The Elden Ring Post

Govy9807

Elden Ring is 60-70 hours of one of the best RPGs out there, with another 20 hours of linear, tedious, content-poor and poorly-balanced chaff tacked on in the back third. 

So it's a typical Souls game. The ur-Souls game. The best-of Souls game.

Spoilers to follow, obviously.

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Many games try to be like Dark Souls through the inclusion of lore - background information intended to supplement or frame the narrative and setting. Such attempts almost always crash and burn, subjecting audiences to a large amount of text that is not interesting in the slightest and adds nothing of value to the work as a whole. What makes Souls games succeed?

• The lore is opt-in. Don't care? Don't worry.
• The lore is short (being primarily 1-3 sentences in item descriptions)
• The lore is fractal - connections between points just keep branching off and making new connections.
  
• The lore supports the themes - each of our endings involves a different belief of how the world should be, and the building blocks of that belief are found throughout the world and its lore.
  

There are distinct branches to the lore, areas of uncertainty, dead ends and lingering mysteries (who the fuck is the Gloam-Eyed Queen?). It is not clean, it is not neat, and so it invites exercises like this to put it all back together. 

This is, I think, the best way of dealing with high-level, (that is, large-scale) worldbuilding: there is no singular order / schema / design that can hold everything and provide all the answers. Concepts come into conflict with each other and produce knock on effects, further conflicts, people with beliefs and motivations.

And they support the fucking themes.

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I appreciate ER's sense of humor a whole lot. Wizards who wear absurd-looking stone heads, cartwheeling albinaurics, warrior-jars filled with fermenting human flesh, somersaulting sheep, land octopi you can make hats out of - it's all very playful and willing to step outside the expectations of the genre. I welcome that attitude in a game.

Souls games have always had an undercurrent of silliness to them but here I think it's the most they have ever done.

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Turtle pope is best pope.

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Did Ranni's ending, though nearly missed the part where you have to talk to the doll at once specific grace.

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Beating Agheel for the first time is an absolute rush, well-fucking-done

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Post-Morgott, the game loses most of its ability to let you go and explore a new area if you are stuck (much less to explore), which is a shame - that was critical to making the early and mid game as fun as it was.

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I forgot Godwyn existed as a character and still cannot regularly remember that he's different from Godfrey and still want to call him Godrick. The naming conventions were cute for about 30 seconds before they became a huge pain.

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The Halingtree feels like a DLC area they finished early and then stuck behind the worst area in the game. 

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Guard counters are the best. Playing older Souls games will be a lot harder now.

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Torrent is the other major highlight of the gameplay additions.

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Fashion souls is alive and well in this game

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Leyndell might be one of my favorite areas, visually, in all of FromSoft's body of work.

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I went INT/DEX (later INT/STR) and I feel I made a mistake. The game really wants you to build faith. Sorceries felt underpowered and grew less-useful over time. Maybe my build was just bad. Gonna respect for STR/FAI for NG+

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Siofra River Well mustered an audible "oh shit!", and when a simple area transition can do that, you know you have perfected exploration in your game. Ainsel River was the same, with the ants.

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Goldmask discerning the mysteries of the universe by T-posing is way funnier than it has any right to be.

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Early on (Weeping Peninsula, specifically), I was able to spend half an hour on my lunch break and clear out one or two mini dungeons or other things of note, and that level of "even if you invest only a little time, you will get something out of it" is both hard to come by and very appreciated.

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Commander Niall is the worst boss in the entire game and the only way it could be worse would be if he had albinauric archers fighting with him.

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The Haligtree is easily the part of the lore that interests me the most. Miquella tried and failed to create a second Erdtree by using his own blood, intending it as a sanctuary for Misbegotten and Albinaurics (those outside or ignored by the Golden Order). This leads to other questions: what fertilized the Erdtree? Does it need to be an Empyrean? Is it related to the jars around the minor Erdtrees? Is Mohg planning on repeating the process?

