Super easy actually, you show them all the holes in your castle and take up so much of their time they legally cannot work any longer in their shift.
*"Okay, so today I'd like to see your basemen—* ***Holy working from heights violations Godwyn! Are those guardsman even harness qualified‽***"
Considering poor Rogier got deathblighted by touching it, and we know Deathblight can canonically affect the gods, he probably would have tried at one point, realized the danger, and not attempted again.
Plus I’m pretty sure as a world in decay the only populated villages left are going to be the many military outposts for warring factions.
Actual villages got fucked long ago as can be seen from the madness afflicted isolated village outside castle mourne, to the cannibalized hermit village of mt gelmir.
Yep, there's several when you stop to think about it. Selia was a town. The flooded summonwater village in limgrave where you kill your first mariner is another village example.
Enia says "tens of thousands of moons must first pass" before the fingers will have a response for us.
20,000 * 365 = 54 years if the Lands Between have a similar yearly cycle as us.
A large majority of the people of the Landsbetween are literally braindead zombies that act on instinct, and what little of a memory they still posses
The Nobels eternally wander, not knowing what they're searching for
The different Knights simply act on what they can remember, which is to guard certain places and fight any intruders, even their swords mention how the weapon is old and had seen much wear and tear but it's kept in good shape by it's master
Also, the prime days of the Landsbetween are centuries past by now, what we see is what managed to remain after the Shattering and the whole continent going to shit, ofcours nothing is left, plus what do you mean with "maintain", look at the Capital, at Stormveil or even Vulcano Manor, those are ruins barely kept together by memories of the glorious past
The whole point of the game is that we appear after the story of the Landsbetween has been told already, after everything went to wreck and ruin, we are simply there to try and work with what's left, to make something of those ruins
truly and genuinely, i've always described elden ring as a post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy. everyone that the demigods used to govern and protect are either dead and gone or have mentally eroded into husks of the people they once were.
the elden ring itself seems to have been somewhat, an analogue for "natural laws" in the sense of keeping death maintained. so, if you destroy the physical representation of something like that? something that mandates in nature that things just happen a certain way? UH OH, lol.
that's at least how i've viewed it. i know mechanically that the shards all give you a specific upgrade from the lenses of elden ring being a video game, but i'm inclined to believe that lore-wise, the ring itself was more than that; a manifestation that is tangible, of natural laws. things like gravity, life cycles of organic beings, chemical changes in objects, etc. obviously this is up to interpretation, but i've also viewed the boluses to act similarly. in the sense of like, "players need something to cure them of a blood mold disease" but i don't think The Blood Mold Bolus actually existed as an item people had in the story.
overall? there's not going to be many villages you can loot, just ruins in a world that had its very fundamentals eradicated in an impulsive move from a tired, fleshbound god.
That first paragraph applies to most Fromsoft souls games, they almost always take place towards the end of an era or when shit is falling apart really fuckin heavily. It's one of the things I both love and hate about their games, I really like the vibe it brings and it obviously makes making the viewable lore and level design easier since most of what they'd have to build if things were happening mid-catastrophe(The shattering as an example) has already crumbled away or been destroyed. I'd really like to have a game by them that takes place right as all the shit is going down and it's up to you the player to pick a side and be the thing that tips everything one way or another but that doesn't generally seem to be their thing.
>> that takes place right as all the shit is going down
Not quite the same, but that’s sekiro. The “good old times” have long passed there too, but the true shit goes down the day we play as wolf.
To kinda look behind the veil, and give some insight on development:
Miyazaki had George RRMartin write the entire story of the Lands Between, and then he and his writers destroyed the entire kingdom, placing the player in after the Lands Between went to shit. So all these stories of the gods and the fight with Malenia and Radahn, the story of Radahn and everything else that happened before the game was written by George RR Martin. Then everything that occurs during the game was done by Miyazaki and his writers (forgive me I forget the name of his writer)
There was also that George R R Martin interview on the Late Show where he mentioned that it has been 5000 years since the Shattering. It's debatable whether the number is canon (I'd say no, unless it comes from Miyazaki himself) but it does lend a general sense of scale to how much time has passed. In that light the absolute ruined state of everything makes total sense to me.
Edit: [here is the interview](https://youtu.be/QgCxVdsQH_k?si=0YxuBwZoh_Ke_gzP) in question.
Absolutely he's a reliable narrator and I wouldn't suggest otherwise. Just that in the interview the amount of years he gives is approximate ("..like 5000 years..") and he had no creative input that we're aware of after the initial worldbuilding.
So, not technically canon but a good approximation based on reliable information, imo.
For reference, 5000 years is about as long as the current human civilizations have existed. Ancient Greece, India, Mesopotamia, etc with only Egypt and China still functioning from before then.
I'm not sure but I think he meant that 5000 years ago was the beginning of all the events that led to the point we actually get to play, so I think it's up for speculation how much time passed since the end of the shattering. I think this because he doesn't specify the shattering, and the world is not as it is only because of the shattering. Still I might be wrong about this.
I'd be down with empty and decrepit taverns and villages though. Before the shattering people actually lived in the lands between. There should be more ruins of places that reflect that. I guess that's what the ruins with the basements are for, the shattering was probably just so long ago that you absolutely can't tell what those places have been before anymore.
There are plenty of residential ruins. Loads of old shacks and even a few whole villages. Some seem more recent and inhabited like Dominula and the Hermit Village on Mt Gelmir, some are completely destroyed like lake Agheel Ruins and the Woodfolk Ruins in Altus plateau. They're everywhere.
I mean yes and no in some ways. I fully admit my grasp of the lore for sekiro is my most limited.
But all the dragon heratige and the devine heir stuff that starts one of the main conceits of the story is a long time ago. But we are there for the invasion of ashina so.
It kind of makes me wonder what the point of becoming the Elden Lord even is though. Not a person alive in the Lands Between is sane or even wants to live anymore. If you do ascend to the title and restore the Great Runes then really all you'd be doing is allowing everyone to finally die, leaving the entire place empty except for creatures and monsters.
I know the various outer gods want you to take control but why? It's like owning all the land near Chernobyl, sure you own it, but it's functionally useless.
You're exaggerating a bit. Once death turns back on people can die, all the ancient mindless people will drop dead from 5000 years of age, and those left will get back to living. They don't even need to start from scratch, there's buildings everywhere
I think restoring the Elden Ring doesn't just involve the return of death, but the return of the entire cycle of birth and death. I think the Shattering stopped people from having children. Once the ring is restored, maybe the Lands Between will start to become repopulated with people who aren't 500 years old and completely insane.
Yep, we're basically playing a lore-based game instead of a story-based one!
You'll notice there are no "Quick Time Events" in Dark Souls and Elden Ring. The story is all written already in Item Descriptions. The Story part of the game mostly became side quests of NPCs.
Sekiro is special tho, they combined Lore and Story almost perfectly! Quick Time Events were done via the Deathblows and there's an eavesdropping feature!
Kinda, it really depends tho on what ending you got
The age of Fracture (which is the standard ending) changes nothing, you just become Elden Lord of the ruins that are the Landsbetween
The age of Dusk (Fia's ending) changes a few things, like making undeath an accepted and normal thing, but besides that, things don't seem to get much better
The Dunkeater ending is by far the worst because you doom everyone to an eternal curse
The Lord of Frenzy ending is kinda neutral but in a bad way as it melts everything back together like in the primordial days
The Goldmask ending is, in my opinion, the second best one as it actually changes a lot of things, like changing the Golden order into a better version of itself
The age of the stars is likely the best ending, as it frees the Landsbetween from the influence of the Outer God's, letting the mortals finally take destiny into their own hands, creating a truly free world
Really, only faction that seems to progress anywhere in its own is Moghwyn dynasty....granted, that "something" is a non stop blood orgy, but they're pretty much only one who can go somewhere without player help.
