Another thought as a result of the St. Trina quest. I’ve commented this before, but want to do it again. I love that you, Blind and your community are sharing knowledge and helping each other figure this out. You are not taking the stance of “Well, I figured this out on my own, so I’m a better player than you, so why should I help you?” Yes, answers can be looked up so easily now, but it’s nice to get direct help and support.
The only clue is after the third try, thiollier says something along the lines of "why can't I hear you, grant me more of your poison so I may hear you" when you enter. I feel like fromsoft has been moving towards a "players figured the last one out, make it tougher to figure out" thing with some of their secrets.
I do want complex puzzles! But I want puzzles that ultimately can be solved with logic. Not trial and error and random experimentation. A thousand piece puzzle is a challenge. A thousand piece puzzle where some of the pieces are cut irregularly and don't fit is a tedium.
@@BlueLizardJello yes! obscurity and waiting around for people to brute force their way to the solution is not a substitute for complexity. that's not complexity. that's just directionless trial and error. a good puzzle requires you to put the pieces together, to look at the pile of dialogue and environmental clues to develop a solution. a bad puzzle asks you to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. and sometimes, we will throw spaghetti at the wall anyway but that's because we failed to pay attention. a good puzzle is always solvable by looking at the available evidence and putting the pieces together - and looking for new, unexpected ways to put the puzzle together if your first approach doesn't work. that's not the same thing as throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Yeah, the finger ruins have been extremely disappointing to me. Massive area, extremely cool possible lore implications, but you ring a bell and then nothing.
Don't know if anyone pointed this out before here, but Metyr is the archetypical word for Mother in Greek. Being Greek definitely put a lot of this questline into perspective from the start! Damn I love fromsoft's cryptic brand of exposition! (great series Blue as always!)
I feel like enjoying these types of puzzles is profoundly subjective. For example stubborn repetition because you feel there is something more there, and you try again and again is rewarding to me because of my own idiosyncrasies. In this case there is more to it I think than previous puzzles you had got used to and now rely on in terms of expectations or formulas (I didn’t play Bloodborne for example). St. Trina not only is associated with sleep but also with addiction and drugs that make you forcefully asleep and looking at Thiollier also addicted and passive and obsessive. His character and his dialogue were the bigger clues. So you need to do it enough times to reach the domain of St. Trina: after all addictions are a form of self harm that you can’t help but doing repeatedly, at the risk of your safety and sanity. St. Trina isn’t to me a fully positive character. But I don’t want to go into it too deep, also because I know now the ending of the DLC and that influence my other arguments. Missing this dialogue might piss off someone who aims to complete everything and wants lore pieces, but can mean going forward with stronger bias than actually useful knowledge. I don’t know how to explain it better, again I think the same experience can be profoundly different from one person to another. But I respect your opinion and also I hated searching for turtles lol ❤
Blue your souls video format is absolutely amazing on another level. And you are the only one that keep doin like this (aside of epic namebro that never make this kind of format again) Your sense of exploration and your thoughts about every aspect of the game, lore, detail observation and mechanics, are what makes a perfect souls Walkthrought for me. I love you keep that on blind playthrought.
The only thing about the 6 times, im assuming it has to do with the 6 crosses, each representing a time Mequilla died/left a part of his body. Its not intuitive, which i agree
You use those cirques for as long as you want. They are great and no fp to throw is icing on the cake. Might have missed it, but are you using the talisman that boosts throwing weapons?
I think you have valid points. Also, the weirdest part to me is the complete contrast between blatantly telling players the (very obvious) weak point on the golem enemies, but having barely, if any, hints on St Trina.
I absolutely agree with what you've said about game design. I was in a similar situation, I had progressed Thiollier's quest in a different way, I'm not sure what I did but he did leave his initial spot but wasn't down in St. Trina's cave. So I had even less of a clue that you had to keep ingesting the poison. I did it three times because, just as you said, three is the magic number for trying something. And nothing happened so I had no reason to continue, maybe I was lacking an item or story progression. Just keep trying is just not good game design. I have the same feeling about some of the hidden doors in this DLC. The one with the hidden spiritspring that you found earlier at least gives you a visual clue if you look around a bit but there is one where there's absolutely no hint at an illusory wall and it's a quite important one. I'm not running through every dungeon, castle or catacomb and hit every possible wall just for the possibility of a hidden path, I think it's silly to expect that from your players.
I think you have a valid point about how esoteric some stuff is in this game. I think that these games have different “tiers” of player base. There are casual players who mainly want to Moonveil everything in the face. There are players who want to fight every boss and really engage with the game. Then there are the true freaks who want to do everything possible. The message explaining how to fight the golems is for the Moonveiler. The Malenia boss fight is for the second tier, and the St Trina quest is for the third.
The St. Trina quest was definitely a mess I only progressed because every once in a while I checked in on Thiollier and eventually she spoke to me. However, I was able to eventually get it although I agree it should be cleared unlike the warming stone on the brood which I would never figure out on my own.
