So to recap, we have 3 interconnected families:
Marika and Godfrey, whose children were Godwyn, who is dead at the game’s beginning and was also the inciting event of the Shattering;and the two Omen twins, Morgott and Mohg.
Next we have Radagon and Rennala, whose children were Ranni, Rykard and Radahn. With Ranni being the Empyrean among them, who is also responsible for Godwyn’s death.
And finally, we have Marika and Radagon, the one god with two aspects; who fell in love with themself and whose children are the twin Empyreans, Malenia and Miquella.
The world is in chaos after the shattering of the Elden Ring and the wars which follow and this is where the player comes in.
You play as one of the Tarnished.
The Tarnished are people who were banished from The Lands Between as they lost the “grace” which is granted to all living things by the Erd Tree.
The Shattering of the Elden Ring caused the Tarnished to be drawn back to the lands between by Lost Grace - which are small beacons of divine light from the Erd Tree.
These beacons of Lost Grace play the role of the Dark Souls Bonfires in this game and much like Dark Souls’ Humanities.
Maybe yonic imagery makes Miyazaki feel safe?
It could just be because as a Maidenless Tarnished, you find yourself drawn to anything which resembles the comfort of a woman - but it’s not that, because Maidenless doesn’t mean you don’t have a girlfriend, or at least not in the way you’d think.
When a Tarnished is chosen by a Finger Maiden, they are given the ability to harness the power of Runes to make themselves stronger- which is the narrative justification for being able to level up your character.
The Finger Maiden who chooses the player is Melina, not to be confused with Malenia.
Melina is also nice enough to provide you with your trusty double-jumping steed Torrent.
Not a lot is known about Melina - other than that she offers to aid the play in their quest to become Elden Lord, if you agree to lead her to the Erd Tree. Though smart money says that she’s another daughter of Marika, if her name which starts with M is any indication.
She will periodically visit you during your quest, by meeting you at sites of grace after significant story progress is made.
That is unless you make a pact with the Lord of Frenzied Flame, in which case she abandons you- though luckily, even on that dark ending path, you retain the horse and the ability to level up.
You’re also welcome to abandon Melina yourself at the last minute and side with Ranni, giving you the Age of Stars ending - which I think all fellow GigaChads understand is the correct choice.
This section of the video took me weeks to write.
Not because I didn’t understand the lore or that I am totally without skill in regard to storytelling , but because there is so much here, so many branches to the lore tree if you will, that it was very difficult to distill the parts of the story which are most critical, into a format which people can digest as a segment of a critique video.
I’ll let you decide whether or not I did a good job in this instance, but even if all I was able to do was spark your curiosity a little bit, there are boatloads of lore behind nearly every named character, location or legendary item for you to dig into.
As mentioned before, VaatiVidya is the go-to Souls lore youtuber, Smoughtown and The Ashen Hollow are other good sources, the Elden Ring Fandom wiki and Fextralife are both great places to read about the lore and if you really want to do the journalism yourself and decipher the lore from the primary source - talk to every NPC, read every item description and for your own sanity, take notes.
I’m still skeptical about how much of this lore was George RR Martin’s doing, as everything from the premise to the presentation feels very typical of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s signature style, but considering how much substance is there, bubbling under the surface, I think the collaboration paid off.
That said, I do hope that if the next From Soft game is a similar collaboration, that it does turn out to be good old Brandon Sanderson - because I doubt writing an encyclopedia worth of From Soft lore will slow down his novel output at all, that dude is a book writing machine.
One of the things I’ve worked on to help me get through my personal stuff, is turning my basement into a healthier environment
The timing with Asmongold cleaning his kitchen (for what appears to be the first time in a decade) is purely coincidental and this project was being worked on long before his ban.
Bidaily deadlifts have been doing a lot to help keep me feeling energetic and healthy. Would recommend buying a bar and a few plates on a local marketplace if you’re looking to improve a little bit
Hi everybody - before I say anything specific, thank you all for your support. I appreciated every last bit of it over the past few years.
Over the past week I’ve encountered a personal crisis, which has made me reevaluate how I have to think about my future.
Sadly trying to make YouTube my priority is not likely to be compatible with the things I need to do in order to take care of my family.
The pressure of trying to make this a career, with very inconsist results (not all bad results, just results which are difficult to confidently plan around) is making it difficult for me to get out of the way of perfectionism, so I end up with a bunch of scripts which don’t get made into videos, or videos which don’t get finished before my observations have changed and I end up wanting to start from scratch.
So I’m going to be taking a major step back for a while - I’m not likely to be streaming very often and I won’t be promising any videos.
I hope you stay subscribed to my channels and ...
Metroid Fusion
The series continues its trend of having the even numbered entries being exclusive to a portable console, as well as the new trend of hiding the number within the opening credits.
Metroid 4 is known as Metroid Fusion and debuted on the Game Boy Advance in 2002.
Intro
I have a strange relationship with Nintendo. Super Mario Bros was the first game I can remember playing at a friends’ house and Super Mario World was the first game I ever owned, as it came with my Super NES.
I’ve loved several Mario games, Zelda games and the original Donkey Kong Country games- I have played dozens of hours worth of drunken Super Smash Bros Melee with my high school friends and more time than I can reasonably estimate killing time on my Gameboy Advance SP while on military courses in the early 2000s.
I also am extremely critical of Nintendo’s consumer practices, particularly in regards to how they handle their back catalog and how most of their games are stranded on their legacy platforms and the ones they do bring to their current hardware, are given a fraction of the attention which community modders give those same games for free.
They also do their best to cease and desist everyone who has the nerve to use their passion for their properties to make fan projects - which in my opinion, they do to prevent their fans from outdoing them.
They are inconsistent about their fidelity targets, sometimes designing games perfectly for the hardware they are releasing the games on- producing incredible performance results like Super Mario Odyssey or they shoot for the moon and have games which struggle to hit 30fps, like Breath of the Wild, while refusing to officially port their games to PC or create new hardware iterations which can run their own games more competently.
Finally, their online service, both when it comes to value and stability, is atrocious.
They are both an incredible company who make amazing games and a terrible company who is very out of touch with many aspects of the modern industry.
The vast majority of the amazing games they make are targeted at children and families, but one Nintendo franchise is very much unlike the others -it draws its inspiration from films like Ridley Scott’s Alien and like that film, stars one of the most badass women in the entire medium.
That series is Metroid
Metroid was originally created by Satoru Okada, but the man behind the majority of the franchise is Yoshio Sakamoto, who was the character designer on the original game and has overseen every other game in the series- if not as director, then as a key adviser.
The result of having Sakamoto act as the shepherd of the series, is that despite the numerous iterations and spin-offs, the Metroid canon has remained relatively tight.
The only major deviations from the originals come as a result of Zero Mission and Samus Returns, as they are remakes of the first two games, which have some more narrative detail.
The series has had a lot of absolute bangers over its nearly 40 year run, which have come in the form of mainline entries, a trilogy of spin-offs which shift the perspective to first person, remakes of both the official and unofficial variety and even some creative fan projects which Nintendo, being Nintendo, has sadly cease and desisted.
So join me as we take a historical look at the gameplay as well as the stories, featured in every official game in the series, as well as some key fan projects.
Without further ado, I present to you: Metroid.
Metroid