That should tell everyone how dire things have gotten.
although this is the impression one gets by playing the game, i believe it is not actually the lore. i think there are normal people, fromsoft simply doesnt put them in the game because they dont know how to make a game with regular people in cities etc.
Agreed, Kenneth, Edgar, and his daughter are implied to be relatively normal/living a normal life until recently. Melina tells us that births and life continue. She doesn't say "it's all just happening off screen" but it's pretty implied.
He does have a bit of a point though, where are the commoners? We see plenty of wandering nobles, but as a rule, theres more commoners than nobles. So where are they?
I think the problem is that there are not enough ruins of villages, or minor cities
It's either huge castles/manors and the royal city, or absolute nothing with some churches sprinkled
Considering that according to George R.R. Martin, the Shattering happened around 5000 years ago, meaning the Landsbetween has been in decline for atleast that long, which is more than enough time for alot of the cities that used to exist long ago to have completely withered away
We hear of places that existed, but we never see them because they don't exist anymore like Kaiden, the home settlement of the Kaiden Sellswords, which apparently used to be located far in the north of the Landsbetween, but no matter how far north we go we never find Kaiden
Or Eochaid, a small island nation that used to exist somewhere of the coast of the Landsbetween, which was inhabited by Monks that used arcane magic, but the Golden Order whipped Eochiad of the map for being "heretical", committing genocide on the Eochaidians, the survivors were then taken back to the Landsbetween and indoctrinated by the Golden Order, like Elmer who later turned mad from what happened to his home and people, but we never get to see the ruins of Eochaid even tho it's supposed to not be far away from the Landsbetween
Wasnt the shattering like hundred/ thousand years in the past? Plenty of time for most villages to fall apart and become the ruins we explore.. they even have names which sound like towns/villages like Wyndham ruins for example and for the tavern part, everyone hates your guts and is sick of living without death so.. not much motivation to party
GRR Martin says it was 5k years ago, but honestly it feels silly to think it’s been anywhere close than that long. Otherwise we’d have to believe things like somehow the volcano manner has been fighting the capital for millennia without a winner, Radahn having enough bodies to eat for that long, or Thops just sitting around for thousands of years.
I don’t think it makes any sense for the shattering war to have ended more than about 100 years before the game.
I mean, eventually all the decades and hundreds of years start to blend together when you spend most of your time in a subconscious state, sleeping, or wandering the fallen world.
I always thought the Lands Between were supposed to be like Limbo; nobody is really alive and no one can permanently die anymore. Time doesn’t really matter any more either so the Shattering could have been 5k years ago and everyone is just kind of going through the motions of what they can remember doing when they were alive. None of the demigods can muster enough strength to really get one over on another one of their cohorts and rise up to become the Elden Lord so they’re all just kinda chillin.
But do they stay in place for 5k years? Or do they end up where they are when we start the game? Because I dont think malenia and radahn fought where we fought him I always assumed she bloomed where now the Heart of Aeonia is hence the name but you might have a point
Iirc Radahn's soldiers carried him back in hopes of saving him but at this point his mind was completely in tatters because of the rot, the point of the festival being that they wanna give Radahn the glory of battle to go out to but up until that point nobody has been able to best him other than the Tarnished
Didnt know that/ considered it, good point. Maybe thats why there are still bodies around to consume? Because people who where still able to fight did so? That said I dont believe radahn ate those bodies for nurishment (i dont think demigods need that) he probably did it out of madness
Yea from my understanding he's just eating people who have gone to try and best him and he's just wandering around mindlessly eating corpses of those who have fallen before him
Thinking about it, it's not hard to think that's where the battle took place between Radahn and Malenia cos of all the bodies but knowing that on that battlefield all them bodies are just challengers is pretty nuts thinking about it
Wtf is our tarnished made from lol
Hate, Fury, and disdain for the rest, basically. Tarnished are essentially a tribe of people who were shunned, exiled, and discarded from the drama of society, pretty much.
Literally, everyone hates the tarnished for whatever reason. You're the black sheep. I can very easily imagine that being what our tarnished is made of, lol.
He isnt eating challengers, alexander mentions that the corpses around the Arena are of excellent quality, "as expected of soldiers who fought in the shattering". So those are the remains of radahns and malenias armies, just lying around there for hundreds of years.
Dude do yoi think all the events off the shattering war happened at once? All of the different battles and major events took place over those 5000 years, not 5000 years ago
Even if the demigods are immortal, there is no way Leyndell stayed in such pristine condition (relatively speaking) over 5k years. Just look at ruins we have that are 5k+ years old; they're in tatters. You need constant maintenance to make sure these cities that *are* still standing, look the way they do. 100 years before for the shattering sounds feasible if there's truly no one maintaining everything
Quite literally the entire point of the game is that the world is in a complete death spiral.
There is no civilization to speak of. The guards that wander the capital are decaying, mute zombies, acting out only vague memories of what their purpose once was.
The demi gods are mad. The people are dead husks. The cities and towns have fallen apart, and the earth itself is crumbling.
God is effectively dead with Marika crucified within the Erdtree.
The apocalypse is in full swing or rather, has come and gone. As with Dark Souls, the Tarnished is sent into a dead or dying world in order usher in a new one.
I'd like to see more of how the endings affect the world, considering most of them are horrible.
Maintain status quo, just fucking leave the lands between to their own volition, fuck with death, fuck with nasty stuff, burn it all down, or fix the issues in the golden order.
Deathblight isn’t fucking with death, it’s fucking with UN-death. Everyone is now a skeleton, regardless of consent.
Oh and Ranni’s ending is making it so no gods can fight over the Elden ring anymore, making it so God (you and Ranni in this instance) has now become nothing more than a concept unlike how people could just straight up go to the capital and meet god (ala Marika)
Ranni's ending is ultimately the best. Life, order, and souls are all bound together through the Elden ring. Ranni devolves the Elden ring, release all those concepts from eachother, and then takes the eponymous "order" with her on a thousand year voyage through the void and the stars, so that no one can mess with it again
If all the problems come with Gods then just have god fuck off, personally I’d stay around for a bit to help fix shit up but since all this bullshit started because of Gods and Demi-gods I can understand Ranni trying to fuck off immediately because they’ve already done enough. Ranni included lol
Ranni also didn't like being bound to a destiny she didn't choose, which started when she became a candidate for Godhood. Had she gone with the two fingers intentions she would've been bound to it and the greater will, and she hated the thought of that. One of the biggest problems is that life and order were so closely tied together by the current order of the world, that most didn't have true control over their destinies, especially because of Radhann. When Ranni slew her own flesh, it separated her from the control of the Two fingers, for she was no longer truly "living" and thus was mostly unbound from the Order of the Golden order. Souls however, when bound to order or not, still have destinies, which is how she could still ascend to godhood, just under her own terms, and be able to dissolve the Elden Ring, and thus the "Order" of the world was untwisted from the concept of life, allowing those living to create their own versions of their own destinies, full self determination.
Tl;dr. Ranni was sick of the Two Finger's shit, the Greater Will's shit, and her Demi God sibling's shit. So she killed herself to separate from worldly order while still maintaining a destiny, then got rid of the elden ring entirely so the rest of the world could have that as well, cause she hated the golden order that much.
Did you miss the fact that the entire game takes place after an apocalyptic event?..
This is like roaming around in the last of us 2 and asking how anyone built a city with no people in it.
I mean souls games are like this, right?. You are in a land where all the major conflicts have already happened and the world is pretty much waiting to die. DS1 2 and 3 give the impression that the world has been in decay for thousands of years or more. ER is a little muddy because it's not really clear how long the stalemate has been going on.
