Nah, not getting mad, I mean you said it yourself I think. Mr. Martin wrote the characters base, who they are because of who they really were. But Miyazaki distorted them as they used the power of the rune fragments they had and the problems they experienced after the shattering all these years. As much as I respect and admire the works of G.R.R. Martin I clearly see how Miyazaki deviated some characters from what they might have been originally and they are now heavily influenced by other works, such as Berserk as an example. Clearly, Miquella was not Griffith but Miyazaki basically turned him(her?) into that, the whole Eclipse thing, Miquella's cocoon... So sure, kind and pure Miquella was created by Martin but changed by Miyazaki and the events post The Shattering. Don't know yet what's to come but the references are really clear to me, at least in that specific case. :) Anyway very good video it was really interesting to hear about all the work and these interviews. I really enjoyed it. ❤
i loved the part when Boc said "There is nothing more powerful in the world than a good story. And who has a better story than Miquella the Mangled?" and miquella became the elden lord. Everyone clapped
I just don’t want to accept that a guy who destroyed modern fantasy made something good. Granted he had several other writers to keep him in check. But at least with Elden Ring he helped fix it.
I’m glad people are finally making content regarding grrm’s contributions to ER. I got into ER because of my love for ASOIAF and the similarities between the two are absolutely insane. It feels almost like a disservice to make theories about ER without knowing a bit about grrm’s work to me. They have so many themes in common it enhances analysis of both franchises.
I’m kinda the opposite version of you, I got into GRRM after falling in love with Elden Ring. I watched GOT which was so good it got me back into reading. Currently on aCoK. I’d love to hear some of your ASOIAF related ER theories.
Dark Souls lore nerds looking to Berserk for explanations of Elden Ring Lore, meanwhile ASOIAF lore nerds are mining Elden Ring looking for spoilers for A Dream of Spring. 🤣
LITERALLY ME, the moment i saw the magma wyrms i was like I KNEW IT theyre giant lava salamanders with an amphibian lifecycle (in the books). esp when you consider aerea's horrible death due to being infested by parasitic tadpoles that required a hot environment to survive. and miquella on radahns back reminded me of hodor. miquella's charm powers reminded me of warging as well at least in the way bran wields it, which is tyrannical . not to mention the zamor warriors being white walkers as well as the parallels between farum azula and old valyria
I've been saying something similar to this since launch day. People are ignoring GRRMs works and only focusing on the story aspects they are familiarized with though Miyazakis works. I still believe that GRRM gave away the ending to of ASOIAF for Elden Ring, Marika/Radagon being the stand in for Bloodraven/Bran with the big twist being they are vassals of the Elden Beast (The Great Other)
The endings are very GRRM: you have Fire(Frenzy), Ice(Dark Moon), or status quo with minor change(Mending Rune/Fracture Ending). The last one may not make sense until you realize the mending runes are all shaped like different types of Suns, and that the Sun Realm has long faded away...
Look into Lucifer means Lightbringer aSoIaF theories. YEARS before Elden Ring ever came out he reasoned that the Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa were fighting against each other within the Weirwood network. To me that sounds exactly like the Radagon/Marika situation. It's astonishing how right he was.
@@JackisaMimic Do you really believe that the mending rune, made to complete the ring and reject all outer god influence is a small change to the status quo?
@@realfnneato3111not outer gods, just gods like Marika and her offsprings, that's why the mending rune says "The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology, can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods no better than men." The rune is blaming everything the gods like Marika, Ranni, Malenia etc for everything wrong with the lands between.
There's creatures in Martin's books that are massive aliens traveling through the cosmos and is said that they can give/increased Magic/psychic powers. There's a theory that the red comet in Asoiaf is one of them. I wonder if that was part of the inspiration for astel
Read his Thousand World books (or watch Preston Jacobs on UA-cam) and you will not be shocked! In my Carian history video I joke about how Memory Stones kind of look like a cellphone's black screen when turned off and the "Lost Black Moon" that they came from may be an exploded space ship. It's very GRRM, and while I dont think in Elden Ring its ACTUALLY a lost space ship, it very well could have been what GRRM envisioned when he wrote about the Numen who come from another world.
In Japanese, the Outer Gods are more explicitly meant to be aspects of existence excluded by the Golden Order not lovecraftian creatures. They are arguably forces of nature not sentient others like the Great Ones. I tend to think Astel and malformed stars are born from the currents and again not terribly sentient
@@JackisaMimic Yo, the fact you mention Thousand World books ... my hat's off to you. This is the first video of yours I've ever watched. Just started the video but was strolling through the comments and this caught me, hehe
GRRM having him involved in the story is the biggest thing that got me interested into Elden ring., and I really felt a lot of Georges writing style throughout the story.
Same! I was hooked to ASoIaF the instant I started to watch lore videos. He's a lore master, you can speculate on so many levels about the worlds and plots he creates
@allthe1 this may be bad but I first read a game of thrones when I was 12, and I was obsessed with the fantasy genre. GRRM is my all time favorite writer. The lore and the world building is absolutely MASTERCLASS, his creativity is actually insane and he’s a garden writer so he has a small idea and writes then it expands like holy shit his ideas just come at him. I love Tolkien don’t get my wrong LOTR is amazing but the dialogue, the world building, the drama, all the political intrigue that goes on is absolutely immaculate. Sorry if I’m glazing this man like Kristy Kreme donuts. He’s just my favorite writer.
@@TheTrueAegonTargaryen I wish I had known ASoIaF earlier, I read it when I was about 30, after A1&2 of the show had come out. Still is one of my favorite authors of sci-fi/fantasy of all time! He built on the shoulders of giants, and he has this incredible synthetic imagination, a bit like a child's. You can really feel the real world politics and struggles of his life in his art.
@@TheTrueAegonTargaryen What I really enjoy about ASoIaF is the honest POV style. I think that was a dream of his to be able to pull this off in an epic fantasy series, and he really did it. I'm convinced he was inspired by The Karamazov Brothers, I know of nothing like the sort, it's completely revolutionary.
Dude you’re speaking facts. When you broke down the part about him writing these characters as “more human” vs what FromSoft turned them into means TON of character elements would stick around from GRRM’s writing.