Great fan of your playthroughs, Blue! I am very happy about all the biology facts that I learn from your playthroughs :) Wasn't expecting that from an Elden Ring playthrough!! Btw, the finger ruins actually remind me of Xylaria polymorpha or dead man's fingers fungi.
I really enjoy both your enthusiasm for exploring these areas and your outside-world knowledge of things like mushrooms and reptiles that you bring to these videos! And the positive interactions with your commenters! Too many people either ignore UA-cam comments or have very toxic interactions with viewers. Overall even when I find myself frustrated with something specific you’re doing in game I really enjoy watching you do it (and hey, that’s why I play the game myself- to do everything the way I would! It’d be boring if everyone I watched did the same exact things :)
I agree with the puzzle issues for the most part, however you prefer to not play online with the community for you 1st play through and that is Great and fine. The design philosophy they may have intended was for this to be a message / community thing, to have people do this together. My 1st time I was in there, I was on huge alert for deaths cause of the number of REDs on the ground. After I dies the 1st time, I read a message or two and they all said different variations of seek death, O death and then death O death. Other hints etc, and while for someone like you in offline, it is bad, however I would argue they may have honestly planned for it to be a online thing. Which I can see an argument against sure. Just wanted to toss out the idea since that's all we can do :D
And I do love the community involvement, but if the puzzles initial solution is just trial and error, I think it's not a very good puzzle. Even if I find out the solution from a friend or an online message, I want the solution to be interesting and something I could have intuited through hints/dialogue/environmental cues, etc.
@@BlueLizardJello In before cut dialogue from vaati or zulli saying FROM had it there in some capacity, but they threw it out. XD then we can be in the "BUT WHY CROWD" Cause yeah, more in game direction or hints would have been nice.
Hi, Blue! Thank you so much for this let's play, I'm really enjoying the way you play the game and take your time looking at things and just let us fully enjoy the atmosphere. So glad I found your channel, it's always been a challenge for me to find a let's play I like when it comes to souls games. So yeah, I decided to pipe up here because of the St.Trina's quest. Totally understand your frustration, I guess I'd also be mad at first after learning about what should be done here! That's definitely not a good puzzle. But on second thought, maybe it's not trying to be one? We're dealing with a dying (?) non-human entity, whose ways are hard to comprehend even for their most devoted admirers. So the illogical nature of the quest kind of makes sense from the lore point of view? Not a great game design decision, I agree, but to my experience developers, especially such unconventional ones as Miyazaki, sometimes consciously arrive to it to make the players feel in a certain way. It may be irritating and hard to comprehend, but maybe that was the creator's vision. Anyhow, I'm definitely not saying you're not allowed to feel the way you feel about this quest, just wanted to share a different perspective! Thank you again for the videos, I'm getting back to watch them, can't wait to catch up!
I could not disagree more about the quest design. If you're using words like "intuitive" and "user experience", or complaining that not everybody will experience all the secrets (which you literally say), then your expectations are just upside-down. Here's the counter-point: even for such an obscure quest, you found out what to do, almost immediately. You even guessed at what you had to do, the only gap was that you didn't do it enough times. If you'd tried once more (which maybe you would have done eventually, coming back here later), you would have been jumping up and down with excitement instead of criticising it. Maybe you wouldn't understand what prompted the change - but that's fine! For me, I love the fact that not everybody will find everything. Everybody has a unique experience, and that's what makes the launch window of a new FS game particularly exciting. You didn't find anything, your friend Blind Playthroughs did, and then you immediately think "wow! I need to go try that!". Or maybe you don't find it at all, that's fine too. But your experience is unique and personal to you; you're not just checking off boxes along a predetermined, linear path. And yes, FromSoft has always done this. Most players experience DeS without understanding the tendency mechanic at all, and parts of the world are locked-out because they're not pure white/black, and in Dark Souls 1, enormous areas like the Great Hollow or boss fights like Gwyndolin are hidden behind illusory walls, and hardly anybody will discover how to get to the Painted World totally organically. Access to the Haligtree is gated behind a guy who hides in an illusory pot! "Not everybody will experience everything on a blind playthrough" - you could translate to Latin and put it on the FromSoftware family crest. It is who they are, and that's what most of us love about them. A lot of companies value intuition and user experience -- and it takes bravery to go the opposite direction and keep secrets from the player. This isn't an accident, or a mistake, it is very much deliberate. Remember that Miyazaki got in to game design because he would read fantasy books in a language he didn't fully understand. These worlds keep secrets from you, and that's what makes them so magical. I don't think you are comfortable with that (and it's fine - I'm not attacking you; I enjoy your playthroughs even though we disagree on this point). I remember in your first run of the Elden Ring base game, you stumbled upon the Frenzied Flame and accepted it, but chickened-out and googled how to reverse it (turns out, the consequences are minor/non-existent, and your fears were overblown, but it's telling that you couldn't just roll with it). Sometimes you need to just accept not knowing, accept that you will miss things, and accept and appreciate that these fantasy worlds are full of enigmas.
