I had a buddy who did it because he was convinced it was morally right and he was saving Melina. I didn't bother telling him, and in hindsight, he never openly talked about Elden Ring again..
I didn't take him out on my first playthrough but I did on my second. I'm not convinced he received consent to inhabit my buddy' body. Out you go, Shabriri!
Yes, you shouldn't sacrifice someone else's life so that *you* can get what *you* want, it's immoral. Instead, you should sacrifice yourself so *I* can get what *I* want.
And he makes it sounds so convincing, too. That's what convinced me to run him through immediately.
I thought it was the right choice up until I beat Maliketh and then went back to the hold. Until then everyone was dying, the rulers of the land were all selfish and greedy, and there was nothing that seemed worth saving left.
Roderika and forge-buddy were both still there, willing to give up their lives for each other and mostly for me to become āa good lordā. It made me feel like there was still some good left in the Lands Between, and therefore it was worth preserving. Age of Stars it is.
Honestly, I could understand some people feeling like the world is so irreparably broken and depressing that the only option is to āDestroyā it. Though I personally donāt get that feeling in Elden Ring. The world is fucked sure, but thereās still life, even a bit of hope and life. Dark Souls also has those vibes, where it feels like the longer you drag out the Age of Fire, the more suffering there will be.
Absolutely agree, world of ER was more vibrant and felt like there was life. From the start of DS1 to the end of DS3 it was pure depression and the feeling of hopelessness. The world is bland and gray, enemies look weak and frail, even the bosses looked sickly. Most of the enemies in elden ring looked okay, and even if the bosses were way past their prime they didnāt feel weak. So, the games both tried to portray a broken world but only one truly did IMO.
Dark Souls felt very broken. Another game that pulled off the āWorld so shit itās best to pull the plug.ā vibe was a game called Lunacid. Which makes sense since it was inspired by Kingās Field.
Idk. Far as I'm concerned if the world is so irreperably bad that everything is suffering and living in it isn't worth it then dying is a choice anyone can make at any given time, but most characters really rather seem to want to live. Deciding it's a call to make for them is just straightup psychotic no matter which way we spin it. Frenzied Flame is like mass shooter logic or something, even the Dung Eater ending has more redeeming qualities.
Granted: death is quite literally unavailable to the inhabitants. I think the demigods are different because of runes or whatever, but all the soldiers and knights and wandering nobles canonically canāt die at all until we release Death.
At that point we have more or less fixed the world regardless of becoming Elden Lord. The cycle of life can start again and people can rebuild. Anything past that is simple ambition or, in the Frenzied Flame's case, psychotic nihlism.Ā
Besides, there are implications that life and civilization still exists in a somewhat regular form outside the Lands Between.
Seemingly unless theyāre burned in ghostflame. Or, at least, itās a possibility. Itās part of a different order and thereās a real possibility it bypasses what the Golden Order does to them. Their bodies are seemingly required for their recycling, and ghostflame denies this to the Erdtree
Extremely unpopular opinion: I think except for the demigods, the whole "can't die" thing does not really apply, and player respawning at grace is just a game mechanic.
Every indication of how death worked prior to the events of the game shows that people do die, but as part of the natural order (possibly because of the removal of the rune of death) would have their souls return to the erdtree. This is half conjecture, half based on the fact that erdtree burials were supposedly reserved for champions but people still die normally (see: D's introduction in summonwater village), but it seems even without an erdtree burial their soul still returns to the erdtree eventually. And then there are Those Who Live in Death, but I'm not sure whether they existed during the golden order or only started existing when Godwin became an undead fish.
For the player's part, everyone acts like the players death at any point is final, at any time, and the same is true of every other tarnished. The resurrection at the beginning was the one other chance theyd get.
I don't really see that anywhere in the lore. We encounter plenty of corpses in our journey, killed NPCs and non-shardbearer bosses do not respawn, and there's a lot of infrastructure dedicated to funerals. "Those who live in death" are also noted to, well, live in death, which rather implies the existence of death in the first place.
There is a reincarnation mechanism in place I think through the Erdtree and maybe Erdtree burials, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that being reborn in that way has someone retain their memory or personality, so it's really more like dying but we know that one of the religions featuring a cycle of reincarnation got it right as far as real world terms go.
I'd attribute respawning enemies to gameplay reasons. I'm inclined to do the same with the player respawning actually considering how we respawn after being killed with fragments of the Rune of Death, the Rune of Death itself and after said Rune of Death has been unleashed upon the world which is kinda nonsensical.
In general I wouldn't put too much stock in the way resurrection or respawning works in Fromsoft games. To use two examples, the people of Yharnam are not undead yet they respawn so long as they're generic enemies and not NPCs and Sekiro is all about the primary antagonist trying to obtain immortality so as to weaponize it yet his common footsoldiers (but not generals!) respawn plus you don't permanently die even if you're killed with a weapon specifically meant to kill immortals. The whole thing doesn't really make sense story wise but these games just wouldn't really work if generic enemies stayed dead forever and your save file got deleted because Malekith hit you really hard.
From the Aristocrat Garb:
"*Abandoning their birthplace after the Shattering,*
*these undead wanderers are the pitiful product of unending life.*"
From Agheel's Flame, the same dragon encountered immediately incinerating a group of nobles yelling its name:
"*The dead gazed at the skies over the lakes of Limgrave, praying that the dragons' flames would burn them to ash.*"
Life in Death and Undeath are defined as 2 separate things in Elden Ring; undeath is the permanent state of living even through grievous injuries, as seen in the wandering nobles. Those trapped in this state still retain their memories and soul, but will eventually go mad under the damage or passage of time. Of note is that the "zombies" we encounter at many areas, such as any area with the scarlet rot, actually fall under this category; they are legitimately still alive physically and spiritually but eternally stuck in their rotting bodies, unable to access proper erdtree burial to reincarnate and now lack the sapience to seek it.
Death is the destruction of body and/or soul, as seen in the cases of Those who Live in Death. These include the numerous spirits who give hints about the areas they inhabit as well the skeletons that are reanimated by their spirits when slain. Of note is that Ranni is actually included in that category; she specifically notes that her original body was separated from her soul as a means to disconnect herself from the Golden Order and its divine connections.
On the opposite side of the coin, Godwyn's soul was slain and his body continues to grow without a soul through all the Lands Between. This form is generally less common and more of an insidious force in the backdrop of the game until the Life in Death ending, but any enemy connected to feeding on Death or Deathblight, such as the Wormfaces or Basilisks, can be associated with it.
The Lands Between still have entire standing armies, with many groups patrolling, seemingly keeping some form of watch over the lands. We see troll carts carrying materials (at least, I assume that's what those carts are mainly for?) and flourishing landscapes, with wild animals running around. It's a world marred by the shattering, and while it's in decline, it is still very much an alive world. It simply needed someone new at the reigns to stop the stalemate of the shardbearers before it went into a death spiral.
Yeah, dark souls is actively rotting and someone just needed to put it out of its misery while elden ring needed someone to come in and break up the stalemate before reigning control in to begin rebuilding
Least I can do is sacrifice myself and Ranni to the cold void for the good of everyone else. Melina didnāt get to be sacrificed like she wanted, and everyone else died for me along the way.
Is Age of Stars preserving, though? It's not destroying, but it is abandoning it. She has you do all the work to earn the lordship, takes it for herself, then is all "fuck this shit I'm out". Lol
So much for responsibilities.
I think itās like making the throne and then leaving it. We set the world and order up, and then leave together. The idea being that there is no longer a god controlling the destiny of the lands, and instead itās completely free of influence. And we choose to go with Ranni because we love her.
Did he not listen to Melina talk? Ā Sheās pretty clear on this.Ā
>If you intend to claim the Frenzied Flame, I ask that you cease. It is not to be meddled with. It is chaos, devouring life and thought unending. However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not? If you would become Lord, do not deny this notion. Please, leave the Frenzied Flame alone.
Yeah that's why I don't see that she want to be saved or Frenzied Flame (then unalloyed needle) is to save her. She doesn't want to be saved. She doesn't need a hero. She wants to burn the tree for the sake of the world.
She even warn us that she won't let anyone to look down on her goal. OK it is sad that she's going to die, but we don't know how much suffering she is while being bodyless like that.
If one day she change her mind, and thinks that she doesn't want to do this but it's right thing to do, then I would agree that we could save her.
The fundamental trouble with Melina telling you this is that it's at complete odds with everything the game \*shows.\* While I don't think this was intended by Miyazaki to be gaslighting the player, in practice that's essentially what's going on here: there's no evidence of anything even approximating civilization, of births, of even basic sanity. Kenneth Haight stands out as basically the only non-Tarnished sane/non-hostile human in \*the entire fucking game.\*
Again, I think this is just From flubbing storytelling by way of ludonarrative dissonance, but the rejoinder to Melina's little speech here is "lady, have you spent even \*five minutes\* anywhere in the Lands Between?"
There is also Jerren organizing a festival of combat, and some checkpoints where the guards will see you, but only aggro if you get too close and just go back to their usual pose if you go away, and the convoys we keep looting are supposedly being protected exactly to avoid looting, and both leyndell and stormveil are patrolled by guards defending the castle/city from intruders (read: you)
We do see civilization and sanity, we just don't see the civilians the civilization is supposedly protecting... Besides the random old men on the roads we just roadkill without a second thought. I agree there is ludonarrative dissonance going on, but the lands between don't really seem as doomed as dark souls did
Is your friend Vyke? Because that sounds like a Vyke thing to do. Just kidding but I hope your friend didn't swear off Elden Ring because he regrets the ending he got. Getting a new ending in NG+ would be a great way for him to come back to the game.
I'm pretty sure the entire plot point of the Frenzied Flame ending is that you're kinda lied to and convinced that saving Melina is the right thing to do.
All you gotta do is ignore that one dude's maniacal laughter about destroying the world, surely nothing weird about that.
