Nodusfall by HoYoverse: The Thin Line Between Inspiration and an Elden Ring Copy

When the first Nodusfall trailer appeared, the gaming community took only a few minutes to do the most familiar thing of the social media age: compare screenshots. A winged character was placed next to Malenia from Elden Ring. A white-haired woman was compared to Melina. The word “rip-off” spread before anyone could touch the gameplay. While the crowd stares at the bright screen, I dig below the dust of old data. The dust here is not a table of match stats, but the way the game industry operates after the shockwave called Elden Ring. Too many titles have chosen dark fantasy, heavy combat and desolate worlds as a shared language. So what makes Nodusfall worth discussing beyond a few familiar frames? HoYoverse is making one of its biggest strategic pivots. The company is associated with Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, with anime aesthetics and gacha mechanics. Nodusfall is said to abandon that anime style in favor of realistic dark fantasy and four-player co-op boss hunting. Against this backdrop, the accusation of copying Elden Ring is not merely about aesthetics. It raises a deeper question about the identity of a studio trying to leave its comfort zone. Elden Ring, developed by FromSoftware, is a milestone. It won the Game of the Year award for 2026 and became the benchmark for open-world action RPGs. Its influence extends to many later projects, from world-building and combat rhythm to a moody atmosphere. When a new product chooses the same material, comparison is unavoidable. But comparison is not conviction. We need to dig deeper. There are three layers to distinguish. The first layer is visual surface. A winged character, a white-haired woman, ruined castles, a dark sky – all of these belong to the shared vocabulary of dark fantasy. These motifs existed before Elden Ring, and they will appear after Elden Ring. If we compare only individual frames, any medieval fantasy game can be labeled a copy. That is a shallow comparison without weight. The second layer is core mechanics. Elden Ring offers a lonely single-player experience where players wrestle with the world by themselves. Nodusfall, according to what has been officially shown, focuses on four players hunting bosses together. If this is executed properly, the operational rhythm of Nodusfall will be closer to Monster Hunter than to Elden Ring. Preparation, reading the flow of a fight and coordination between team members become the key elements, not solitude in an open world. This is a major difference that online debates have ignored. The third layer is genre ecosystem. There is no match data here because Nodusfall has not been released. Yet there is background evidence: soulslike clones have flooded the market in recent years. Players are increasingly tired of copycats without personality. Nodusfall, therefore, must prove that it does not merely imitate the outer layer, but creates a distinct gameplay loop. Four-player co-op is an opportunity to stand out, but also a major design challenge. Based on my experience following controversy around game plagiarism, I notice a pattern: communities often pass judgment right after a trailer, then stick to that judgment for months until real gameplay appears. If the gameplay is fresh and convincing, the story changes. If it repeats what Elden Ring has already done too clearly, the backlash will be even worse, because the community will feel that their early suspicions were justified. Calling Nodusfall a rip-off is only a comment from part of the community, not an official conclusion. Legally, copying core mechanics, dark settings or high difficulty is rarely considered copyright infringement. Intellectual property law protects specific expressive elements such as character designs, images or names, not ideas or gameplay systems. Therefore, if Nodusfall merely uses common dark fantasy motifs, the chance of a lawsuit from FromSoftware or Bandai Namco is low. The more interesting point is the reverse effect. The controversy is generating massive attention that HoYoverse could hardly buy with advertising. If Nodusfall later demonstrates a sufficiently distinctive four-player gameplay experience, the current backlash can become a marketing springboard. The narrative will shift from “cheap Elden Ring” to “Elden Ring meets Monster Hunter.” But that is an optimistic scenario. It depends on how HoYoverse handles its communication campaign in the coming months. If HoYoverse chooses silence until the next major gameplay showcase, the risk lingers. The waiting period is the most dangerous phase, because audiences tend to fill the void with negative assumptions. Conversely, if the studio proactively releases a video focused on cooperative boss-hunting mechanics, the story can be rewritten. Every prophecy lies in the sediment that the crowd ignores. The sediment of Nodusfall is not in the first trailer. It lies in the question: does HoYoverse truly understand the dark fantasy and co-op boss hunting genre, or is it simply riding a fashionable setting? The studio’s history shows strength in long-term service and beautiful graphics, but it has never faced a tactical action RPG system of this kind. The question should not stop at whether the trailer feels similar. The question should be whether the game has enough personality to stand on its own when players hold the controller. A few similar frames are only the tip of the iceberg. What lies below – boss design, combo timing, enemy AI, cooperation systems – will define Nodusfall’s identity. While the crowd labels it a copy after thirty seconds of trailer, I prefer to wait until real data is exposed. An empty arena is not a stop. It is a new stratum to excavate. For Nodusfall, the biggest match has not begun. That match will begin when official gameplay is shown, and that is when the community should speak. There are no miracles on the stage, only fragments assembled before others notice. The recent trailer is one fragment. The remaining fragments sit inside HoYoverse’s development rooms. If they assemble them into a meaningful gameplay loop, today’s accusation will become a small footnote in media history. If not, it will become a verdict delivered before the next hearing begins. I do not have enough data to predict certainty, but I have enough experience to understand that in this industry, the moment of the strongest game reveal – not the prettiest trailer – decides everything. Unfortunately, many people treat a beautiful trailer as if it were the final.