There's not a lot to love about the aesthetics of Elden Ring's hub area, the Roundtable Hold: Dull grey stone hallways lit by torches. The best bits of it are all furniture, like the roundtable itself, that you can barely appreciate due to tight camera angles from the claustrophobic walls. Lovers of the least-loved of some much-loved games—Dark Souls 2—will be surprised because they know that developers FromSoftware can make a perfect hub area already: Majula, the beautiful seaside town with its perpetual sunset and calming music.
Now one modder by the moniker of Drop0ff has simply gone and done it, replacing the entirety of the Roundtable Hold with Majula and moving over everything you need for Elden Ring to play out as it would before. Just with a better hub. "Every roundtable npc and event has been ported over" says the description.
Majula actually looks better than ever in many ways thanks to Elden Ring's much-improved lighting system, which has nearly a decade's worth of technological advancement over Dark Souls 2's. It's funny to consider how much the landscape around Majula looks just like much of Elden Ring—and frankly, its been a meme in certain corners that Elden Ring is just Dark Souls 2: 2.
What the mod cannot replicate, unfortunately, is the immaculate cast of weirdos that populate Majula. There is of course fan favorite Emerald Herald, but what of strange talking cat Sweet Shalquoir? What of all-time great and truly clutch bro Laddersmith Gilligan? They are not present and, for this, Elden Majula is doomed to be a hollow shell of itself—no pun intended. We'll have to make due with lackluster ear-botherer Gideon Ofnir the All-Knowing instead.
You can find Majula Hub on Nexus Mods, where to-date nearly 3,000 blessed and perfect souls have downloaded it. Thanks, I love it.
Now, please, all rise for our national anthem.
