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

[abija]

Since the build could use the spell anyway, had to do it:

last boss scarlet flower

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAy0roztMuQ

 

[MasPingon]

I love the art style of Shadow of Eldtree:

Spoiler

 

[Ravielsk]

The environmental storytelling is good enough that watching lore videos would cheapen it. Finding the

spoilers

Shaman Village

and suddenly understanding how the DLC world's and a major character's backstory, several item descriptions, some ghost dialogue, and a few enemy types all tie together is just great.

I would honestly take everything in the DLC with a massive truck load of salt. After fucking around a bit with it, its painfully obvious the DLC is yet again unfinished and the result of hasty rewrites and cuts. For example the Gloom eyed queen was clearly meant to be part of the DLC but was unceremoniously cut out. Marika's past was also on the docket and was directly advertised in the story trailer but was again almost entirely cut. The Shaman village is more like a chapter 9 of a 10 chapter book, but we lack the prior 8 chapters.
There are also scenes in the trailer showing Miquella lifting the veil over the shadow lands and there are unused lines for his Radhan cutscene.

There are entire areas of the game that were obviously cut down in importance. For example The Scaduview area in the released game is a worthless chunk of land with a bowl and some blessings and nothing else. Yet it features several unique assets, is guarded by an optional boss and the bowl has its own unique icon on the map despite again not having anything of importance tied to it. The same goes for the Suppressing Pillar and the abyssal woods which despite housing what is essentially a complete lore bomb of a boss with his own unique cutscene is yet again pretty much irrelevant to the actual plot of the game(unless you count learning again that frenzy flame=bad as relevance).

What I am getting at is that the DLC is essentially another lore hole that is not worth diving into because too much was omitted to form a coherent plot and what is there is so vague that its effectively telling several mutually exclusive stories all of which could be equally true yet there is no way to even approximate which are closer or further from the truth. The finest example of this being people assuming Marika was somehow justified in what she did in the shadow lands because of the Shaman village and the Jar saints, yet you could very easily make the argument for the reverse if you just assume the events played out in reverse(for which there is an equal amount of evidence).

 

[Reinhardt]

scarlet shit is annoying btw

 

[Hell Swarm]

The environmental storytelling is good enough that watching lore videos would cheapen it. Finding the

spoilers

Shaman Village

and suddenly understanding how the DLC world's and a major character's backstory, several item descriptions, some ghost dialogue, and a few enemy types all tie together is just great.

I would honestly take everything in the DLC with a massive truck load of salt. After fucking around a bit with its painfully obvious the DLC is yet again unfinished and the result of hasty rewrites and cuts. For example the The Gloom eyed queen was clearly meant to be part of the DLC but was unceremoniously cut out. Marika's past was also on the docket and was directly advertised in the story trailer but was again almost entirely cut. The Shaman village is more like a chapter 9 of a 10 chapter book, but we lack the prior 8 chapters.
There are also scenes in the trailer showing Miquella lifting the veil over the shadow lands and there are unused lines for his Radhan cutscene.

There are entire areas of the game that were obviously cut down in importance. For example The Scaduview area in the released game is a worthless chunk of land with a bowl and some blessings and nothing else. Yet it features several unique assets, is guarded by an optional boss and the bowl has its own unique icon on the map despite again not having anything of importance tied to it. The same goes for the suppressing Suppressing Pillar and the abyssal woods which despite housing what is essentially a complete lore bomb of a boss with his own unique cutscene is yet again pretty much irrelevant to the actual plot of the game(unless you count learning again that frenzy flame=bad as relevance).

What I am getting at is that the DLC is essentially another lore hole that is not worth diving into because too much was omitted to form a coherent plot and what is there is so vague that its effectively telling several mutually exclusive stories all of which could be equally true yet there is no way to even approximate which are closer to further from the truth. The finest example of this being people assuming Marika was somehow justified in what she did in the shadow lands because of the Shaman village and the Jar saints, yet you could very easily make the argument for the reverse if you just assume the events played out in reverse(for which there is an equal amount of evidence).

Welcome to From games. Is this your first time? Never get invested in From lore. It all changes at the last moment based on which post-it notes get read from a random pile they shove on an interns desk

The worst bit is Patches still doesn't have a quest line fully fleshed out. He does literally nothing and ends up where he started.

 

[Ravielsk]

Is this your first time?

No, I am one of the few here on codex bringing up all the cut content and hasty edits.

My posts on the matter

What does cut content have to do with the finished game? Why is the story a mess?