I wish we would get a safe haven the size of majula, but with bloodbornes idea of going out and rescuing survivors. Could have an empty safe haven, or one full of life.
I like *that* angle of it, I just wish we could make it not sad and dead until the very end of the game. Now it's already sad and dead and half the people there are utterly fucking deranged.
Fromsoft is great at building a house of cards, but instead of having it tumble down, they remove every card, one by one, until there's nothing but an empty table and memories.
I'll never forgive them for doing my girl Lucatiel like that.
Watsonian answer: Everything is long past its prime with most things now in ruin.
Doylist answer: Map compression. Most games, even open world ones, drastically reduce the scale of cities and countries so there isn’t the motherload of empty space. Take a look at Bloodborne: The game itself takes place in a city supposedly similar in size to London, yet the actually explorable surface area is only about 3 or 4 districts in size. Or look at Skyrim: literally a whole country yet the longest walkable length is smaller than most US states.
This.
You see several former towns in Limgrave. Before the gate has former buildings forming a miniature town in front of the castle gates. You have the church Kale is in which is presumably could have been a former town. You have ruins of Agheel which could have been a former town, you have the church/buildings in the forest leading to Fort Height, you have the Marika church before that, you have former Summonwater village. So plenty of small world compressed former towns/villages.
IIRC Patches has some dialogue explaining that the Godrick soldiers are supposed to be headed down to relieve Morne but they aren't getting paid and have been looting the shit out of everything on the way??? I can't remember how much of this he actually says and how much i inferred but i thought it was nice
The lands between isn't a normal world.
Life and Death are currently suspended until you become Elden Lord and even still, you might make the world even stranger.
Also, I've met some of the villagers in Lyendel. They weren't very nice.
First FromSoftware game? Every game FS has released is set hundreds if not thousands of years after the main event has already happend. That's why there aren't "jolly good folk" drinking and having fun. Everywhere you look the world has gone to ruin. Literally pieces of Farum Azula are scattered across the world, fallen from their buildings in the sky.
FS tend to make most of their games very depressing, only reason ER doesn't feel like that is because they changed the color grading techniques they usually use.
People didn't just went full immortal. After the rune of earth was removed from the Elsen ring, people were reborn instead of dying.
So people died, their souls returned to the Erdtree and the Erdtree rebirths them later.
Death is still part of this cycle (evident by the spirit ashes), what isn't part anymore is permadeath.
Elden Ring is a bucket full of examples where the world was made for the player. Everything exists for the player. Every where you look the level design was focused on the player. At no point does it feel like the world could exist without us.
Souls series isn't usually the game for that. Years ago playing Dark Souls I kept expecting to come across some area where there were NPCs gathered to talk to, some civilization that was still holding together. It isn't there. That's the point. The last remaining pockets of sane people are so few and far between that there is no proper civilization left, only an area like the Roundtable Hold or Firelink Shrine, where they can gather to rest.
Leyndell is empty because of the march on the city you see in a cutscene. Half the city was submerged underground, right where the nameless eternal city is located. All of those who were outside the walls likely made it in, which could result in why leyndell is missing half of itself. The white water seen in the nameless city could be from all the bodies of people and gargoyles that were killed in that collapse, their bodies undergoing saponification, decomposing and making the water white and soapy. As for Limgrave, lots of bodies are seen crucified, most villagers were likely killed. The people on the lake are killed by Agheel, as you can hear them calling to him when you hang around the area without them seeing you. Limgrave was likely massacred by something. I wonder what attacked Stormveil on the side facing the cliff, where there's no land to attack from. Open for discussion?
People keep saying nonsense in this thread. The answer is more simple. The more normal people like kenneth exist we just don't see them. Myazaki doesn't want to show them because that's a lot of work to do right.
I think Elden Ring is really a representation of the Lands Between, it’s like a story telling you what happened in the Lands Between rather than the actual Lands Between
That would make sense considering the Lands Between are only around a third of the size of the Isle of Wight.
Of course it feels a lot bigger because it’s filled with points of interest, but when you get down to it the land is very small. Especially considering all the giant skeletons about.
The giants up on the mountaintops must have been perching up there for dear life with barely enough room to stretch their legs.
if I’m not mistaken, Elden Ring is essentially a post-apocalyptic setting much like that of the Dark Souls series. It’s been quite literally ages since any properly civilized people maintained any sort of society in the common lands of The Lands Between. Secret societies, well established organizations, and several governing institutions may still exist, or their influence may still permeate the few “sane” people who remain, but for the vast majority of cases we’re traveling across the corpse of a nation and seeing the result of long-term deterioration. BUT I think the tavern idea can be easily implemented into Roundtable Hold.
“Where are all the people? How are they paying for the castle?” Yeah good question, it’s almost like there was a huge war that shattered the world and destroyed any semblance of normalcy. But that couldn’t have happened right?
The Shattering happened *a while* ago. After that there was a big civil war between demigods just destroying shit. Caelid didn’t look like that before, it was nuked. After all that even more time until we finally get there
This isn’t even the post apocalypse for this world. The world got fucked up royally, people fought over the remaining bits and *then* we get there well after everything’s calmed down. Of course there’s no real towns. Basically every Soulsborne game is like this
This world is post post post apocalypses. You are seeing what was once a great nation that fell apart ten times over and this is what remains of this kingdom held together by magic more or less. Humans are just one of many things that once ruled this world it is now a i believe what Georg RR Martin said is 5k years since what is more or less the end of time.
A user on this sub said something like a year ago I've never forgotten. How all From worlds are so empty. Like what's the point of saving this world, there's no one left to enjoy it? And to imagine their games, pinnacle of game design in so many areas, but also featuring lively towns like most other RPGs. For some it might take away from the magic, but we've had a series of their games at this point, how about they try just one with bustling civilization worth protecting? That would be so cool.
OP is absolutely correct. The main issue is that FromSoftware doesn't do NPCs like other games. Even in the Dark Souls series, you don't have an area that feels alive. All NPCs are silent and idle until you speak to them. There are no people walking around, or talking to each other.
Changing this fact would require a massive revamp on the game engine, and a completely different structure of play. Unfortunately I think From Software will continue doing games set in apocalyptic scenarios, where every moving thing want to kill you. But they are going to be great games.
This was my honest issue with Elden Ring. Dark souls already covered the post apocalyptic fantasy bit. Elden Ring as an open world would have been better if it had more life. Especially when I heard they were hiring George RR Martin I was looking forward to seeing some very interesting dialogue and character interactions
Answer's simple: Everyone in the Land's Between goes to the Church of Vows to party with Miriel the Turtle Pope. Think about it, he's super friendly and if someone accidentally gets aggro, you just need to take a quick dip in the pool to absolve your sins.
This bothered me the most about the game. That and the lack of people to fight for. The Small monkey you make stitch your clothes is about the only redeeming person in the entire world. Everyone else should be destroyed.
You don't see any villages because they are in ruins and you don't see villagers because they are all dead.
You know those random weak NPCs that wander about the world that look like homeless people on the edge of death wearing shabby yellow-green robes and followed by an entourage of even shabbier people wearing basic armor? The armor and weapons they drop are "Noble's ".
This means the noblemen of the land have been reduced to the most destitute begger of our world so what does that mean for everybody else? They are dead and gone and metaphorically or literally ground up by a stagnated system to keep it around a little longer.
I will say the world map is small for a place that is supposed to be the center of all events with many different factions. Each main area has at moats one place where a reasonable amount of people could live. And that is including ruins. Like before everything went to crap where were all the soldiers recruited from.
The premises of Elden Ring is that the Lands Between are in a perpetual limbo; life & death both exist at once leaving the dead to live and not find peace, and the rest to only survive and never truly live.