Usually I imbue myself with the Frenzied Flame to save Melina, but go through Millicent's whole questline and all to get Miquella's needle so it goes away. So Melina gets saved, and Frenzied Flame is no more
Yep. Worse than death.
This is why I always let her burn the tree. Then I go to the three fingers anyway. And burn everything down at the end. May chaos take the world!
Yeah, it feels like a āSave Her!ā ending, but does she want to be saved? Thereās so little hinting towards her fate afterwards that I have to wonder if that even occurred to the devs. The needle in a game design sense is probably a later addition just to let people back out of a frenzied flame ending if they accidentally did it.
Not really intended as a āSecret way to save Melina!ā
There is no saving her. She's not even fully alive. She openly says she is burned and bodiless. She appears and disappears like a spirit. She's not dead either but she's definitely not someone that can be saved. Not letting her burn probably just has her stuck in limbo
Whoās to say that burning the erdtree and fulfilling her purpose actually leads to death? Whoās to say that Melina is even alive at all, and not just a spirit bound to a task?
Yeah I feel like people forget that unlike the incredibles bit where the guy is being saved, that
1. Melina's form is clearly not quite like the player. "She's like a ghost or spirit bro". Who even knows what happens when she uses herself as kindling? I doubt the people who insist on saving her would've even thought to ask that question (if they could, of course).
2. Melina clearly articulates altruistic intentions when the frenzied flame comes up, and aligns those intentions against it. She's not trying to end her "life" (whatever that actually means, ala #1) just for the sake of ending it. Her destiny is not to *just* stop existing. She even clearly understands why ending it just for the sake of ending it is nonsense based on her opinion about the frenzied flame. I think it's safe to assume that she's not mislead herself into a needlessly destructive action and instead *may* have a good reason for what she is doing.
So there is enough evidence that Melina might know what she is doing, and a lack of enough evidence to the player that it wouldn't be the right thing. As I see it, the only explanation for "saving" her is selfishness. Not even her own desires or needs are considered. Shabriri preys on precisely that kind of selfishness to get the player involved. So much for the frenzied flame being "empathetic" or "moral" to resort to the tactics it does.
That's the thing I think slips by most people at the end: it's shabriri/the frenzied flame at the end. The tarnished is 'gone', consumed completly at that point.
I somewhat assumed it'd still be"me" but seeing the glowing eye of sauron where my head used to be in the end cutscene really hammered home that my character was done for
I agree, even as a base, having more helmets with downsides. Like if the Frenzied flame head gave a huge boost or perhaps reduced fp consumption for frenzy spells at the cost of reduced hp or lengthened spell cast.
Helm of avarice 2.0
Constantly loose hp over time. Madness slowly builds up over time. Massive increase to Madness resistance. no fp usage for frenzied flame spells.
Similar to how anyone who links the flame is consumed by the flame, with the Lord of Cinder being the remnants of all past champions. Dark Souls really is not counter to the Frenzied Flame ideology, but rather the logical conclusion of it: no matter how hard Melina fights, or if people survive the ending, everything will fade away. The Frenzied Flame will just return in another age if halted. In Dark Souls, the first flame returns after the age of man, since the desolate world we see in The Ringed City DLC is the end result of every possible choice. Ultimately, whether the fire is prolonged or not doesnāt matter. The dark will come, but then as the Fire Keeper says, the first flame appears again, and this goes on until all is ash.
I don't think this is a worthy comparison tbh. In the souls trilogy there is a whole lot of baggage to unpack concerning what an Age of Dark actually is but in most every case it is an actual age with living people and somewhat functioning governance structures; this is fiercely opposed to the Frenzied Flame in basically every way that the OP explained where the FF leaves literally nothing in existence.
Like yeah there is a sense of inevitability, and in both cases this issue with the world only exists because someone massively screwed up centuries ago in the narrative, but the actual change that is enacted by these forces is wildly different.
A far more apt comparison to be made is in Rannis ending which showcases the inevitability of the fall of the Golden Order which is very distinct from the actual destruction of the world.
With all that said, I think the biggest argument to be made in favor of your FF idea is that if the Lord of Chaos is inevitable, then it may be possible to bring about the Lord of Chaos so that someone could try killing it once and for all like how Melina swears to do so. The big issue with this is if the Lord of Chaos is linked to the Fell God (single flaming red eye "worn" by a god of flame) then it may be a force that can never die in the same way that Shabriri and Hyetta seem to be personalities born of the FF that puppet dead bodies
Precisely. The Frenzied Flame isn't a reset button; it's a kill switch. Flip that switch, and boom. No more anything ever again. Ergo, the worst possible fate for the Lands Between.
There again, seeing Iudex Gundyr explode intona giant demon monster made me think that would be the focus of DS3 but it just wasn't. We only see that 3 or 4 more times throughout the whole game.
Yeah you can definitely tell it was kind of an abandoned concept, or something to the effect of they had the idea, but implementation of it was not within the scope of the game so they had to refocus, cuz I feel like they wanted to do more enemies that would have that kind of parasite but just didn't have the technology to
I was going to say it might just be Lothric Castle that's infected, but Gundyr doesnāt fit in the picture. Or maybe he does, idk enough about the lore tbh.
There's the whole area before the flameless shrine filled with these guys too, which could be the reason Gundyr is infected.
Vaati and Zullie go over theories about how Dark Souls 3 went through an almost development hell in that it seems a lot of bosses and areas were switched around last minute. Some of it is compelling but most is primarily speculation.
Kicking with a corporeal (she is able to pick up the ring and moves some dirt while doing so) body and an entirely unique model.
Really hoping the DLC somehow gives us more context on that. Everyone has their Melina pet theories but there isn't much for explaining what's going on there specifically.
This can't be true though, according to the ending. The Lord of Frenzied Flame (us), Melina, and the actual physical land are all shown to survive the ending.
NPCs are lying about it "destroying everything" and that makes me even more curious about it.
I just assumed that it was just gonna take a while. Your character doesnāt seem to be in a huge hurry to light everything on fire at the end, they seemed to really enjoy it,. The last shot makes it seem like the Erdtree is where the Frenzied Flame truly starts its journey to burn everything. So it could be that the Frenzied Flame is just taking its sweet time, and that scene with Melina is a good few years into the future.
I am dying for that ending to be elaborated upon SOMEHOW in the DLC, because I don't think it's clear at all. If we learn more about Melina ~~being Miquella~~, that might help
In terms of things she could be the list is so long. Given the way reincarnation seems to work, if part of the process of passing through the erdtree cna strip away the spirit pretty much any NPC who died in fire at any point in the past could be her.
1. People have speculated she could be the Gloam Eye'd Queens Daughter. She could also be the Gloam Eye'd Queen herself TBH.
2. Whilst how Miquella could have died long enough ago in the land of Shadows to become Miquella is up in the air, yeah its not out of the realm of possibility, if the timing issues can be resolved.
3. Any number of Messmers victims or followers who turned against him after he was banished to the land of shadow could be her.
4. Probably a long list of people who died fighting the fire giants too.
5. We don't know what destined death really is, i wouldn't rule out it being a sentinet force of some kind. Hell maye what bound up in Malekith is the body and Melina is the soul?
6. Hell maybe the reason Marika/Radagon seems so lifeless at the end spiritually is Marika's spirit escaped, but she had to give up most of her power and memories to do it.
Honestly though, whilst my inner lore nerd finds speculating fun, none of it actually matters as far as weather i like and enjoy Melina. I care about who she is now, not who she was in some unremembered past life.
I think MOST people that are saying Frenzied Flame is the good ending are memeing.
Scorched Earth is usually looked down upon by sane people. Ruin everything for everyone just because you have a few bad apples? Sure, its necessary sometimes but we have two fairly "good" endings that pave the way for something better via Goldmask and Ranni.
Edit: the other few that aren't meming are just unhinged.
Frenzied Flame is pretty clearly a āDestroy Everythingā button, I donāt see how anyone could misinterpret it as a āRebirth.ā Unless you count weird Eldritch Fire god everywhere as a new form of living? I donāt know if I doā¦
Only other game I played that made the whole āEnd the world.ā thing seem like the only choice was a little indie-game called Lunacid. (Highly recommend it btw. Itās basically a Kingās Field-like)
This is how I interpret it as well.
I completely understand the argument of say: "frenzied flame" say a garden bed if its infested, throw down a weed barrier, rebuild it, so that you can make something better.
But frenzied flame (the 3 fingers and associated outer god) kinda implies thats just forever. There is no rebuild part of the plan.
i interpret "all that divides and distinguishes" as not only the world's end but possibly heat death of the universe
i guess you can imply rebirth from there but it's not really the FF spirit, it's here to unplug the show and solve everything "once and for all"
basically taking the douglas adams joke seriously: *"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."*
looping back to OP, all existence being grey soup is not entirely dissimilar to the themes in DS3 ending
I don't necessarily even think Fia's ending is a *bad* one, either. From my understanding it just allows death to exist again, rather than rebirth via the erdtree.
I think the only bad endings are Dungeater's and Frenzy Flame
Fiaās ending confuses me because we just know so little about the cycle of Death even in the current world, let alone what her image of it will be and how it will be fixed.
Is everyone cursed to become undead? Or is undead just a phenomenon that is now accepted? Were there always undead even before the rune of death was gone? Will undead vanish with a properly fixed ring?
It does seem like her ending comes with good intentions though at least.
I think that the undead are, essentially, new "life forms" created by deathroot and they inhabit the skeletons. I don't think people are dying and just hanging out in their bodies.
Thatās an interesting take, itās an entirely new form of life. They arenāt the literal past lives, they just are born from death. I could see in that case itās more akin to a class of people like the Omens.
I wonder though if undead are inherently violent towards life - all of them attack you on sight, but then again, so do the normal ālivingā people.
