HoYoverse dropped Nodusfall at Gamescom Opening Night Live on August 25, 2026, and a slice of the FromSoftware internet treated it like a crime scene. The new co-op action game is darker and more realistic than Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, or Zenless Zone Zero. It shows Weavers hunting mythic beasts in a world where divine order has collapsed. Within hours, Elden Ring communities were posting side-by-sides and calling the trailer a ripoff.
That reaction is loud. It is also sloppy. Shared genre language is not theft. FromSoftware popularized a look. It did not invent winged goddesses, lion companions, fire titans, or ruined kingdoms, and it does not get a veto over anyone else using them.
What the trailer actually showed
Nodusfall is a multi-mythology co-op hunt. Players form a squad, climb and pressure huge creatures, and mix combat styles. The presentation is closer to Monster Hunter meeting a grim fantasy action RPG than it is to HoYoverse’s usual anime look. That shift is the point. The studio has been branching out with projects like Varsapura and Petit Planet. Nodusfall is the darkest swing yet.
The comparisons that spread fastest were specific:
- A winged figure surrounded by white birds, read as Malenia’s Scarlet Aeonia with doves swapped in for rot.
- A warrior with a massive lion-like companion, read as Godfrey and Serosh.
- A colossus with a burning circular head, read as Midra or a Furnace Golem.
- A mounted clash, read as the Nameless King.
Content creator MarcoMeatball said HoYoverse “pretty much directly took several of the bosses” and changed them a bit. A Reddit line that kept getting quoted was even more sweeping: each design might look inspired in isolation, but three of them in one trailer meant a “blatant ripoff.”
That is a mood, not an argument. A two-minute cinematic is not a design document. It is a mood board with teeth. If your first instinct is to treat every tall knight, rotting angel, or flaming giant as FromSoftware property, you have confused familiarity with ownership.
FromSoftware did not invent this palette
Dark fantasy is older than Demon’s Souls. Winged women appear in Greek harpies, biblical angels, valkyries, and a century of European painting. A warrior bound to a lion is a mythic image from Heracles to Chinese guardian beasts to countless coat-of-arms designs. A sun-headed fire titan is the kind of thing religious art and tabletop bestiaries have been doing forever. A knight on a flying mount is not a Dark Souls 3 exclusive. It is a dragon rider.
Even some of the people making the accusations admit the obvious when pressed. A winged enemy with bird legs and a flock of white birds can just be a harpy. A flaming head is not a copyrighted silhouette. A lion at a warrior’s shoulder is not Serosh unless the rest of the character, lore, and fight sell that specific relationship.
FromSoftware’s own catalog is built on inheritance. Hidetaka Miyazaki has been open about loving Berserk. The oversized greatswords, broken-armed knights, brand-like curses, and doomed gothic worlds lean hard on Kentaro Miura’s manga. Bloodborne drinks from Lovecraft. Dark Souls also pulls from Fighting Fantasy books, old board games like Dragon Pass, and even Ghibli silhouettes. Miyazaki has said the “Soulslike” label is humbling and has refused to take full credit for inventing a genre, because the core pieces already existed.
So the standard some fans want to apply to HoYoverse is a standard FromSoftware itself would fail. If quoting Berserk, Guts’ sword, and a dozen older fantasy sources is “homage,” then a studio using a winged omen, a lion companion, and a fire giant is not automatically a thief. You do not get to treat inspiration as sacred when your favorite studio does it and as plagiarism when a Chinese company does it.
This is the Zelda argument all over again
Genshin Impact went through the same ritual. Early trailers looked like Breath of the Wild to a lot of people: climbing, gliding, a bright open world, elemental puzzles. Some of that influence was real. Nintendo fans treated it as identity theft. Studio staff later described the backlash as an “unprecedented crisis,” with young developers in tears over being told they had done something wrong. Genshin then spent years becoming its own machine: character-driven regions, gacha live service, a sprawling original cosmology. The clone label did not age well.
Nodusfall is getting the sequel to that lecture before the game even has a release date. The trailer has a Malenia-coded flourish. Fine. Notice the rest of the pitch. HoYoverse is talking about multi-mythology hunts, squad tactics, climbing colossal beasts, and a more grounded visual register. That is a different product goal than Elden Ring’s lonely pilgrimage through the Lands Between, and it is also different from Nightreign’s multiplayer experiment. Looking at the same shelf of dark-fantasy images does not make two games the same game.
The “gachaslop” sneer that followed the Gamescom showcase is doing extra work here. A lot of the anger is not really about a wing pose. It is about who is allowed to make expensive, grim, high-production fantasy. HoYoverse made its fortune in colorful live-service RPGs. When that studio shows ruined temples, oversized weapons, and mythic bosses, some players hear an interloper entering a church. Genre churches are not real. The look belongs to anyone who can execute it.
Similarity is not the same as copying the work
There is a fair version of the critique. If Nodusfall ships with a boss whose full moveset, second-phase spectacle, item text, and character tragedy are just Malenia with the serial numbers filed off, that is lazy. If the lion companion is a calm beast-regent perched on a tarnished king’s back, whispering restraint until the player forces a transformation, then the conversation changes. A trailer shot is not that evidence.
Right now the public material is a cinematic packed with giant trolls at anvils, lightning tigers, dragons, holy spears, and co-op pressure on mythic bodies. Those images also get compared to Monster Hunter, which is the more honest mechanical cousin. Huge quarry, team coordination, climbing, resource loops after a kill. If the game is “Elden Ring plus Monster Hunter,” that is a pitch, not a confession. Plenty of good games start as a collision of two hits.
HoYoverse also has a real record of borrowing minigame ideas and wearing its references on its sleeve. That history is why some people refuse to give the studio any benefit of the doubt. Fair enough as skepticism. It still does not turn a harpy into stolen IP. You can dislike live-service monetization, you can want proof that Nodusfall will have its own fight design, and you can still reject the idea that FromSoftware owns decayed gold, rotting wings, or a lion next to a king.
Gatekeeping aesthetics is a dead end
FromSoftware earned its reputation. The studio made some of the best boss encounters and most coherent ruined worlds in modern games. That success created a visual dialect. Once a dialect exists, other studios will speak it. Lies of P, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Khazan, and a pile of smaller soulslikes already did. The genre got better because more teams entered the same sandbox. Miyazaki himself has described other soulslikes as stimulating because everyone is working in that shared space.
HoYoverse entering that space with a bigger budget and a different production machine is not an insult to Elden Ring. It is what successful aesthetics do. Western grimdark, Japanese gothic fantasy, and Chinese mythic spectacle have been cross-pollinating for decades. Pretending that one Tokyo studio holds the deed to “knight versus god-beast in the ruins” is fan fiction about copyright.
If Nodusfall is bad, it will be bad for ordinary reasons: stiff combat, empty co-op, thin worldbuilding, or a monetization scheme that fights the fantasy. Those are the fights worth having after more than a trailer. Until then, “this winged woman reminds me of Malenia” is a compliment to FromSoftware’s cultural reach. It is not a case.
Dark fantasy was never a private garden. FromSoftware walked through it, planted some unforgettable trees, and left the gate open. HoYoverse is allowed to walk in too.
Comments