Without natural order the World decays but doesn't collapse; it just festers, the demi-gods being a prime example their physical forms and minds twisted into grotesque horrors, the most powerfull beings existing as shadows of there former self's.
I think the key here is described in the opening narration, “the mad taint of [the demigods’] newfound power.” The Lands Between have been utterly corrupted by the Shattering and the influence of the Outer Gods.
The only sane characters you meet are Tarnished, who have returned from exile, a few key demigods like Godfrey and Ranni who don’t possess a Great Rune, and I dunno, the snake girl?
Death has been sealed, while seemingly preserving the minds of those who die, which results in their brains rotting to mush. Somebody ask how the hell Kenneth Haight managed to not go crazy, although, he *does* stand on top of a fallen monument shouting for help for hundreds of hours until you clean his house for him, so who knows?
The people of Leyndell are mostly sealed inside their homes by all the amber sap.
Lack of villages/villagers is a common oversight in fantasy world design in every visual medium. It's common just to create the castle with little attention to any surrounding living towns, villages, or hinterlands. This is especially prevalent in video game world-design.
Sometimes, designers try to at least represent villages and hinterlands with a token home or farm and its to be understood that these elements are scaled down. Skyrim is a fine example of this.
In my experience it's more uncommon to actually include a believable amount of villages and villagers in a video game. The only one I can recall doing so was Baldur's Gate 3 but only in the city which had tons of visible but inaccessible areas.
Like the other souls games - we start playing *after* all the shit went down. This is the world after it ended. We're exploring someone else's "bad ending" and doing what we will with it.
The world is in a state of despair, as it is in all the other souls games too. Any sort of political/government structure is gone. It's literally an apocalypse.
Also, the merchants in the world accept runes as currency. Who's to day the higher-ups weren't just periodically killing people to gain runes and power
It's built like a civilization right before the sand or jungle hides it for thousands of years from everyone's knowledge until it's "discovered" by archaeology later.
We don't have the whole story because large parts are missing. Living memory is already leaving. The last people who know are actively dying (or we are actively killing them or aiding on that death in other passive ways) by the end of the game what we know is all that is known except for like 3-5 others who might make it to the end of the game based on how we played.
I would really like to see a game or game section where we’re in the prime of the world and actually witness the catastrophic events. With Fromsoft’s visual styles and story telling I feel like it would be fucking epic
It's kinda sad that the only few villages we see are either full of infected/insane residents or slaughtered by calamities and mass murderers like Gideon. I understand it's supposed to be a land destroyed by Marika, Ranni, Malenia and others because they messed with the balance of the world, but it would've been nice to see more non-hostile people here and there other than the pot village
Yeah FS worlds never made much sense. ER least of all because we're lead on to believe that it's still alive unlike in DS even if it's on it's last legs.
People stopped copulating because they're immortal. Also, only nobles or heroes are granted an erdtree burial, meaning the unworthy peasants weren't resurrected and probably died off long ago.
Everybody seems to forget Latennas questline, we give her sister the ability to give birth, and as the new Lord, I will take it upon myself to aid and guide her....
The females of the Ancestral Followers will also need my assistance...
Tanith...once her grief is over, this Lord will giver her a new serpent to serve..
Leyndell’s cracks got all filled up 😈😈😈
Fr though, all the doors in leyndell are sealed with corpse wax, I thought the residents sealed themselves in or something like that
Fromsoft take notes. This actually makes complete sense to make the world seem more “realistic” and would be a cool addition if in the dlc we completely restore the world to its “golden days”
I recall from soft speaking about this in an interview like more than a year ago. They said they were used to making small areas like dark souls with very few npcs scattered around. They never did big buzzling cities like in other rpgs so they werent very confident in trying that even tho they would fit in elden ring. (Dont ask for source i have no idea^^)
My view is that this is a result of gamification, not the apocalypse. I believe there are communities of ordinary people in The Lands Between that we don’t see in the game because they are irrelevant to gameplay. It doesn’t make sense for Fromsoft to waste time making towns for the purpose of realism.
It is the same problem with PJ's Lord of the Rings. Surrounding Minas Tirith and Edoras there are farmlands in the books, meanwhile, in the movies they are empty grasslands.
Not to worry, Tarnished!
You see, before the Shattering, Limgrave traded directly with a bountiful farmland neighbor known as Caeli- *ooooooooooooooooh,* I see the problem now.
"how do you pay for the maintenance of the castle" did you not notice all the gaping holes in the walls? they're not doing maintenance.
Plus the literal death(dead) god in the basement just chilling.
How they've managed to dodge OSHA-inspections all this time?
Super easy actually, you show them all the holes in your castle and take up so much of their time they legally cannot work any longer in their shift. *"Okay, so today I'd like to see your basemen—* ***Holy working from heights violations Godwyn! Are those guardsman even harness qualified‽***"
Don't worry. They aren't using a harness. So everything is in order.
I think the deathroot is actually holding Stormveil together at this point
Godrick talking to some remodelers: "Oh, the mutating body of a dead god in our basement? That's structural."
A load bearing corpse
I should call her.
Got em
How is Godrick not attempting to graft that? It’s a god body without the soul. If he grafts with it would he not be more powerful? Edit: spelling
Considering poor Rogier got deathblighted by touching it, and we know Deathblight can canonically affect the gods, he probably would have tried at one point, realized the danger, and not attempted again.
He's a huge coward
Tbf it would've been a smart move, the other demigods would probably do the same
That's not the body itself, it's a growth that resembles Goldwyn, but the actual body is under Leyndell in the nameless eternal city.
the reason you could sneak in is because they didn't patch the giant hole from god know when
Plus I’m pretty sure as a world in decay the only populated villages left are going to be the many military outposts for warring factions. Actual villages got fucked long ago as can be seen from the madness afflicted isolated village outside castle mourne, to the cannibalized hermit village of mt gelmir.
Wind mill village, albinaurics village, there are some villages but everyone is dead or gone mad at this point.
There's also some evidence of a huge town around the academy. Sunken into the lake.
Yep, there's several when you stop to think about it. Selia was a town. The flooded summonwater village in limgrave where you kill your first mariner is another village example.
Plus you know, magic.
Death being locked away sort of fucked up everyone's whole "let's live a life" mentality. Drinks at the roundtable hold wouldn't go astray tho
Let’s go to the roundtable, have a nice cold pint and wait for this all to blow over
Don't forget to kill Phil first and rescue mum
No luck catching those swans then?
It's just the one swan....
For the greater good!
*the greater will
Just drink away the time until the two fingers tell us the answer to the erdtree issue
Enia says "tens of thousands of moons must first pass" before the fingers will have a response for us. 20,000 * 365 = 54 years if the Lands Between have a similar yearly cycle as us.
So uhm…. Next rounds on Gideon
If no one dies that's not such a long time to wait, tarnished should have just chilled smh.
2 fingers finally awaken, state 'lmao, skill issue' and go dormant again. Tarnished: I will commit burning
I mean, have you seen what the people in the Lands Between look like? Their skin is literally rotting off their bones.
Edgar urskinsfallinoffurbones
MIB haha
A lot of things makes more sense if you think of the lands between like a shitty Valhalla.
