Does Elden Ring's Lore Make Sense?

Some spoilers. The lore of Elden Ring is confusing, but is there something beyond the murkiness or is it vague item descriptions all the way down?

Music: Kevin Macleod - Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet
Dark Souls 3 OST - Epilogue

#eldenring #eldenringlore #lore

[SpookeyGael]

honestly I think the only reason people prefer Ranni's ending is that it's the one that has to most context and content to get it. The others are mostly just handed to you with little fanfare.

[Liam-pivi]

Ratatoskr, as much as I love him, was a bit hyperbolic. You can extrapolate macro themes out of what we’ve gotten. What I’m interested in are specific questions regarding the lore. Why did Radahn fight morgott if they’re both loyal to the golden order? What allegiance do the black knife assassins have? To what degree was Ranni involved in Godwyn being specifically assassinated, if at all. What are Marikas true intentions? What’s going on with Helphen? How was Marika an empyrean? What defines an empyrean? Who was the gloam eyed queen? If the god skin apostles are ancient, with characteristics resembling the crucible, how old is the gloam eyed queen as well? Is black flame a weakened form of Destined Death? Was it the rune of death or the Queens Greatsword that was the true source of the power of black flame? What is up with the more detailed version of the Elden Ring found in Farum Azula? How was Placidusax injured? Who was the God of the Ancient Dragons? Why do the scales of Placidusax specifically imbue weapons with the strength to kill gods? Who are all the nameless Demi gods in the walking mausoleums? How was Godwyn the first of the Demi gods to die in recorded history, but the incantation Noble’s presence states that it’s a trophy of a successful god hunt, though the current black flame isn’t capable of truly killing a god?

[flavertex]

I'm with you and Crunchy in the thematic department. In Dark Souls, as you say, one of the grand lore themes is "stagnation, " and the argument supported by that narrative is that "stagnation is a sign that the current order of things has run it's natural course, so the correct response is to allow what is stagnating to end so that new, fresh things can emerge." The big character conflict in Dark Souls is coming to that realization, in finally acknowledging that the world cannot be saved by continually linking the fire. At the end of the game, our big ending-deciding decision is "do we keep the lights on, or turn them off and finally go the fuck to bed?"

I think it's clear that Elden Ring is a continuation of these themes, a progression. Elden Ring begins with the assumption that everyone already understands that the current world order is fucked and broken and needs to end, and indeed this is supported texturally by each and every ending requiring the burning of the Erdtree, the destruction of the old order. Elden Ring then asks us to follow through on our thematic decisions from Dark Souls: "ok, so you've decided that the current order needs to end. What takes it's place, then? If not this, then what? If you've decided to turn the lights off for the night, what will you do come tomorrow morning?" It pushes us a step forward, and asks us to be creative, to dig deep and find inspiration for how we would like the new world to look like. Every ending of the game, every conclusion, is an affirmation of the theme that *something* needs to be chosen, that recognition of the stagnation of the old is only half of the equation, with the other half being the inspiration towards something new.

[notazazel]

Idk DLC always adds more questions instead of answering anything for the most part imo

[daunted]

My feeling, is the fact we are asking this question, leans towards one end of the spectrum. Elden ring is a cool world, that even as a major player in the world, I feel as though I am just a sight seer. A tourist walking from big attraction to big attraction. Without a tour guide telling me what the significance is, the context in which the things were made, or their meaning going forward.

[zachtaylor]

I’ve gotten to where I don’t even pay attention to lore and story in these games because even if I do pay attention I still have no idea what’s going on

[MetalCaffeine]

Even though Elden Ring has a lot more detail to the worldbuilding itself than past games, actual character motivations are more vague than they've ever been. It's a little frustrating to be honest. Like, I understood what Gwyns motivation was in Dark Souls but I can't really say the same for Marika since there's so little info about her and what her goal actually was.

[Shezmen]

Hey man, thanks for the video. I would definitely suggest to add "Honored Madman" to the roundtable of lore channels. He's really excellent at connecting pieces of the lore together with a very casual approach which makes him different and enjoyable to watch too.

[TwistedMindChern]

So many videos about this game and still, its lore makes no sense. Everyone comes with a different interpretation.

[deadmedowns]

I do think it's a little funny that people are already acting like we've exhausted all the potential information. We're still figuring things out about the older Fromsoft games.

[mald]

My interpretation is that you're more literally living in a mythology, and are forming the mythical cannon for a world to come.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

It suffers from the same crap every other Souls game does: it doesn't give the player nearly enough information to actually understand the story they're trying to tell, so why bother trying to tell a story at all. It's annoyed me since Demon's Souls. It's like writing a book in a cipher. Sure, maybe you can figure it out, but the number of people who are going to bother can be counted on one hand.

[stampede]

In some of my own lore hunting I've tried taking a different, less holistic approach to the lore. Each location I go to, I look at everything there and think "What is THIS story?"

It's a slow and meticulous approach, but it's started giving me some new insight. For instance, the Stormfoot Catacombs were recently invaded by nobles who sought erdtree burial but were denied.

