Nodusfall – When HoYoverse Was Convicted of 'Ripping Off' Elden Ring Based on a Trailer with Zero Gameplay Footage

The night the Nodusfall trailer aired, I opened two browser tabs side by side: one playing HoYoverse's announcement video, the other showing live Reddit comments. Within four hours, hundreds of posts comparing static images from the trailer to Elden Ring characters appeared. Some placed a winged character next to Malenia, others pointed at a white-haired woman and called her a 'Melina clone.' The coldest comment was just three words: 'rip-off confirmed,' followed by a blue checkmark as if it were a final judgment. I didn't react immediately, because I learned that the mob's voice is loudest when it thinks it has the most data. But I turned the numbers over, and I remembered a phrase I always tell myself: 'Data never lies; it just patiently watches you deceive yourself.' The gaming community has deceived itself again, not with false numbers, but by refusing to look at what has never existed: actual gameplay. Since Elden Ring's release in February 2026 and its Game of the Year win, the gaming industry has witnessed an unprecedented wave: developers from around the world have rushed into the soulslike subgenre, inspired by FromSoftware's Dark Souls. Games with high difficulty, grim world design, and haunting mystical atmospheres are everywhere. HoYoverse, the Chinese company behind Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, suddenly announced Nodusfall, a project completely different from its usual output: abandoning anime style for realistic dark fantasy, with a spotlight on co-op boss hunting for up to four players. This very difference made Nodusfall the center of attention, but it also sparked a fierce debate. Players quickly pointed out visual similarities: a winged character reminded them of Malenia, a white-haired woman brought Melina to mind, and crumbling architectural shots could almost be pasted into Caelid or Liurnia. Within a week, the hashtag #NoMoreRipOff trended on multiple platforms. But notably, throughout the entire debate, no official gameplay of Nodusfall was shown. All the community had was a three-minute trailer, a few stills, and a lot of emotion. Looking through the eyes of a data analyst, I see a perfect repetition of a phenomenon I have witnessed many times in esports: people judge a team based on a friendly match result, or evaluate a player through a few highlight clips without considering xG, pass accuracy, or distance covered. In football, I once saw a young striker score against a weak team and be hailed as 'the new Messi,' only to vanish after three seasons. Conversely, a quiet center-back with a 92% successful tackle rate rarely gets mentioned. The gaming community is no different. They see two similar images, slap on the label 'copy,' and stop analyzing there. But if we truly want to judge Nodusfall, we need a completely different set of metrics: input response time, attack delay, combat pacing, action systems, map layout, and above all – how the four-player co-op mechanic changes the experience compared to a mostly single-player game like Elden Ring. This is the biggest blind spot in the controversy. I spent three full days rewatching analysis videos from veteran players, reading every post on major forums, and cross-referencing with publicly available data on HoYoverse's released games. The result surprised me: not a single one of the most vocal accusers presented evidence that Nodusfall uses Elden Ring's source code, art assets, or gameplay mechanics. They merely repeated the phrase 'looks similar' – a very different thing from 'ripped off.' In intellectual property law, ideas and gameplay mechanics are generally not protected; only specific expressions such as character designs, names, or graphical assets can constitute infringement. A winged character does not automatically create copyright infringement, just as a football game having a 'free kick' mode doesn't make it a copy of another game. Nodusfall is still in pre-release; no official information about its combat system, skill tree, or how the four players interact has been revealed. Convicting it now, from a data perspective, is an incredibly hasty and unobjective move. However, if I only stopped at defending HoYoverse, this article would become a boring rhetorical exercise. I need to go deeper into the design structure Nodusfall is proposing. According to the announcement, the game focuses on co-op boss hunting with up to four players. This is not a small detail; it's a fundamental difference from Elden Ring. Elden Ring allows summoning allies, but the core experience remains a solitary journey, an open world of discovery, and one-on-one boss battles. Nodusfall, if described accurately, will be closer to Monster Hunter than Elden Ring: players focus on preparation, coordination, and hunting giant monsters as a group. This difference can be likened to comparing a tennis singles match (Elden Ring) with a 4v4 basketball game (Nodusfall) – both are sports, both have a ball, but tactics, skills, and feelings are entirely different. The community at some point recognized this when a group of players called Nodusfall 'Elden Ring meets Monster Hunter,' but unfortunately, that reasonable voice was drowned out under a wave of outrage. A forum user called 'veteran_hunter' wrote: 'If Nodusfall is truly co-op boss hunting, then comparing it to Elden Ring is as meaningless as comparing Left 4 Dead to Resident Evil.' I agree with him, not completely, but in essence yes. To understand better, I need to review some game history. When Dark Souls released in 2026, it created a new genre despite borrowing heavily from previous games such as The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, and even FromSoftware's own King's Field. No one called Dark Souls a 'thief' because it knew how to combine old elements into something new with its own identity. In 2026, Bloodborne evolved the formula with gothic horror and faster combat. In 2026, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice completely changed the defense system. In 2026, Elden Ring achieved massive success by expanding the open world and increasing freedom. Each version had similarities to the previous one, but was still recognized as an independent work. So why, when HoYoverse – a company with enormous financial resources and top-tier artists and engineers – announces a dark fantasy game, is it immediately labeled 'copycat'? I believe there is a deep reason not found in