Thank you for this. As much as I love Berserk, I feel like most of the lore fan base have become too hyperfixated on the possible references from Berserk, letting those references shape the lore in their minds, to an almost unhealthy degree. This video is a great reminder that, at the end of the day, George RR Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki are still the geniuses who created Elden Ring's narrative, not Kentaro Miura, as much of a genius as he was. People need to learn to separate inspiration from the actual product. As one commenter said, people are treating Elden Ring as basically "Berserk: the game," which I think is a great disservice to the masterpiece both of them had created.
Thank you! Elden ring is it's OWN universe completely SEPARATE from Berserk. The people trying to tie these two together are REACHING. Miyazaki wouldn't dare try to imprint ANYTHING Berserk into ER. Gotta remember, Miyazaki's baby is Kingsfield. Everything comes from Kingsfield.
@@Taylor-j8xthen why is it alright for people to compare jrrm other works? It's a separate thing like you just said. Inspiration for elden ring was drawn from more than once source.
Thank you for making this video. I think some people forget the importance and influence of Martin. He is a huge history nerd and it's written all over the mythos and world of Elden Ring and his books.
I'll probably make it a video in the future but here is a short reddit post I recently did about the origin to the name "The Lands Between" www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/1bc49f1/the_meaning_of_the_lands_between/ You are right, he is a HUGE history buff!
Thank you so much for this, as a massive fan of both A Song of Ice and Fire and Miyazaki's games one of the things I was most excited for was seeing a synthesis of crazy ASOIAF theories and Dark Souls lore hunting into creating a grander picture of the game but sadly the GRRM half was just totally neglected in general lore discussion and i ended up bouncing off. But im glad to see that seeming to change in recent weeks!
You and me both. It's why I made my channel, I wanted to try to steer the discussion in another direction, even if it is only slightly. A fish cannot change the course of the river, but when he leaps and breaches the surface, he can make ripples in the water.
Thank you, Jack. Far too many people have done George and themselves the tremendous disservice of disregarding the sheer scope of his legendary contributions which can be so easily felt infused with Miyazaki’s as you play through this world. Brilliant as always!
The writer who took the name of the Githyanki from GRRM's "Dying Of The Light" and put it into D&D was none other than Charles Stross, who's a pretty phenomenal author in his own right. He was the one who adapted them into what we see today.
Stross' contributions to not only science-fiction but also Dragon Magazine helped shape a lot of what we consider the "Spelljammer" setting today. Check out "The Atrocity Archives" as it's his best-known (and probably most well-rounded) work.
@@MapleFried The Launcry series is pretty damn good all the way through. Thanks for reminding me of his hand in Spelljammer - d'you know if those old Dragon articles are archived anywhere?
Nice one! I've felt like many people are quick to dismiss Martin's influence after what happened to GoT, but it would make sense for it to be everywhere. I would love more videos exploring any parallel you can find.
I think you may have misinterpreted the GRRM interview where he discusses not naming characters after his initials. The way he discusses that he’s named characters in previous works that begin with G, R, and M and it had nothing to do with it being about his initials makes it seem that he did name all of the key characters when it comes to the demigods/Radagon/Marika.
Yeah the alliterative naming convention definitely seems like Martin. Though maybe he didn't come up with all of them, maybe Miquella for example. Or maybe the DS2 thing is a coincidence.
@@been_rly_n2_paragliding_latelyMaybe is just the DS2 team pulling inspiration from GRRM. The last book of the series, A Dance with Dragon was released in 2011, while DS2 is from 2014, by that time the story of a young boy (Bran) and the big tree on top of Bloodraven's cave had been already out there since A Storm of Swords from the year 2000. There might be more of GRRM's works in Dark Souls than we imagine, :) not everything is Berserk like some people think. 😅
@@been_rly_n2_paragliding_lately It's a super coincidence. The god Quella in Dark Souls 2 is actually named Nera in Japanese. DS2 is general has a lot of names that have been localised into different names in English, perhaps because the translation team didn't feel like they vibed well in English. Vendrick was named Vanclad, Nashandra was Dyunashandra and Targray had the bizarre name Garainduuk. Worth mentioning that Miquella is just Mikera in Japanese.
Yes it’s possible that he didn’t name them all or they were slightly altered after the fact by From. It’s also possible that the characteristics or domains of specific characters wasn’t elaborated by Martin so when the team at From saw the name Miquella they decided to tie the character to dreams as a reference to Quella from DS2.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, I'm so glad you're bringing it up! George R.R Martin is an excellent writer, and not only do we need to remember him and his works more as we explore the lore, but we need to give him the credit he deserves! The DLC is just another exploration of Martin's characters and world, and Miyazaki's interpretation of those characters.
That reverse breakdown you did of Godrick was great makes me wonder what the process would’ve been like for someone like Radahn or even Godfrey, especially Serosh and the fact that’s he’s an extension of Godfrey’s emotions. Nevertheless very good video🙏🏽
I was laughing just thinking about how Godrick is literally wearing a coat of arms. I know we have a turtle wearing a pope hat but coat made of arms is the funniest thing to me
@@JackisaMimicI'm so glad someone else picked up on the turtle pope connection!! I remember watching someone stream the game and ranting about how grrm had basically no influence, and he SPECIFICALLY pointed out the turtle pope and said "you think THAT is something grrm would write in?" it was literally the worst example he could have possibly used 😂 the man wears a hat with his 'great and powerful turtle' on it everywhere he goes 😂 having the pope be a turtle is probably the most blatantly GRRM thing in the entire game
@@JackisaMimic My favourite pun is the Serpent Sages in Volcano Manor. They wear their embryonic sac as a head dress. They are literally eggheads. You can't tell me that isn't a GRRM thing to write in.
@@JackisaMimic I can see the equivalent being Martin writing "Radahn never abandoned his steed" and Miyazaki twisting that to "Radahn, despite growing to an enormous size, learned gravity magic so he would never have to abandon his steed".
I can picture GRRM writing something like "Radahn defied the stars" to mean he resisted the course of fate or fought against the odds, and Miyazaki making it much more literal. Or like "Godfrey's beloved pet calmed him and stayed his bloodlust."