Because in development, especially when making open world titles, you cannot make the game level by level sequentially. You need to have the whole thing planned out in advance before you sit your team down to make a game. So when making level one you already have to be thinking about how it will slot in with level 10 even though you are nowhere near making that level. Same goes for scripting and writing, you need to code and write level one in a way that does not conflict with future additions into the game.
You do this because once you inevitably have to change and cut some things for whatever reason you want to maintain coherency of both the game and the story.

Problem is that Souls games after DS1 have not been doing this whatsoever. Meaning that say DS3 was developed with the ability to make bonfires and alter the state of levels through something called rituals but then the rituals and bonfire making were cut and so was everything pertaining to them but the game has already been made mostly with those mechanics and story beats in mind and nobody bothered to patch up those holes. The result in an incomprehensible story that may just as well not exist because its essentially skipping around like a broken record.

Bloodborne is even worse as that game had massive changes done just a few months before release and most were for the worse. For example in the released game the entire area of Old Yharnam and old hunter Djura make absolutely no sense. Because the entire point of that area is to signal to the player that "the beasts are people". Problem is that literary no one is hiding this or pretending to not know this in the released product. Why? Well because the original plan was that the city would become gradually more beast infested as the game went(aka the moon presence got closer) and discovering the secret behind the curse of the beast was meant to be a major chunk of the story. But then it and all the directly related NPCs were cut but everything else was more or less untouched. The result is a game that has to pretend to not know what is real and what is a dream because that is the only way for things to even pretend to make sense.

Not convinced about bonfires in DS3. I could sit down for 30 minutes and rearrange the bonfires in a way that'd be a noticeable improvement over the OG (in fact people have done this in various mods, it's not that hard).

Bonfires placing as a mechanic is just the tip of the iceberg which we sadly do not know the full extent of. The main issue is that in combination with the rituals mechanic(which was mostly a sort of time travel mechanic) bonfires add major lore implications about the state of the world and the players role in it. Whether it would make the game better or worse is a whole other discussion which I am not looking to start.

At the very least I would assume that it would certainly tie up most of the lose narrative ends that compose DS3(such the angelic knights, lothric civil war, the twin princess, Oceiros and well a lot more).

Can you elaborate?

Not a whole lot but I will try. Based on what Lance McDonald uncovered the game was supposed to have ritual mechanics that would alter the skybox of the level to change the state of the world. Ranging from different time of day to basically summoning a swarm of dragons. All of this seems to have been in some way connected with the bonfire mechanic that would have used enemies as sort of tributes or gates for these altered states. Some of it might have been wholly meant for PVP or simple aesthetic purposes and some may have been just developers experimenting but it was clearly meant to be a core part of the game otherwise they would not have bothered highlighting it in the gameplay reveal trailer and to use it internally in presentations.

I believe that it was supposed to be a time travel mechanic of sorts for three reasons:
A. They reused that exact concept in the Ringed city DLC which is what From tends to do with cut content
B. There is a screenshot from an early build where the unused ceremony dragon skybox is in full effect and the dancer of boreal valley is present as a friendly NPC

The image in question

C. This is exactly how its used with Untended Graves area which is just the starting area but with a different time of day flag triggered and canonically acts as your character traveling back in time. As can be seen from the dialog with the hand maiden.

The dialog in question

Oh thou'rt... Oh, no, 'tisn't anything Ashen One. <--- her recognising the player
I am but a humble handmaiden of the shrine.
Weapons, armor, trinkets, and spells...
I've lots of little things to ease the burden of a weary traveller.
...And yes, I'm Undead, too, but not so charitable as to give my goods away.
Ashen One, fetch souls, and bring them to me.
As is thy wont, no?"

Put all together with all the lose and seemingly out of nowhere things in the game (angelic knights, lothric civil war, the twin princess, Oceiros, Profaned capital etc.) its kind of obvious that these things were meant to be far more spread out perhaps mainly through different eras as that would neatly give the developers space to flesh them out without needing to make whole new levels.

ER and the latest DLC are however doubly obnoxious in this regard because in the past you "could"(really you shouldn't but you could) justify the cuts as simply not having a place to put them into or not having enough time to flesh them out. This is not the case with ER, From had plenty of time and plenty of space to put NPCs and item into and just did not.

Its one thing to not directly slot the DLC area into the open world, that is a understandable compromise(that other games seemingly do not have to make but whatever) but advertising one thing just months before release and then going back on it entirely without so much as a peep is just a new level of shit from them.

 

[Reinhardt]

Patches

oh, right. i forgot. nigga promised me to open shop.

 

[Hell Swarm]

advertising one thing just months before release and then going back on it entirely without so much as a peep is just a new level of shit from them.