Also, as for the argument that people would have even less chance of finding these things before the internet, the counter-point is simple: it's 2024. The internet does exist, has been broadly available for decades, and is firmly entrenched in our society and culture by this point. I'm 35, and my family (not very well off, in the UK) had internet access since I was maybe 8 or 10 years old. I also remember game magazines, but the truth is that for more and more people, the pre-internet era is so far back that we were very, very young children back then. It's time to let go of the "what if no internet" mindset IMO.
I have no issue disagreeing on this, but I also think you wildly misunderstood the point that I was trying to make. You focus on me expecting to experience every secret during a blind playthrough and if I said that, then I wildly misspoke. My rant was about proper game design and I do believe that From Software covers the entire spectrum of game design; from the positively brilliantly contrived puzzles and secrets to the terribly obscure and darn-near-impossible to solve examples. I don't expect to see and do all in a single playthrough. However, when I come across a puzzle in their games (and Elden Ring has the most puzzles by a large margin and it's also their most recent game, so it is the focus), I *do* expect that the solution has been or will be telegraphed within the game itself. It can be obscure. It can be hidden. It can be crytpic. But it should be there. I firmly believe that no puzzle that is expected to be solved through "trial and error" is a smart puzzle. The "solution" to getting dialogue out of St. Trina is not a smart puzzle. The "solution" to the tower in the base game where you need to use the Erudition gesture while wearing a glintstone helm is not a smart puzzle. Using in-game descriptions, NPC dialogue, the environment itself to clue the player in to the solutions would change these drastically. Again, I don't expect or even want to find everything during a single playthrough. But when I miss the solution to a puzzle and I find out what said solution is, I expect to go "Ohh! I see why that's the answer!" I'm comfortable having things hidden from me. I'm not comfortable with calling these examples smart game mechanics. World/character tendency is another great example that you brought up. I actually *love* the mechanics! And I love that the mechanics are explained in the game, but they are subtle! the archstones become lighter or darker. Phantoms appear. Souls gained per kill change. Even the worlds themselves may be altered. But If you're paying very close attention, it is explained to some degree. I would argue some tweaking is necessary to make it truly fun, but it's not a trial and error puzzle like some of Elden Ring's are. And that's where my issue lies. And at the end of the day, it is a truly minor issue for me in such a massively and exquisitely crafted game.
Just to tell you Blue, I'm at the end of the game and I've only found those 2 altars for duplicating remembrances, and while I can easily state I likely haven't found them all yet, as I didn't explore some areas in detail, I feel like there mustn't be many more than those on the DLC. The base game has only 7 remembrance duplications, so the DLC for sure has less than that. I think you'll enjoy the lore implications of the fingers questline, if you manage to do the majority of the steps.
The way FromSoft told you to do it multiple time was from Thiollier's dialogue : "you musn't follow my example" = you should definitly follow his example "Why won't you share your voice with me. Grant me more of your poison that I might drift further into sleep. Perhaps then you'll grace me with your voice" = continue to drink more poison to drift further into sleep until you hear her voice. Definitly missable, but that's how I understood that we had to do it repeatedly. I think it would have been better if Thiollier didn't say this just one time, because after that he asks to be left alone, and if you didnt really hear that second dialogue, you're on your own from there.
Even though I agree with you that the design of St.Trina's quest is weak and not well designed, I think it's not something really new by From Software. One could argue that the 30 seconds waiting on DS1 to be taken by a bird could be considered unintuitive as well.
That's the thing, it's not new. It's just widely accepted at this point. I think it's bad design and relies on luck/trial and error and word of mouth. However, this isn't their norm. They have some great puzzles! I just don't want to turn a blind eye when they miss the mark.
Fair enough. I agree. I also think that Cerulean Coast/Charo's Hidden Grave and a few areas you didn't reach yet were a major letdown in terms of exploration and rewards. It's beautiful, but it's an empty space.
I think Miazaki has gone on record saying something like that Elden Ring is just the beginning Its good, but it's not what he thinks of as a masterpiece from him yet or something...
Why oh why oh why in the world can we summon help just as we approach the center of the Finger Ruins? Is it possible we are all somehow missing some kind of secret boss encounter? There is no reason to have a summons there at all. It feels like a bad joke bait and switch or an unfinished encounter. So confused by this place. The ridges on the ground are, of course, a giant whorl fingerprint. I didn't figure out what to do with St. Trina, but I can take a little solace in the fact that I fingered this bit out.
I think there is cut content here. I can't imagine there is still a hidden encounter (as much as I would love there to be one.) Either that, or From really wanted us to be unnerved. Looking over our shoulder. Amazing locations visually and thematically. Unfortunately, style over substance. Even if we get some interesting lore tidbits, it ultimately comes from +1 version of talismans and NPC dialogue in another location entirely. And OF COURSE the ridges are the whorls of a fingerprint. Ahhh! I shouldn't have missed that.
I agree with what you said about the St. Trina quest. Players have to do this six times, seven to be sure, and with only the subtlest of hints to urge the players to continue. Why make something so important so easily missable? We all know how much you love FromSoft games and how experienced you are with them and you missed this. If Elden Ring is a player’s first FromSoft game, they may not even be aware of the “exhaust the dialogue” mechanic that experienced players are aware of.