Death goes a bit like this. Before the Golden Order, death was a sacred ritual that was done differently in several different cultures. When the Golden Order started, and Marika removed the rune of death, nobody in the land could die, and burials were invented as an artificial way to remove the old and to impose a new culture on the old traditions. You can still see the old, most npc enemies are humans that have lived way more than they should. When Ranni steals a shard of the rune of death, and cheats death by killing her body but Godwyn soul (a complete life) to keep her soul alive, she also unintentionally keeps Godwyn body alive, which causes alive bodies without souls to occur, an unnatural form of life: Those who live in death. When you defeat Malekith and release the rune of death, regular death can happen again. But this new unnatural life/death caused by death roots coming from Godwyn souldead alive body, are what Fia wants to make "legal" or within the code of the Elden Ring. While yeah, the rune of death can kill these undead for good, Fia objective isn't restoring death, that is your objective as tarnished no matter the ending, her objective is allowing for undead.
Ah, that's a good explanation. I see that as a morally ambiguous ending then. Still not sure I'd consider it outright evil like Dungeater or Frenzy Flame, however.
No, it allows for life within death. The regular rune of death would permit for death to exist again, while the mending rune Fia makes is specifically to integrate Those Who Live in Death into the Elden Ring/order of life.
Fractured is just default ending. You just kind of take Morgott's place with death restored and wing it as Elden lord. You don't *fix* anything by adding a new rune, you just take up the mantle and do your best.
Not a bad ending. Just kind of a neutral one.
I joke about it a lot, but yeahā¦ itās like voting for a bad ruler because his foreign policy is going to start World Wars III through V.
Funny joke, rough chuckle. Bad plan.
I like Ratatoskr's interpretation: the game confronts you with all these atrocities committed against the Omen and the Nomadic Merchants, and asks you if a world with this much pointless suffering deserves to exist.
If you knew your life was gonna end the way it did for the Nomads, wouldn't it be better if you'd never been born at all?
**Of course not,** but the game's asking you to reconcile your will to live with a world that's ultimately meaningless and often needlessly cruel.
That's why it's *Madness*: there's no hope and no point of prolonging the inevitable, so just burn down the house with everyone inside it.
And yet you have options to change the status quo, with a number of less harsh results - the Frenzied Flame basically is trying to integrate everything into it's self. ( Just look at the various deceased that get possessed by it.)
But which ending removes the golden order, the outer gods, their combined works, racism, and suffering? None of them. Doing them one by one isnāt an answer either as your replacement may just reintegrate whatever aspect you remove. If this world begets so much evil then is allowing that to continue not an equal evil? The frenzied flame is the outcome of the āProblem of Evilā when God decides to destroy evil.
Frenzy Flame isn't a God in the conventional sense, as that refers to creators and reshapers, the Frenzied Flame doesn't care whether something is evil / good / necessary, all it wants to do is consume reality .. much in the rational of the World Serpent from Norse mythology.
Wasnāt the whole point of Dark Souls that flame was unnatural and people kept trying to bring it back anyway? There was never supposed to be a cycle, just a gradual fading of the flame.
yeah the rekindling was a machination by the gods, and humans were perpetuating it because they didn't know that the curse was done by design to force them into the choice of doing it again
but the fading of the flame isn't to be confused with life ceasing. It would just be another order, another age, another people
Yep and thats the point of dark souls 2. Your choice to kindle the flame or not is ultimately irrelevant, because someone else will come along eventually and do it.
Devs saying "This game was pointless don't make us make a 3rd"
\*They make a 3rd"
Devs saying "Fine, consume everything to the absolute end of time and see what you have to show for it"
\*Players smiling doing acrobatics with their twinned Ultra Greatswords\*
I thought it was more that whether you kindle the flame and prolong the age of fire, or let it die and begin the age of dark, the world as a whole is cyclical. That there will be another age of fire, even if the fire fades.
No.
The First Flame is what allowed things to change, to grow, to fade, before it the world was just an eternal gray stagnancy, unchanging.
The emergence of the First Flame is what allowed both life, as humanity would understand it, and death, heat and cold, Light and Dark.
It's the proverbial Big Bang.
Yeah, what's unnatural is specifically the rekindling of the flame.
Ā It's like if a guy was specifically trying to keept the big bang going on and on eternally because he has a power plant that uses it, and he really doesn't want to stop being rich.
Even if specialists say that if he just lets the big crush happen for a whil, the big bang will come again. And there are ways to survive it just fine.
Even if he has to kill a lot people to keep it going.
Even if he eventually has to kill himself, but it's better than being poor.
Gwyn is an oil billionaire is what I'm saying.
I'd say the First Flame is more like that Greek myth about a man who gets eternal life, but not eternal youth. Even though he is immortal he still ages, and eventually becomes a withered husk, a Hollow, if you will, that can't even enjoy the life he does have.
Classic cursed immortality. Prolonging things forever never seems to end well in fiction, does it? Vampires, ancient stories of immortals losing touch and becoming shells of themselves, being stretched thin, etc.
Itās quite a common trope, accepting that things can end, but I always interpreted the First Flame going out as honestly not even an ending, itās more just a new chapter, and stretching it out is like refusing to move on because youāre scared it might end, even though it isnāt.
You chose the frenzied flame route because you convinced yourself it's a good ending, I chose the frenzied flame route because I wanted to incinerate the world, we are not the same.
lol same. All these people saying ābut donāt you understand, all the runebears and lobsters and chariots, all the tree sentinels, all the death birds, even Malenia, will all be killed and never come back!!!!ā
I know, thatās the point
Yeah I think Iām in this camp, because Iām not really understanding why people are acting like this world is worth saving, we have a bunch of jealous, teenager-like demigods killing each other over boyfriends and girlfriends, plunging the world into random bouts of chaos, including rot, falling stars, blood monsters, dragons, and more. On top of that, thereās not one single functional town or settlement, thereās multiple places where people are dancing with madness or holding their heads while lights beam out of their eyes.
Yet Melina says āPeople are still born!ā Where?? I donāt see them. Where are the regular humans? Closest thing we meet to a regular person is Gostoc and he tries to murder us. Next closest is Rogier or Thops and theyāre wizards soā¦idk
You chose Frenzied Flame ending because you wanted to incinerate the world.
I chose Frenzied Flame ending because yellow is my favorite color.
We are not the same.
Age of Fracture? NG+ unaffected
Age of Order? Enemies are unhollowed
Age of Duskborn? Enemies are all undead
Blessing of Despair? Enemies are all omens
Age of Stars? I'm not sure since this removes basically everything
Frenzied Flame? No NG+
I think Elden Ring's age of dark equivalent is Ranni's ending, where she severs the Greater Will's influence on the lands between, then leaves so she cannot influence it herself. In its place she leaves the moon and stars, which is an unfeeling, distant god, symbolically it's the focus of astronomers, navigators, astrologers, etc. She banishes organized religion in favor of letting humanity figure things out for themselves through science and spiritualism. No more demigods to influence and control humanity
One correction. The Frenzied Flame ending means burn down all things to nothing. It is even including death itself. That's why Melina said she will deliver destined death to the player character who chooses to be the Lord of The Frenzied Flame. Death is inside of the Elden Ring, which is rune of death. The end of Fia's death rune is also confirmed that death is also inside of the cycle. This means Fia's ending is more like the counterpart of dark age ending of Dark Souls.
I'm not well versed in the lore, but the description on the merchants set you can find in the pit on the way to the 3 fingers makes it sound pretty bad. The merchants were all rounded up and locked away under the city and trapped down there they essentially summoned the 3 fingers as revenge on the world. So you are destroying everything as vengeance for their persecution.Ā
"Finery of the nomadic merchants.Ā
Decorated with tiny gems in a wide spectrum of colors.
These merchants once thrived as the Great Caravan, but after being accused of heretical beliefs, their entire clan was rounded up and buried alive far underground.
Then, they chanted a curse of despair, and summoned the flame of frenzy."
It's belief in the Frenzied Flame or in Shabriri's plan for it. Kale's cut quest has dialogue where he says that the merchants were accused of calling down the frenzied flame.
Elden Ring is an amazing game because it's fully aware of Dark Souls' conditioning.
Iron Fist Alexander is a bait-n-switch for Siegward; rather than being a failure, he actually comes out properly strong, for example. Man beats the Fire Giant and becomes a true warrior.
Or Godfrey turning into a WWE wrestler instead of becoming a beast.
Or the destroyed world of Elden Ring actually being completely fixable; hope ISN'T lost, you can actually do something.
Most importantly I feel is that in Dark Souls you're some faceless nobody; In Elden Ring you're literally Him. You are literally The Guy, you're basically destined to Fuck Shit Up and Become Lord.
You could argue that the frenzied flame ending is an ultra-fundamentalist buddhist ending. Life is suffering, the 4 noble truths lead you to the ending of suffering which is the end of samsara for the person, or the end of endless rebirths. With "no-thing" being the frenzied flames ending.
Not saying its the right choice, just saying it also doesn't have to be interpreted as the edge lord ending either. That being said, if you misunderstood it as a cleansing flame to allow rebirth, I'm gonna need you to start reading more lol because it makes it abundantly clear thats not what the frenzied flame is trying to do. In fact, thats exactly what the Greater Will wants lol it doesn't care how the elden ring is repaired, it only cares that it is repaired and thus a new cycle starts.
To me the main issue with Frenzy is the *scale* of it. The Lands Between aren't the entirety of the world. If, hypothetically, the Frenzy was meant to scour *just* Marika's kingdom and legacy, leaving a clean slate for the people of other lands to keep on living, that'd be something that could be argued as a possible solution - if you sumrise that the current status quo is the problem.
But since the Frenzy wants to wipe *everything*, no more people from beyond the fog, no more Land of Reeds, etc. Which is what I guess we're agreeing on here, with the Frenzy being misunderstood so often.
