Elden Ring - Why is the sea empty?

Elden Ring's map has been through a few revisions, but some versions were a bit stranger than others.

Song used: Outset Island - The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker OST

[ZullietheWitch]

Special thanks to honghojyr, who messaged me after having read a book about sea monsters on old maps and recognizing one of the drawings from the unused map tiles. Knowing one of them was a pre-existing asset made it easy to start spotting some of the others.

Something I think is interesting is the idea of fantasy settings that still have legends and folk tales, like monsters scribbled in the map margins, that still don't actually exist, despite all the magic and other impossible creatures. Naturally it'd be easy to expect giant krakens and sea serpents to be real in a story that already has magic, but they could just as easily be nothing more than the idle daydream of someone in-universe there as well.

[mihirlavande]

Zullie's music choice: Such a goofy goober.

Zullies video: There might be a giant shadow water demon out in the sea, but we're not sure.

[DrTolis]

Tarnished: can kill gods
Also Tarnished : cannot float

[alfalldoot]

Could you imagine if there was just a 1/1, 000, 000, 000 or something that you see a gigantic fin moving in the distance?

[Mersadeon]

Honestly my bet is that they included them at first because it's a thing old maps do and it feels flavourful, only to then realize that it might awaken player expectations, so to avoid disappointment they removed them for the final version.

[Corpse_House]

It feels likely that they were originally there as embellishments, but then removed so as not confuse players who may have thought they were actual creatures you'd get to encounter/fight at some point

[JoseViktor]

My theory is that they removed some of these drawings on porpuse, in case we as players wouldn´t feel underwhelmed of being unable of exploring the sea with apparently so much going around.

[realkingofantarctica]

Oh, that's just Bert. He's a little awkward, but he's chill, trust.

[Tiziown]

In a game where most of the really f*cked up things come from space, the idea of some even greater evil lurking in the waters is incredibly fascinating!

[DTGeorge]

Maybe the DLC will be Another's Crab Treasure after all

[Gakulon]

I like to think the weird sea serpent with a human face is just some type of regular sea creature that got misremembered and morphed as more people told stories about it until the description of it became almost wholly detached from reality.

[joshuaolsoncook]

Because the sea is full of broken controllers and keyboards….

[GrandPaladinTyrux]

For a game with with tons of beaches and an entire area sinking into a marine lake, Elden Ring has a distinct lack of sea creatures and weapons & items based on them - it's something I've always wanted to sea in prior Souls games, and I'm holding out hope maybe an Ash Lake-esque water level makes it into the dlc!

[FirstLast-cgnk]

I think the thing that is easily missed is that due to Elden Ring's focus on religion, deities, and funerary rights, there's a possibility that there may have been Outer Gods who lived in the ocean. We've seen avian psychopomps like the Deathbirds, and there are even aquatic ones like the Tibia Mariners. There are also corpse-like shambling humans on several beaches, so there is a potential connection between death and the sea.

[Centinym]

Nah, they were definitely playing with the idea - you remember the water section in sekiro. Sadly, they probably realized it needed more time in the oven, unlike the jump button. We *will* have underwater exploration in a souls-like eventually.

[ultraphoenix]

I wished we got some monsters like the Hydras in Dark Souls...

[boogyboogyboogy]

Related, but the Lands Between aren’t completely isolated in the middle of the sea- you can somewhat see from the northernmost points on the map (though mostly just the Haligtree- the Mountaintops and the Snowfield can be too foggy to see I think), there’s another fairly sizable landmass admittedly not too far off the Lands’ northern coast. I haven’t heard any reference to it, but I wonder if the landmass is one that we know of already, be it the Land of Reeds or the Badlands (although, if I’m not mistaken, the Badlands are said to be “across the fog”, and I believe the sea south of the Weeping Peninsula is known as the sea of fog.)

No big lore theories from me atm, but I’m curious what anyone else might make of it? Land of Reeds a bit to the North, Badlands far to the South, and the Lands Between… ya know, between them, maybe? (I know, Lands “Between” likely refers instead to being between Siofra and Ainsel Rivers)

[Banana-senpai]

0:05 however big does Elden Ring look like to you guys, it's a pretty small island in terms of real size. Like, if you did a hitchhiking tour of the Lands Between, staring first hour in the morning you could walk all the roads in elden ring with a few stops for food and rest and be sleeping by sunset.

[childofcascadia]

I still think Godwyns final model was originally the Umibozu, or related to the Umibozu somehow- and the design was so cool that when they scrapped the Umibozu as an enemy, they altered its model slightly and made it Godwyn.

I have never heard a better theory about why Godwyn looks like that. It makes more sense to me than any other convoluted theory.

[kamilmalach]

Imagine DLC with various faraway islands to explore, full of monsters and civilizations inspired with real-life legends about unknown parts of the map. Like cynocephali or headless tribes with faces on their chests.

Friendly chest ahead.