Maybe it's just me, but I hated this puzzle idea here. It is fine to do the same thing 2-3 times for different results but making it so many times where all u get is a small change in dialogue is just wasteful and annoying. I hate those designs where u think just making it a chore is a way to increase difficulty. This is basically the quest design of Final Fantasy series (usually the collectible ones) or Assassin's creed series. Even watching the same animation 7-8 times was a pain.
I find your take on the St. Trina puzzle a bit poor. Why should all puzzles be logical(as long as they are somewhat reasonable), especially in a game where you get messages from other players telling you about secrets? Why do you think you are supposed to be able solve all puzzles yourself? And the argument about if it was before youtube is just... They design these things with the knowledge we live in times where all secrets will be in wikis and visldeos in the next few days. And even if it wasn't so, what's wrong with discovering secrets by talking to other players or years later?
Because who solves it first and how? Blind luck? An accident? Does that person even know what they just did to solve it? I'm not upset if people enjoy this mechanic of someone using trial and error or brute force (or let's be real here, data mining) to find an answer and then spread that information. But for me, that isn't fun at all. If I'm presented with a puzzle, I deserve a chance as a player to solve it using context clues, environmental storytelling, unique items descriptions, NPC dialogue, etc. The answer can still be a challenge, but it should be based in some sort of logic in my opinion..
7:51 God, Thiollier was such a creepy character. I disliked him very early on because of the way he talked about Miquella and St Trina and how he was obsessed with her even though St Trina is Miquella and not - at that point/to anyone's knowledge - a separate entity. I have a whole theory that Miquella's essentially, in part, a metaphor for trans men to some degree, if not literally a trans man himself, so Thiollier's dialogue had some really creepy transphobia to it but like, the description of the talisman he drops just seals the deal for me, he's just a huge creep regardless of whether Miquella's whole deal is meant to be a trans narrative. can dudes just stop being so weird and possessive about other people, it's so gross i wrote this part of my comment before i watched further; now im aware hes not Dead because he's still, you know, breathing and talking and hasnt dropped his armor or anything. he'll probably come back at some point. but for a brief moment, i was relieved because i believed he was dead lol 9:52 yeah, st trina, nothing says forgiveness like murdering the guy. i dont trust that flower lookin weirdo. if we are expected to trust her, i have no idea why. tbh I'm still on miquella's side. yeah sure he can compel people to do stuff and that's not great BUT other than the inherent problematic nature of ignoring other people's automomy, i dont know if there's anything to suggest he has bad intentions. we DO know that he's the only one who actually did anything to help Malenia as she was actively dying from a horrible degenerative disease. we know he was in the process of creating the Haligtree as a safe haven for people who have been harmed and rejected by society. I'm not about to trust St Trina's word just because she has a wobbly voice. she is by no means an objective, reliable source. she was yeeted out of Miquella; its not crazy to imagine she's a little peeved by that because maybe she doesn't want to just kinda float around in an incorporeal state. we have absolutely no evidence to suggest she's trustworthy. a quavering voice isn't enough in my mind to overcome the weight of what we know to be true about Miquella. as they say, actions speak louder than words. 20:13 tbh i think healthy, substantive criticism reflects a great respect for a piece of media. if you don't care about something, you're not going to waste time and energy on it. if i don't care about something and there's something about it that isn't great, I'll just say it sucks and move on. I think thats very common. but when you love something and respect it and its creators enough to engage meaningfully with it and conclude there are imperfections, that demonstrates real love. imo, someone who articulates ways that fromsoft can grow and continue to develop and improve is a more passionate fan than someone who doesn't have the emotional capacity to know how to see something for what it is and still love it
You're my favourite Souls UA-camr, BLJ! I really should lend some support more often.
What?!
No real words, thank you so much! I'm happy enough to have you part of this community and commenting on videos. This is too much!!
Another thought as a result of the St. Trina quest. I’ve commented this before, but want to do it again. I love that you, Blind and your community are sharing knowledge and helping each other figure this out. You are not taking the stance of “Well, I figured this out on my own, so I’m a better player than you, so why should I help you?” Yes, answers can be looked up so easily now, but it’s nice to get direct help and support.
The only clue is after the third try, thiollier says something along the lines of "why can't I hear you, grant me more of your poison so I may hear you" when you enter. I feel like fromsoft has been moving towards a "players figured the last one out, make it tougher to figure out" thing with some of their secrets.
I do want complex puzzles! But I want puzzles that ultimately can be solved with logic. Not trial and error and random experimentation.
A thousand piece puzzle is a challenge. A thousand piece puzzle where some of the pieces are cut irregularly and don't fit is a tedium.
@@BlueLizardJello yes! obscurity and waiting around for people to brute force their way to the solution is not a substitute for complexity. that's not complexity. that's just directionless trial and error.
a good puzzle requires you to put the pieces together, to look at the pile of dialogue and environmental clues to develop a solution. a bad puzzle asks you to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. and sometimes, we will throw spaghetti at the wall anyway but that's because we failed to pay attention. a good puzzle is always solvable by looking at the available evidence and putting the pieces together - and looking for new, unexpected ways to put the puzzle together if your first approach doesn't work. that's not the same thing as throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Yeah, the finger ruins have been extremely disappointing to me. Massive area, extremely cool possible lore implications, but you ring a bell and then nothing.