After playing the DLC, the theme of cyclic vengeance being a core underlying theme of the entire mythos feels very GRRM. Miyazaki even kind of signposted this with Castle Morne and the Grafted Blade being an obvious nod to the Iron Throne. The whole point is that the foundations were flawed to begin with. You can't build eternity on sandstone. The only thing that does last forever is the hatred you inspire in those you step on to get what you want. The Frenzied Flame ending embodies this perfectly with Malenia vowing vengeance against you. Even burning all of existence away couldn't end the cycle of revenge...
Thank you for pointing this out, I think for most lore channels they are going by what they know, what and how it was in previous games, thus they easily overlook the importance of Martin in the lore and the world.
I am thrilled to see you addressing it. I am well conversant in both Elden Ring and ASOIAF lore and as happenstance would have it I can report that there are ASOIAF UA-cam lore channels finally delving into Elden Ring to try to predict what GRRM is up to. If you would be interested I think you should make a collab video with the channel Michael Talks About Stuff. He has expressed interest in talking to someone who knows a lot about Elden Ring Lore.
I've been going through GoT over the last few months and also getting into ASoIaF books again. Reading them and watching lore videos. If your only experience with Martin's work was the show I could see how people assume he didn't add much to ER. Because the show runner stripped most of the fantastically Elements from the show. Because they didn't like the magic part of the series as much. But the books have so many similarities with ER's world and mechanics
FINALLY. Before I indulge in this doubtlessly amazing video, let me say: This might not mean much to you but I absolutely love what you are doing. You are my favorite Elden Ring lore-tuber bar none and I've been refreshing your channel 3 times a day for the past week since discovering you. The way you look past the surface level clues and engage with the material on not just a "archeological" level but also on a meta level allows your analysis to have much greater depth than what I am used to from the usual Souls analysis. Not only are your analysis and discoveries great, but your character as well, be it the Black Swordsman, Jackivus Mimicus or Jack. Thank you for what you are doing.
it's kinda crazy that while miyazaki held a huge respect toward GRRM and literally state the GRRM is the one who wrote entierety of elden ring mythos. the fans underestimating it and treat GRRM like only play minor part of the story. he literally wrote the base of the lore and that might include shadow land which miyazaki continue to mess it up (in a good way) to look like what we see now
Yeah I don’t get how that seems like a bad thing, but that’s what I’m seeing in some of these comments. It be should exciting that a master of world building made a world and lore for Miyazaki and FROMSOFT to turn into a Dark Souls type game. Like, imagine if Tolkien wrote a lore and mythos for Miyazaki some how lol That’s not crazy to say: 10s of millions of people have seen “Lord of the Rings”, and 10s of millions of people have watched” Game of Thrones”. Their popularity and familiarity is pretty much the same
@@JackisaMimic true. That is the whole reason miyazaki collab with GRRM in the first place. . The way i understand why people dont like the idea of GRRM having significant contribution, is probably because most of fronsoft fans didnt relate or familiar with martins works. That might created the feeling of denial since they cant relate to it, unlike how they relate to berserk for example. Then we come to this situation. . Tbh i do feel like this fron time to time. i dont really like talking about berserk influence, despite massive refeence in souls games because that work of fiction traumatize me
I put a very heavy trigger warning on Berserk. Although I love it and it means a lot to me, it isn’t for everyone because of how heavy the subject matter is and how graphic the gratuity is. One thing that Miyazaki is excellent at is being able to interpret some of the same concepts and themes as Berserk without needing to be too “gross”. He is also able to exemplify the themes of struggle that Berserk bases its whole story on through the power of play, by making his games a struggle. The influence of Berserk is more than skin deep when it comes to his games, but I also feel the analysis we get is just “this monster looks like this character” and nothing really meaningful.
@@JackisaMimic yeah true. i appreciate miyazaki able to create the right balance on this theme. . for comparison, i get people sentiment toward berserk influence, i mean, it's literally one of the biggest piece of work that influenced miyazaki. but only refrencing berserk might make miyazaki work look and feel very shallow, like all he did is just copying berserk without any attempt to look other source. . that is why im more interested in youtuber that dig many other influence, since everyone already talk about berserk at this point and it become common knowledge that everybody know.
i'm glad to see someone finally talking about this!! i've thought for a long time that morgott was a sort of high fantasy parallel to tyrion's story. the proud golden first child no longer being available as heir(jaime takes a vow swearing to set aside his birthright/godwyn's soul being killed) and the younger child, despite being a more worthy heir than the original, is denied and shunned due to their perceived curses(tyrion having dwarfism/morgott bearing marks of the crucible). if you wanted to round out the lannister sibling trio you could also say that mohg's connection with bloodflame mirrors cersei's obsession with wildfire, although i'll admit that's definitely a bit of a stretch.
You can find ASOIAF characters, or the aspects of them, across many characters. Some feel like they are one to one, and others have bits and pieces, but that is mostly because GRRM likes to rewrite the same characters over and over agian and remix them. I don't know how many of his stories have the fat genius or the androgynous man/boy with superpowers, but its a lot of them. I think the most clear cut example's are the ones I mentioned in this video but Rykard and Tanith being Stannis and Melisandre really jump out at me. Godfrey being Robert Baratheon and Serosh being the Lion of Lannister clawing at his back, subduing his blood lust. Cersei and Jamie being Marika and Radagon, but Radagon and Rennala being Ned and Catelyn. Tyrion and Morgott are also a great parallel as you mention. Blaidd is Jon Snow because theyre both dumb and lovable.
a golden lineage bearing lion heraldry describes the lannisters just as much as it describes godfrey and his descendants, although i believe the succession of stormveil castle draws a parallel a different house in a song of ice and fire. a true/worthy successor not being found among godfrey's golden lineage, the lords of the land turn to nepheli loux a bastard child of godfrey's alter ego, hoarah loux. in a song if ice and fire, robert baratheon, the previous lord of storm's end and recent king, dies, leaving a very hairy succession in his wake. the books haven't been completed yet but the likely inheritor of storm's end(in my opinion) will be edric storm, a bastard of robert baratheon, who unlike his three false "golden" siblings has black hair, and a personality much closer to their father.
bran stark and miquella are both children who wield a deceptively sinister power that is connected in some way to a magical tree and both are associated with wolves, bran through his direwolf summer, and miquella through the three wolves we see in statuary, and can summon through the lone wolf ashes of war.