Dark souls 2 says Hi.

From are a lot like Games Workshop. They have a general style people like but ultimately fail to pull out the full potential. They stagnate and rehash what comes before but worse over and over. Until you're left with a super popular product surrounded by fanboys but it's not of a quality you would have bought into in it's current state. I suppose that sums up most of modern media as well but I think you get the point.

 

[Odoryuk]

Just please don't make up a better unexistent version of the DLC that has nothing to do with reality in your head and then run all over the internet stating it was a fact and you were robbed

 

[Ravielsk]

Dark souls 2 says Hi.

Dark Souls 2 gets to have the excuse that they swapped the director mid development and the resulting game is just a cobbled together from what was done at the time of the swap.
Elden Ring does not get any such excuse.

 

[Bloodeyes]

I restarted with a STR/FTH build. I dropped myself some of the things I found on my other character. Its a cool build but I was retarded and made it at 139. Meta PSN is so rough, especially because of my time-zone and region. Its almost all Japanese players and they are really nasty gankers. I'd level this guy up to 200 but I want at least 1 character at meta for the arena and this guy is the unlucky one.

Still, I had a few good ones. I like the big flower. It seems to get unbreakable (except by status) hyper armor from frame 1 of its L2:





Gotta get those rune arcs somehow. These bosses are hard.

 

[MasPingon]

Bloodborne is even worse as that game had massive changes done just a few months before release and most were for the worse. For example in the released game the entire area of Old Yharnam and old hunter Djura make absolutely no sense. Because the entire point of that area is to signal to the player that "the beasts are people". Problem is that literary no one is hiding this or pretending to not know this in the released product. Why? Well because the original plan was that the city would become gradually more beast infested as the game went(aka the moon presence got closer) and discovering the secret behind the curse of the beast was meant to be a major chunk of the story. But then it and all the directly related NPCs were cut but everything else was more or less untouched. The result is a game that has to pretend to not know what is real and what is a dream because that is the only way for things to even pretend to make sense.

This is literally Polygon level o bullshit, you just make up those things as you go in your rant. In early stage of development Bloodborne was named "Project Beast" and it supposed to be a kind of different story. Concept have changed, which is common in in early stages and Old Ones kicked in. You just took a pinacle of FS enviromental story telling and shit on it without a reason like a toested climate activist. Beast are people was a minor twist, Djura was a minor NPC and your rant about how they published a game around those concepts, cut important pieces giving nothing in return and somehow pretend it's still whole package makes me think you are either mentally disturbed or retarded. I'm not a doctor but it looks like some kind of persecution mania, you making similar shit up about SoE also, those things do not exist.

 

[Odoryuk]

The finest example of this being people assuming Marika was somehow justified in what she did in the shadow lands because of the Shaman village and the Jar saints, yet you could very easily make the argument for the reverse if you just assume the events played out in reverse(for which there is an equal amount of evidence)

What's the evidence against the shamans? I must have missed that.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Dark souls 2 says Hi.

Dark Souls 2 gets to have the excuse that they swapped the director mid development and the resulting game is just a cobbled together from what was done at the time of the swap.
Elden Ring does not get any such excuse.

6th archstone in Demon's souls also says hi.
Lost Izaleth says hi
Farron keep being bloodborne assets says hi.

This isn't new. It's From.

You just took a pinacle of FS enviromental story telling and shit on it without a reason like a toested climate activist. Beast are people was a minor twist, Djura was a minor NPC and your rant about how they published a game around those concepts, cut important pieces giving nothing in return and somehow pretend it's still whole package makes me think you are either mentally disturbed or retarded.

Like this defense of From's last minute lore changes. Often leaving plot lines in the game files but removed from the main game. From Lore constantly changing last second to the writers straight up patching the lore in games you've already bought. The lore community refuses to admit they're staring at static made by people who don't really care that much and insist it's so deep and insightful because youtubers write fanfics.

Did this week teach you nothing? Lore video after Lore video by people who hadn't even beat the DLC let alone read all the item descriptions. Radahn dindu nuffin, Radahn is satan and wanted boy pussy, the downfall of Raddy 2 swords. Marika's bitch tits were evil/nice/a saint/tricked/a lady boy. It's all fucking fanfics made by autistic people who cannot accept From make awful lore, they take concepts from else where, never flesh them out and go "teehee, it's our style" while you fags spend 3 weeks arguing over a door texture they literally scanned from some 3rd world shit hole that used to have civilized people in it. Resident evil 4 used the same techniques and I don't see any of you arguing why ancient mexican holy dog statues are used as door handles in a midgets castle.

