From Software Elden Ring - From Software's new game with writing by GRRM

[Skinwalker]

We *are* fighting.

 

[Skinwalker]

He is just a turtle like any other, one that has grown old enough to bring that wisdom into fruition and gain sentience in the process (or maybe all turtles are aleady self-aware, who is to say?)

This is a good point. For all we know, all the giant turtles are sentient, or at least used to be.

There are tons of demihumans in the game, not a single one of them ever talks, except for Bok.

There are tons of misbegotten in the game, not a single one of them ever talks, except for the blacksmith guy.

There are tons of eviscerated trolls in the game, not a single one of them ever talks, except for the other blacksmith guy.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Elden Ring is a fighting game!

The frontlines are many and the enemy is insidious.
But yeah, FS lore sucks. At least they put aliens here and there to salvage some of this shit.

 

[cvv]

Do you have any point to make besides calling people retards?

You're very young, my padawan, while Skinwalker is very, very old. He's had many names through the ages and has been trolling these halls since time immemorial

Some consider him the primordial source of all retardery on Codex.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Some consider him the primordial source of all retardery on Codex.

Well that ain't hard to notice.

 

[Skinwalker]

Like, when you meet Iji, he acknowledges that he's a fucking giant because it's rather noteworthy

The only thing he acknowledges is that "I am terribly large compared to you", which you can plainly see already. Are you telling me that this whole multi-page bitchfest about Miriel would be avoided if he said "I am, as you can see, a turtle"?

Are you *that* banal?

 

[Damned Registrations]

How about a "I was raised by Soandso, back when the Erdtree was but half it's height today" or "Once there were many of my kind, before Turtledickpuncher killed most of us" or "My master endowed me with intelligence so I might preserve the records of this church after his passing." You know, something to imply he wasn't farted into existence by ChatGPT and a human being spent more than a single second considering where this character came from and WHY he's entirely unique in the game.

This would be like if you got to Mt. Gelmir, saw Rya as a giant snake, and neither of you commented on it. I'm sure you morons would be defending that too because some fucking grass clipping somewhere mentioned scales or something.

 

[Ghulgothas]

Is it odd that part of me expects ER + SotE to be the last 'classic' style Souls game From makes for the foreseeable future? DS3 felt like such a rote, by-the-numbers designed game and ER being a gamified, big and about-to-be-bigger sandbox of weapons, builds, and enemies/dungeons to apply them too, it feels like they're trying to make this as definitive and encompassing of a genre end-point as possible.

 

[Old Hans]

Is it odd that part of me expects ER + SotE to be the last 'classic' style Souls game From makes for the foreseeable future? DS3 felt like such a rote, by-the-numbers designed game and ER being a gamified, big and about-to-be-bigger sandbox of weapons, builds, and enemies/dungeons to apply them too, it feels like they're trying to make this as definitive and encompassing of a genre end-point as possible.

I still think demon souls is the best because it still has that King's Field DNA

 

[Skinwalker]

How about a "I was raised by Soandso, back when the Erdtree was but half it's height today" or "Once there were many of my kind, before Turtledickpuncher killed most of us" or "My master endowed me with intelligence so I might preserve the records of this church after his passing."

Well, Iji doesn't say any of this crap about himself, and yet you brought him up as an example of how to do it "right". Your inconsistent bellyfeels are getting tiresome.

I mean, you're literally begging for inane trivia like "Miriel is a member of the ancient sub-species of giant turtles, Tortillus Magnificus Sapienza, who are extremely intelligent by nature and often serve as pastors in various churches in the Lands Between, sadly most of them are now extinct". Well, now you have it. Consider it official. He can talk because he is a Tortellina Gigantica Sapiens. Wow. Such value added.

 

[9ted6]

How about a "I was raised by Soandso, back when the Erdtree was but half it's height today" or "Once there were many of my kind, before Turtledickpuncher killed most of us" or "My master endowed me with intelligence so I might preserve the records of this church after his passing."

Well, Iji doesn't say any of this crap about himself, and yet you brought him up as an example of how to do it "right". Your inconsistent bellyfeels are getting tiresome.

I mean, you're literally begging for inane trivia like "Miriel is a member of the ancient sub-species of giant turtles, Tortillus Magnificus Sapienza, who are extremely intelligent by nature and often serve as pastors in various churches in the Lands Between, sadly most of them are now extinct". Well, now you have it. Consider it official. He can talk because he is a Tortellina Gigantica Sapiens. Wow. Such value added.

I think you're missing the point.

It's not about having explanations or trivia for everything, it's about having a reason for things to be the way they are in the game. It'd be nice to have a reason why there's a giant turtle wearing a pope hat there that isn't just Fantasy So Random! because it makes the game feels like From just threw random shit all over the place with no rhyme or reason.

There's no meaning or intent behind the turtle wearing a pope hat or the supreme god of the world being two freaky fingers, it's just weirdness and surreality for the sake of it and that makes for a bland soulless world. It's hardly different from something like Skyrim having a bunch of cliche fantasy elements in it because they're obligatory. By the numbers mindless window dressing like dangling a set of keys in front of you expecting you to be engaged.

If we go back to DS1's possibly weirdest thing, that being Frampt and Kaathe, the reason they look that way was because they're a tribute to Miyazaki's grandmother. She made him a goofy sockpuppet when he was a kid and he loved it, so he made the snakes look like it as an homage to her.

Even if they still amount to weird unexplained donkey snakes in the worldbuilding it still shows there was a thoughtful intent behind it. They didn't look weird for the sake of being weird and they weren't a result of the devs doing a search for weird fantasy monster designs with no other thought or planning besides.