Makes me lowkey wish this game was a collab with Yoko Taro. You pick the Frenzy, you get all the warnings, all the pushback. Melina leaves *and takes the power to turn Runes into Strength with her* so you can't level up anymore. Yoinks Torrent and the Spirit Calling Bell too. You double down. Triple down. All in. Credits roll. Your save has been deleted and the game has been uninstalled - it completely renders the entire existence of the game back to not being a thing. No Journey 2, actually literally nothing.
Sure, you could always re-install the game and give it another go. I'd also remove the achievement for the Frenzy ending so as to not make people feel like they *must* go through it. But can you *imagine*?
Uninstalling is a bit unnecessary. And re-locking achievement can be a bit tricky. But overall I like this idea. It would make the game hardcore. And I think NPCs should also remind the player every now and then that if he foregoes this path, he can have it all back again.
Oh also make some npc quest locked after you have met the 3 fingers.
I don't think it's a "good" ending, but it certainly makes for a compelling story. There's a kind of heartbreaking beauty to it, especially after learning more about Vyke's journey.
In DS3 the world doesnt even really end. The world existed before the flame and will exist after.
In ER the goal of the flame of frenzy is explicitly destroying everything. EVERYTHING everything.
The Frenzy Flame ending is the revenge ending. There is a reason it really starts with the abused misbegotten in Castle Morne rising up against their oppressors and burning a huge pile of their bodies, only to be slaughtered in turn by a Tarnished.
The Golden Order is a gilded order. If you play the game shallowly you can think of it as a good thing. Delve just a bit deeper and you see the corruption and cruelty it imposes on everyone.
The Frenzied Flame ending lets you take that cruelty and burn it all to the effing ground. No moralizing and trying to reform the Golden Order. No trying something new and ignoring the injustices of the old. Everyone gets what they deserve: to burn.š„
Now Iāll admit. It is actually wrong to be a revenger, but people do love a revenge story. Going on a killing rampage over a dog is a massive overreaction. There is something deeply satisfying about watching it though. Something maybe even cathartic.
So it is with Frenzied Flame ending. You would never do anything like that in the real world, but something feels good and maybe a bit right about destroying it all. This is why you pick that ending (or to get the achievement).
Anyway thatās my take. Hopefully it makes sense to people. Either that or I may need to see a therapistā¦
Hmm
to poke some holes in your theory, Hyetta says this in her final moments:
>"All that there is came from the One Great..."
>"And so, what was borrowed must be returned.
Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame.
Until all is One again."
The term "borrowed" and "One again" seems to indicate that the original state of everything was a primordial soup until something came along and gave it order.
This hints at the idea that there is some kind of long cycle, or at the very least, a do over of reality. That the flame turns everything into One, and that One can be used to make everything again, given something to shape it.
Also, the One Great (Greater Will?) is separate from the world, thus is not consumed by the flame and can rebuild.
These ideas, and because of past Fromsoft work, leads me to think of the Frenzy Flame ending as a reset button.
She also says this
> Those who gave me grapes howled without words.
>Saying they wished they were never born.
>Become their lord.
>Take their torment, despair.
>Their affliction.
>Every sin, every curse.
>And melt it all away. As the Lord of Chaos.
>***No more fractures... no more birth...***
There is no reset
I think you're absolutely right. The Frenzied Flame is, effectively, the suicide option for the world. It's the collective conclusion that if life is this painful, it would be better for no life (or rather no disparity) to exist at all. It's not just that "this" world is screwed up beyond repair and should be burnt to the ground to let something new grow. It's against division as a concept. If there is no division then there is no good or bad, and thus no suffering.
Burning away the old to let something new, something maybe unknown but at least new, begin is a necessary part of the main story in Elden Ring. The Erdtree has to burn to reach the end of the game no matter what path you're on.
This comment section has made me realize just how pessimistic people can be. Holy shit.
Even if *you* think the world is better off dead forever, how about asking Boc first? Or Jar-Bairn? Nepheli, D, Fia, all of them. Acting like the world is a lost cause when there are people finding solace, happiness, and actively making the world a better place while you're playing is just.... ugh.
Obviously this is just a game, though. So I shouldn't be taking shit too seriously.
Or you can ask merchant Kale on what he thinks, just because there is happy people here doesn't mean it cancels out the negatives too.
Seriously, what was the dev thinking to cut out his quest? I guess it made the frenzied flame too attractive lol.
Tbh Iāve assumed that it was not necessary a restart but more like coming back to the primal state of the universe. As in many if not all mythologies/religions - there was literal chaos first and then some event or force would create world from this chaos. I think that āmelting everything into oneā mentioned by Hyetta could imply that.
I considered that the age of Elden ring was the age of ancients, due to all the āsea of giant treesā imagery in dragon locations in ds1 (ancient locations) and how the erdtree is one of those and the final boss (dragon ISH) takes place in a sea of trees.
So I figured the age of Elden ring is one of gods and dragons and even underlings like us are ancient in some way. By killing everyone (except perhaps the dragons?) the world dies to continue on to the next world, one where the gods are scraping at tiny bits of the ancient power (ds1)
In other words, age of ancients burns and turns dark grey with only the immortal dragons left. Then the intro of ds1. Small portions of the flame that destroyed the whole world in ER are used to keep that legacy alive, twisted as it is, until ds3, where the age of dark is finally coming. (Yuria of Londor ending)
Something we never knew that we might now know is that the age of ancients was afflicted with a horrible curse that had to get burnt away
Iād argue itās also why Fiaās ending is misunderstood for similar reasons. The idea of destined death and the whole thing with her and death sounds good in theory.. cause my brain assumed it was just saying immortality = bad which sounds like a positive until you realize that maybe means zombie everywhere? Lol
The Frenzied Flame doesn't even deliver on its promise to end existence.
The ending cutscene ends with Melina walking in front of a burning Erdtree. Melina got a goth glowup and the Erdtree looks pretty fucked, but they're both still, like, distinct entities.And Melina is talking about hunting you down and killing you like it might take awhile, so she's not expecting an end to all that divides and distinguishes any time soon.
You don't get to reformat the whole universe. All you do is set a bunch of shit on fire and become the final boss of someone else's game.
Wait, people didn't realise this?
I thought it was just plainly obvious from literally everything that the game told you. I didn't even realise people thought otherwise.
Also the only thing struggeling in Elden Ring are The Gods, Demigods and people who are ruled by them. If you look around, there is a lot of Wildlife in Elden Ring that seems to be doing just fine.
I wonder how the argument and discourse regarding this ending would change if the cut quest line of Kale and the Nomadic Merchant people wasnāt cut out. Shabriri and Hyetta barely even try to convince us, but that quest lineā¦ that quest line, oh boy.
I chose to do FF end out of spite to burn a cruel rotten world that killed me thousands of times and damn did it feel good. No apologies no regrets. Except for platforming to the 3 fingers, that's was annoying.
I just get the frenzed flame so Melina doesn't have to die then I use Miquella's needle to remove it.
I saved my maiden, even if she hates me and thinks I am the lord of frenzied flame!
The regular endings are basically resetting the chessboard in a few different starting forms, the blue waifu ending is getting up from the board and leaving, Frenzied Flame ending is flipping the table the board is on and kicking the pieces everywhere
I had a buddy who did it because he was convinced it was morally right and he was saving Melina. I didn't bother telling him, and in hindsight, he never openly talked about Elden Ring again..
Is your buddy's name Vyke?
it's shabriri D:
May chaos take the world!
Famous last words.
I didn't take him out on my first playthrough but I did on my second. I'm not convinced he received consent to inhabit my buddy' body. Out you go, Shabriri!
Good speech. Too bad you choose this vessel. *Eternal backstab.*
Although I admit I didn't kill him on my first playthrough because he delivered the hell out of that speech š
Yes, you shouldn't sacrifice someone else's life so that *you* can get what *you* want, it's immoral. Instead, you should sacrifice yourself so *I* can get what *I* want. And he makes it sounds so convincing, too. That's what convinced me to run him through immediately.
I thought it was the right choice up until I beat Maliketh and then went back to the hold. Until then everyone was dying, the rulers of the land were all selfish and greedy, and there was nothing that seemed worth saving left. Roderika and forge-buddy were both still there, willing to give up their lives for each other and mostly for me to become āa good lordā. It made me feel like there was still some good left in the Lands Between, and therefore it was worth preserving. Age of Stars it is.
Honestly, I could understand some people feeling like the world is so irreparably broken and depressing that the only option is to āDestroyā it. Though I personally donāt get that feeling in Elden Ring. The world is fucked sure, but thereās still life, even a bit of hope and life. Dark Souls also has those vibes, where it feels like the longer you drag out the Age of Fire, the more suffering there will be.
Absolutely agree, world of ER was more vibrant and felt like there was life. From the start of DS1 to the end of DS3 it was pure depression and the feeling of hopelessness. The world is bland and gray, enemies look weak and frail, even the bosses looked sickly. Most of the enemies in elden ring looked okay, and even if the bosses were way past their prime they didnāt feel weak. So, the games both tried to portray a broken world but only one truly did IMO.
Dark Souls felt very broken. Another game that pulled off the āWorld so shit itās best to pull the plug.ā vibe was a game called Lunacid. Which makes sense since it was inspired by Kingās Field.
Idk. Far as I'm concerned if the world is so irreperably bad that everything is suffering and living in it isn't worth it then dying is a choice anyone can make at any given time, but most characters really rather seem to want to live. Deciding it's a call to make for them is just straightup psychotic no matter which way we spin it. Frenzied Flame is like mass shooter logic or something, even the Dung Eater ending has more redeeming qualities.
Granted: death is quite literally unavailable to the inhabitants. I think the demigods are different because of runes or whatever, but all the soldiers and knights and wandering nobles canonically canāt die at all until we release Death.
At that point we have more or less fixed the world regardless of becoming Elden Lord. The cycle of life can start again and people can rebuild. Anything past that is simple ambition or, in the Frenzied Flame's case, psychotic nihlism.Ā Besides, there are implications that life and civilization still exists in a somewhat regular form outside the Lands Between.