@@JackisaMimicoh interesting, I hadn't thought about marika/radagon as jamie/cersei before! i personally connected them more to lyanna/rhaegar but i think there are probably interesting echoes of both! throughout!
Many compare Jamie to the Norse god Tyr, both of whom famously have one hand, and so does Radagon in his boss fight. Read up on Tyr, he’s an interesting Norse character, I bet you’ll see Radagon in the thoughtful god of War (not the game lol)
yup.. the fire giants? ice dragons/ elemental dragons in general, sacred trees, convoluted/dramatic family tree and interactions, that tortoise priest among other things, the mysterious black stones, prophecies and so on. i like that the miyazaki soulsborne assets collide with GRRM's world lore base. GRRM world was the playground, Miyazaki ate it up and sprinkle the the soulsborne magic dust. the grand conspiracies of the night of the black knife and the mystery of the whole thing is pretty inspired choice.
I'm really sick of those who associated everything in Elden Ring with Berserk. Yeah, Miquella and Griffith share some similarities, but they have different motives, values, and perspectives. great video btw.
Great video! I just came from Michael Talks About Stuff’s video where he gave you a shoutout and I’m glad I did. Since release I’ve always felt GRRM’s influence in the game. None of the previous souls games have had a family tree/lineage for the main bosses. Also the influence of the outer gods automatically made me think of thousand worlds and asoiaf which I’ve always viewed to a certain extent as sci-fi masquerading as fantasy. These two were the most glaring examples on my first play through. As a die hard fan of both asoiaf and the souls games I couldn’t believe GRRM and Miyazaki would be collaborating and was honestly shocked at how quickly the community wrote off any GRRM involvement/influence. I’m happy that that sentiment seems to be changing though.
So happy to have you here! The reason I made my channel was because I was not seeing any Elden Ring analysis that incorporated GRRM's influence. As a massive GRRM fan I wanted to fix that lol I hope you enjoy my other videos!
To the "who wrote Ranni", I think it's a very interesting question. We could say that Miyazaki assumed certain things about her and then added certain philosophical elements to her that GRRM hadn't - or did he write a little about her personality, and then it developed from there? I really appreciate how this video is here to remind people they were co-writers 100%. This was the case of one creative with years of experience and ideas and knowledge coming together with another, who would have likely stuck to the "manual" like glue - if the reverance for GRRM's work is anything to go by. Miyazaki is well read, experienced and massively creative in his own right obviously, but my understanding now is that GRRM laid the foundation and everything else is riffing off of that in exciting and sometimes familiar ways. I am all for credit where credit is due, but to pretend this game's narrative and lore was a 1 man job when it is so clearly stated it was a collaborative effort is just offensive to even the guy people hold in such high esteem. It's kind of like GRRM wrote the recipe, and then Miyazaki went off and made the dish 😅 adding this and that, but it still needed to follow the rules to work!
Exactly the response I was looking for! Elden Ring is such a masterpiece because two masters of their craft’s came together to create it. It is Martin and Miyazaki togethaaa
Great video. It would be very heartening to see more lore analysis from the community that takes into account GRRMs works and influences. My only disagreement would be I think GRRM did name all of these characters from the pre shattering era. I think his comments about it are saying that he did name them, but not for the reasons some fans made a conspiracy about.
Very possible, but since he didn’t notice the coincidence, characters such as Quella from DS2, and Miyazaki specifically stating that Martin named the Lands Between leads me to believe that the names were changed. In my next video I briefly go over why the Lands Between name is significant, keep an eye out for it!
One of the first things I noticed about Elden Ring, in stark contrast to the proverbial FromSoft games, was how each of these factions were mentioned like someone reading off a collection of medieval lineages. It's honestly what initially turned me off to the lore, because I thought it was too much. Now, I have since changed my mind on that point, and I actually believe that the variety of houses actually adds to the narrative's depth. But that bit alone had Mr. Martin written all over it. Not gonna lie, when I heard they were working on a game together, my first thoughts were, "you could not have picked two writing styles that were any more opposite than those two..." But, past me was wrong, and the blend ended up being awesome. I can't believe I'm saying this, (for several reasons) but I actually like how Martin injected so much life into the world, that it doesn't feel as hopelessly bleak as Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and especially Demon's Souls (all of which I love). Not that I don't love dark, but it was just nice to have something a little less hopeless- even though that is entirely my perspective on EVERYTHING. lol Great video man! You pointed out alot that I didn't connect the dots on. Keep up the good work, and nice Guts design!
I feel like a big contributing factor is that a lot of the souls community is only familiar with Martin through the show Game of Thrones instead of any of Martins actual work. There are too many degrees of separation there and since most of the people in the lore discussion haven't actually read asoiaf they're going to miss the vast majority of the parallels and similar themes. But seriously though thankyou for making this. This is literally the video I've been waiting on ever sense the game came out.
I agree, I think it’s just a degree of unfamiliarity. It’s not a bad thing to not have read a 5000+ page book series(excluding the side stories) What stinks though is that even though I provided evidence for how much GRRM was involved with Elden Ring I’m still getting dismissive (and sometimes rude)comments. Cast a wide enough net you’re bound to catch some trash. Just don’t get the hostility, like I’m not lying that there are similarities between two pieces of fiction the same person wrote lol
I agree that we should consider multitudinous sources. I feel like there's lot's of references to Weird Fiction; I choose to believe Grand Lift of Rold is a reference to *Roald* Dahl's "Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Elevator" and Demon Princes in DS3 were a reference to the Jack Vance sci-fi novel series. (Maliketh's) Black Blade is a reference to Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer (there's also a Blue Öyster Cult [boc?] song about it)
One of the core theme's to Elden Ring is mimicry. When you look deep enough you will see mimics in all things. "Thus does the copy pass into becoming the genuine article"
Great video! I always think that it makes no sense for Miyazaki to collaborate with GRRM, the author of his favorite series only to incorporate little of his writing into the actual game lore. People who think everything in Elden ring is related to Berserk really overlook this fact. Like why would you had a critically acclaimed author wrote a story for your game when you’re just gonna use Berserk as a foundation anyway? Make zero sense.