Don't know if anyone pointed this out before here, but Metyr is the archetypical word for Mother in Greek. Being Greek definitely put a lot of this questline into perspective from the start! Damn I love fromsoft's cryptic brand of exposition! (great series Blue as always!)
I feel like enjoying these types of puzzles is profoundly subjective. For example stubborn repetition because you feel there is something more there, and you try again and again is rewarding to me because of my own idiosyncrasies. In this case there is more to it I think than previous puzzles you had got used to and now rely on in terms of expectations or formulas (I didn’t play Bloodborne for example). St. Trina not only is associated with sleep but also with addiction and drugs that make you forcefully asleep and looking at Thiollier also addicted and passive and obsessive. His character and his dialogue were the bigger clues. So you need to do it enough times to reach the domain of St. Trina: after all addictions are a form of self harm that you can’t help but doing repeatedly, at the risk of your safety and sanity. St. Trina isn’t to me a fully positive character. But I don’t want to go into it too deep, also because I know now the ending of the DLC and that influence my other arguments. Missing this dialogue might piss off someone who aims to complete everything and wants lore pieces, but can mean going forward with stronger bias than actually useful knowledge. I don’t know how to explain it better, again I think the same experience can be profoundly different from one person to another. But I respect your opinion and also I hated searching for turtles lol ❤
watching this from Jamaica during hurricane beryl
Be safe!
Blue your souls video format is absolutely amazing on another level. And you are the only one that keep doin like this (aside of epic namebro that never make this kind of format again)
Your sense of exploration and your thoughts about every aspect of the game, lore, detail observation and mechanics, are what makes a perfect souls Walkthrought for me. I love you keep that on blind playthrought.
The only thing about the 6 times, im assuming it has to do with the 6 crosses, each representing a time Mequilla died/left a part of his body. Its not intuitive, which i agree
"Are u a lampray?"
"Nop, I am imaginary" 🤣🤣
Sometimes I amuse myself.
@@BlueLizardJello u sure do and we love u for it 👍😄
You use those cirques for as long as you want. They are great and no fp to throw is icing on the cake. Might have missed it, but are you using the talisman that boosts throwing weapons?
I sure am!
I wholeheartedly agree. I for one am not in the least bit tired of seeing them in action either.
and they nerfed them... / (Fixed scaling bugs) NOOOOO!!!!!!!! Blue got to use them BEFORE YOU COULD TAKE THEM FROM US! AHAHA
@@SLADE3128 But they're still awesome! I was using them today after the patch.
@@BlueLizardJello Whew, wasn't sure how much it would affect you! :D glad it isn't too bad
I think you have valid points. Also, the weirdest part to me is the complete contrast between blatantly telling players the (very obvious) weak point on the golem enemies, but having barely, if any, hints on St Trina.
I absolutely agree with what you've said about game design. I was in a similar situation, I had progressed Thiollier's quest in a different way, I'm not sure what I did but he did leave his initial spot but wasn't down in St. Trina's cave. So I had even less of a clue that you had to keep ingesting the poison. I did it three times because, just as you said, three is the magic number for trying something. And nothing happened so I had no reason to continue, maybe I was lacking an item or story progression. Just keep trying is just not good game design. I have the same feeling about some of the hidden doors in this DLC. The one with the hidden spiritspring that you found earlier at least gives you a visual clue if you look around a bit but there is one where there's absolutely no hint at an illusory wall and it's a quite important one. I'm not running through every dungeon, castle or catacomb and hit every possible wall just for the possibility of a hidden path, I think it's silly to expect that from your players.
I think you have a valid point about how esoteric some stuff is in this game. I think that these games have different “tiers” of player base. There are casual players who mainly want to Moonveil everything in the face. There are players who want to fight every boss and really engage with the game. Then there are the true freaks who want to do everything possible. The message explaining how to fight the golems is for the Moonveiler. The Malenia boss fight is for the second tier, and the St Trina quest is for the third.
Me and yourself being among the true freaks
The St. Trina quest was definitely a mess I only progressed because every once in a while I checked in on Thiollier and eventually she spoke to me. However, I was able to eventually get it although I agree it should be cleared unlike the warming stone on the brood which I would never figure out on my own.
Dziękujemy.
Nie ma za co, dziękujemy!
Great fan of your playthroughs, Blue! I am very happy about all the biology facts that I learn from your playthroughs :) Wasn't expecting that from an Elden Ring playthrough!! Btw, the finger ruins actually remind me of Xylaria polymorpha or dead man's fingers fungi.
Im not sure which disappointed me more , having to die 6 times or the fact that St Trina is a plant pokemon.
Amanita mushroom “eggs” lookup completed. Thanks for the lesson, haha. The fingers definitely look like that.
