s beautiful. We might as well have been the Dream Team for how good some of those games felt when you’re all exhausted, trying to figure out where your ball went, and trying to wipe off all the sweat before you get back into the car.
We usually went to In-n-Out after that. Perfect Friday night.
Youtube embed: “HOP ON NIGHTREIGN” by Keith Garces
Part of the fun of sports is giving myself over to the team and trying to get us all over the finish line, and Nightreign is very much that kind of game. You have to be aware of what your teammates’ characters are capable of, in addition to their actual human skill at performing those actions. If you try to play it alone instead of joining the team of three, you’re probably going to ruin the experience for everyone. Sometimes you get hard carried by the neighborhood Steph Curry, who is always down to run up the score or splash a Guardian ult on both downed teammates from across the map, nothing but net to rescue the run. That’s a different kind of thrill, a rare experience, but I do prefer the “all in it learning together” struggle.
Sometimes you don’t mesh and the games suck. Your team gets off to a weird start or prioritizes awkwardly-placed locations, so your weapons and levels are out of whack when you get to the boss fight at the end of the night. Life happens. You’re still presenting a united front against the enemy, whether that enemy is a formidable opposing basketball team or the red-eyed Bell-Bearing Hunter, but you’re not enough of a team. You’re moving as three, when you should be moving as one.
But most times out of ten, at least in my experience, when a bunch of people get together to accomplish a shared goal, there’s a level of submission to the team involved, of figuring out the best way to belong instead of the best way to lead. Being open to playing with randos in this game means being surprised when they go off on their own, but also being surprised when they show off great game sense or a really team-oriented kind of gameplay. Runs are up and down, but mostly, they’ve been up, and I think that makes for a really pleasant time. The game is still 45 minutes of hard focus and then back to zero, but when you’re cooking, you’re cooking as a unit.
Youtube embed: “ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN: we take those” by David Brothers
Elden Ring: Nightreign is a banger of a game. The first night boss felt insurmountable on week one, but now that we’re a few weeks in, I’ve gone on a few dozen runs, taken down the last boss of the game, and had the time to come up with some good relic presets for my Duchess character. Next for me is helping another friend through the game like I was helped through the game, sharing the knowledge I picked up playing duos and getting closer and closer to being the Nightreign equivalent of the guy who spent thirty years boxing out.
(If you follow this metaphor to the logical end point, the Bell-Bearing Hunter at the bottom of the castle is the guy “who tried out for the G-League” who shows up every now and then and ruins things for everyone. Sure, it’s possible you could take him. But you’d have more fun turning around and going home instead of suddenly being a supporting character in somebody else’s single player game.)
I spent most of my video game time these past few weekends on playing duos with friends and the occasional full rando game, and even on runs that went south or had someone quit out, I still ended up having a great deal of fun. I’m hooked, and it has me wanting to get back to Elden Ring and even more excited for The Duskbloods.
Youtube embed: “ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Bring Me to Life Trailer” by Bandai Namco Entertainment America
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