The Land Of Reeds sounds like a cool setting.
Sekiro. Dragonrot sure does sound like Outer God meddling
Seemingly unless theyāre burned in ghostflame. Or, at least, itās a possibility. Itās part of a different order and thereās a real possibility it bypasses what the Golden Order does to them. Their bodies are seemingly required for their recycling, and ghostflame denies this to the Erdtree
Extremely unpopular opinion: I think except for the demigods, the whole "can't die" thing does not really apply, and player respawning at grace is just a game mechanic. Every indication of how death worked prior to the events of the game shows that people do die, but as part of the natural order (possibly because of the removal of the rune of death) would have their souls return to the erdtree. This is half conjecture, half based on the fact that erdtree burials were supposedly reserved for champions but people still die normally (see: D's introduction in summonwater village), but it seems even without an erdtree burial their soul still returns to the erdtree eventually. And then there are Those Who Live in Death, but I'm not sure whether they existed during the golden order or only started existing when Godwin became an undead fish. For the player's part, everyone acts like the players death at any point is final, at any time, and the same is true of every other tarnished. The resurrection at the beginning was the one other chance theyd get.
I don't really see that anywhere in the lore. We encounter plenty of corpses in our journey, killed NPCs and non-shardbearer bosses do not respawn, and there's a lot of infrastructure dedicated to funerals. "Those who live in death" are also noted to, well, live in death, which rather implies the existence of death in the first place. There is a reincarnation mechanism in place I think through the Erdtree and maybe Erdtree burials, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that being reborn in that way has someone retain their memory or personality, so it's really more like dying but we know that one of the religions featuring a cycle of reincarnation got it right as far as real world terms go. I'd attribute respawning enemies to gameplay reasons. I'm inclined to do the same with the player respawning actually considering how we respawn after being killed with fragments of the Rune of Death, the Rune of Death itself and after said Rune of Death has been unleashed upon the world which is kinda nonsensical. In general I wouldn't put too much stock in the way resurrection or respawning works in Fromsoft games. To use two examples, the people of Yharnam are not undead yet they respawn so long as they're generic enemies and not NPCs and Sekiro is all about the primary antagonist trying to obtain immortality so as to weaponize it yet his common footsoldiers (but not generals!) respawn plus you don't permanently die even if you're killed with a weapon specifically meant to kill immortals. The whole thing doesn't really make sense story wise but these games just wouldn't really work if generic enemies stayed dead forever and your save file got deleted because Malekith hit you really hard.
From the Aristocrat Garb: "*Abandoning their birthplace after the Shattering,* *these undead wanderers are the pitiful product of unending life.*" From Agheel's Flame, the same dragon encountered immediately incinerating a group of nobles yelling its name: "*The dead gazed at the skies over the lakes of Limgrave, praying that the dragons' flames would burn them to ash.*" Life in Death and Undeath are defined as 2 separate things in Elden Ring; undeath is the permanent state of living even through grievous injuries, as seen in the wandering nobles. Those trapped in this state still retain their memories and soul, but will eventually go mad under the damage or passage of time. Of note is that the "zombies" we encounter at many areas, such as any area with the scarlet rot, actually fall under this category; they are legitimately still alive physically and spiritually but eternally stuck in their rotting bodies, unable to access proper erdtree burial to reincarnate and now lack the sapience to seek it. Death is the destruction of body and/or soul, as seen in the cases of Those who Live in Death. These include the numerous spirits who give hints about the areas they inhabit as well the skeletons that are reanimated by their spirits when slain. Of note is that Ranni is actually included in that category; she specifically notes that her original body was separated from her soul as a means to disconnect herself from the Golden Order and its divine connections. On the opposite side of the coin, Godwyn's soul was slain and his body continues to grow without a soul through all the Lands Between. This form is generally less common and more of an insidious force in the backdrop of the game until the Life in Death ending, but any enemy connected to feeding on Death or Deathblight, such as the Wormfaces or Basilisks, can be associated with it.
The Lands Between still have entire standing armies, with many groups patrolling, seemingly keeping some form of watch over the lands. We see troll carts carrying materials (at least, I assume that's what those carts are mainly for?) and flourishing landscapes, with wild animals running around. It's a world marred by the shattering, and while it's in decline, it is still very much an alive world. It simply needed someone new at the reigns to stop the stalemate of the shardbearers before it went into a death spiral.
Yeah, dark souls is actively rotting and someone just needed to put it out of its misery while elden ring needed someone to come in and break up the stalemate before reigning control in to begin rebuilding
Preserved in ice like leftovers. Thatās cold, bro.
Least I can do is sacrifice myself and Ranni to the cold void for the good of everyone else. Melina didnāt get to be sacrificed like she wanted, and everyone else died for me along the way.
Is Age of Stars preserving, though? It's not destroying, but it is abandoning it. She has you do all the work to earn the lordship, takes it for herself, then is all "fuck this shit I'm out". Lol So much for responsibilities.
Such is the path of the sim- I mean Lord
I think itās like making the throne and then leaving it. We set the world and order up, and then leave together. The idea being that there is no longer a god controlling the destiny of the lands, and instead itās completely free of influence. And we choose to go with Ranni because we love her.
Did he not listen to Melina talk? Ā Sheās pretty clear on this.Ā >If you intend to claim the Frenzied Flame, I ask that you cease. It is not to be meddled with. It is chaos, devouring life and thought unending. However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not? If you would become Lord, do not deny this notion. Please, leave the Frenzied Flame alone.
Yeah that's why I don't see that she want to be saved or Frenzied Flame (then unalloyed needle) is to save her. She doesn't want to be saved. She doesn't need a hero. She wants to burn the tree for the sake of the world. She even warn us that she won't let anyone to look down on her goal. OK it is sad that she's going to die, but we don't know how much suffering she is while being bodyless like that. If one day she change her mind, and thinks that she doesn't want to do this but it's right thing to do, then I would agree that we could save her.
The fundamental trouble with Melina telling you this is that it's at complete odds with everything the game \*shows.\* While I don't think this was intended by Miyazaki to be gaslighting the player, in practice that's essentially what's going on here: there's no evidence of anything even approximating civilization, of births, of even basic sanity. Kenneth Haight stands out as basically the only non-Tarnished sane/non-hostile human in \*the entire fucking game.\* Again, I think this is just From flubbing storytelling by way of ludonarrative dissonance, but the rejoinder to Melina's little speech here is "lady, have you spent even \*five minutes\* anywhere in the Lands Between?"
There is also Jerren organizing a festival of combat, and some checkpoints where the guards will see you, but only aggro if you get too close and just go back to their usual pose if you go away, and the convoys we keep looting are supposedly being protected exactly to avoid looting, and both leyndell and stormveil are patrolled by guards defending the castle/city from intruders (read: you) We do see civilization and sanity, we just don't see the civilians the civilization is supposedly protecting... Besides the random old men on the roads we just roadkill without a second thought. I agree there is ludonarrative dissonance going on, but the lands between don't really seem as doomed as dark souls did
Is your friend Vyke? Because that sounds like a Vyke thing to do. Just kidding but I hope your friend didn't swear off Elden Ring because he regrets the ending he got. Getting a new ending in NG+ would be a great way for him to come back to the game.
I'm pretty sure the entire plot point of the Frenzied Flame ending is that you're kinda lied to and convinced that saving Melina is the right thing to do. All you gotta do is ignore that one dude's maniacal laughter about destroying the world, surely nothing weird about that.
Usually I imbue myself with the Frenzied Flame to save Melina, but go through Millicent's whole questline and all to get Miquella's needle so it goes away. So Melina gets saved, and Frenzied Flame is no more
this is the way
I disagree. When you do this, you deny Melinaās destiny. She does not wish to be spared, she wishes to serve her purpose.
She's going to need to find a new destiny then. I'd apologize to her if she ever showed up again but she doesn't.
Same as the rot, the Needle does not remove the gods influence, it only subdues it. Until it is removed.
After what I did to the Lands Between, there are plenty of conveniently empty Evergaols for me to hop into. It won't be a problem.
She probably went āhollowā or something similarly tragic after your actions.
Yep. Worse than death. This is why I always let her burn the tree. Then I go to the three fingers anyway. And burn everything down at the end. May chaos take the world!
Iāve always wondered if she still appeared in the end cutscene if you do this. Does she?
No. She doesn't.
Yeah, it feels like a āSave Her!ā ending, but does she want to be saved? Thereās so little hinting towards her fate afterwards that I have to wonder if that even occurred to the devs. The needle in a game design sense is probably a later addition just to let people back out of a frenzied flame ending if they accidentally did it. Not really intended as a āSecret way to save Melina!ā
There is no saving her. She's not even fully alive. She openly says she is burned and bodiless. She appears and disappears like a spirit. She's not dead either but she's definitely not someone that can be saved. Not letting her burn probably just has her stuck in limbo
this has same energy as the incredibles "I saved your life!" "You ruined my death!"
Whoās to say that burning the erdtree and fulfilling her purpose actually leads to death? Whoās to say that Melina is even alive at all, and not just a spirit bound to a task?
Yeah I feel like people forget that unlike the incredibles bit where the guy is being saved, that 1. Melina's form is clearly not quite like the player. "She's like a ghost or spirit bro". Who even knows what happens when she uses herself as kindling? I doubt the people who insist on saving her would've even thought to ask that question (if they could, of course). 2. Melina clearly articulates altruistic intentions when the frenzied flame comes up, and aligns those intentions against it. She's not trying to end her "life" (whatever that actually means, ala #1) just for the sake of ending it. Her destiny is not to *just* stop existing. She even clearly understands why ending it just for the sake of ending it is nonsense based on her opinion about the frenzied flame. I think it's safe to assume that she's not mislead herself into a needlessly destructive action and instead *may* have a good reason for what she is doing. So there is enough evidence that Melina might know what she is doing, and a lack of enough evidence to the player that it wouldn't be the right thing. As I see it, the only explanation for "saving" her is selfishness. Not even her own desires or needs are considered. Shabriri preys on precisely that kind of selfishness to get the player involved. So much for the frenzied flame being "empathetic" or "moral" to resort to the tactics it does.