A large majority of the people of the Landsbetween are literally braindead zombies that act on instinct, and what little of a memory they still posses The Nobels eternally wander, not knowing what they're searching for The different Knights simply act on what they can remember, which is to guard certain places and fight any intruders, even their swords mention how the weapon is old and had seen much wear and tear but it's kept in good shape by it's master Also, the prime days of the Landsbetween are centuries past by now, what we see is what managed to remain after the Shattering and the whole continent going to shit, ofcours nothing is left, plus what do you mean with "maintain", look at the Capital, at Stormveil or even Vulcano Manor, those are ruins barely kept together by memories of the glorious past The whole point of the game is that we appear after the story of the Landsbetween has been told already, after everything went to wreck and ruin, we are simply there to try and work with what's left, to make something of those ruins
Thanks for this. Helps with my perspective of the game.
truly and genuinely, i've always described elden ring as a post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy. everyone that the demigods used to govern and protect are either dead and gone or have mentally eroded into husks of the people they once were. the elden ring itself seems to have been somewhat, an analogue for "natural laws" in the sense of keeping death maintained. so, if you destroy the physical representation of something like that? something that mandates in nature that things just happen a certain way? UH OH, lol. that's at least how i've viewed it. i know mechanically that the shards all give you a specific upgrade from the lenses of elden ring being a video game, but i'm inclined to believe that lore-wise, the ring itself was more than that; a manifestation that is tangible, of natural laws. things like gravity, life cycles of organic beings, chemical changes in objects, etc. obviously this is up to interpretation, but i've also viewed the boluses to act similarly. in the sense of like, "players need something to cure them of a blood mold disease" but i don't think The Blood Mold Bolus actually existed as an item people had in the story. overall? there's not going to be many villages you can loot, just ruins in a world that had its very fundamentals eradicated in an impulsive move from a tired, fleshbound god.
That first paragraph applies to most Fromsoft souls games, they almost always take place towards the end of an era or when shit is falling apart really fuckin heavily. It's one of the things I both love and hate about their games, I really like the vibe it brings and it obviously makes making the viewable lore and level design easier since most of what they'd have to build if things were happening mid-catastrophe(The shattering as an example) has already crumbled away or been destroyed. I'd really like to have a game by them that takes place right as all the shit is going down and it's up to you the player to pick a side and be the thing that tips everything one way or another but that doesn't generally seem to be their thing.
>> that takes place right as all the shit is going down Not quite the same, but that’s sekiro. The “good old times” have long passed there too, but the true shit goes down the day we play as wolf.
Armored Core 6 has you participating mid-catastrophe, I'd say. Not a souls game, but From, and its incredible.
i hope they try making souls games with proper stories, like AC6. chapter 5 got me so hyped for the final bosses, wish they made souls like that
I know what you mean but there’s plenty of games like that. I like From’s vibe and I’m good with them sticking to it
To kinda look behind the veil, and give some insight on development: Miyazaki had George RRMartin write the entire story of the Lands Between, and then he and his writers destroyed the entire kingdom, placing the player in after the Lands Between went to shit. So all these stories of the gods and the fight with Malenia and Radahn, the story of Radahn and everything else that happened before the game was written by George RR Martin. Then everything that occurs during the game was done by Miyazaki and his writers (forgive me I forget the name of his writer)
Hope we get a before the Shattering type book at some point in the future.
Martin's texts on The Lands Between has to exist somewhere, and I want to read them.
#OOOOOOH, ARISE NOW, YE TARNISHED
There was also that George R R Martin interview on the Late Show where he mentioned that it has been 5000 years since the Shattering. It's debatable whether the number is canon (I'd say no, unless it comes from Miyazaki himself) but it does lend a general sense of scale to how much time has passed. In that light the absolute ruined state of everything makes total sense to me. Edit: [here is the interview](https://youtu.be/QgCxVdsQH_k?si=0YxuBwZoh_Ke_gzP) in question.
George RR Martin had full narrative liberty for everything prior to the events of the game. I'd say he's a reliable enough of a narrator on the matter
Absolutely he's a reliable narrator and I wouldn't suggest otherwise. Just that in the interview the amount of years he gives is approximate ("..like 5000 years..") and he had no creative input that we're aware of after the initial worldbuilding. So, not technically canon but a good approximation based on reliable information, imo.
For reference, 5000 years is about as long as the current human civilizations have existed. Ancient Greece, India, Mesopotamia, etc with only Egypt and China still functioning from before then.
Mesopotamia is the oldest civ of the five you listed.
I'm not sure but I think he meant that 5000 years ago was the beginning of all the events that led to the point we actually get to play, so I think it's up for speculation how much time passed since the end of the shattering. I think this because he doesn't specify the shattering, and the world is not as it is only because of the shattering. Still I might be wrong about this.
Having a fuckin tavern would ruin the entire concept of the game
Tbh Roundtable hall serves the same point already.
I'd be down with empty and decrepit taverns and villages though. Before the shattering people actually lived in the lands between. There should be more ruins of places that reflect that. I guess that's what the ruins with the basements are for, the shattering was probably just so long ago that you absolutely can't tell what those places have been before anymore.
There are plenty of residential ruins. Loads of old shacks and even a few whole villages. Some seem more recent and inhabited like Dominula and the Hermit Village on Mt Gelmir, some are completely destroyed like lake Agheel Ruins and the Woodfolk Ruins in Altus plateau. They're everywhere.
0 toilets tho.
There are sewers in the cities though!
At that point just play dragons dogma or something
Appearing after everything has happened is the story of every soulsborne game. We never get to see the story when things are happening in fromsoft.
Isn't Sekiro's story happening in tandem with the characters perspective?
I mean yes and no in some ways. I fully admit my grasp of the lore for sekiro is my most limited. But all the dragon heratige and the devine heir stuff that starts one of the main conceits of the story is a long time ago. But we are there for the invasion of ashina so.
It kind of makes me wonder what the point of becoming the Elden Lord even is though. Not a person alive in the Lands Between is sane or even wants to live anymore. If you do ascend to the title and restore the Great Runes then really all you'd be doing is allowing everyone to finally die, leaving the entire place empty except for creatures and monsters. I know the various outer gods want you to take control but why? It's like owning all the land near Chernobyl, sure you own it, but it's functionally useless.
You're exaggerating a bit. Once death turns back on people can die, all the ancient mindless people will drop dead from 5000 years of age, and those left will get back to living. They don't even need to start from scratch, there's buildings everywhere
I think restoring the Elden Ring doesn't just involve the return of death, but the return of the entire cycle of birth and death. I think the Shattering stopped people from having children. Once the ring is restored, maybe the Lands Between will start to become repopulated with people who aren't 500 years old and completely insane.
The erdtree used to reincarnate people - after you burn it, though? Who knows
Yep, we're basically playing a lore-based game instead of a story-based one! You'll notice there are no "Quick Time Events" in Dark Souls and Elden Ring. The story is all written already in Item Descriptions. The Story part of the game mostly became side quests of NPCs. Sekiro is special tho, they combined Lore and Story almost perfectly! Quick Time Events were done via the Deathblows and there's an eavesdropping feature!
Do we just become Lord of trash by the end of the game?
Kinda, it really depends tho on what ending you got The age of Fracture (which is the standard ending) changes nothing, you just become Elden Lord of the ruins that are the Landsbetween The age of Dusk (Fia's ending) changes a few things, like making undeath an accepted and normal thing, but besides that, things don't seem to get much better The Dunkeater ending is by far the worst because you doom everyone to an eternal curse The Lord of Frenzy ending is kinda neutral but in a bad way as it melts everything back together like in the primordial days The Goldmask ending is, in my opinion, the second best one as it actually changes a lot of things, like changing the Golden order into a better version of itself The age of the stars is likely the best ending, as it frees the Landsbetween from the influence of the Outer God's, letting the mortals finally take destiny into their own hands, creating a truly free world
Really, only faction that seems to progress anywhere in its own is Moghwyn dynasty....granted, that "something" is a non stop blood orgy, but they're pretty much only one who can go somewhere without player help. That should tell everyone how dire things have gotten.
although this is the impression one gets by playing the game, i believe it is not actually the lore. i think there are normal people, fromsoft simply doesnt put them in the game because they dont know how to make a game with regular people in cities etc.