We couldn't agree more! We've uploaded a couple videos connecting Elden Ring to ASOIAF (with more on the way), and we'd love to know what you think if you ever have time to watch them. We're just happy to see people finally give GRRM the credit he deserves. Keep posting!
Great video! As far as the Miquella not being Griffith thing I don’t think we need to go so far as to eliminate any comparison between the two. What I take from this discussion about GRRM’s influence and Miyazaki’s influence is that it can be both! George brought the backbone and we can see Miyazaki provides connective tissue. So we can see GRRM and ASOIAF in Mohg and Miquella, and we can also see Griffith there, especially after the DLC trailer
As a big ASOIAF fan to me all the lore is so reminiscent of that world. The whole idea of having ancient crumbling castles from an earlier time. The duelism in the religion. Stormveil castle is basically Storms End. The weird dark side of all the magic elements. The special emphasis on turtles. I'm not really into Dark Souls so it's hard to sus out which parts are GRRM but it's clear it was a good collaboration.
I'm so glad you've made this because I have been saying this since the game came out - there are so many Martinism's in the history of the lands between and it does depress me a little that lore hunters never highlight them.
I don’t know how I missed this for two weeks. It’s really awesome to see someone finally give Martin some credit for his work on Elden. I’ve seen so many people say, that the only “direct reference” in the game to Ice and Fire is the Grafted Greatsword. That Martin’s work on the game would be a single pages worth, and it was just marketing. Anyone who has read Martin’s books, would be able to see his hand at work throughout the entire game. I am also confident, that Miyazaki and Martin, are both far more competent storytellers than to make Miquella, a Griffith rip off.
Well glad you found the video! Elden Ring has such an amazing story that I don't think people actually give it enough credit. That sounds crazy to say with how popular the game is and lore theorizing is but people have barely scratched the surface, I think.
@@JackisaMimic I agree completely. No other dlc that I’m aware of. Has ever had the impact on a fan base as this has. To make us all realize just how little we still truly know, sparking mass wonder. Is an incredible achievement in storytelling. These days, most people just constantly trash Martin for either how little involvement he had in Elden, or for the next book. Far too much damage has been done to storytelling in every medium. Only for us to trash, and discredit one of the last great authors we have. The video was really inspiring man, subbed immediately.
Please consider watching my video on the Eclipse! It will prepare you for its sequel video that you won’t want to miss! Let me know what you think about it if you do watch it!
wow! I have been a fan of George and the ASOIAF books for years and didnt notice any of this and struggled to figure out how much he influenced the series. But with those interviews, it feels so obvious and like a total surprise at the same time. Totally amazing video and i cant believe i hadnt seen your channel before! And you did a great job explaining the details from the books for new people where elden ring might be their first experience with GRM's writing, I dont think ive seen anyone else do that very well.
I still have a theory of some read-between-the-lines lore about Sir Gideon Offnir. He must've been some kind of condemned spymaster like Littlefinger in ASOIAF. GRRM has a habit of using names that perfectly encapsulate his characters (ironically, or in a nominative-determinant way) I think "Offnir" must've been a name given to him when he was killed or exiled in the past, presumably for spying and it's meant perhaps to be read like: "Off with his ear" -> Offnir, which would tie into his ear motif plastered all over his armor and in the opening CG. May be a bit of a reach but I think it also fits with the way he has beetle spies all throughout the lands between and is called "The all-hearing brute" by Latenna. He probably prefers to be called the noble title "Sir Gideon Offnir, The All-Knowing" but he may just be an egotistical spymaster who's survived so long few people exist who can call him out, rather than someone who's actually further enlightened (Goldmask, Miquella).
Having your face there talking to us really made it easy to follow along. Helped me view the characters and the world in a whole new context, quite fascinating in which ways Miyazaki twisted Martins words. Great Video! :)
Excellent multifaceted analysis mate, very refreshing to see people finally covering this. The asoiaf UA-camr Michael talks about stuff recently put out a video discussing the shared ground between the properties and how the elden ring story may influence the continuation and conclusion of asoiaf. I would recommend his channel to everyone.Thsnks for the video man
I saw that video! I actually made a community post asking people to watch his video and leave some comments! I had never seen his stuff before but I loved it, especially his theories about the Starks being the wards for the "Old Ways" and how there are villainous undertones in the history. I knew the Weirwoods weren't 'good' but it is such clever writing that our favorite POV characters that we love and are rooting for are actually unknowingly on the side of an enemy of humanity as it were, that they are Ice not to contend with Fire, but the Ice that could destroy humanity. It makes you wonder then, we know the Flame of Frenzy isn't a good outcome for the world but does that make the Dark Moon any better? Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" poem is present in Elden Ring too it seems. Maybe next week I'll do a video on how there are no good endings 🤔
I gotta thank you for making this great video :D creative direction and world building are such pivotal parts of Elden Ring and to discredit or brush over GRRM's or Miyazaki's work in any way based on their additions to the lore and story is saddening. Both of these men are great creative minds! As an aspiring writer myself, I understand how collaborative endeavours can go very wrong but I think GRRM's and Miyazaki's collab in Elden Ring is one of the best. I recently started reading ASOIAF and GRRM's influence in the game is becoming increasingly more apparent!
Thank you! Good luck with your writting! After you've read ASOIAF read his sci-fi short stories set in the Thousand Worlds like "In The House of the Worm" or "A Song for Lya" and you will see how deep the rabbit hole really is.
The reason GoT wasn't being finished is because GRRM put a LOT of time into ER. 😆5,000 years of the story's history... I would kill to see what his journal looks like. They contacted him years before the game's release, so he was working on it for a while. Did you see his interview with Colbert in 2022? Really great video!! I see so many people kind of just forget about his influence and conception of the story and its characters.
Its the illustrious Kitetales! ASOIAF and Elden Ring are so similar that Shadow of the Erdtree is probably going to the closest thing we get to a conclusion for the books lol. If you wanna see what GRRM knowledge looks like in action please consider watching my video on the Eclipse, I am working on a massive video that will (hopefully) be a great lead into the DLC!
I've ranted about the discreditation of GRRM's work within Elden Ring a couple times. I'm glad this discussion has started to become more vogue, I thought I was going insane.
