The week before heading to Tokyo to play Shadow of the Erdtree for PC Gamer's next cover story, I decided I needed to brush up on my Elden Ring skills. Instead of playing solo, I decided to invite a friend to try out the Seamless Co-opMod.

Co-op has always been my favorite way to experience From Software games, and in "Elden Rings" it was easier to summon a friend to take on bosses and dungeons with me than in "Dark Souls". However, there are some frustrating limitations, such as not being able to ride torrents in an open world. So when we interviewed Hidetaka Miyazaki, president of From Software, we brought up the fact that seamless co-op allows you to play an entire game in one multiplayer session without interruption, and asked him what he thought about such a way to experience the game.

"Playing an entire game together is not something I actively oppose or disregard. When it comes to The Elden Ring, we just wanted a looser, more casual style. Instead of putting technical constraints on the player, so to speak, it's more like completing this concentration and moving on." [In "Dark Souls," for example, players had to use consumables to summon other players, but in "Elden Ring," that restriction is greatly reduced by the crafting system. The concept of "summoning pools" was also introduced to concentrate players' summoning signatures, making it easier to find helpers quickly in difficult battles.

While these are welcome changes for players who only occasionally want to dabble in cooperative play, for me it is a very different experience than traveling the entire journey with a friend, which I have done throughout the entire Dark Souls trilogy (and now most of Eldenring). So I was very surprised when Miyazaki said the following:

"It doesn't mean that we won't consider other ways that you and your friends could have had a complete co-op experience from start to finish.

Of course, this is hardly a promise, and Miyazaki did not divulge any secrets about what From Software intends to make next. However, the studio tends to make co-op more accessible in its games, and must have noticed that the Seamless Co-op mod is by far the most popular on the Elden Ring Nexusmods page, with 3.6 million downloads (the next most popular mod is 1.2 million downloads and only ⅓ as many). This is important for a studio known for following its own vision.