Nodusfall and the Shadow of Elden Ring: Is HoYoverse Copying or Betting on a New Genre?

A pair of wings opens through smoke and dust. A pale face with silver hair falls over a shoulder of dark armor. Around it stand broken ruins, ghostly lights, and a dying giant tree. Anyone who has played Elden Ring only needs a few seconds to understand why the first Nodusfall trailer has caused a storm. HoYoverse, the maker of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, seems to have adopted a visual language that strongly recalls FromSoftware's masterpiece. Within hours of the reveal, international gaming communities erupted. Some called it an Elden Ring clone. Others placed images beside each other and wrote one word: rip-off. But I have seen this before. For more than six years analyzing esports and games, I have seen titles being judged by their clothes rather than their gameplay. Nodusfall is a radical pivot for HoYoverse. It is a realistic dark fantasy action RPG with a four-player co-op boss-hunting focus. That last part is the most important detail, yet it is often buried under the visual comparison. Elden Ring is a colossal cultural milestone. Released in 2026, it sold more than 25 million copies and won countless Game of the Year awards. Its dark open world and methodical combat reset the expectations of the entire action RPG genre. Every game after that lives under its shadow. Nodusfall appears in that shadow with a similar look and tone. But visual similarity is not the same as mechanical imitation. When Nodusfall emphasizes four-player co-op combat, the real experience may feel closer to Monster Hunter than to Elden Ring. That distinction matters as much as the difference between wearing a red jersey and actually playing like Liverpool. Fans are comparing characters with Malenia and Melina, but these are archetypes that have existed in dark fantasy for decades. Copyright law does not protect a genre. Anyone can build a dark fantasy world. The problem is not where Nodusfall starts, but where it ends. Lies of P began as a Bloodborne-like Korean game, yet it became its own identity when its unique mechanics were shown. Nodusfall deserves the same chance to be seen through actual gameplay, not just through a static trailer. There is also a larger force at work: HoYoverse is a Chinese company that has frequently faced accusations of copying Japanese games. That narrative often has more to do with bias than with evidence. A studio with huge financial resources and a global live-service operation is now attempting a difficult genre. If they fail, it will be because their game is poor, not because their trailer has a winged woman who reminds someone of Malenia. If they succeed, Nodusfall could be remembered as HoYoverse's most daring move. The only way to settle the argument is to put the controller in the player's hand and let the final product speak for itself. Until then, every accusation remains what it should be called: a premature judgment.