This is so facinating. So many interviews, especially those released after Elden Ring came out, seem to describe GRRM's involvement as having written things about 5000 years prior, where the demigods seemingly led peaceful if dramatic lives. It's been mentioned before that Miyazaki and the fromsoft team made the downfall of the world happen, so I was led to believe the night of black knives, the shattering, etc were all Miyazaki. It's truly interesting that those were all events GRRM wrote of.
It's really interesting that GRR Martin came up with the name "the lands between" -- a number of people have suggested that it might be a callback to Berserk (the interstice) or Dark Souls 2 (things betwixt). GRR Martin's naming makes it feel much more like a real place on a globe rather than an "interstice" as implied by the Berserk comparison.
YESSS another new Jack Mimic video! I've still been spending hours on each one. No new theories yet but I'm loving it. I bought a copy of Song Of Ice and Fire and I'm going to start reading it soon!
Theories coming soon, just gotta lay this ground work ;) The next Black Swordsman video is going to be PACKED with theories you probably haven't seen before! Also you are gonna really enjoy these books, I can't speak highly enough about them as you can tell
I don't think anything you said here is controversial or rude, and I really liked your thoughts on everything! I can't wait to watch your future videos on this topic and more!
You mentioned Romeo & Juliet, and I was thinking about another of its lines... Oh, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities. For naught so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give. ...besides having "mickle" (meaning "abundant" and sounding like a certain character whose chief trait is abundance, constant youth in the face of aging and rot) and "grace" (hmm) it's pretty relevant in other ways. Friar Lawrence is saying that every little thing on the earth, even the ones reviled as poison, offer some unique goodness. Miquella created a haven for the shunned with much the same attitude.
One thing that GRRM and Miyazaki have in common is that they are both prolific borrowers. This is why it is so important to incorporate an understanding of GRRM when analyzing Elden Ring, it helps reveal mimicry in all forms. Great eye, that's an amazing catch, thank you so much for sharing!
@@JackisaMimic …though after thinking about it, I’d guess the name “Miquella” is more likely inspired by “miko.” That’s what the Japanese dialogue calls Kuro, and Miquella definitely fits into that Kuro/Lothric type: willowy heir, with a strong but disabled protector, attempting to break the cycle in hopes of a better world (that, plus all the Bran parallels you mention)
The funny thing is that Berserk really never has informed the story of any of the Souls games in a significant way despite the obvious inspirations. Ex. Artorias is an obvious visual references to Guts, but Artorias and Guts are really nothing alike. Yharnam has clear visual roots from Innistrad from Magic: the Gathering, but again, nothing alike on a deeper level. Miyazaki has so much respect for Miura's work and chooses to honor it with visual and perhaps SOME degree of narrative similarity, but never 1:1. It'd be disingenuous to Miyazaki's skill as a creative director and writer to say that all he does is borrow or rip off plot beats from Berserk; he's better than that. People should let Martin and Miyazaki's story be Martin and Miyazaki's, and let Berserk be Berserk.
Absolutely agree. To be fair, the most Berserk influenced game from Miyazaki is Demon's Souls, which was his first attempt at directing a non-Armored Core game. It's essentially fighting apostles in the mysterious fog until you go meet the Idea of Evil, and choose whether to become an apostle yourself. His first attempt at dark fantasy being the most like one of his favorite pieces of dark fantasy media makes sense.
I'm so glad that someone with a big platform has finally addressed this. As a GRRM fan, Elden Ring is so full of his ideas and themes that the game has confirmed fan theories about aSoIaF that had been around for years before Elden Ring ever came out. I can also confidently say that the tree and moon symbolism also comes from GRRM, though I do agree that Miyazaki added his own touch.
Tree symbolism, definitely. Moon symbolism, I am not sure. Mostly because Rennala gives me major Catelyn Stark vibes. Check the Tully colors and the robes Rennala wear, as well as the grief they show for their children, and their husbands who both need to go to the capital while they grieve over a child ;)
@@JackisaMimic "He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi,’ the Lysene girl said. ‘Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. " Radagon and the Golden Order have sun symbolism. And I don't need to explain about Rennala and the Egg. ASoIaF pre-history hints towards an ancient cataclysm that came from a destruction of a moon, and the Carian royal house has similar symbols.
Oh I am not denying the importance of the moon in ASOIAF, just that what the moon symbolizes to Miyazaki and what the moon symbolizes to Martin are different. I will say this though - a moon breaks in both ASOIAF and Elden Ring. In ASOIAF "the moon was an egg, Khaleesi" and dragons spilled from it. In Elden Ring, we have the lost Black Moon and the memory stones are said to be fragments. If you've read any Thousand Worlds, like Tuf Voyaging, I am seeing some Ecological Engineering Corps in both of these
Bro, thank you so much for this video. You are super underrated. I love GRRM, but every time I brought him up in an elden ring discussion my friend group turned me down saying that his contributions to elden ring were likely minimal at best. His name was just attached for marketing, and maybe some names of areas, but not much more. I can't wait to shove this video in their faces, because this concisely explains the points I was making but with easily digestible evidence to support it. This is going to open so many doors in the theory world, people just need to have the heart to watch this!
People nitpicking whether Martin or Miyazaki are Whole-Cloth responsible for certain elements in game are people who have never worked collaboratively on something creative before.
I feel as though If the community had an ounce of respect for Miyazaki’s integrity and Honour, we’d be a lot closer to the true answers of Elden Ring. It should be common knowledge that George created the background-lore of the game (character arc and motives, events and wars, eras and history). But for some reason or another, people think Miyazaki is being dishonest when explaining these things. It was collaborative. We should equally accept any and all of those who have their own interpretations from ASOIAF that could relate to Elden Rings story, and vice versa we could take Elden Ring’s ideas and concepts that George may use in TWOW and ADOS. We should flex our understanding of Elden Rings creation, and be more accepting of those who have theories as an ASOIAF fan - because it is equally as valid as researching about themes Miyazaki typically uses in his games, especially for this unique case for Elden Ring where it a *collaboration* Great video, Jack !
Thanks! Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm just one guy, my goal is to introduce more people to the creative inspirations and origin to Elden Ring so more people can put their brains together and we can understand this piece of art better. I love this game, and I want others to be able to get the same joy out of it that I do.