gameplay: bias about the developer's origin. For years, Chinese game companies have faced plagiarism accusations from Japanese and Western games, from 'clone' mobile titles to products like Genshin Impact, which was compared to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Genshin Impact succeeded and gradually gained acceptance, but the 'copy' stain remains. Now Nodusfall becomes a scapegoat for a prolonged cultural obsession. The Western community, partly, holds a prejudice that a company from China cannot create something original in this genre. This is unfair, but it is very present in the comments I read. Some even said: 'HoYoverse is only good at making money-making gacha games, don't expect them to do soulslike.' That is a bias, not a data-driven conclusion. Speaking of data, let's examine the financial and strategic aspect. HoYoverse is one of the highest-grossing game companies in the world. Genshin Impact alone brings in billions of dollars each year from microtransactions. That means HoYoverse has enough resources to develop Nodusfall with a massive investment – something an indie studio cannot do. However, pivoting from anime-style gacha games to realistic dark fantasy is a risky move. Unlike Genshin Impact, where characters are designed with cute aesthetics and bright colors, Nodusfall requires an art team capable of recreating gloomy landscapes, horrifying monsters, and a hopeless atmosphere. This is a skill that Japanese studios like FromSoftware have honed for decades. Can HoYoverse achieve it? There is no answer yet, but I believe in a rule: if you have enough money and time, you can hire the best people to teach you. HoYoverse may recruit top-level designers from around the world. And because this is a strategic product aimed at the premium console/PC market – where Western action RPGs currently dominate – they certainly won't want to screw it up. A product mocked as a 'clone' at announcement can still succeed if it proves quality at launch; evidence includes games like Mortal Shell and The Surge, which were criticized for resembling Dark Souls but carved their own niches. More importantly, I see in this controversy a fascinating psychological phenomenon: the over-prioritization of external visuals over actual experience. In esports, I am used to fans judging players by their costumes, expressions, or quotes in livestreams, rather than by their real in-game stats. A player with a good K/D or xG but who loses focus in decisive moments is often overlooked. Similarly, a game with a beautiful trailer resembling a famous game will immediately be labeled, while aspects like game feel, balance, or progression systems – the things that determine whether a game is good – cannot be conveyed through still images. 'The night Germany collapsed, I understood: the championship formula always lacks a variable called collapse. Just like the night the Nodusfall TVC aired, I understood: the formula for judging a game always lacks a variable called gameplay.' This is the point I want the angry crowd to realize: you have the right to doubt, you have the right to compare, but you don't have the right to render a verdict without sufficient evidence. And 'evidence' here is not a 30-second video captured from a TV screen, but a playable demo or an official gameplay footage lasting at least 10 minutes, with full player actions. There is something I learned from following hundreds of professional matches: every prediction must be verified by data after the event ends. When analyzing a football match, I do not conclude a team played well just because they shot on target many times. I look at the quality of those shots (xG), the origin of the passes, and how they reacted when trailing. Similarly, to evaluate Nodusfall, I need to know: how many milliseconds is the response time when pressing the attack button? How far is the default dodge distance of the character? How many weapon types are in the game? What attacks does each weapon have? How does the stamina system work? Can four players use synergistic skills together? Without these answers, all comparisons to Elden Ring are baseless speculations. I believe if HoYoverse is smart, they will soon release a 15-minute gameplay video showing how four players coordinate to bring down a boss. At that point, the debate will shift from 'Does this game look similar?' to 'Is this game fun?' – a completely different and much more important question. However, I must also face an uncomfortable truth: HoYoverse is not a completely innocent victim. The fact is, they chose a visual style too familiar to fans of Elden Ring. A character with silver-gray wings, an old woman with white hair sitting by a fire with ambiguous dialogue – these are iconic images of Elden Ring. If HoYoverse wanted to avoid misunderstanding, they could have designed more unique characters, or released gameplay information earlier to shape expectations. Only releasing a trailer showing colors and setting, without revealing any mechanics, leaves too much room for imagination – and when people have room, they fill it with what they know. This psychological phenomenon is called 'retrospective illusion' – we tend to recall what is most familiar when facing an ambiguous object. So to some extent, HoYoverse brought this on itself. But that is not an excuse for the community to turn a gaming discussion into a social media trial. I have seen too many games destroyed by backlash before release, and I believe that is unfair to any developer. Looking to the future, I think this controversy will have a potential positive effect. In an industry increasingly crowded with hybrid games, community attention is a form of marketing that cannot be bought. Whether praised or criticized, millions of people now know about Nodusfall. If HoYoverse turns criticism into motivation to perfect the product, their team can use this curiosity to create a truly differentiated game. But if they just make a 'Elden Ring with co-op,' they will fail miserably, and current criticism will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's why I emphasize: don't jump to conclusions. Wait for the first gameplay. Wait for the release date. And remember, 'The transfer market is where people sell the past, but the wise buy the future with data.' Similarly, in gaming, people often sell the past of successful games to attract attention, but only the wise can see the future of a game through real differences. Can Nodusfall do that? I don't know. But I'm willing to wait, instead of condemning.