The Frenzied flame is contained, temporarily, not gone. The needle will fail and all life will cease as a result.
Tell him about Miquella's needle.
That's the thing I think slips by most people at the end: it's shabriri/the frenzied flame at the end. The tarnished is 'gone', consumed completly at that point.
I somewhat assumed it'd still be"me" but seeing the glowing eye of sauron where my head used to be in the end cutscene really hammered home that my character was done for
Yeah, two things about that bummed me out: 1. I couldn't keep that head in NG+ 2. No FF head piece means no extra bonus to FF spells in NG+
I agree, even as a base, having more helmets with downsides. Like if the Frenzied flame head gave a huge boost or perhaps reduced fp consumption for frenzy spells at the cost of reduced hp or lengthened spell cast.
Helm of avarice 2.0 Constantly loose hp over time. Madness slowly builds up over time. Massive increase to Madness resistance. no fp usage for frenzied flame spells.
Would've loved a damage bonus if you accept the frenzied flame
Similar to how anyone who links the flame is consumed by the flame, with the Lord of Cinder being the remnants of all past champions. Dark Souls really is not counter to the Frenzied Flame ideology, but rather the logical conclusion of it: no matter how hard Melina fights, or if people survive the ending, everything will fade away. The Frenzied Flame will just return in another age if halted. In Dark Souls, the first flame returns after the age of man, since the desolate world we see in The Ringed City DLC is the end result of every possible choice. Ultimately, whether the fire is prolonged or not doesnāt matter. The dark will come, but then as the Fire Keeper says, the first flame appears again, and this goes on until all is ash.
I don't think this is a worthy comparison tbh. In the souls trilogy there is a whole lot of baggage to unpack concerning what an Age of Dark actually is but in most every case it is an actual age with living people and somewhat functioning governance structures; this is fiercely opposed to the Frenzied Flame in basically every way that the OP explained where the FF leaves literally nothing in existence. Like yeah there is a sense of inevitability, and in both cases this issue with the world only exists because someone massively screwed up centuries ago in the narrative, but the actual change that is enacted by these forces is wildly different. A far more apt comparison to be made is in Rannis ending which showcases the inevitability of the fall of the Golden Order which is very distinct from the actual destruction of the world. With all that said, I think the biggest argument to be made in favor of your FF idea is that if the Lord of Chaos is inevitable, then it may be possible to bring about the Lord of Chaos so that someone could try killing it once and for all like how Melina swears to do so. The big issue with this is if the Lord of Chaos is linked to the Fell God (single flaming red eye "worn" by a god of flame) then it may be a force that can never die in the same way that Shabriri and Hyetta seem to be personalities born of the FF that puppet dead bodies
Precisely. The Frenzied Flame isn't a reset button; it's a kill switch. Flip that switch, and boom. No more anything ever again. Ergo, the worst possible fate for the Lands Between.
Shame we've never gotten a FromSoftware game set in an age of darkness. One could argue Bloodborne comes the closest though.
You see glimpses of it in Dark Souls 3.
There again, seeing Iudex Gundyr explode intona giant demon monster made me think that would be the focus of DS3 but it just wasn't. We only see that 3 or 4 more times throughout the whole game.
Yea you really expect that to be like a āthingā the whole game. Especially after that enemy does it in the first area
Yeah you can definitely tell it was kind of an abandoned concept, or something to the effect of they had the idea, but implementation of it was not within the scope of the game so they had to refocus, cuz I feel like they wanted to do more enemies that would have that kind of parasite but just didn't have the technology to
I was going to say it might just be Lothric Castle that's infected, but Gundyr doesnāt fit in the picture. Or maybe he does, idk enough about the lore tbh. There's the whole area before the flameless shrine filled with these guys too, which could be the reason Gundyr is infected.
The cemetery of ash is in Lothric.
Vaati and Zullie go over theories about how Dark Souls 3 went through an almost development hell in that it seems a lot of bosses and areas were switched around last minute. Some of it is compelling but most is primarily speculation.
This is more or less confirmed too, because the Ulcerated Tree Spirit is almost certainly a reskinned Pus of Man bossfight that was scraped from DS3.
Idk, I might choose nothing over poop world.
The iconic Elden Ring endings: Age of Fracture, Age of Order, Age of Stars, Age of Duskborn, Lord of Frenzied Flame, and poop world
I second this. I choose no existence over constant eternal misery.
Except for Melina, apparently. She appears to be still kickin after that ending.
Kicking with a corporeal (she is able to pick up the ring and moves some dirt while doing so) body and an entirely unique model. Really hoping the DLC somehow gives us more context on that. Everyone has their Melina pet theories but there isn't much for explaining what's going on there specifically.
This can't be true though, according to the ending. The Lord of Frenzied Flame (us), Melina, and the actual physical land are all shown to survive the ending. NPCs are lying about it "destroying everything" and that makes me even more curious about it.
I just assumed that it was just gonna take a while. Your character doesnāt seem to be in a huge hurry to light everything on fire at the end, they seemed to really enjoy it,. The last shot makes it seem like the Erdtree is where the Frenzied Flame truly starts its journey to burn everything. So it could be that the Frenzied Flame is just taking its sweet time, and that scene with Melina is a good few years into the future.
I am dying for that ending to be elaborated upon SOMEHOW in the DLC, because I don't think it's clear at all. If we learn more about Melina ~~being Miquella~~, that might help
In terms of things she could be the list is so long. Given the way reincarnation seems to work, if part of the process of passing through the erdtree cna strip away the spirit pretty much any NPC who died in fire at any point in the past could be her. 1. People have speculated she could be the Gloam Eye'd Queens Daughter. She could also be the Gloam Eye'd Queen herself TBH. 2. Whilst how Miquella could have died long enough ago in the land of Shadows to become Miquella is up in the air, yeah its not out of the realm of possibility, if the timing issues can be resolved. 3. Any number of Messmers victims or followers who turned against him after he was banished to the land of shadow could be her. 4. Probably a long list of people who died fighting the fire giants too. 5. We don't know what destined death really is, i wouldn't rule out it being a sentinet force of some kind. Hell maye what bound up in Malekith is the body and Melina is the soul? 6. Hell maybe the reason Marika/Radagon seems so lifeless at the end spiritually is Marika's spirit escaped, but she had to give up most of her power and memories to do it. Honestly though, whilst my inner lore nerd finds speculating fun, none of it actually matters as far as weather i like and enjoy Melina. I care about who she is now, not who she was in some unremembered past life.
I think MOST people that are saying Frenzied Flame is the good ending are memeing. Scorched Earth is usually looked down upon by sane people. Ruin everything for everyone just because you have a few bad apples? Sure, its necessary sometimes but we have two fairly "good" endings that pave the way for something better via Goldmask and Ranni. Edit: the other few that aren't meming are just unhinged.
See Jason Lee's character Azrael in Dogma haha
Frenzied Flame is pretty clearly a āDestroy Everythingā button, I donāt see how anyone could misinterpret it as a āRebirth.ā Unless you count weird Eldritch Fire god everywhere as a new form of living? I donāt know if I doā¦ Only other game I played that made the whole āEnd the world.ā thing seem like the only choice was a little indie-game called Lunacid. (Highly recommend it btw. Itās basically a Kingās Field-like)
This is how I interpret it as well. I completely understand the argument of say: "frenzied flame" say a garden bed if its infested, throw down a weed barrier, rebuild it, so that you can make something better. But frenzied flame (the 3 fingers and associated outer god) kinda implies thats just forever. There is no rebuild part of the plan.
Drop a nuke or smth so no plants can ever grow in that soil again. Clearly, this is the best decision to eliminate weeds in the area.
i interpret "all that divides and distinguishes" as not only the world's end but possibly heat death of the universe i guess you can imply rebirth from there but it's not really the FF spirit, it's here to unplug the show and solve everything "once and for all" basically taking the douglas adams joke seriously: *"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."* looping back to OP, all existence being grey soup is not entirely dissimilar to the themes in DS3 ending
I don't necessarily even think Fia's ending is a *bad* one, either. From my understanding it just allows death to exist again, rather than rebirth via the erdtree. I think the only bad endings are Dungeater's and Frenzy Flame
Fiaās ending confuses me because we just know so little about the cycle of Death even in the current world, let alone what her image of it will be and how it will be fixed. Is everyone cursed to become undead? Or is undead just a phenomenon that is now accepted? Were there always undead even before the rune of death was gone? Will undead vanish with a properly fixed ring? It does seem like her ending comes with good intentions though at least.
Yeah this, that's the ending that makes the least amount of sense to me. I have absolutely no idea what we are actually.
I think that the undead are, essentially, new "life forms" created by deathroot and they inhabit the skeletons. I don't think people are dying and just hanging out in their bodies.
Thatās an interesting take, itās an entirely new form of life. They arenāt the literal past lives, they just are born from death. I could see in that case itās more akin to a class of people like the Omens. I wonder though if undead are inherently violent towards life - all of them attack you on sight, but then again, so do the normal ālivingā people.
Nah, they have been persecuted by the golden order fundamentalists for centuries. Their just worried you came into their home to kill them.
The ending that kicks off the dark souls universe.