33:10 I think GRRM wrote up to ursurped or at the farthest, who ursurped him. I definitely see the "bones" of Martins mythos in Elden Ring. Most of my suspicions were corrected watching this video. The part where he said Martin created (part of) the setting, the Lands Between. As a writer, I totally understand what "snippets" he means now. Setting, characters, and conflict. Setting being the Lands Between. Characters being the Emperyeans, and conflict being the Shattering.
Exactly right! To me, Miyazaki made the muscle, flesh, and skin of Elden Ring: what powers it, what fills it, and what we see on the surface, but without the bones that Martin made it would be just a fleshy pile. Martin gave Elden Ring structure; Miyazaki gave it purpose, meaning, and emotion
I think the Souls community in general has a limited understanding of even Miyazaki's influences in general... Not just Elden Ring, that was co-authored, but literally every game he's made... "It's just him and Berserk!" People also forget that the white haired pretty boy predates Griffith in fantasy... It started with Elric Melniboné, a character recreated by British author Michael Moorcock, who's works were popular enough in Japan to inspire Yoshitaka Amano and be the reason why Final Fantasy has so many white-haired swordsmen.
Dude this was an amazing video. Probably the best GRMM, interviews and lore analysis combination. I think the value of Miyazaki not asking GRRM to write the narrative directly allows for the tarnished to make actual choices. To role play so to speak. To support either Ranni's age of stars or frenzy flame etc. This approach makes sure the foundation is solidly supported by the rich imagination of GRRM while the recontextualizations regarding game design are left to Fromsoftware to figure out. Keep up the great work! I really liked the Bran Stark inference there and although I'm not as knowledgable about Martin's work as you do, I did watch the entirety of GoT and Bran is truly not a bad analogy for Miquella. Again, I'm sure they wont be the exact same but I can see the threads of inspiration for sure. It is definitely a shame more knowledgeable people about his works don't interpret the story from this lens. It is not only natural but the most likely avenue to explore BEFORE berserk and Griffith while trying to understand the intentions. And I say this as someone who loves berserk.
Thanks man, happy you enjoyed the video! I have a Berserk tattoo and no ASOIAF tattoos, so I think that shows where I stand on how I feel about these pieces of art. I'm not pushing back on what the Berserk influences are because I don't respect it, but because I love it so much and I disagree with the consensus.
@@JackisaMimic That'a great to hear. You'll REALLY like my next video then :)) I've never played the first DD but I'm excited to jump in this time around
This was a new perspective, I didn't know anything about this Blood Raven from Song of Fire and Ice, thanks for sharing. Makes me curious about what other characters we can find parallels for like this.
I think a much more poignant comparison to Bloodraven lies elsewhere; Marika. Both her and Bloodraven ruled highly authoritarian regimes before being punished for transgressions they commited for the sake of the world. They're both (wilfully?)trapped in a tree and heavily implied to resurrect dead people. There's also parallels in the use of changing forms for purposes of deception, the Mimic's Veil being called "Marika's Mischief", while in Brynden's case it's the use of Warging. Bran is also not someone who compels affection as much as he's quite literally stealing the body of Hodor through the use of Warging. I wouldn't say the parallel is off in general tho, but there's another GRRM character who is much more similar to Miquella in my mind, which also happens to be part of the book that Miyazaki told every new From employee to read; Fevre Dream's Joshua York.
I haven't read Fevre Dream yet but I have it on my bookshelf, I guess I should crack into it! You are not the first person who I have seen compare Joshua York to Miqeulla!
@@JackisaMimic I think Julian, the antagonist of the book, has a few parallels to Mohg(and potentially Messmer) too. I'm curious where you heard it before? 😶
There really is a big divide between Souls nerds and the ASoIaF/GRRM fandom. There’s very few of us in both camps. More people need to point out the numerous connections between GRRM’s writings and ER, otherwise the lore can never be fully understood. I think that’s why a lot of seasoned Souls lore-heads say that ER’s story/lore ‘makes no sense’.
Love seeing a name like Bittersteel popping up in my comments! I have seen numerous comments all over the place saying that the lore is incomplete due to cut content, or something along similar lines. You have probably followed ASOIAF theorizing for a while too, so we both know how much you can learn about the story and lore of a GRRM world just based on troop patterns! Understanding how he writes his stories and the implications something like "where is the standing army located" makes mysterious in Elden Ring make much more sense. Here is an example: Consider that Godfrey became Tarnished in Limgrave, and that his last campaign was in Caelid where dragons roost. From there, we can hypothesize a series of events where the Ancient Dragons attack the capital and Godfrey goes on the offensive. While the king is away from his throne, the Night of the Black Knives occur and Godwyn, the heir apparent is killed. Opening up for situation where then Godfrey gets divested by Grace and Marika can raise Radagon as Elden Lord. This is just a rough draft of a theory but I think with enough elbow grease and investigation we can see how Marika is able to depose her current Lord and raise "herself" as Elden Lord.
@@JackisaMimic true! there is so much crossover, and it’s equally interesting on both sides. I’ve been suspecting for a while now that Miquella is going to be the all powerful Skinchanger of the ER universe, as he is very much in line with the classic GRRM telepath/skinchanger trope. I also suspect that his bewitching or “Skinchanging” powers are tied directly to the process of creating puppets originally practiced by the Nox - and there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest that. First of all, Selivus is unusually confident that his special draught will let him puppet even a demigod, but how does he know? Maybe because he knew it had been done before? The Amber Starlight Shard needed to make the draught is found where? In the place coded in the game files as Miquella’s Hideaway, which happens to have a giant statue of him in it. I think Selivus caught wind of Miquella’s methods but was overconfident and failed to recreate it successfully. Edit: also worth mentioning that the amber starlight shard is the same color as unalloyed gold, and is shaped like a needle in an inverted position compared to Miquella’s Needle. Perhaps these are what his famous needles are made from?
If I were you I would make sure you keep Selivus around for the DLC ;) I suspect one of the key items we get from his quest will be useful in the Land of Shadow. No need to give Gideon that flask
@@JackisaMimic oh I have, lol. I’m keeping Selivus, Radahn, Mohg, Malenia and Millicent alive for the DLC release to mine for Easter eggs and random dialogue lines. I used the first draught on the Dung Eater but I haven’t given him the Amber Starlight Shard yet.