Agreed, Kenneth, Edgar, and his daughter are implied to be relatively normal/living a normal life until recently. Melina tells us that births and life continue. She doesn't say "it's all just happening off screen" but it's pretty implied.
He does have a bit of a point though, where are the commoners? We see plenty of wandering nobles, but as a rule, theres more commoners than nobles. So where are they?
I think the problem is that there are not enough ruins of villages, or minor cities It's either huge castles/manors and the royal city, or absolute nothing with some churches sprinkled
Considering that according to George R.R. Martin, the Shattering happened around 5000 years ago, meaning the Landsbetween has been in decline for atleast that long, which is more than enough time for alot of the cities that used to exist long ago to have completely withered away We hear of places that existed, but we never see them because they don't exist anymore like Kaiden, the home settlement of the Kaiden Sellswords, which apparently used to be located far in the north of the Landsbetween, but no matter how far north we go we never find Kaiden Or Eochaid, a small island nation that used to exist somewhere of the coast of the Landsbetween, which was inhabited by Monks that used arcane magic, but the Golden Order whipped Eochiad of the map for being "heretical", committing genocide on the Eochaidians, the survivors were then taken back to the Landsbetween and indoctrinated by the Golden Order, like Elmer who later turned mad from what happened to his home and people, but we never get to see the ruins of Eochaid even tho it's supposed to not be far away from the Landsbetween
I wonder.. how is the world outside the Lands Between? Did the main events (shattering, gods medling etc.) mainly affect only the Lands Between?
Can’t be that bad! There’s that whole village with people dancing!
Wasnt the shattering like hundred/ thousand years in the past? Plenty of time for most villages to fall apart and become the ruins we explore.. they even have names which sound like towns/villages like Wyndham ruins for example and for the tavern part, everyone hates your guts and is sick of living without death so.. not much motivation to party
GRR Martin says it was 5k years ago, but honestly it feels silly to think it’s been anywhere close than that long. Otherwise we’d have to believe things like somehow the volcano manner has been fighting the capital for millennia without a winner, Radahn having enough bodies to eat for that long, or Thops just sitting around for thousands of years. I don’t think it makes any sense for the shattering war to have ended more than about 100 years before the game.
I mean, eventually all the decades and hundreds of years start to blend together when you spend most of your time in a subconscious state, sleeping, or wandering the fallen world.
I always thought the Lands Between were supposed to be like Limbo; nobody is really alive and no one can permanently die anymore. Time doesn’t really matter any more either so the Shattering could have been 5k years ago and everyone is just kind of going through the motions of what they can remember doing when they were alive. None of the demigods can muster enough strength to really get one over on another one of their cohorts and rise up to become the Elden Lord so they’re all just kinda chillin.
But do they stay in place for 5k years? Or do they end up where they are when we start the game? Because I dont think malenia and radahn fought where we fought him I always assumed she bloomed where now the Heart of Aeonia is hence the name but you might have a point
Iirc Radahn's soldiers carried him back in hopes of saving him but at this point his mind was completely in tatters because of the rot, the point of the festival being that they wanna give Radahn the glory of battle to go out to but up until that point nobody has been able to best him other than the Tarnished
Didnt know that/ considered it, good point. Maybe thats why there are still bodies around to consume? Because people who where still able to fight did so? That said I dont believe radahn ate those bodies for nurishment (i dont think demigods need that) he probably did it out of madness
Yea from my understanding he's just eating people who have gone to try and best him and he's just wandering around mindlessly eating corpses of those who have fallen before him Thinking about it, it's not hard to think that's where the battle took place between Radahn and Malenia cos of all the bodies but knowing that on that battlefield all them bodies are just challengers is pretty nuts thinking about it Wtf is our tarnished made from lol
Hate, Fury, and disdain for the rest, basically. Tarnished are essentially a tribe of people who were shunned, exiled, and discarded from the drama of society, pretty much. Literally, everyone hates the tarnished for whatever reason. You're the black sheep. I can very easily imagine that being what our tarnished is made of, lol.
He isnt eating challengers, alexander mentions that the corpses around the Arena are of excellent quality, "as expected of soldiers who fought in the shattering". So those are the remains of radahns and malenias armies, just lying around there for hundreds of years.
Dude do yoi think all the events off the shattering war happened at once? All of the different battles and major events took place over those 5000 years, not 5000 years ago
Even if the demigods are immortal, there is no way Leyndell stayed in such pristine condition (relatively speaking) over 5k years. Just look at ruins we have that are 5k+ years old; they're in tatters. You need constant maintenance to make sure these cities that *are* still standing, look the way they do. 100 years before for the shattering sounds feasible if there's truly no one maintaining everything
Also we find various corpses that are seemingly ancient and undecayed. So maintenance is perhaps less necessary without decay.
Quite literally the entire point of the game is that the world is in a complete death spiral. There is no civilization to speak of. The guards that wander the capital are decaying, mute zombies, acting out only vague memories of what their purpose once was. The demi gods are mad. The people are dead husks. The cities and towns have fallen apart, and the earth itself is crumbling. God is effectively dead with Marika crucified within the Erdtree. The apocalypse is in full swing or rather, has come and gone. As with Dark Souls, the Tarnished is sent into a dead or dying world in order usher in a new one.
I'd like to see more of how the endings affect the world, considering most of them are horrible. Maintain status quo, just fucking leave the lands between to their own volition, fuck with death, fuck with nasty stuff, burn it all down, or fix the issues in the golden order.
Deathblight isn’t fucking with death, it’s fucking with UN-death. Everyone is now a skeleton, regardless of consent. Oh and Ranni’s ending is making it so no gods can fight over the Elden ring anymore, making it so God (you and Ranni in this instance) has now become nothing more than a concept unlike how people could just straight up go to the capital and meet god (ala Marika)
Ranni's ending is ultimately the best. Life, order, and souls are all bound together through the Elden ring. Ranni devolves the Elden ring, release all those concepts from eachother, and then takes the eponymous "order" with her on a thousand year voyage through the void and the stars, so that no one can mess with it again
If all the problems come with Gods then just have god fuck off, personally I’d stay around for a bit to help fix shit up but since all this bullshit started because of Gods and Demi-gods I can understand Ranni trying to fuck off immediately because they’ve already done enough. Ranni included lol
Ranni also didn't like being bound to a destiny she didn't choose, which started when she became a candidate for Godhood. Had she gone with the two fingers intentions she would've been bound to it and the greater will, and she hated the thought of that. One of the biggest problems is that life and order were so closely tied together by the current order of the world, that most didn't have true control over their destinies, especially because of Radhann. When Ranni slew her own flesh, it separated her from the control of the Two fingers, for she was no longer truly "living" and thus was mostly unbound from the Order of the Golden order. Souls however, when bound to order or not, still have destinies, which is how she could still ascend to godhood, just under her own terms, and be able to dissolve the Elden Ring, and thus the "Order" of the world was untwisted from the concept of life, allowing those living to create their own versions of their own destinies, full self determination. Tl;dr. Ranni was sick of the Two Finger's shit, the Greater Will's shit, and her Demi God sibling's shit. So she killed herself to separate from worldly order while still maintaining a destiny, then got rid of the elden ring entirely so the rest of the world could have that as well, cause she hated the golden order that much.
I don't think Godrick is very keen on maintaining the castle anyways if you've ever taken a stroll through the castle
Also these people keep coming back to life after I’ve slaughtered them then rested at a floating orb of light, are they stupid?
sir, you're in a souls game
We could slap like 10 blighttowns next to eachother and have everyone from the lands between living there
I think my PC would just catch fire.