I haven't gotten far yet but I think looking at each location as largely self contained and only gradually building to a larger whole might be a useful approach.

[KosOrSomeSayKosmo]

I like Elden Ring, but I think I'd like it even more with the open world cut and the game following a linear series of levels akin to DS3, or even choosing levels from the Roundtable Hold a la Demon's Souls. I feel that could have helped concentrate the richness of the experience while also helping maintain the narrative drive and quest lines.

[alternatebanana]

I wonder if a discussion could be had about the vague language relationship between "The Lands Between", "Middle-Earth", and "Midgard", and how this relationship may inform some deeper aspects of this narrative.

[etherealMcCoy]

I think a missed point is that the lore is broken. It's glitched. It's why Goldmask's ending exists - there are contradictions and exceptions in reality that shouldn't exist. Marika cannot be Radagon. The golden order can't be perfect while imperfections such as those who vibe in death exist. The Greater Will cannot have both abandoned the world while still guiding it. A tarnished cannot be elden lord. A turtle cannot be a dog.

The biggest liar in the whole game is Miriel. Heresy isn't just native to the world, it defines the world.

The lore has to be determined from the perspective that there are no mutual exclusions, and that all facts are indeterminate except momentarily.

[Crembaw]

Here's the thing: Elden Ring has an incredibly strong Christian influence, and I'd strongly argue an *Early Christian* influence in particular. One of the possible influences on early Christian thought in addition to Judaism was the idea of the Mystery Cult, and the enigmatic nature of a lot of the information and how it is revealed to the player throughout Elden Ring also seems to pay homage to that: each level of challenge completed reveals a further piece of the grand mystery of the divine. But importantly, the idea that the divine has to be intelligible to humans at all is an extremely modern notion. In many ancient religions, and important to this discussion *western* religions, there was a general acceptance that many things about the divine were simply beyond human comprehension. It wasn't a conundrum for early Christians to reconcile Jesus being fully God and fully Human, they didn't wonder how He could 'do that.' How can you know the will or ability of an omnipotent god?

Elden Ring drinks heavily from this cup, as well as other factors of early Abrahamic religions - chiefly the myriad references of the worship of, and being in conflict with, other Gods. There are elements of the divine that are simply unknown or perhaps even unknowable, and even characters and groups within the game have to contend with their actions potentially being the actings-out of the conflict between wills of totally unfathomable entities that they have put their faith in. It isn't so much that these things don't 'make sense, ' they may make perfect sense in the grand strokes of myth and divine conflict, but they defy interpretation in the sense that, well, you either have to accept they happened and build the themes out of them, or get frustrated that it wasn't explained in detail to you. It perhaps leaves a few too many things in this realm that don't need to be there, which is a failure of the writing in my estimation, but it isn't *wrong* to take this path, it's just a different way to approach a setting than we're accustomed to in (most) FromSoft games. Bloodborne took a similar approach, but because we are so steeped in the Post-Lovecraftian world we understood readily while playing it that some things would be left completely foreign to us. But the overuse of rationalism, combined with the frankly apocalyptically cringe 'Protestant Reformation', have basically gutted this understanding of religion in the western world, to the point that we so often see people resort to hardline *misunderstanding* of the Ol' Bibble to assert that it either must all be fantasy or fact, and so Elden Ring probably doesn't seem to stick the landing quite as well.

[dannywest]

The epistemology is pretty simple here. The art and the world building and the experience and all of it is wonderful, nobody would trade it, etc. But there are a lot of people who play these games who force certainty where it plainly doesn't belong in regards to how they model the cohesion in these works. If you know anything about the translations of these games you know how unbelievably off some of the meanings are. In a certain sense if you're playing in English you're already going to be missing pieces. (The Japanese is also delphic, but more directly so, if that makes any fucking sense at all.)

But more importantly, it's clear that narrative cohesion in these games necessarily takes a back seat to both deadlines for publishing and gameplay. Almost all of these titles have bosses switch rooms or get renamed or they re-use areas/assets or whatever else at the last minute because they think it's ultimately a better gameplay experience. They also know that doing this leads to more speculation, projection, and interpretation, which is ultimately better for the marketing, word of mouth, and content cultures the game creates downstream of itself.

[Vladek]

I think it's a bit too early to tell if the lore of Elden Ring is too obscure or not. For example 3 years ago Hawkshaw did "Ash Lake, Havel, and the Plot against the Gods", a video about DS1 a game that is now 11 years old and despite that he manage to extract this very obscure piece of lore from it.
Elden Ring is juste bigger than all the previous FS games, so maybe we just need more time to figure it out :D

[TheBlaringBlue]

I am so deeply thankful for this video and of course Ratatoskr's. Both really gather up well what I've been feeling about the game since exploring the lore for a few weeks back in April/May. I think you both hit the nail on the head more or less - this story is somehow more ambiguous than previous games, and I think you articulated it so so well in this video. Absolutely top tier work.