rootfifthoctave While a lot of loresters are still groping around and making false claims in regards to this, if you take a zoomed out perspective, few of the concepts are new, it’s based on history, mythology, religion, alchemy, science etc.
The easiest comparison to draw with the concept of Radagon and Marika being one is the holy trinity of father, son, and spirit. God and Jesus are the same, but Jesus is God made flesh. Radagon and Marika may have been wed, but with one exalted to a God, the spiritual form & concept could fuse more literally than flesh would. You could think of it like ghost sex, if you want. All theories are equally viable.
Only now, a year later, do I feel that lore stuff is getting really interesting, after a year of everyone basically regurgitating the events of the game in video form.
Here’s a fun watch. Very relevant to Elden Ring.
My approach, or at least IMHO, is that it makes sense when you zoom out and look at the bigger picture. I see so many people trying to micro manage, make sense of every little thing, which is often mistranslated, using college-dropout level quantum mechanics, and it just falls flat for me.
A good example, like I’ve said before, is that some people completely miss the obvious God & Christ figures of the game, because they’re taking the ingame text way too literally and think it’s more complicated than it is. From the first glance at the game it could be clear that the relationship between Created and Creator, the Fractalization of the first Source (God), have parallels in this game.
From a role playing perspective, I am always making a similar character in each game, but the fun for me comes from finding where my character belongs in the new world. They have the same affinities as always, but each new game means finding where I fall in the scheme of things and which faction I align with. Elden Ring was super fun because the tropes from prior games are veiled & skewed in ways that keep me guessing.
Similarly to The Good Lore coming out recently, so have The Good Runs. LobosJr. has been doing some of his absolutely classic runs that bring back feelings of his legendary Dark Souls runs from back in the day. He does challenge runs for every souls game, but of course, Elden Ring is super interesting.
He even says how the run he does at the beginning of the game is similar to Dark Souls where he skips down to blight town to grab stuff. From the moment the game came out, I was pondering the possibilities of what would become an established “starter pack run”, where generally many people would take a similar path to grab items in the early game. FS takes this sort of stuff into account to a degree, after all.
Getting kidnapped and taken to the mines in Caelid was an obvious example of a possible skip, same with the portal to the Beast Chapel or whatever it’s called. That is basically the equivalent to starting with the master key and skipping down to blight town.
Lobos makes it look so easy. He almost makes torches look viable. By the time he’s in the haligtree he’s doing considerable damage.
Another note, I beat Malenia again in NG+, and above I kind of nonchalantly humble bragged about not having much of an issue with her.
I need to clarify.
I very much would have more of an issue with her, if I hadn’t used the optimal strategy to beat her every time. It still takes about 6 tries.
- Level 115-150
- Full Dung Eater set or similar. Rare occassion where I switch to a heavy build, begrudgingly.
- Keen Uchigatana +25 in the right hand with bloodhound step
- Hand of Malenia +10 in the left hand. If you haven’t beaten her before and can’t access this, I used another katana at max level
- Don’t summon another player, this doubles her HP.
- Used a talisman to give medium equip load
- On top of that, Valkyrie winged blade talisman, Lord of Blood’s Exaltation talisman, and (in NG+) Milicent’s Prosthesis talisman. This is a subsequent hits / bleed build that will destroy her HP bar quickly before she has a chance to heal or hurt. I can also substitute talismans with the bull horn for poise or the ones that increase HP to help silver tear survive longer.
- Immediately summon silver tear.
- Flask of physick is there with leaden tear or whatever to let me tank hits.
- Getting through phase 1 is easy and quick enough. When she’s vulnerable I use her own Waterfoul Dance, which always knocks her over with the final hit. Without this, just use regular L1 attacks
- Bloodhounds step to dodge
- Each phase can be done super quickly. But just as quickly, she can kill you. It’s like a Glass-Cannon War of Attrition. It’s over in a flash. Phase 1 is over so quickly for me. Phase 2 is the same.