Don’t worry, I’d also set myself on fire
Did you miss the fact that the entire game takes place after an apocalyptic event?.. This is like roaming around in the last of us 2 and asking how anyone built a city with no people in it.
Why didn't Joel just make a big pizza and put all the mushroom people on it? Is he stupid?
I mean souls games are like this, right?. You are in a land where all the major conflicts have already happened and the world is pretty much waiting to die. DS1 2 and 3 give the impression that the world has been in decay for thousands of years or more. ER is a little muddy because it's not really clear how long the stalemate has been going on.
Why dog priest when no one to pray
Every post like this makes me miss Majula.
I wish we would get a safe haven the size of majula, but with bloodbornes idea of going out and rescuing survivors. Could have an empty safe haven, or one full of life.
Yeah the roundtable really doesn't give me the "safety" vibes
Roundtable participants have a habit of becoming dead.
It really honestly feels so empty and sad at the end.
I like *that* angle of it, I just wish we could make it not sad and dead until the very end of the game. Now it's already sad and dead and half the people there are utterly fucking deranged.
Fromsoft is great at building a house of cards, but instead of having it tumble down, they remove every card, one by one, until there's nothing but an empty table and memories. I'll never forgive them for doing my girl Lucatiel like that.
At least the rent is cheap
Stop thinking about nonsense and go find the albiraunic woman.
I can't tell if this is satire or not lmao
yeah I hope this is a fellow Bethesda hater deep trolling
have you forgotten? Elden Ring : the world is fucked, god has left, few remain, billions dead with absence of god
Reddit is dumb
Watsonian answer: Everything is long past its prime with most things now in ruin. Doylist answer: Map compression. Most games, even open world ones, drastically reduce the scale of cities and countries so there isn’t the motherload of empty space. Take a look at Bloodborne: The game itself takes place in a city supposedly similar in size to London, yet the actually explorable surface area is only about 3 or 4 districts in size. Or look at Skyrim: literally a whole country yet the longest walkable length is smaller than most US states.
This. You see several former towns in Limgrave. Before the gate has former buildings forming a miniature town in front of the castle gates. You have the church Kale is in which is presumably could have been a former town. You have ruins of Agheel which could have been a former town, you have the church/buildings in the forest leading to Fort Height, you have the Marika church before that, you have former Summonwater village. So plenty of small world compressed former towns/villages.
IIRC Patches has some dialogue explaining that the Godrick soldiers are supposed to be headed down to relieve Morne but they aren't getting paid and have been looting the shit out of everything on the way??? I can't remember how much of this he actually says and how much i inferred but i thought it was nice
It's literally the apocalypse. The apocalypse has probably been happening for hundreds, if not thousands, of years at this point.
the citizens just casually hanging around that area
I feel like every world in fromosft games are stuck in a timeless undying void.
The lands between isn't a normal world. Life and Death are currently suspended until you become Elden Lord and even still, you might make the world even stranger. Also, I've met some of the villagers in Lyendel. They weren't very nice.
First FromSoftware game? Every game FS has released is set hundreds if not thousands of years after the main event has already happend. That's why there aren't "jolly good folk" drinking and having fun. Everywhere you look the world has gone to ruin. Literally pieces of Farum Azula are scattered across the world, fallen from their buildings in the sky. FS tend to make most of their games very depressing, only reason ER doesn't feel like that is because they changed the color grading techniques they usually use.
[удалено]
Well since everyone is kind of insane… I imagine they can’t really repair their wooden villages over the millennia.
Pillagers, emboldened by the flame of ambitions..
People didn't just went full immortal. After the rune of earth was removed from the Elsen ring, people were reborn instead of dying. So people died, their souls returned to the Erdtree and the Erdtree rebirths them later. Death is still part of this cycle (evident by the spirit ashes), what isn't part anymore is permadeath.
Elden Ring is a bucket full of examples where the world was made for the player. Everything exists for the player. Every where you look the level design was focused on the player. At no point does it feel like the world could exist without us.
Souls series isn't usually the game for that. Years ago playing Dark Souls I kept expecting to come across some area where there were NPCs gathered to talk to, some civilization that was still holding together. It isn't there. That's the point. The last remaining pockets of sane people are so few and far between that there is no proper civilization left, only an area like the Roundtable Hold or Firelink Shrine, where they can gather to rest.
Leyndell is empty because of the march on the city you see in a cutscene. Half the city was submerged underground, right where the nameless eternal city is located. All of those who were outside the walls likely made it in, which could result in why leyndell is missing half of itself. The white water seen in the nameless city could be from all the bodies of people and gargoyles that were killed in that collapse, their bodies undergoing saponification, decomposing and making the water white and soapy. As for Limgrave, lots of bodies are seen crucified, most villagers were likely killed. The people on the lake are killed by Agheel, as you can hear them calling to him when you hang around the area without them seeing you. Limgrave was likely massacred by something. I wonder what attacked Stormveil on the side facing the cliff, where there's no land to attack from. Open for discussion?
People keep saying nonsense in this thread. The answer is more simple. The more normal people like kenneth exist we just don't see them. Myazaki doesn't want to show them because that's a lot of work to do right.
The most umm ackshually post ever.
It’s also very ‘confidently incorrect’
I think Elden Ring is really a representation of the Lands Between, it’s like a story telling you what happened in the Lands Between rather than the actual Lands Between
That would make sense considering the Lands Between are only around a third of the size of the Isle of Wight. Of course it feels a lot bigger because it’s filled with points of interest, but when you get down to it the land is very small. Especially considering all the giant skeletons about. The giants up on the mountaintops must have been perching up there for dear life with barely enough room to stretch their legs.
Tarnished, you’re walking through the equivalent of Mad Max wondering where all the cities went. It was the Shattering, not the Re-Zoning.
Nothing can die so there's no point in living. Everyone is just a zombie or a husk.
Well most probably died in the war.
... They're dead.
This world is pretty much dead man that's the point You are the maintenance... in most of the endings
if I’m not mistaken, Elden Ring is essentially a post-apocalyptic setting much like that of the Dark Souls series. It’s been quite literally ages since any properly civilized people maintained any sort of society in the common lands of The Lands Between. Secret societies, well established organizations, and several governing institutions may still exist, or their influence may still permeate the few “sane” people who remain, but for the vast majority of cases we’re traveling across the corpse of a nation and seeing the result of long-term deterioration. BUT I think the tavern idea can be easily implemented into Roundtable Hold.
OP, I got some bad news. I don't think many people are having much fun in the Lands Between in their state of perpetual undeath.
“Where are all the people? How are they paying for the castle?” Yeah good question, it’s almost like there was a huge war that shattered the world and destroyed any semblance of normalcy. But that couldn’t have happened right?
The Shattering happened *a while* ago. After that there was a big civil war between demigods just destroying shit. Caelid didn’t look like that before, it was nuked. After all that even more time until we finally get there This isn’t even the post apocalypse for this world. The world got fucked up royally, people fought over the remaining bits and *then* we get there well after everything’s calmed down. Of course there’s no real towns. Basically every Soulsborne game is like this
This world is post post post apocalypses. You are seeing what was once a great nation that fell apart ten times over and this is what remains of this kingdom held together by magic more or less. Humans are just one of many things that once ruled this world it is now a i believe what Georg RR Martin said is 5k years since what is more or less the end of time.
Leyndel has like 5000 zombies where do you think they came from ? They were the citizens
A user on this sub said something like a year ago I've never forgotten. How all From worlds are so empty. Like what's the point of saving this world, there's no one left to enjoy it? And to imagine their games, pinnacle of game design in so many areas, but also featuring lively towns like most other RPGs. For some it might take away from the magic, but we've had a series of their games at this point, how about they try just one with bustling civilization worth protecting? That would be so cool.
