Why Elden Ring: The Convergence Is Almost as Exciting as Elden Ring 2
Elden Ring's "The Convergence" mod may help ensure you never need to stop playing FromSoftware's masterpiece.
I’m willing to bet that you don’t need an excuse to keep playing Elden Ring. Even if you’ve “beaten” that game, Elden Ring offers so many exploration possibilities, secrets, and punishing optional boss fights that it’s doubtful most Elden Ring players will come close to personally seeing everything it has to offer. Yet, many in the Elden Ring community are already buzzing about a mod called “The Convergence” that may make Elden Ring an entirely new game.
What is The Convergence? Well, for the moment, it’s the name of a popular Dark Souls 3 mod that launched in 2020. The earliest versions of the mod improved Dark Souls 3‘s magic system, changed the game’s layout a bit, and altered a few of the game’s boss fights. While The Convergence mod was impressive even in those early days, the mod has since grown into something else entirely.
In its current form, The Convergence honestly feels closer to Dark Souls 4 than a Dark Souls 3 mod. I really don’t know how to begin to tell you about how massive the mod truly is. Where do you even start with a mod that adds over a dozen new classes, tons of new items, significantly deeper character build options, numerous new or altered enemies, and enough layout changes to make Dark Souls 3 veterans feel lost? Again, all of that really only scratches the surface of what the mod offers. You’ve got to check out the game’s official content wiki for a better idea of what it’s all about.
After years of updating The Convergence mod and turning it into one of the most impressive and complete overhauls I’ve ever seen, the mod’s team recently announced that they have officially concluded development on the project. While everyone involved with the mod could simply walk away and feel confident they made something truly special, they’ve instead announced that they’ve decided to take on a new, even more ambitious task.
To be clear, we don’t know much about Elden Ring‘s Convergence mod at this time (though I’m working to find out more). However, this is one of the rare instances when the potential of a project feels like more than enough reason to get truly excited about it.
After all, The Convergence didn’t just add a ton of content to Dark Souls 3; it expertly implemented a ton of new content into the base Dark Souls 3 experience without wrecking that game’s delicate balance. We’ve seen many other (admittedly impressive) mods that add new spells, bosses, and items to a game. One of the things that made The Convergence so impressive was the care that went into ensuring that all of those additions served to enhance what made Dark Souls 3 special rather than just give you a bunch of new toys.
For instance, if a new spell trivialized a boss fight, that boss fight was altered to compensate for the power of the new ability. If a new enemy was added, The Convergence’s developers took the time to ensure they fit the game’s lore as closely as possible. That’s not to say that The Convergence is perfect, but it’s rare to find a mod that emphasizes logical content over “more stuff.” Honestly, there are ideas in The Convergence (such as your choice of Covenant drastically affecting your build) that should probably be standard in FromSoftware Soulsborne games moving forward.
While the earliest version of Elden Ring‘s Convergence mod (which likely won’t be released for some time) obviously won’t be as deep as the final version of Dark Souls 3‘s Convergence mod, that’s hardly the point. Even in its earliest forms, Dark Souls 3‘s Convergence mod forced you to look at that game in a new way. Only the most dedicated Dark Souls 3 players were able to come close to keeping up with its various updates since then.
The simplest form of Elden Ring‘s Convergence mod will almost certainly give you a reason to dive back into Elden Ring. The hypothetical final form of that mod may actually make Elden Ring something closer to a new game. Even better, The Convergence team has shown that they’re able to set incredibly ambitious goals for themselves and meet them. With the exception of FromSoftware themselves, I don’t know if there’s another team I trust more with the challenge of overhauling a stone-cold masterpiece like Elden Ring.
I think that YouTuber SilverSeraphym put it best when he said that the most impressive thing about Dark Souls 3‘s Convergence mod was that it offered a way to properly recapture the feeling of playing that game for the first time. The idea of experiencing that same feeling with Elden Ring seems like an impossible dream that might actually come true.
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Matthew Byrd is Games Editor at Den of Geek and an entertainment enthusiast living in Brooklyn. When he's not exploring the culture of video games, he's…