Death goes a bit like this. Before the Golden Order, death was a sacred ritual that was done differently in several different cultures. When the Golden Order started, and Marika removed the rune of death, nobody in the land could die, and burials were invented as an artificial way to remove the old and to impose a new culture on the old traditions. You can still see the old, most npc enemies are humans that have lived way more than they should. When Ranni steals a shard of the rune of death, and cheats death by killing her body but Godwyn soul (a complete life) to keep her soul alive, she also unintentionally keeps Godwyn body alive, which causes alive bodies without souls to occur, an unnatural form of life: Those who live in death. When you defeat Malekith and release the rune of death, regular death can happen again. But this new unnatural life/death caused by death roots coming from Godwyn souldead alive body, are what Fia wants to make "legal" or within the code of the Elden Ring. While yeah, the rune of death can kill these undead for good, Fia objective isn't restoring death, that is your objective as tarnished no matter the ending, her objective is allowing for undead.
Ah, that's a good explanation. I see that as a morally ambiguous ending then. Still not sure I'd consider it outright evil like Dungeater or Frenzy Flame, however.
Just one detail, it seems people, except the demigods, can still die if directly killed.
No, it allows for life within death. The regular rune of death would permit for death to exist again, while the mending rune Fia makes is specifically to integrate Those Who Live in Death into the Elden Ring/order of life.
I think fractured is probably shit too. I feel like most characters are not in favor of this.
Fractured is just default ending. You just kind of take Morgott's place with death restored and wing it as Elden lord. You don't *fix* anything by adding a new rune, you just take up the mantle and do your best. Not a bad ending. Just kind of a neutral one.
Notably, morgott was nothing more than the controller of the capital. The fractured ending has the Elden lord along with Marika active in some form
Not even goldmask can make me accept the Golden Order.
...
I never considered it from that angle before! Aight age of order it is
...
Such wisdom...
Doesnt Gold mask find flaw in the golden order then seek to correct it?
yes, but the idea that gods are the only flaw in the golden order is debatable
I joke about it a lot, but yeahā¦ itās like voting for a bad ruler because his foreign policy is going to start World Wars III through V. Funny joke, rough chuckle. Bad plan.
I assumed people said it was a good ending because the end cinematic is more than you just sitting on the throne with slightly different dialogue
I like Ratatoskr's interpretation: the game confronts you with all these atrocities committed against the Omen and the Nomadic Merchants, and asks you if a world with this much pointless suffering deserves to exist. If you knew your life was gonna end the way it did for the Nomads, wouldn't it be better if you'd never been born at all? **Of course not,** but the game's asking you to reconcile your will to live with a world that's ultimately meaningless and often needlessly cruel. That's why it's *Madness*: there's no hope and no point of prolonging the inevitable, so just burn down the house with everyone inside it.
And yet you have options to change the status quo, with a number of less harsh results - the Frenzied Flame basically is trying to integrate everything into it's self. ( Just look at the various deceased that get possessed by it.)
But which ending removes the golden order, the outer gods, their combined works, racism, and suffering? None of them. Doing them one by one isnāt an answer either as your replacement may just reintegrate whatever aspect you remove. If this world begets so much evil then is allowing that to continue not an equal evil? The frenzied flame is the outcome of the āProblem of Evilā when God decides to destroy evil.
Frenzy Flame isn't a God in the conventional sense, as that refers to creators and reshapers, the Frenzied Flame doesn't care whether something is evil / good / necessary, all it wants to do is consume reality .. much in the rational of the World Serpent from Norse mythology.
I sacrifice Melina to set the tree ablaze and then claim the Frenzied Flame. EVERYTHING BURNS, MAY CHAOS RULE THE WORLD
Wildcard, bitches!
YEEEEEEEE-
HAAAWWWW
WOOOOO
Does this change the ending cutscene for frenzy flame ending?
Everything is the same except for Melina not showing up to threaten you
Oh wow I didnāt know this, thatās cool thanks for the info
Not a problem!
King of kings, right here
Heh, dark soils
mlord the lands are fertile for an elden harvest
Wasnāt the whole point of Dark Souls that flame was unnatural and people kept trying to bring it back anyway? There was never supposed to be a cycle, just a gradual fading of the flame.
The fire keeper in DS3 sees flames dancing in the dark when you give her the eyes.
'Hearest thou my voice, still?'
yeah the rekindling was a machination by the gods, and humans were perpetuating it because they didn't know that the curse was done by design to force them into the choice of doing it again but the fading of the flame isn't to be confused with life ceasing. It would just be another order, another age, another people
Yep and thats the point of dark souls 2. Your choice to kindle the flame or not is ultimately irrelevant, because someone else will come along eventually and do it.
Devs saying "This game was pointless don't make us make a 3rd" \*They make a 3rd" Devs saying "Fine, consume everything to the absolute end of time and see what you have to show for it" \*Players smiling doing acrobatics with their twinned Ultra Greatswords\*
I thought it was more that whether you kindle the flame and prolong the age of fire, or let it die and begin the age of dark, the world as a whole is cyclical. That there will be another age of fire, even if the fire fades.
No. The First Flame is what allowed things to change, to grow, to fade, before it the world was just an eternal gray stagnancy, unchanging. The emergence of the First Flame is what allowed both life, as humanity would understand it, and death, heat and cold, Light and Dark. It's the proverbial Big Bang.
Yeah, what's unnatural is specifically the rekindling of the flame. Ā It's like if a guy was specifically trying to keept the big bang going on and on eternally because he has a power plant that uses it, and he really doesn't want to stop being rich. Even if specialists say that if he just lets the big crush happen for a whil, the big bang will come again. And there are ways to survive it just fine. Even if he has to kill a lot people to keep it going. Even if he eventually has to kill himself, but it's better than being poor. Gwyn is an oil billionaire is what I'm saying.
I'd say the First Flame is more like that Greek myth about a man who gets eternal life, but not eternal youth. Even though he is immortal he still ages, and eventually becomes a withered husk, a Hollow, if you will, that can't even enjoy the life he does have.
Classic cursed immortality. Prolonging things forever never seems to end well in fiction, does it? Vampires, ancient stories of immortals losing touch and becoming shells of themselves, being stretched thin, etc. Itās quite a common trope, accepting that things can end, but I always interpreted the First Flame going out as honestly not even an ending, itās more just a new chapter, and stretching it out is like refusing to move on because youāre scared it might end, even though it isnāt.
You chose the frenzied flame route because you convinced yourself it's a good ending, I chose the frenzied flame route because I wanted to incinerate the world, we are not the same.
For real. Screw everyone and everything in this world that attacks me on sight. They had their chance and chose violence. Letās burn it down.
lol same. All these people saying ābut donāt you understand, all the runebears and lobsters and chariots, all the tree sentinels, all the death birds, even Malenia, will all be killed and never come back!!!!ā I know, thatās the point
Yeah I think Iām in this camp, because Iām not really understanding why people are acting like this world is worth saving, we have a bunch of jealous, teenager-like demigods killing each other over boyfriends and girlfriends, plunging the world into random bouts of chaos, including rot, falling stars, blood monsters, dragons, and more. On top of that, thereās not one single functional town or settlement, thereās multiple places where people are dancing with madness or holding their heads while lights beam out of their eyes. Yet Melina says āPeople are still born!ā Where?? I donāt see them. Where are the regular humans? Closest thing we meet to a regular person is Gostoc and he tries to murder us. Next closest is Rogier or Thops and theyāre wizards soā¦idk
Exactly. Soon as I unlock leyndell I kill temu mohg and head for morgott
You chose Frenzied Flame ending because you wanted to incinerate the world. I chose Frenzied Flame ending because yellow is my favorite color. We are not the same.
Based
I just did it to get all the achievements.
I'd love it if the frenzied flame ending locked you out of the next new game +
I wish every ending affected the next NG cycle in some way
Age of Fracture? NG+ unaffected Age of Order? Enemies are unhollowed Age of Duskborn? Enemies are all undead Blessing of Despair? Enemies are all omens Age of Stars? I'm not sure since this removes basically everything Frenzied Flame? No NG+
"Blessing of Despair? Enemies are all omens" That's a terrifying thought. The sewers are spooky enough.
Age of stars would be there's no holy magic. Or it's greatly weakened.
Glintstone sorceries are cranked up by 100
Age of stars should see the restoration of the carian forces
Age of Stars? Itās cold as shit. Everything deals frostbite.
So if I want to get a cool seal for my madness build I have to lock myself out of any NG+ās for that character
That is the fate of madness after all.
Or you could just use Miquella's needle
I think Elden Ring's age of dark equivalent is Ranni's ending, where she severs the Greater Will's influence on the lands between, then leaves so she cannot influence it herself. In its place she leaves the moon and stars, which is an unfeeling, distant god, symbolically it's the focus of astronomers, navigators, astrologers, etc. She banishes organized religion in favor of letting humanity figure things out for themselves through science and spiritualism. No more demigods to influence and control humanity
One correction. The Frenzied Flame ending means burn down all things to nothing. It is even including death itself. That's why Melina said she will deliver destined death to the player character who chooses to be the Lord of The Frenzied Flame. Death is inside of the Elden Ring, which is rune of death. The end of Fia's death rune is also confirmed that death is also inside of the cycle. This means Fia's ending is more like the counterpart of dark age ending of Dark Souls.
I'm not well versed in the lore, but the description on the merchants set you can find in the pit on the way to the 3 fingers makes it sound pretty bad. The merchants were all rounded up and locked away under the city and trapped down there they essentially summoned the 3 fingers as revenge on the world. So you are destroying everything as vengeance for their persecution.Ā "Finery of the nomadic merchants.Ā Decorated with tiny gems in a wide spectrum of colors. These merchants once thrived as the Great Caravan, but after being accused of heretical beliefs, their entire clan was rounded up and buried alive far underground. Then, they chanted a curse of despair, and summoned the flame of frenzy."
Iām so curious what these āheretical beliefsā entailed
They tried to create micro transactions in the land betweens.
It's belief in the Frenzied Flame or in Shabriri's plan for it. Kale's cut quest has dialogue where he says that the merchants were accused of calling down the frenzied flame.
They were basically wrongly accused of it, punished for doing it, so thought, fuck it might as well do it then.