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We know Placidusax was Elden Lord before the coming of the Erdtree; Faram Azula is his mausoleum and guarded by beastmen. So that is likely the pre-human ordering of the world. Maliketh is referred to both as Marika's half-brother and as "a shadowbound beast given to his Empyrean". The latter we see also in Blaidd. Blaidd goes mad when Ranni rebels against the Greater Will, so it makes sense that the Will was the one who gave Maliketh to Marika. The half-brother part is more confusing: did they share a father or a mother, or was it more esoteric? Was that union part of the Greater Will's usurpation of the prior order under Placidusax? It says that Placidusax had a patron god (outer god associated with lightning, I suppose), who fled. Greater Will chased it away and merged the two lineages?

Maliketh's boss arena has a statue of a woman with three wolves, and an image of an expanded Elden Ring,. The former might be Marika (which means she might have two other wolf-siblings), the latter I think might represent the Crucible and the structure of the Elden Ring under the Great-Tree (as opposed to the later Erdtree)

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So what gods were the Godskin cult skinning? Unseen members of the Golden lineage? The whole tail attack makes me think there's some connection to the Crucible there, though from a different angle than the Omen and the Knights.

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Melina's red-gold hair is worth noting. Malenia has red hair, and Miquella has blond in the opening cutscene. Honestly we don't know if M&M were born before or after the Radagon + Marika fusion dance. If they were, then Melina would make sense as coming after, but then that brings up the question of why M&M seem especially vulnerable to outer god influence.

Don't ask me about the eye, though. That would seem to imply some connection with the Gloam-Eyed Queen, which could kinda work, but if she is what I suspect (an attempt by Marika to arrange her own death)...kinda? It kinda works.

I am not a fan of how unceremoniously she gets written out of the story, it feels like we never really got started. The Doll remains the best level-up lady.

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If Miquella is actually St Trina (and I believe he is), he might be in thrall to whatever outer god is associated with sleep (as all of them have a status effect), but since he was also the one who invented the gold needle, he could have made a second one for himself.

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We know there was civilization prior to the arrival of the Erdtree, and damnably little beyond that, other than I suspect the beastmen and demihumans were the basis of it. The ancestral followers too.

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The Onyx and Alabaster Lords are an enormous question mark. I've got nothing on them. Love the design and their fights, though.

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Rennala's boss fight is actually a scathing indictment of the modern Harry Potter fandom in this essay I will...

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I get what they were going for with Radahn, but I wasn't a fan of the fight. Ended up laming it out and letting the summons do all of the work. I do appreciate the detail that he doesn't have feet (because they rotted off during the war against Malenia)

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Helpful tip: Godskin Apostles are super vulnerable to sleep. 

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Helpful tip: Alexander wrecks the Fire Giant's day. 

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Malenia is a very well-designed boss. Never was able to beat her, but I felt like I was actually able to learn (many other bosses cannot claim that honor). Maybe I can go back and manage it.

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Hell yes they do the opening theme for the final boss encounter thing.

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I wonder if the golden trunks we see in the Elden Beast fight are representative of other worlds that the Greater Will has settled with an Erdtree. Or just a neat visual.

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The Elden Beast fight is beautiful, thematically and narratively important, and a big wet fart to end the game on. Dull as hell. Shoulda let you use Torrent. I struck a win by relying on Tiche's life drain, which wasn't all that fun, but I was well past the point of wanting the fight to be fun.

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Haven't got even an inkling of where or when they might go with the DLC, or what it might expand upon. My hope is to get more information on:

• Any of the outer gods, but most specifically the ones associated with sleep and blood.
  
• The era of beasts + literally anything about demihumans
• The Gloam-Eyed Queen
• The Deathbirds and their cult
• Other members of the Golden Lineage, at least enough to plot out something of a family tree without the enormous gap between Godwyn and Godrick.
• Just more information in general, please and thanks.