A ragged thief scampers through the shrubbery of Limgrave, dagger in hand. Like a kitten haphazardly learning the basics of hunting, she pounces from the bushes at the mindlessly patrolling Limgrave soldiers in repeated attempts to backstab them. Sometimes she succeeds, other times she doesn't, but the key thing is that she's learning.
Mistakes are inevitable during these tentative early steps in the Lands Between, but in this instance they're not punishable by death as they have been for millions of Tarnished who have been venturing there since February. Instead, when a backstab fails or another of Godrick's soldiers gets pulled into the fray, a Knight, watching stoically from nearby, intervenes to cut down the assailants with his halberd when something goes wrong. He affectionately reprimands the scampish rogue, who begrudgingly absorbs his advice to work on jump-attacks and perhaps give up on the buckler if she's not going to parry with it, and their training continues.
That's how the first forty minutes or so of the Elden Ring Seamless Co-op mod (played in split-screen on PC courtesy of Nucleus Co-op) looked for my partner and myself. As someone who's completed the vanilla game, I wanted to take a bit of a backseat so that she could experience some of the wonderment of Elden Ring's daunting world without too much direction. A co-op experience that began with me acting as her mentor and guide soon turned into the classically intense Elden Ring gauntlet; the pressure ratcheted as we ascended Stormhill, and soon we were both desperately yelling commands at each other and frantically yet methodically fighting the neon-lit boatman known as the Tibia Mariner.
The Elden Ring Seamless Co-op mod does a few key things that make the game way more accessible. In fact, the mod morphs it from being a predominantly single-player game where with a bit of faff you can call on players to help you in times of need, into a full-on co-op experience. The mod lets up to four players adventure together seamlessly, removing barriers so that you can cross fog walls together, all ride your own Torrents, and explore the entire game world without disconnecting. You can even vote on fast-travelling together. It removes pretty much all friction from the co-op aspect of the game.
Now, I can already hear the shrieks of the zealots who believe that as soon as you summon a player to help you beat Hoarah Loux at the 67th time of asking you've somehow bastardised your entire Elden Ring experience and should have your license to play any FromSoft game revoked; 'It's not how they want you to play it,' 'You don't get it. You're meant to suffer.' 'Why would you want to mod a game that's so perfectI?!? What's wrong with you PC people?'
The funny thing is that I actually agree with some of the above. I think there's merit to playing a game as it was designed to be played before seeking alternative ways to experience it. You play it as long as it engages you, then whether you bounce off it or complete it or are for whatever reason 'done' with it, you start exploring ways to refine and tweak the experience if you so wish (which is where mods come in). A developer creates a game to be consumed a certain way, and it seems like a basic courtesy to try and understand the experience they're conveying to you. Give it a go, try to get to grips with it, and only then start faffing with it. That way you'll learn to understand what that developer's really about, and in turn what it is you seek in a game.
The problem is that Elden Ring is probably the most esoteric and challenging blockbuster game ever created. There are a lot of people out there who have banged their heads against it for hours, yet have been unable to decipher those arcane rules that are so familiar to us who have played FromSoft games for years.
Elden Ring's massive commercial appeal as 'an open-world RPG from the mind of George R. R. Martin' (ostensibly) has pulled people into its maelstrom who'd never have considered playing a game like Dark Souls or Bloodborne - maybe even explicitly avoided them due to their daunting reputation. I've no doubt that Elden Ring has opened many peoples' eyes to the wonder of FromSoft games, but I've also seen the Facebook and Twitter posts of confused (and relatively casual) gamers who have struggled to understand what this weird-ass game wants from them. What superficially may look like a Skyrim or a Witcher 3 is anything but.
I was delighted when a couple of my closest friends (who I'd class as moderate gaming enthusiasts) bought Elden Ring, but I never explicitly recommended it to them, knowing that the rules of its unforgiving and distinctly 'FromSoft' world might be difficult for them to adapt to. Despite me pouncing at every opportunity to help them, the by-design awkwardness of co-op summoning in the vanilla game meant that there was only so much I could do.
Suffice to say, neither of them so much as made it to the first major boss, Godrick the Grafted.
My experience with the Seamless Co-op mod shows how just that little bit more conventionality in Elden Ring can open the game up to people who'd never have even considered playing the game solo. Yes, you trade some of that delicious sense of solitude as you explore its terrible yet beautiful broken world, and yes everything is a little easier, but the boss fights are still riveting, and the Lands Between are still one of the most mysterious, compelling game worlds to explore, filled with lore and secrets for those who wish to seek them out.
Next, I plan on using his mod to band together with my struggling Tarnished friends and bring them back to the Lands Between in a way that's a little more welcoming than the experience FromSoft designed. They may take some persuading, but if it's a choice between them not experiencing it at all and them experiencing it in a slightly more accessible way, then of course I'll pick the latter. Besides, for a lot of people, this isn't a compromised way to play the game, but a decidedly more fun one. The mod has provided an easy mode that, in my eyes, is better than an actual easy mode. After all, a normal easy mode wouldn't let you and your friends gallop around the world together on horned horse-beasts now, would it?