 

[Skinwalker]

It's not about having explanations or trivia for everything, it's about having a reason for things to be the way they are in the game

But you want the reasons to be painstakingly explained to you with trivia, so really it's about explanations and trivia for everything.

 

[Skinwalker]

Dark Souls 1 had a very large talking cat that was the leader of a covenant, and to my memory never addressed the fact that she's a cat or explained why she can talk. This sort of stuff was always part of the Miyazaki style. Who are these fucking retards coming in and sperging over the fact that there's a giant talking turtle in Elden Ring.

 

[Silverfish]

Dark Souls 1 had a very large talking cat that was the leader of a covenant, and to my memory never addressed the fact that she's a cat or explained why she can talk. This sort of stuff was always part of the Miyazaki style. Who are these fucking retards coming in and sperging over the fact that there's a giant talking turtle in Elden Ring.

ER was 11 years later. They've had time to improve.

 

[Skinwalker]

Dark Souls 1 had a very large talking cat that was the leader of a covenant, and to my memory never addressed the fact that she's a cat or explained why she can talk. This sort of stuff was always part of the Miyazaki style. Who are these fucking retards coming in and sperging over the fact that there's a giant talking turtle in Elden Ring.

ER was 11 years later. They've had time to improve.

But it's not a flaw and needs no improvement.

 

[9ted6]

Dark Souls 1 had a very large talking cat that was the leader of a covenant, and to my memory never addressed the fact that she's a cat or explained why she can talk. This sort of stuff was always part of the Miyazaki style. Who are these fucking retards coming in and sperging over the fact that there's a giant talking turtle in Elden Ring.

No one ever said there was nothing weird in DS1, it's that the scale and amount of weirdness is very obviously different between games.

Like no one can say Fallout 1 didn't have jokes and pop culture references in it, it did, but it's also absolutely correct to say that Fallout 2 had many more jokes and references and was much more blatant with them than 1 was. That's the same deal here.

In ER every 10 steps you run into something unexplained and surreal and it wears off fast feeling less like imagination and fantasy and more like they didn't know or care what they were doing so they just did whatever in a Lol Random fashion.

This also isn't a newfag retard thing either. People said DS1 was more weird and fantastical than DES, that DS2 was weirder than 1, 3 was weirder than them both and so on. From has gradually flanderized itself over time and turned things it originally did uniquely into its own tired tropes and this has been a complaint since the DS1 days.

And no, wanting things explained and reasonable isn't wanting slop. Look at all the capeshit franchises with their dozens of multiverses and thousands of alternate reality characters running around. That is unimaginative slop.

 

[Lyric Suite]

This theory that he is really old turtle so he became wise does not appeal to me. I think it's just one of those one-purpose creatures created by Greater Will. Like Two Fingers(guardians of the faith), shadowbound beast(defenders of Empyreans), he is there to perform ceremonies. I agree it might be strange at first without a context, it also bothered me a bit during my first playthrough.

Since we have no info you can make up anything you want but the turtles were obviously set up by FromSoft in advance, and it's not a coincidence that turtles became a meme among players (dog!). The description of the talisman says it all. Some refuse to kill or eat turtle meat because they believe turtles to be "wise". It was an OBVIOUS set up since the normal assumption is that this is just world building where as in reality turtles are wise in a literal sense.

Also, there's that whole part in Farum Azula about "beasts" having "gained" intelligence before the age of the Erdree, and after that we have the age of the Crucible, which also has an association with nature. For all we know, Miriel could be from that time. Pretty sure we are meant to assume he is very old, at the very least older than the Erdree. But this is all pointless speculation, since Miriel exists purely because of that description.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This theory that he is really old turtle so he became wise does not appeal to me. I think it's just one of those one-purpose creatures created by Greater Will. Like Two Fingers(guardians of the faith), shadowbound beast(defenders of Empyreans), he is there to perform ceremonies. I agree it might be strange at first without a context, it also bothered me a bit during my first playthrough.

Since we have no info you can make up anything you want but the turtles were obviously set up by FromSoft in advance, and it's not a coincidence that turtles became a meme among players (dog!). The description of the talisman says it all. Some refuse to kill or eat turtle meat because they believe turtles to be "wise". It was an OBVIOUS set up since the normal assumption is that this is just world building where as in reality turtles are wise in a literal sense.

Also, there's that whole part in Farum Azula about "beasts" having "gained" intelligence before the age of the Erdree, and after that we have the age of the Crucible, which also has an association with nature. For all we know, Miriel could be from that time. Pretty sure we are meant to assume he is very old, at the very least older than the Erdree. But this is all pointless speculation, since Miriel exists purely because of that description.

Just imagine the epic turtle neck meat that guy drops.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I went through my entire playthrough without harming any of our turtle friends.

 

[Skinwalker]

I haven't attacked a single animal in either of my two playthroughs. Except wolves and bears, but they attacked me first.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Note to self: Kill turtle pope next time I see him.

 

[mediocrepoet]

 

[Skinwalker]

Pretty sure he's unkillable.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Pretty sure he's unkillable.

You can kill turtle Pope, hes just really durable.

 

[Lyric Suite]

No one ever said there was nothing weird in DS1, it's that the scale and amount of weirdness is very obviously different between games.

Is it really though?

This aspect of unreality in FromSoft games was always there, and was always something you just had to roll with it (the alternative being animu).

Take Gywn's knights for instance. Why are they taller than other humans? Why is Artorias even taller? What spieces is he? Why is his armor different? I mean this is not a world that seems to follow any logic. Rule of cool appears to be the only factor.