Snake Maze posted:

Malenia is basically an invader who got their rear end kicked so they ran away and spammed the carian retaliation glitch until the host died. She might have " "won" " but nobody is impressed.

skasion posted:

Malenia vs Radahn is a battle with no winner. Like yeah Caelid is all hosed to the wall, but so is the Haligtree.

StarkRavingMad posted:

Having an argument about who won in Malenia v. Radahn is maybe the dumbest tangent this thread has gone on and that's saying something

StarkRavingMad posted:

Having an argument about who won in Malenia v. Radahn is maybe the dumbest tangent this thread has gone on and that's saying something

StarkRavingMad posted:

Having an argument about who won in Malenia v. Radahn is maybe the dumbest tangent this thread has gone on and that's saying something

The Anime Liker posted:

Yeah it owns

Phenotype posted:

she is the goddess of the rot lol where do you get off saying "okay radahn can use gravity magic and whatever weird poo poo but malenia auto-loses if she uses her own weird powers".

I'm sure Radahn would have won a 1v1 no-items no-magic Final Destination where it's just the two of them trying to punch eachother, but when it came down to it, Malenia decided to use her full powers and turned Radahn into a husk and his kingdom into nightmare fuel. She was basically fighting him with one hand behind her back until then.

The Haligtree's just hosed because that's how Malenia do, that's not any of Radahn's doing. In that fight, she completely and irreparably hosed him over, along with everyone in Caelid. He couldn't do anywhere near that sort of damage to her.

Phenotype posted:

The Haligtree's just hosed because that's how Malenia do, that's not any of Radahn's doing. In that fight, she completely and irreparably hosed him over, along with everyone in Caelid. He couldn't do anywhere near that sort of damage to her.

Son of Thunderbeast posted:

I wonder if Malenia might come back as a super-duper boss in DLC, but only if you already beat her in the Haligtree. She's gotta come out of that lotus eventually right

Epic High Five posted:

Well they aren't really her powers anymore than the frenzied flame cultists own their own. She essentially just kills herself to tag in an outer god whose price is the 2nd of 3 fingers on the monkey's paw curling up

RBA Starblade posted:

I hate how late the third ball bearing for smithing stones is

I went west instead and all my poo poo's been stuck at +12 lmao

Phenotype posted:

look at this rules-lawyering hahaha in that case no one's powers are their own because they're only special because they get their powers through Marika aka the Greater Will.

This is only even a discussion because Malenia was being nice trying to fight Radahn like a regular person and not destroy everything from the start. If she'd gone in like "hahaha gently caress your poo poo" just throwing rot everywhere and blasting Radahn with it from the getgo, no one would be like "oh but you didnt beat radahn did you"

RBA Starblade posted:

I hate how late the third ball bearing for smithing stones is

I went west instead and all my poo poo's been stuck at +12 lmao

euphronius posted:

You would have ate it on godricks first big aoe but you had vigor !! Good job

Also it looks like at the end one of his dragon arm grabs got caught on the environment? Idk YouTube was pixelating

mirarant posted:

The only real badass out of the Malenia vs Radahn slap fight was Finlay.

juggalo baby coffin posted:

boloney posted:

I agree with most of this except for the very last part about fire being required - it seems to only be required if you seize the throne by force. Presumably Godfrey, for example, didn't have to do that as he was willingly taken as Marika's consort

As far as we know there have only been two Elden Lords before us so who the gently caress knows what the cycle actually entails

juggalo baby coffin posted:

I don't think the Frenzied Flame is a different Outer Power, i think it's the second half of the Greater Will. Two Fingers plus Three Fingers makes a human hand, and the hand is the main way we impose our will on the world. If you do the Frenzied Flame storyline you find out that basically the goal of the Frenzied Flame is to free up the energy the Greater Will invested in the world by restoring it to a primal state where it can be remade into a new world.