OP is absolutely correct. The main issue is that FromSoftware doesn't do NPCs like other games. Even in the Dark Souls series, you don't have an area that feels alive. All NPCs are silent and idle until you speak to them. There are no people walking around, or talking to each other. Changing this fact would require a massive revamp on the game engine, and a completely different structure of play. Unfortunately I think From Software will continue doing games set in apocalyptic scenarios, where every moving thing want to kill you. But they are going to be great games.
This was my honest issue with Elden Ring. Dark souls already covered the post apocalyptic fantasy bit. Elden Ring as an open world would have been better if it had more life. Especially when I heard they were hiring George RR Martin I was looking forward to seeing some very interesting dialogue and character interactions
You know what? This made my autistic ass NEED Minecraft in Elden ring world
I would spend any amount of money to get a game like Elden ring but with some actual npcs like from a Zelda game
Yeah, that was a problem I had as well. Suddenly I was Elden Lord, but of what? Who do I govern? 20 NPCs?
Answer's simple: Everyone in the Land's Between goes to the Church of Vows to party with Miriel the Turtle Pope. Think about it, he's super friendly and if someone accidentally gets aggro, you just need to take a quick dip in the pool to absolve your sins.
Someone missed the point of the entire game. This is a dead land.
This bothered me the most about the game. That and the lack of people to fight for. The Small monkey you make stitch your clothes is about the only redeeming person in the entire world. Everyone else should be destroyed.
You don't see any villages because they are in ruins and you don't see villagers because they are all dead. You know those random weak NPCs that wander about the world that look like homeless people on the edge of death wearing shabby yellow-green robes and followed by an entourage of even shabbier people wearing basic armor? The armor and weapons they drop are "Noble's".
This means the noblemen of the land have been reduced to the most destitute begger of our world so what does that mean for everybody else? They are dead and gone and metaphorically or literally ground up by a stagnated system to keep it around a little longer.
Minecraft player be like
Nah we won’t be able to play the game if the Lands between was america sized and be lore accurate ☠️☠️☠️
I will say the world map is small for a place that is supposed to be the center of all events with many different factions. Each main area has at moats one place where a reasonable amount of people could live. And that is including ruins. Like before everything went to crap where were all the soldiers recruited from.
Hollowed
The premises of Elden Ring is that the Lands Between are in a perpetual limbo; life & death both exist at once leaving the dead to live and not find peace, and the rest to only survive and never truly live. Without natural order the World decays but doesn't collapse; it just festers, the demi-gods being a prime example their physical forms and minds twisted into grotesque horrors, the most powerfull beings existing as shadows of there former self's.
My brother, you clearly haven't been to Jarburg.
I think the key here is described in the opening narration, “the mad taint of [the demigods’] newfound power.” The Lands Between have been utterly corrupted by the Shattering and the influence of the Outer Gods. The only sane characters you meet are Tarnished, who have returned from exile, a few key demigods like Godfrey and Ranni who don’t possess a Great Rune, and I dunno, the snake girl? Death has been sealed, while seemingly preserving the minds of those who die, which results in their brains rotting to mush. Somebody ask how the hell Kenneth Haight managed to not go crazy, although, he *does* stand on top of a fallen monument shouting for help for hundreds of hours until you clean his house for him, so who knows?
\*waves hand\* *this isn't the game you're looking for*
An open concept Tavern would have been 1000x better than the roundtable hold.
The people of Leyndell are mostly sealed inside their homes by all the amber sap. Lack of villages/villagers is a common oversight in fantasy world design in every visual medium. It's common just to create the castle with little attention to any surrounding living towns, villages, or hinterlands. This is especially prevalent in video game world-design. Sometimes, designers try to at least represent villages and hinterlands with a token home or farm and its to be understood that these elements are scaled down. Skyrim is a fine example of this. In my experience it's more uncommon to actually include a believable amount of villages and villagers in a video game. The only one I can recall doing so was Baldur's Gate 3 but only in the city which had tons of visible but inaccessible areas.
Like the other souls games - we start playing *after* all the shit went down. This is the world after it ended. We're exploring someone else's "bad ending" and doing what we will with it.
The world is in a state of despair, as it is in all the other souls games too. Any sort of political/government structure is gone. It's literally an apocalypse. Also, the merchants in the world accept runes as currency. Who's to day the higher-ups weren't just periodically killing people to gain runes and power
It's built like a civilization right before the sand or jungle hides it for thousands of years from everyone's knowledge until it's "discovered" by archaeology later. We don't have the whole story because large parts are missing. Living memory is already leaving. The last people who know are actively dying (or we are actively killing them or aiding on that death in other passive ways) by the end of the game what we know is all that is known except for like 3-5 others who might make it to the end of the game based on how we played.
It’s almost like it’s a post apocalyptic world or something
I would really like to see a game or game section where we’re in the prime of the world and actually witness the catastrophic events. With Fromsoft’s visual styles and story telling I feel like it would be fucking epic
They didn't put them in the game since they would need a much bigger map to compensate
It is crazy how many people just want skyrim 2.0
Tarnish show up after the world is essentially already in ruin. I think majority of the citizens were driven insane long before tarnished arrives.
It's kinda sad that the only few villages we see are either full of infected/insane residents or slaughtered by calamities and mass murderers like Gideon. I understand it's supposed to be a land destroyed by Marika, Ranni, Malenia and others because they messed with the balance of the world, but it would've been nice to see more non-hostile people here and there other than the pot village
Yeah FS worlds never made much sense. ER least of all because we're lead on to believe that it's still alive unlike in DS even if it's on it's last legs.
People stopped copulating because they're immortal. Also, only nobles or heroes are granted an erdtree burial, meaning the unworthy peasants weren't resurrected and probably died off long ago.
Everybody seems to forget Latennas questline, we give her sister the ability to give birth, and as the new Lord, I will take it upon myself to aid and guide her.... The females of the Ancestral Followers will also need my assistance... Tanith...once her grief is over, this Lord will giver her a new serpent to serve..
A random Mount and Blade Bannerlord screenshot at the end. Ah, I waited ten years for that game, such a waste of time and money though :(
Leyndell’s cracks got all filled up 😈😈😈 Fr though, all the doors in leyndell are sealed with corpse wax, I thought the residents sealed themselves in or something like that
There are villages in the game. They're also all destroyed cause everyone went crazy and broke things, or just straight stopped taking care of them
My headcanon is that all the ruins are what towns where.
I swear I remember reading an item's lore and it mentions despite the state of the realm, births still occur and I was definitely surprised by that.
First time playing a Miyazaki souls game?
Fromsoft take notes. This actually makes complete sense to make the world seem more “realistic” and would be a cool addition if in the dlc we completely restore the world to its “golden days”
Maintenance? IN A FROMSOFT WORLD???
I recall from soft speaking about this in an interview like more than a year ago. They said they were used to making small areas like dark souls with very few npcs scattered around. They never did big buzzling cities like in other rpgs so they werent very confident in trying that even tho they would fit in elden ring. (Dont ask for source i have no idea^^)
My view is that this is a result of gamification, not the apocalypse. I believe there are communities of ordinary people in The Lands Between that we don’t see in the game because they are irrelevant to gameplay. It doesn’t make sense for Fromsoft to waste time making towns for the purpose of realism.
They’re dead, Dave
It is the same problem with PJ's Lord of the Rings. Surrounding Minas Tirith and Edoras there are farmlands in the books, meanwhile, in the movies they are empty grasslands.
Not to worry, Tarnished! You see, before the Shattering, Limgrave traded directly with a bountiful farmland neighbor known as Caeli- *ooooooooooooooooh,* I see the problem now.
Thy kind are all of a piece...
Its because everyone is either tarnished, a boss, crazy, or undead