The ongoing quest to unearth cut content in the game files of FromSoftware’s Soulsborne series has just taken an interesting turn as one modder has discovered unused assets in Dark Souls 3 that suggest it was at one point meant to receive a ‘battle royale’ PvP mode.
Now, before you start hopping with excitement, the sort of battle royale that FromSoftware had in mind for Dark Souls 3 was a bit different than what has become so prevalent in games like Fortnite and PUBG. Dark Souls modder Lance McDonald, the same intrepid soul who discovered a hidden boss rush feature in Bloodborne and a bunch of cut content in Dark Souls Remastered, recently managed to find three interesting items buried in Dark Souls 3’s code: a Ceremony Sword of Darkness, a Ceremony Sword of Flame, and a Ceremony Sword Battle Royale Eclipse.
According to the item descriptions attached to the Ceremony Sword of Darkness and Ceremony Sword of Flame, it appears that, had the items made it into Dark Souls 3’s final build, using the former (the Sword of Darkness) would have transported the player to a special darkness-covered version of the game’s High Wall of Lothric region called ‘Moonlight Ceremony.’ Using the Sword of Flame, meanwhile, would have allowed the user to invade another player’s Moonlight Ceremony, essentially offering a dedicated in-game region for those who wanted to participate in structured PvP.
McDonald says there is no item description attached to the third item, the Ceremony Sword Battle Royale Eclipse, but he speculates that its use of the term “battle royale” suggests it would have allowed users to enter a version of the Moonlight Ceremony in which players could engage in free-for-all-style deathmatches. These free-for-all fights would have likely juxtaposed nicely with the structured team-based PvP bouts that Dark Souls 3 received as part of its Ashes of Ariandel DLC, but alas it would seem it wasn’t meant to be.