Phenotype posted:

This is only even a discussion because Malenia was being nice trying to fight Radahn like a regular person and not destroy everything from the start. If she'd gone in like "hahaha gently caress your poo poo" just throwing rot everywhere and blasting Radahn with it from the getgo, no one would be like "oh but you didnt beat radahn did you"

Scruffpuff posted:

Originally the erdtree had a rope swing that everyone liked to swing on, but then one of the ropes got frayed and broke, nobody could swing any more and that's how things got to how they are.

euphronius posted:

…

What if this was Winds of Winter ??

Snake Maze posted:

Malenia tried to beat Radahn in a straight fight - and she lost that straight fight. (And it was a decisive loss, considering her unconscious body was dragged home without getting her hands on the rune she came for - she didn’t just shrug, go super saiyan, and win easily when she stopped holding back)

Now, it’s true that her poison rot blood or whatever did a number on Caelid in the aftermath, but for her to claim she “has never know defeat” is clearly a very selective recollection of events.

juggalo baby coffin posted:

i have some theories about the overarching plot of the game so theres spoilers here:

as far as i can tell the erdtree is just a kind of cosmic parasite, grown from a star beast (like astiel and others) who had a connection to the Greater Will, one of the outer gods. I think that because the elden beast uses both holy magic (which is the Greater Will element basically) and nebula magic like the other star beasts. Several incantations also mention the Erdtree being universally hated and warred with when it first arrived, until it became dominant.

early on it's super vital and gives people extended life and health and freedom from death and injury, but over time decreases in magnitude until its basically just keeping people alive as awful undying husks.

this is kind of an aside but from what i can glean, the main way to actually 'die' in the lands between was Erdtree Burial in the root catacombs, which was seen as a reward for heroes. Godwyn's half-death seems to have hosed this up, because from him deathroot has spread through the erdtree roots and filled all the root catacombs where people should be able to go to 'die' are now infested with Those Who Live In Death.

the tree starts to realise its days are numbered when its vassal, Marika/Radagon, gives birth to Empyreans. Empyreans just seem to be people who have the potential to become full gods like Marika/Radagon, implying that the Greater WIll intends to replace Marika and the Erdtree entirely. The empyreans are:

- Malenia (the strongest, but born corrupted by the Scarlet Rot, a rival Outer Power to the Greater Will)
- Miquella (born stunted, also came to reject Radagon/Marika's interpretation of the Golden Order because it couldn't
- Ranni (the only one without an M name because publically she was the daughter of Rennala and Radagon, not related to Marika at all)
- Melina (hinted at but not confirmed anywhere)

Ranni rejects the Greater Will as oppressive and starts working to kill her own Two Fingers and eventually remove the Greater Will from the planet entirely, so she becomes a problem for the Erdtree.

Malenia is the embodiment of a rival Outer Power, the Scarlet Rot. She keeps blooming in intense situations, and on the third blooming will become a true godess, with a Scarlet Bloom to replace the Erdtree. This actually happens during her boss fight, but the tarnished ends up aborting it. So she's a problem.

Miquella is stuck in a perpetual child state, and the failure of the Golden Order to fix that drives him to seek out his own way, distancing him from the Greater Will orthodoxy and making him more of a threat to Marika. his half-formed nature also means his Godhood could manifest in multiple ways, but more on that in a little bit.

One thing that is noteworthy is that there is the theme of Moon/Stars and Sun duality. Rennala and Radagon's marriage was the union of the sun and moon. The elden beast uses both holy (sun) and nebula (moon) powers. Miquella's gimmick being 'unalloyed gold' isn't a coincidence I don't think. I think Miquella intended to reject the moon element entirely. Loretta's sickle weapon mentions that the glintstone (moon/stars) it once had has been torn out and replaced with amber, which was done when she left the Carians to join Miquella. The golden order, ie the current balance of sun and moon, is explicitly 'alloyed gold' because of that union.

Unalloyed Gold is also a threat to basically every interested party also because it blocks the influence of the Outer Powers. the Unalloyed Gold Needle is used to save Millicent from the scarlet rot, was intended to be used to save Malenia, and can be used by the player to free themself from the Frenzied Flame.