Has anyone tried to hit Thiollier during the fight with that eternal sleep you found on upper levels of fissure earlier?
I really enjoy both your enthusiasm for exploring these areas and your outside-world knowledge of things like mushrooms and reptiles that you bring to these videos! And the positive interactions with your commenters! Too many people either ignore UA-cam comments or have very toxic interactions with viewers. Overall even when I find myself frustrated with something specific you’re doing in game I really enjoy watching you do it (and hey, that’s why I play the game myself- to do everything the way I would! It’d be boring if everyone I watched did the same exact things :)
Blue's hated +1 talisman as a reward for that area is just a final gutpunch...
I'm writing a sternly worded letter.
I agree with the puzzle issues for the most part, however you prefer to not play online with the community for you 1st play through and that is Great and fine. The design philosophy they may have intended was for this to be a message / community thing, to have people do this together. My 1st time I was in there, I was on huge alert for deaths cause of the number of REDs on the ground. After I dies the 1st time, I read a message or two and they all said different variations of seek death, O death and then death O death. Other hints etc, and while for someone like you in offline, it is bad, however I would argue they may have honestly planned for it to be a online thing. Which I can see an argument against sure. Just wanted to toss out the idea since that's all we can do :D
And I do love the community involvement, but if the puzzles initial solution is just trial and error, I think it's not a very good puzzle. Even if I find out the solution from a friend or an online message, I want the solution to be interesting and something I could have intuited through hints/dialogue/environmental cues, etc.
@@BlueLizardJello In before cut dialogue from vaati or zulli saying FROM had it there in some capacity, but they threw it out. XD then we can be in the "BUT WHY CROWD" Cause yeah, more in game direction or hints would have been nice.
I believe that FromSoft's logic was: every player knows that you have to try it three times, so what can we do? Let's make it four 🙂
Hi, Blue!
Thank you so much for this let's play, I'm really enjoying the way you play the game and take your time looking at things and just let us fully enjoy the atmosphere. So glad I found your channel, it's always been a challenge for me to find a let's play I like when it comes to souls games.
So yeah, I decided to pipe up here because of the St.Trina's quest. Totally understand your frustration, I guess I'd also be mad at first after learning about what should be done here! That's definitely not a good puzzle. But on second thought, maybe it's not trying to be one? We're dealing with a dying (?) non-human entity, whose ways are hard to comprehend even for their most devoted admirers. So the illogical nature of the quest kind of makes sense from the lore point of view? Not a great game design decision, I agree, but to my experience developers, especially such unconventional ones as Miyazaki, sometimes consciously arrive to it to make the players feel in a certain way. It may be irritating and hard to comprehend, but maybe that was the creator's vision.
Anyhow, I'm definitely not saying you're not allowed to feel the way you feel about this quest, just wanted to share a different perspective! Thank you again for the videos, I'm getting back to watch them, can't wait to catch up!
I could not disagree more about the quest design. If you're using words like "intuitive" and "user experience", or complaining that not everybody will experience all the secrets (which you literally say), then your expectations are just upside-down.
Here's the counter-point: even for such an obscure quest, you found out what to do, almost immediately. You even guessed at what you had to do, the only gap was that you didn't do it enough times. If you'd tried once more (which maybe you would have done eventually, coming back here later), you would have been jumping up and down with excitement instead of criticising it. Maybe you wouldn't understand what prompted the change - but that's fine!
For me, I love the fact that not everybody will find everything. Everybody has a unique experience, and that's what makes the launch window of a new FS game particularly exciting. You didn't find anything, your friend Blind Playthroughs did, and then you immediately think "wow! I need to go try that!". Or maybe you don't find it at all, that's fine too. But your experience is unique and personal to you; you're not just checking off boxes along a predetermined, linear path.
And yes, FromSoft has always done this. Most players experience DeS without understanding the tendency mechanic at all, and parts of the world are locked-out because they're not pure white/black, and in Dark Souls 1, enormous areas like the Great Hollow or boss fights like Gwyndolin are hidden behind illusory walls, and hardly anybody will discover how to get to the Painted World totally organically. Access to the Haligtree is gated behind a guy who hides in an illusory pot! "Not everybody will experience everything on a blind playthrough" - you could translate to Latin and put it on the FromSoftware family crest. It is who they are, and that's what most of us love about them. A lot of companies value intuition and user experience -- and it takes bravery to go the opposite direction and keep secrets from the player. This isn't an accident, or a mistake, it is very much deliberate. Remember that Miyazaki got in to game design because he would read fantasy books in a language he didn't fully understand. These worlds keep secrets from you, and that's what makes them so magical.
I don't think you are comfortable with that (and it's fine - I'm not attacking you; I enjoy your playthroughs even though we disagree on this point). I remember in your first run of the Elden Ring base game, you stumbled upon the Frenzied Flame and accepted it, but chickened-out and googled how to reverse it (turns out, the consequences are minor/non-existent, and your fears were overblown, but it's telling that you couldn't just roll with it). Sometimes you need to just accept not knowing, accept that you will miss things, and accept and appreciate that these fantasy worlds are full of enigmas.