 

[Odoryuk]

From make awful lore

They make lore that fascinates and engages people. That's the only thing that matters. Everything that is in the game's release is the canon and should be studied, the "last minute changes" are discarded bits and should be forgotten. Simple as that.
I'm saying this as a person who haven't seen lore videos since after I beat Dark Souls 1 and realised that theorising and sharing ideas with homies is a lot more interesting than watching someone else's readings.

 

[Silva]

Bloodborne is even worse as that game had massive changes done just a few months before release and most were for the worse. For example in the released game the entire area of Old Yharnam and old hunter Djura make absolutely no sense. Because the entire point of that area is to signal to the player that "the beasts are people". Problem is that literary no one is hiding this or pretending to not know this in the released product. Why? Well because the original plan was that the city would become gradually more beast infested as the game went(aka the moon presence got closer) and discovering the secret behind the curse of the beast was meant to be a major chunk of the story. But then it and all the directly related NPCs were cut but everything else was more or less untouched. The result is a game that has to pretend to not know what is real and what is a dream because that is the only way for things to even pretend to make sense.

This is literally Polygon level o bullshit, you just make up those things as you go in your rant. In early stage of development Bloodborne was named "Project Beast" and it supposed to be a kind of different story. Concept have changed, which is common in in early stages and Old Ones kicked in. You just took a pinacle of FS enviromental story telling and shit on it without a reason like a toested climate activist. Beast are people was a minor twist, Djura was a minor NPC and your rant about how they published a game around those concepts, cut important pieces giving nothing in return and somehow pretend it's still whole package makes me think you are either mentally disturbed or retarded. I'm not a doctor but it looks like some kind of persecution mania, you making similar shit up about SoE also, those things do not exist.

He's not completely wrong though, even if exaggerating a bit. BB is my fave but has it's dose of holes too (see Martyr Logarius' model being Pthumerian when the guy was supposedly an Yharnamite executioner). But in the end what matters is how fun and evocative the final product is, and most end up real nice.

The game that feels significantly "damaged" here, to the point of making me do a hard, conscious effort to buy into it's plot is DS3, which is a discombobulated mess due to it's main motivators (Pope Sully and Kaathe) being deprotagonized at the last moment, and now we have lots of serpent references pointing to absolutely nothing, and a mute Pope that should talk something important but doesn't. Shit is analogous to those TTRPG sessions where the GM shows up drunk and his plot for the day is clearly making no sense, but you still go along because the pizza is good and his elder sister is hot as fuck so let's go baby.

 

[Hell Swarm]

They make lore that fascinates and engages people. That's the only thing that matters. Everything that is in the game's release is the canon and should be studied, the "last minute changes" are discarded bits and should be forgotten. Simple as that.

You have no idea what is a last minute change and what isn't because you're not on the design team. Your idea means we have to completely ignore all of the DLC lore because the day 1 downloadable patch added in the bubble faggots announcing tranny boy was going to become a new God. So last minute change ended up defining the DLC lore.

 

[Odoryuk]

They make lore that fascinates and engages people. That's the only thing that matters. Everything that is in the game's release is the canon and should be studied, the "last minute changes" are discarded bits and should be forgotten. Simple as that.

You have no idea what is a last minute change and what isn't because you're not on the design team. Your idea means we have to completely ignore all of the DLC lore because the day 1 downloadable patch added in the bubble faggots announcing tranny boy was going to become a new God. So last minute change ended up defining the DLC lore.

Why the fuck would Miquella get himself abducted and transformed into a cocoon if not to become a higher being? Nothing contradicts the base game.

 

[Hell Swarm]

They make lore that fascinates and engages people. That's the only thing that matters. Everything that is in the game's release is the canon and should be studied, the "last minute changes" are discarded bits and should be forgotten. Simple as that.

You have no idea what is a last minute change and what isn't because you're not on the design team. Your idea means we have to completely ignore all of the DLC lore because the day 1 downloadable patch added in the bubble faggots announcing tranny boy was going to become a new God. So last minute change ended up defining the DLC lore.

Why the fuck would Miquella get himself abducted and transformed into a cocoon if not to become a higher being? Nothing contradicts the base game.

Day 1 Elden Ring patch completely changed a bunch of lore and enemy placements. The idea that bubble guys are announcing a new God was part of that patch and they were added various places around the world.

For someone who wants to ignore last minute changes you're not aware of what they are..