Miquella also started to grow the Haligtree, a rival and intended replacement for the Erdtree, which provoked Marika to act.

She subverts Ranni's plan to kill her Two Fingers to instead do the Night of the Black Knives and take out Godwyn and Ranni together, then (idk how long later) shatters the Elden Ring, casting everything into this awful stalemate.

Radahn fights Malenia to a standstill and prevents her third blooming, cutting short the threat of her godhood. his mindless holding back of the stars also prevents access to Nokron, where Ranni's fingerslayer blade is kept, so even with her soul kicking around Ranni can't move forward with her plans.

Mohg, an omen-cursed non-empyrean royal child, who was touched by the Formless Mother (another Outer Power) uses the distraction to steal the defenseless Miquella. His plan is to feed Miquella a ton of cessblood to make him turn into a vassal for the Formless Mother. This fucks over the Haligtree, which gets warped and deformed by Malenia's rot in Miquella's absence. It is noteworthy that Miquella is not dead even at the end of the game, you never get his greatrune and Gideon tells you that he is still slumbering in the cocoon Mohg made for him.

So anyway, Marika has hosed over the Greater Will's plans for her succession and bought the Erdtree some time, and trapped the realm in a state of endless degradation without death. She didn't necessarily bank on the Greater WIll imprisoning her inside the Erdtree as punishment.

I think Melina is her backup plan for that scenario. She's bodiless and invisible and can only get places if she makes a pact with a Tarnished. the tarnished are also Marika's backup plan, but that's made open from the start. The demigods have failed, the Tarnished need to finish the job.

I think Melina is also part of a second, secret duality, within the sun itself: the division of light and flame. The Erdtree, the two fingers, holy magic, they all represent light. Two Fingers miracles are all light based, the Cipher weapons the two fingers make are words of light.

Fire is represented as antithetical to both the Erdtree and Order in general, but there are hints all over that it is an inescapable part of the Greater Will. Radagon has the red hair of a fire giant, and was said to despise it. This is a metaphor for how the Erdtree despises fire, despite fire being a part of the Greater Will's nature.

I don't think the Frenzied Flame is a different Outer Power, i think it's the second half of the Greater Will. Two Fingers plus Three Fingers makes a human hand, and the hand is the main way we impose our will on the world. If you do the Frenzied Flame storyline you find out that basically the goal of the Frenzied Flame is to free up the energy the Greater Will invested in the world by restoring it to a primal state where it can be remade into a new world.

The fire incantations also talk about monks seeing fire within the light of the erdtree and being expelled for this insight, despite it being true insight.

The other reason I think there is a theme of fire and light duality is that the original form of the Erdtree was the 'Primal Crucible', and a crucible is literally a vessel for heating things up to transform them. As well as representing destruction, fire represents renewal. When a forest fire is over new plants grow from the ashes. Some ecosystems even rely on it. The process of becoming the new elden lord REQUIRES that you burn the tree, showing that rather than being antithetical to the world, fire is a natural part of it.

tl;dr: the erdtree rather than representing the natural order is actually defying it. the Greater WIll is both fire and light, not just light. death and renewal is a natural part of existence, and propping up a failing world system just leads to suffering and degredation of all people, both weak and powerful.

FishMcCool posted:

This means you don't like Sleeping Dogs, and that therefore, your opinion on games is worthless. You can go straight to prison, and you don't get to collect a pork bun on the way.

Wellwinds posted:

The three fingers and their followers are set out in opposition to a new world (backed by melina's plea of a chance for new lives to continue if you don't take the flame). They see existence as discrete entities being a mistake that results in pain and suffering the likes of which gives rise to people who'd rather have never existed to being with

Otherwise seems like a solid theory. Also I think there's probably something to the 2+3 fingers because the cinqueda is modeled after a five fingered hand which the beastman revere as a sign of intelligence/sentience