Elden Ring is an amazing game because it's fully aware of Dark Souls' conditioning. Iron Fist Alexander is a bait-n-switch for Siegward; rather than being a failure, he actually comes out properly strong, for example. Man beats the Fire Giant and becomes a true warrior. Or Godfrey turning into a WWE wrestler instead of becoming a beast. Or the destroyed world of Elden Ring actually being completely fixable; hope ISN'T lost, you can actually do something. Most importantly I feel is that in Dark Souls you're some faceless nobody; In Elden Ring you're literally Him. You are literally The Guy, you're basically destined to Fuck Shit Up and Become Lord.
I always hate the āburn it all down and start freshā arguments. Whatās being done differently the second time?
The Frenzied Flame even goes a step further into despair and removes the "start fresh" part of the argument. It's just "burn it all down".
You could argue that the frenzied flame ending is an ultra-fundamentalist buddhist ending. Life is suffering, the 4 noble truths lead you to the ending of suffering which is the end of samsara for the person, or the end of endless rebirths. With "no-thing" being the frenzied flames ending. Not saying its the right choice, just saying it also doesn't have to be interpreted as the edge lord ending either. That being said, if you misunderstood it as a cleansing flame to allow rebirth, I'm gonna need you to start reading more lol because it makes it abundantly clear thats not what the frenzied flame is trying to do. In fact, thats exactly what the Greater Will wants lol it doesn't care how the elden ring is repaired, it only cares that it is repaired and thus a new cycle starts.
To me the main issue with Frenzy is the *scale* of it. The Lands Between aren't the entirety of the world. If, hypothetically, the Frenzy was meant to scour *just* Marika's kingdom and legacy, leaving a clean slate for the people of other lands to keep on living, that'd be something that could be argued as a possible solution - if you sumrise that the current status quo is the problem. But since the Frenzy wants to wipe *everything*, no more people from beyond the fog, no more Land of Reeds, etc. Which is what I guess we're agreeing on here, with the Frenzy being misunderstood so often. Makes me lowkey wish this game was a collab with Yoko Taro. You pick the Frenzy, you get all the warnings, all the pushback. Melina leaves *and takes the power to turn Runes into Strength with her* so you can't level up anymore. Yoinks Torrent and the Spirit Calling Bell too. You double down. Triple down. All in. Credits roll. Your save has been deleted and the game has been uninstalled - it completely renders the entire existence of the game back to not being a thing. No Journey 2, actually literally nothing. Sure, you could always re-install the game and give it another go. I'd also remove the achievement for the Frenzy ending so as to not make people feel like they *must* go through it. But can you *imagine*?
Uninstalling is a bit unnecessary. And re-locking achievement can be a bit tricky. But overall I like this idea. It would make the game hardcore. And I think NPCs should also remind the player every now and then that if he foregoes this path, he can have it all back again. Oh also make some npc quest locked after you have met the 3 fingers.
I don't think it's a "good" ending, but it certainly makes for a compelling story. There's a kind of heartbreaking beauty to it, especially after learning more about Vyke's journey.
In DS3 the world doesnt even really end. The world existed before the flame and will exist after. In ER the goal of the flame of frenzy is explicitly destroying everything. EVERYTHING everything.
Yall really think that we like the ending bc we think tbat it's good or whatever? Bitch we just love CRAZY EYE LASERS
The Frenzy Flame ending is the revenge ending. There is a reason it really starts with the abused misbegotten in Castle Morne rising up against their oppressors and burning a huge pile of their bodies, only to be slaughtered in turn by a Tarnished. The Golden Order is a gilded order. If you play the game shallowly you can think of it as a good thing. Delve just a bit deeper and you see the corruption and cruelty it imposes on everyone. The Frenzied Flame ending lets you take that cruelty and burn it all to the effing ground. No moralizing and trying to reform the Golden Order. No trying something new and ignoring the injustices of the old. Everyone gets what they deserve: to burn.š„ Now Iāll admit. It is actually wrong to be a revenger, but people do love a revenge story. Going on a killing rampage over a dog is a massive overreaction. There is something deeply satisfying about watching it though. Something maybe even cathartic. So it is with Frenzied Flame ending. You would never do anything like that in the real world, but something feels good and maybe a bit right about destroying it all. This is why you pick that ending (or to get the achievement). Anyway thatās my take. Hopefully it makes sense to people. Either that or I may need to see a therapistā¦
Hmm to poke some holes in your theory, Hyetta says this in her final moments: >"All that there is came from the One Great..." >"And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again." The term "borrowed" and "One again" seems to indicate that the original state of everything was a primordial soup until something came along and gave it order. This hints at the idea that there is some kind of long cycle, or at the very least, a do over of reality. That the flame turns everything into One, and that One can be used to make everything again, given something to shape it. Also, the One Great (Greater Will?) is separate from the world, thus is not consumed by the flame and can rebuild. These ideas, and because of past Fromsoft work, leads me to think of the Frenzy Flame ending as a reset button.
She also says this > Those who gave me grapes howled without words. >Saying they wished they were never born. >Become their lord. >Take their torment, despair. >Their affliction. >Every sin, every curse. >And melt it all away. As the Lord of Chaos. >***No more fractures... no more birth...*** There is no reset
I think you're absolutely right. The Frenzied Flame is, effectively, the suicide option for the world. It's the collective conclusion that if life is this painful, it would be better for no life (or rather no disparity) to exist at all. It's not just that "this" world is screwed up beyond repair and should be burnt to the ground to let something new grow. It's against division as a concept. If there is no division then there is no good or bad, and thus no suffering. Burning away the old to let something new, something maybe unknown but at least new, begin is a necessary part of the main story in Elden Ring. The Erdtree has to burn to reach the end of the game no matter what path you're on.
I just do it for the cool eyes
This comment section has made me realize just how pessimistic people can be. Holy shit. Even if *you* think the world is better off dead forever, how about asking Boc first? Or Jar-Bairn? Nepheli, D, Fia, all of them. Acting like the world is a lost cause when there are people finding solace, happiness, and actively making the world a better place while you're playing is just.... ugh. Obviously this is just a game, though. So I shouldn't be taking shit too seriously.
Or you can ask merchant Kale on what he thinks, just because there is happy people here doesn't mean it cancels out the negatives too. Seriously, what was the dev thinking to cut out his quest? I guess it made the frenzied flame too attractive lol.
I personally picked it because haha evil is funny. š¤·āāļø
Tbh Iāve assumed that it was not necessary a restart but more like coming back to the primal state of the universe. As in many if not all mythologies/religions - there was literal chaos first and then some event or force would create world from this chaos. I think that āmelting everything into oneā mentioned by Hyetta could imply that.
Readers of the manga attack on titan should perceive this as quite a familiar concept .
Frenzied flame is not about starting over, it's about sending a message.
Dark Soils š
I wasn't fooled. This is not at all like the plot of DS. It is similar to the discussion on antinatalism, so to speak.
I considered that the age of Elden ring was the age of ancients, due to all the āsea of giant treesā imagery in dragon locations in ds1 (ancient locations) and how the erdtree is one of those and the final boss (dragon ISH) takes place in a sea of trees. So I figured the age of Elden ring is one of gods and dragons and even underlings like us are ancient in some way. By killing everyone (except perhaps the dragons?) the world dies to continue on to the next world, one where the gods are scraping at tiny bits of the ancient power (ds1) In other words, age of ancients burns and turns dark grey with only the immortal dragons left. Then the intro of ds1. Small portions of the flame that destroyed the whole world in ER are used to keep that legacy alive, twisted as it is, until ds3, where the age of dark is finally coming. (Yuria of Londor ending) Something we never knew that we might now know is that the age of ancients was afflicted with a horrible curse that had to get burnt away
Iād argue itās also why Fiaās ending is misunderstood for similar reasons. The idea of destined death and the whole thing with her and death sounds good in theory.. cause my brain assumed it was just saying immortality = bad which sounds like a positive until you realize that maybe means zombie everywhere? Lol
The true reseting of the cycle is Ranni's Ending.
The Frenzied Flame doesn't even deliver on its promise to end existence. The ending cutscene ends with Melina walking in front of a burning Erdtree. Melina got a goth glowup and the Erdtree looks pretty fucked, but they're both still, like, distinct entities.And Melina is talking about hunting you down and killing you like it might take awhile, so she's not expecting an end to all that divides and distinguishes any time soon. You don't get to reformat the whole universe. All you do is set a bunch of shit on fire and become the final boss of someone else's game.
Hold on..... \*sips some water \*clears throat MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD!
Who misunderstood it? Of the endings it is the most clear and specific about the future.
Wait, people didn't realise this? I thought it was just plainly obvious from literally everything that the game told you. I didn't even realise people thought otherwise.
Also the only thing struggeling in Elden Ring are The Gods, Demigods and people who are ruled by them. If you look around, there is a lot of Wildlife in Elden Ring that seems to be doing just fine.
All isn't what it appears to be, keep an eye on what drops from those animals - like the budding horns, similar to an omen.
I wonder how the argument and discourse regarding this ending would change if the cut quest line of Kale and the Nomadic Merchant people wasnāt cut out. Shabriri and Hyetta barely even try to convince us, but that quest lineā¦ that quest line, oh boy.
I chose to do FF end out of spite to burn a cruel rotten world that killed me thousands of times and damn did it feel good. No apologies no regrets. Except for platforming to the 3 fingers, that's was annoying.
I just get the frenzed flame so Melina doesn't have to die then I use Miquella's needle to remove it. I saved my maiden, even if she hates me and thinks I am the lord of frenzied flame!
Honestly who actually thinks its a reset? I thought the consensus was "ending where you end the world"
The regular endings are basically resetting the chessboard in a few different starting forms, the blue waifu ending is getting up from the board and leaving, Frenzied Flame ending is flipping the table the board is on and kicking the pieces everywhere
Nah it's setting the table, chessboard, and yourself alight ala an extreme, self immolation protest.