Dark Souls fans are a wonderfully inquisitive group of people, often finding new and unusual ways to play the game or using their technical ability to uncover the series' secrets. For example, just a month ago, a Dark Souls fan was able to discover an early Bloodborne level concept in the files of Dark Souls Remastered.

This isn't the only recent discovery made by a Dark Souls fan, however, as YouTuber and video game engineer Lance McDonald has now found a scrapped multiplayer game mode. After digging around the files of Dark Souls 3, McDonald discovered a cut multiplayer mode with a name that translates as "battle royale."

McDonald explains the discovery in the below YouTube video, but specifically, there are files that make reference to three pieces of cut content: the Ceremony Sword of Darkness, the Ceremony Sword of Flame, and the Ceremony Sword Battle Royale Eclipse.

According to the item descriptions, the Sword of Darkness allows players to cause an eclipse called the "Moonlight Ceremony" that plunges the world in darkness. Meanwhile, the Sword of Flame would have allowed players to invade a world in an eclipse state. The Sword Battle Royale Eclipse doesn't have a description but McDonald suggests that, all together, the items are part of an "extension of the PvP arena concept."

Unfortunately for those hoping for some sort of ultra-hard, medieval-themed version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, it seems highly unlikely that Dark Souls 3's battle royale mode was anything like that. While games like PUBG and Fortnite Battle Royale have put the focus on the number of players involved, the ideas of danger zones and being the last one standing are the core elements of the Battle Royale genre, not necessarily the player count. So Dark Souls 3 may have featured its own version of the blue zone (or the red zone), but supported a much smaller number of players.

Dark Souls developer From Software has publicly stated that it is done with the series for now, meaning that a Dark Souls 4 with this proposed Battle Royale mode isn't likely to happen any time soon. But other games have taken up the mantle, including Egress, which has a Lovecraftian, medieval, and 1980s-inspired vibe combined with battle royale gameplay. That may sound utterly bizarre but for those hoping to play a Dark Souls version of battle royale, that may be the closest thing on offer for quite a while.

Source: Lance McDonald - YouTube