Also, as for the argument that people would have even less chance of finding these things before the internet, the counter-point is simple: it's 2024.
The internet does exist, has been broadly available for decades, and is firmly entrenched in our society and culture by this point. I'm 35, and my family (not very well off, in the UK) had internet access since I was maybe 8 or 10 years old. I also remember game magazines, but the truth is that for more and more people, the pre-internet era is so far back that we were very, very young children back then. It's time to let go of the "what if no internet" mindset IMO.
I have no issue disagreeing on this, but I also think you wildly misunderstood the point that I was trying to make. You focus on me expecting to experience every secret during a blind playthrough and if I said that, then I wildly misspoke. My rant was about proper game design and I do believe that From Software covers the entire spectrum of game design; from the positively brilliantly contrived puzzles and secrets to the terribly obscure and darn-near-impossible to solve examples.
I don't expect to see and do all in a single playthrough. However, when I come across a puzzle in their games (and Elden Ring has the most puzzles by a large margin and it's also their most recent game, so it is the focus), I *do* expect that the solution has been or will be telegraphed within the game itself. It can be obscure. It can be hidden. It can be crytpic. But it should be there. I firmly believe that no puzzle that is expected to be solved through "trial and error" is a smart puzzle.
The "solution" to getting dialogue out of St. Trina is not a smart puzzle. The "solution" to the tower in the base game where you need to use the Erudition gesture while wearing a glintstone helm is not a smart puzzle. Using in-game descriptions, NPC dialogue, the environment itself to clue the player in to the solutions would change these drastically.
Again, I don't expect or even want to find everything during a single playthrough. But when I miss the solution to a puzzle and I find out what said solution is, I expect to go "Ohh! I see why that's the answer!"
I'm comfortable having things hidden from me. I'm not comfortable with calling these examples smart game mechanics.
World/character tendency is another great example that you brought up. I actually *love* the mechanics! And I love that the mechanics are explained in the game, but they are subtle! the archstones become lighter or darker. Phantoms appear. Souls gained per kill change. Even the worlds themselves may be altered. But If you're paying very close attention, it is explained to some degree. I would argue some tweaking is necessary to make it truly fun, but it's not a trial and error puzzle like some of Elden Ring's are. And that's where my issue lies.
And at the end of the day, it is a truly minor issue for me in such a massively and exquisitely crafted game.
27:53
Frozen bird's shadow
Print magazines?! What kind of sorcery is this?!
Back in my day, magazines were chiseled on stone tablets!
@@BlueLizardJello back in my day smoke signals and only once a day from the East!
@@drtoe9182 Heaven help you if the wind was blowing.
Just to tell you Blue, I'm at the end of the game and I've only found those 2 altars for duplicating remembrances, and while I can easily state I likely haven't found them all yet, as I didn't explore some areas in detail, I feel like there mustn't be many more than those on the DLC.
The base game has only 7 remembrance duplications, so the DLC for sure has less than that.
I think you'll enjoy the lore implications of the fingers questline, if you manage to do the majority of the steps.
You could try putting the lampreys to sleep to get a closer look?
The way FromSoft told you to do it multiple time was from Thiollier's dialogue : "you musn't follow my example" = you should definitly follow his example "Why won't you share your voice with me. Grant me more of your poison that I might drift further into sleep. Perhaps then you'll grace me with your voice" = continue to drink more poison to drift further into sleep until you hear her voice.
Definitly missable, but that's how I understood that we had to do it repeatedly. I think it would have been better if Thiollier didn't say this just one time, because after that he asks to be left alone, and if you didnt really hear that second dialogue, you're on your own from there.
Im not sure if you know this, but the spirit worms head turn red when they’re mad.
The thing about fromsoft and Miyazaki want us to explore and engage is why this souls game is a big win for gaming industry
Even though I agree with you that the design of St.Trina's quest is weak and not well designed, I think it's not something really new by From Software. One could argue that the 30 seconds waiting on DS1 to be taken by a bird could be considered unintuitive as well.
That's the thing, it's not new. It's just widely accepted at this point. I think it's bad design and relies on luck/trial and error and word of mouth. However, this isn't their norm. They have some great puzzles! I just don't want to turn a blind eye when they miss the mark.
Fair enough. I agree. I also think that Cerulean Coast/Charo's Hidden Grave and a few areas you didn't reach yet were a major letdown in terms of exploration and rewards. It's beautiful, but it's an empty space.
I think Miazaki has gone on record saying something like that Elden Ring is just the beginning
Its good, but it's not what he thinks of as a masterpiece from him yet or something...
Yes he recently said that Elden Ring is close to his perfect fantasy RPG, but not quite.
@@BlueLizardJelloCan't wait to see what his true masterpiece is
It's very disappointing how empty the finger ruins are.
Why oh why oh why in the world can we summon help just as we approach the center of the Finger Ruins? Is it possible we are all somehow missing some kind of secret boss encounter? There is no reason to have a summons there at all. It feels like a bad joke bait and switch or an unfinished encounter. So confused by this place. The ridges on the ground are, of course, a giant whorl fingerprint. I didn't figure out what to do with St. Trina, but I can take a little solace in the fact that I fingered this bit out.
