I have started playing ELDEN RING after having never played a Souls-like before. I have no idea what's going on, why I'm immortal, or how to play but I love the creepy anime girl as well as my magic horse.
Haha.
But no, I've spent the past dozen hours trying to rectify that lore wise and absolutely love this world as well as its handling of lore without handholding. George R.R. martin's influence on the backstory is clear but so is the Souls-like creators ability to storytell without much in the way of actual interaction.
Never has a quest for godhood been so sympathetic.
The Elden Ring lore and gameworld
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CharlesPhipps
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Re: The Elden Ring lore and gameworld
Huh. I never understood what was going on. I beat this gold spider then fell off a ledge. Then I distrusted the creepy anime girl and turned down her offer. Beat some castle and was confused because people were talking about leveling and getting magic. Personally I was just lost wandering in a swamp the east of the castle when I stopped playing.
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CharlesPhipps
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- Posts: 4956
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Re: The Elden Ring lore and gameworld
The lore of the game is exceptionally deep but incredibly difficult to find out in-universe. The short version is that Marika, the God Queen of the Lands Between, has disappeared and the Elden Ring that provides prosperity has been shattered. All of Marika's demigod children and her Elden Lord husbands have claimed a fragment of the Elden Ring in hopes of assuming rulership of the universe. You, as the immortal Tarnished, are part of a group of warriors resurrected to make their own play for the Elden Ring. If you're a good person, you want to be Elden Lord to fix the world and if you're a bad person then you just want to be elevated to godhood.
I really like George R.R. Martin's touch in a much more high fantasy world than Westeros and the focus on the Olympian-like demigods and their dysfunctional family that makes this gameworld so great. He apparently wrote much of the backstory that the game requires you to research to understand and its readily apparent. Almost every god has a deep and messed-up backstory relating to their families with messy breakups, long-buried lust, as well as deep philosophical issues with the way the world functions. For millennia, the Golden Order has created a paradise but it was only one for humans and under an immortal God Queen.
I think my favorite of the demigods are Ranni and Melina, who both are willing to help the Tarnished for their own reasons. I think both characters could have had much more presence in the game and interactions but it is the nature of Elden Ring that anything other than pure gameplay takes a great deal to coax out. Of the bosses, I actually really like Godrick and Rennala who are the runts of the litter of gods. Godrick is a diluted demigod who has turned to Frankensteinian body experimentation to try to become a true immortal while Rennala used to be the world's greatest sorceress but just lives as a madwoman in her academy's attic these days.
I really like George R.R. Martin's touch in a much more high fantasy world than Westeros and the focus on the Olympian-like demigods and their dysfunctional family that makes this gameworld so great. He apparently wrote much of the backstory that the game requires you to research to understand and its readily apparent. Almost every god has a deep and messed-up backstory relating to their families with messy breakups, long-buried lust, as well as deep philosophical issues with the way the world functions. For millennia, the Golden Order has created a paradise but it was only one for humans and under an immortal God Queen.
I think my favorite of the demigods are Ranni and Melina, who both are willing to help the Tarnished for their own reasons. I think both characters could have had much more presence in the game and interactions but it is the nature of Elden Ring that anything other than pure gameplay takes a great deal to coax out. Of the bosses, I actually really like Godrick and Rennala who are the runts of the litter of gods. Godrick is a diluted demigod who has turned to Frankensteinian body experimentation to try to become a true immortal while Rennala used to be the world's greatest sorceress but just lives as a madwoman in her academy's attic these days.