 

[MasPingon]

Silva Yeah, Aldrich was even worse, all the build up and not even a cutscene before a fight. If you are not paying enough attention you can finish the game and wonder "what happened to this Aldrich guy I was after, must have missed him somehow". Happened to me.

 

[Ravielsk]

What's the evidence against the shamans? I must have missed that.

You simply assume to order of events goes in reverse instead of the current fan consensus:
Marika lives happily in village > Hornsent stuff shamans into pots to make saints > Marika gets pissed > Marika becomes a goddess(with the help of the fingers) > Marika sends Mesmer to take revenge

You can easily assume events went in a slightly different order:
Marika lives happily in village > Marika becomes a goddess(with the help of the fingers) > Hornsent get pissed and in retaliation stuff shamans into pots to make saints > Marika gets pissed > Marika sends Mesmer to take revenge

I personally lean towards the second timeline because simply put if Marika had her people stuffed into pots I have a hard time imagining she would allow the practice to continue in the lands between to a point where there would be a full village of them and Alexander could travel the lands freely without anyone calling him at least a "monster". Also if the Hornset were stuffing shamans from her village into pots I have a hard time imaging Marika seducing or betraying her way(like the story trailer says) towards anything with them.

That said it could be another lazy retcon so who knows how canon the trailer really is or is not. Namco's own promotional site for the game does not seem to be canon so anything is possible really.

 

[MasPingon]

What's the evidence against the shamans? I must have missed that.

You simply assume to order of events goes in reverse instead of the current fan consensus:
Marika lives happily in village > Hornsent stuff shamans into pots to make saints > Marika gets pissed > Marika becomes a goddess(with the help of the fingers) > Marika sends Mesmer to take revenge

You can easily assume events went in a slightly different order:
Marika lives happily in village > Marika becomes a goddess(with the help of the fingers) > Hornsent get pissed and in retaliation stuff shamans into pots to make saints > Marika gets pissed > Marika sends Mesmer to take revenge

I personally lean towards the second timeline because simply put if Marika had her people stuffed into pots I have a hard time imagining she would allow the practice to continue in the lands between to a point where there would be a full village of them and Alexander could travel the lands freely without anyone calling him at least a "monster". Also if the Hornset were stuffing shamans from her village into pots I have a hard time imaging Marika seducing or betraying her way(like the story trailer says) towards anything with them.

That said it could be another lazy retcon so who knows how cannot the trailer really is or is not. Namco's own promotional site for the game does not seem to be canon so anything is possible really.

What's wrong with that? What you described is ambiguity, not bad writing/plot holes.

 

[Odoryuk]

Day 1 Elden Ring patch completely changed a bunch of lore and enemy placements. The idea that bubble guys are announcing a new God was part of that patch and they were added various places around the world.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the "unpatched" version very tough to get and wasn't it limited to a single console, meaning it was an unfinished version of the game, meaning that's the last minute changes that can be ignored?

I personally lean towards the second timeline

You didn't give enough evidence in the game, though. From the game, it is evident that the shamans were seen as lower breed, and their meat was good for jars because it melded with other meat easily. It has nothing to do with punishment to Marika, it was their way of creating saints and shaman meat was the focal ingredient for that. Get some lowly shaman, mix it with meat from criminals and heretics and you have yourself a saint.

I personally lean towards the second timeline because simply put if Marika had her people stuffed into pots I have a hard time imagining she would allow the practice to continue in the lands between to a point where there would be a full village of them and Alexander could travel the lands freely without anyone calling him at least a "monster". Also if the Hornset were stuffing shamans from her village into pots I have a hard time imaging Marika seducing or betraying her way(like the story trailer says) towards anything with them.

There's a hospital for the saints in Messmer's castle, where they tried to heal the afflicted, and probably learned how the jars work. In The Lands Between the jars contain dead body of warriors, allowing them to become champions once more, that's why they are connected to the Erd Tree that returns the dead back to life. It's more humane and it is only gross when a sentient jar eats enemies he defeated to become even more stronger. It's a different way of doing it and I could see how Marika would introduce this.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the "unpatched" version very tough to get and wasn't it limited to a single console, meaning it was an unfinished version of the game, meaning that's the last minute changes that can be ignored?

You can buy a copy on console any where even now, you just don't let it patch. It's 'unfinished' but then finishing it is a last minute change.

Hey lorefags. You're all retarded fart sniffers. This dumb little fuck is the best thing in the DLC and he doesn't need 15 lore videos about him. He hangs out, does his blue worm thing and that's it. Blue worm spirits > Your tranny faggot lore.

 

[Odoryuk]

Love it when they spit their innards in order to digest you. An actual thing some real life organisms do as well.