FromSoftware’s Biggest Upcoming Challenge May Be Its Approach to Optional Soulslike Bosses

The aura around optional bosses in FromSoftware games has always astounded and their distinction as foes who can be inadvertently undiscovered, circled back to later, and ignored completely make a lot of them far more compelling than a boss players have no choice but to eventually confront. This can make them more special or revered with FromSoftware free to design them to be as difficult as possible if it wanted because they don’t need to abide by the same constraints as a boss who players are required to defeat in order to roll credits.

Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring—each has optional bosses who, more often than not, have become some of their respective game’s most popular or notorious bosses, too:

• Gehrman, the First Hunter and Moon Presence, both of whom are required to defeat for certain endings though neither are required to roll credits and beat the game (Bloodborne).
• Champion Gundyr (Dark Souls 3).
• Nameless King (Dark Souls 3).
• Lady Butterfly (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice).
• Demon of Hatred (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice)
• Owl (Father) / Great Shinobi – Owl (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice).
• Malenia, Blade of Miquella (Elden Ring).
• Dragonlord Placidusax (Elden Ring).

Each has excelled in popularity and was either sought out or stumbled upon, and when players may have encountered them in their playthroughs might’ve been earlier or later than most main bosses. The distinction between main and optional bosses is clear, but optional ones often have water-cooler potential due to the voluntary challenge they pose and how FromSoftware’s Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree follow-up tackles optional bosses will now be interesting to see as a result.

FromSoftware’s Optional Bosses are a Crucial Staple in Soulslikes

All DLC bosses are technically optional since all of that content is optional; plus, many
Remembrance bosses in
Elden Ring

are technically optional depending on which ones players choose to defeat to meet their prerequisite of two before advancing to Leyndell, Royal Capital.

Because optional bosses are indeed discretional, they often have more of an atmosphere than main bosses for several reasons. For one, the FromSoftware community’s loyalist players are vocally proud of indulging in the most arbitrarily difficult ways of playing these games as possible, and thus taking on bosses that are sometimes designed to be harder due to them not being required for story progression is a rite of passage.

Moreover, playing a FromSoftware game and not seeing everything it offers seems lackluster when it’s known that so much content is missable or surpassable if players learn effective ‘cheese’ strats for circumventing it. Some optional bosses are best left to come back to later anyway before they decide to roll credits, making for endgame challenges players can endure that are typically far more of a threat than the final story boss of any FromSoftware game—not to mention how laborious DLC bosses can be.

Rather, defeating an optional boss early is usually a terrific incentive for transposing their unique weapons. Having been an obscure but powerful feature throughout FromSoftware’s eclectic ‘Soulsborne’ catalog, transposing boss weapons has been one of many rewards players treat themselves to by beating bosses and can earn them the weapon a particularly beloved optional boss wields, too. The same is said for their gear, which is evident in Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree with players capable of dressing like nearly every iconic boss and role-playing as them with their respective weapons as well.

This ensures that optional bosses aren’t merely obstacles in players’ paths before they finally reach another scripted boss but quality-rich foes whose place in the Lands Between, Lordran, Yharnam, or elsewhere is deserved. Sekiro is an action-adventure game and not an action-RPG, rendering it far more basic in terms of its optional bosses and what they can gift players with, but they are no less epic or significant to Shadows Die Twice’s narrative and the player’s progression through branching skill and upgrade trees.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Demonstrates How Paramount a Balance of Main and Optional Bosses is

Many of Shadow of the Erdtree’s best and hardest bosses are optional:

• Bayle the Dread.
• Commander Gaius.
• Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame.
• Rellana, Twin Moon Knight.
• Scadutree Avatar.

Unsurprisingly, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree doesn’t feature alternate endings as its base game does. That said, optional bosses allow players to engage with far more content, let alone entire questlines and regions they wouldn’t need to access otherwise, such as the survival-horror-leaning Abyssal Woods.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
facilitates open-world exploration as much as its base game and finding the DLC’s optional bosses is an organic part of the experience whether players decide they have what it takes to fell them at that moment or not.

Likewise, beating optional bosses has always been a great way to earn more of a FromSoftware game’s currency, level up, and upgrade weapons so that when players do attempt a main boss again they can hopefully tank another hit or deal a little more damage than they had before. FromSoftware’s formula is unafraid of constructive adaptation at this point, but optional bosses are surely here to stay and it’ll be exciting to see what its next game’s pool of bosses looks like.

Main bosses have an undeniable weight on their shoulders as they’re the ones FromSoftware deems worthy of fulfilling an unavoidable encounter, whereas optional bosses arguably have a bit more slack in what their quality amounts to and chiefly turn out to be excellent regardless. FromSoftware hasn’t always implemented the most exciting or fun main bosses—Dark Souls can attest to that with its egregious Bed of Chaos—and yet it’s nice to rely on optional bosses having a huge role connected to quests, NPCs, and exploration, which is where FromSoftware’s world-building thrives.