I think there is cut content here. I can't imagine there is still a hidden encounter (as much as I would love there to be one.)
Either that, or From really wanted us to be unnerved. Looking over our shoulder.
Amazing locations visually and thematically. Unfortunately, style over substance. Even if we get some interesting lore tidbits, it ultimately comes from +1 version of talismans and NPC dialogue in another location entirely.
And OF COURSE the ridges are the whorls of a fingerprint. Ahhh! I shouldn't have missed that.
Love the series blue you do amazing work. Wondering will you be going back to the everything possisble in the base game series?
18 mins in a silly cave. Plato!
Are you telling on me to an ancient Greek philosopher?
I agree with what you said about the St. Trina quest. Players have to do this six times, seven to be sure, and with only the subtlest of hints to urge the players to continue. Why make something so important so easily missable? We all know how much you love FromSoft games and how experienced you are with them and you missed this. If Elden Ring is a player’s first FromSoft game, they may not even be aware of the “exhaust the dialogue” mechanic that experienced players are aware of.
Maybe it's just me, but I hated this puzzle idea here. It is fine to do the same thing 2-3 times for different results but making it so many times where all u get is a small change in dialogue is just wasteful and annoying. I hate those designs where u think just making it a chore is a way to increase difficulty. This is basically the quest design of Final Fantasy series (usually the collectible ones) or Assassin's creed series. Even watching the same animation 7-8 times was a pain.
Watching a load screen 6 times from imbibing is not exciting gameplay especially on the ps4 it gets a bit long
Right? It wasn't well designed unfortunately.
Hello guys,i have a huge favour to ask. I'm on ps4,i completely ruined a quest. Can anyone help me with ash of war-swift slash?
I find your take on the St. Trina puzzle a bit poor. Why should all puzzles be logical(as long as they are somewhat reasonable), especially in a game where you get messages from other players telling you about secrets? Why do you think you are supposed to be able solve all puzzles yourself?
And the argument about if it was before youtube is just... They design these things with the knowledge we live in times where all secrets will be in wikis and visldeos in the next few days.
And even if it wasn't so, what's wrong with discovering secrets by talking to other players or years later?
Because who solves it first and how? Blind luck? An accident?
Does that person even know what they just did to solve it?
I'm not upset if people enjoy this mechanic of someone using trial and error or brute force (or let's be real here, data mining) to find an answer and then spread that information.
But for me, that isn't fun at all. If I'm presented with a puzzle, I deserve a chance as a player to solve it using context clues, environmental storytelling, unique items descriptions, NPC dialogue, etc. The answer can still be a challenge, but it should be based in some sort of logic in my opinion..
7:51 God, Thiollier was such a creepy character. I disliked him very early on because of the way he talked about Miquella and St Trina and how he was obsessed with her even though St Trina is Miquella and not - at that point/to anyone's knowledge - a separate entity. I have a whole theory that Miquella's essentially, in part, a metaphor for trans men to some degree, if not literally a trans man himself, so Thiollier's dialogue had some really creepy transphobia to it
but like, the description of the talisman he drops just seals the deal for me, he's just a huge creep regardless of whether Miquella's whole deal is meant to be a trans narrative. can dudes just stop being so weird and possessive about other people, it's so gross
i wrote this part of my comment before i watched further; now im aware hes not Dead because he's still, you know, breathing and talking and hasnt dropped his armor or anything. he'll probably come back at some point. but for a brief moment, i was relieved because i believed he was dead lol
9:52 yeah, st trina, nothing says forgiveness like murdering the guy. i dont trust that flower lookin weirdo. if we are expected to trust her, i have no idea why. tbh I'm still on miquella's side. yeah sure he can compel people to do stuff and that's not great BUT other than the inherent problematic nature of ignoring other people's automomy, i dont know if there's anything to suggest he has bad intentions. we DO know that he's the only one who actually did anything to help Malenia as she was actively dying from a horrible degenerative disease. we know he was in the process of creating the Haligtree as a safe haven for people who have been harmed and rejected by society.
I'm not about to trust St Trina's word just because she has a wobbly voice. she is by no means an objective, reliable source. she was yeeted out of Miquella; its not crazy to imagine she's a little peeved by that because maybe she doesn't want to just kinda float around in an incorporeal state. we have absolutely no evidence to suggest she's trustworthy. a quavering voice isn't enough in my mind to overcome the weight of what we know to be true about Miquella. as they say, actions speak louder than words.
20:13 tbh i think healthy, substantive criticism reflects a great respect for a piece of media. if you don't care about something, you're not going to waste time and energy on it. if i don't care about something and there's something about it that isn't great, I'll just say it sucks and move on. I think thats very common. but when you love something and respect it and its creators enough to engage meaningfully with it and conclude there are imperfections, that demonstrates real love. imo, someone who articulates ways that fromsoft can grow and continue to develop and improve is a more passionate fan than someone who doesn't have the emotional capacity to know how to see something for what it is and still love it