FINALLY! I love Berserk and Elden Ring but Miquella ≠ Griffith. I'm so glad someone brought up GRRM's old work. Looking into the lore and story it doesn't make all to much sense for Miquella just to be an ass pull of being a Griffith reference. I have explained many times about inconsistencies with the theory. Miquella is not a copy of a character, he is far more than that.
I really love both examples you gave of Godrick and Miquella. The bran stark comparison was something I never considered before, I kept hearing about Griffith instead! I’m sold, I’m subbing!
Dig it! I often think : Miyazaki probably came to GRRM saying he wanted to make a game kinda based on Game of Thrones, but would love GRRM's thoughts on deviating - so it was similar but different. And they probably talked big picture about the nature of legends and religions - ending at the idea the gods are usually reborn, going through cycles - just as the moon and the sun seem to go around the earth, and were repeatedly turned into gods by old humans. So the earth is literally the "land between" these 2 cycling forces. and then what if : something shattered this cycle? gods might be reborn without flesh, or at different points in time, or split into two genders, or mixed with other species - and then miyazaki takes this core idea explores examples of each branch. GRRM comes back with rykard as a blasphemous god who rejects the family cycle. Perhaps they talked about the lineage of gods being like a literal holy tree, and the runes as a map of this family tree-that is shattered into different aspects the player can collect. Babbling. but I'd bet this is how that sort of consultation and series of conversations would go. Trusting a master writer like GRRM to lay out ways they haven't seen fantasy legends perverted, maybe with heart breaking dramatic ideas for specific characters - then miyazaki taking that and weaving in his influences from enjoyment of A song of ice and fire.
Some time ago, I watched Preston Jacobs’ videos on GRRM’s old sci-fi stories looking for parallels to ER. There are lots of Martin motifs all over the game (red heads, albinos, etc). Video series is worth a watch for lore hunters.
I will probably do a video on it in the future but In The House of the Worm from his Thousand Worlds series has so many ER parallels all the way down to the conflict between silver and gold.
When I first came across your videos I did indeed think of you as a headcannon lunatic. And now after watching many more of your videos out of curiosity, I’m 100% on your side in terms of lore interpretation lmao
Wow, this dropped on my landing page and if your channel and this video don't both blow up, then I will be shocked. Great, methodical approach that has me thinking again (did Miquella know the killing of Radahn would release the stars and so he sent Malenia to kill him). Also brings back great memories pre launch when we knew nothing. Your thorough work is very thought provoking. I get a bit annoyed when people smugly say 'George RR Martin' didn't do much.' When he wrote an entire RPG world and Elden Ring is just one adaptation of that text. I think they expected what FF16 ended up being and expected GRRM to be writing character dialogue. Great video, going to watch a few more
Happy you liked the video and for your support! I'll raise you one though: Did Miqeulla know that Malenia rotting Radahn's brain would leave the stars in stasis until Torrent's chosen Tarnished(us) came by and killed him. Gotta look at the bigger picture when we think about Miquella ;)
The thing that clearly indicate to me that GRRM had a major hand is all the similar names 😂 I remember when I read the book I would get confused as to who was talking. There were so many similar names!
Is this the video where we discuss GRRM'S propensity to write about incest? it is 1000% GRRM who came up with all the demigods names. Messmer is another one of those demigods that GRRM wrote about. now determining whether GRRM just had written about messmer, and gave the guy a back story, but he was cut from the original game, and then was picked back up with a new created backstory .... just with the same name (this is exactly what miyazaki's latest comments conveyed to me) I think the messmer character was picked back up, and I think any of the backstory we see in this DLC (or the majority of it at minimum) will be a newly created backstory for messmer. different from the one GRRM wrote, but they used that character as inspiration for this DLC.
I think generally Martin probably wrote the shattering, as well as some information about previous civilizations, and information about what's now known as the land of shadow for the DLC, and Miyazaki took the ideas of what was written, had the gameplay elements made, had a large portion of the map made, and then when it came to story, things fell more into place as the development of the game went on, eventually landing with the story being as it is now. This accounts for the many bizarre differences that can be seen with certain pieces of cut content and potential spawns for certain enemies, such as Godrick having his enemy ID tied to the location where Mohg the Omen is. That and a few other things kind of point to the idea that the game may have taken place closer to the events of the shattering some time during the game's development. This makes me think that development story-wise was very fluid because, while they had their background written, they had to figure out where to get these characters placed and how they would be interacted with, leading to development gameplay-wise also being more open ended for FromSoft. Some characters I do believe to have been written entirely by Miyazaki, or at least, not to have been fully fleshed out by Martin, like Mohg, as Mohg has a similar ID thing that Godrick has, placing him as an enemy riding a the rideable chariot within the Gelmir Hero's Grave, and the model name is generic, not being specific to any one character. This could either point to Mohg not having a set visual design, but I think it far more fitting that Mohg either didn't exist in the original mythos created, or was far more nebulous in Martin's work than what we see within the game.
Wow, that was a good essay, very compelling. Btw, I'm currently reading Berserk thanks to your compelling and passionate advocacy. I'm really enjoying it. What I've gathered until now is that a lot of the major themes, esthetics, and some minor naming conventions of Elden Ring are straight out of Berserk, no doubt. Just as a quick example, one character is described at one point as a Bestial Priest - I don't think I need to elaborate on that one - but aside from the name and general role in the story the similarities stop there. All in all I think your last words here best describe what I have though from day 1 of playing Else Ring: I can feel both Miyazaki and GRRM's influence in the game, GRRM to a lesser, more distant and abstract degree, as it should be.
Wow you’re reading Berserk because of me? That’s amazing! I can’t believe that someone I’ve never met is reading something because of my passion for it. I really hope you can enjoy as much as I have. While the skin, flesh, and muscle of Elden Ring may mostly be Miyazaki, the bones are firmly GRRM’s. So you may not see it in the forefront they are what hold the characters and plot together.
Hey, Jack! I'm a huge fan of your work, personally i think you're set to become one of the greats when it comes to ER lore! I've recently been thinking about some similarities i have notest between ER lore and the Dune series, they are not overwhelming but I think you might find them interesting: 1. Paul Atreides was a man who was elevated to Godhood, creating a religion so big and fanatic that even him began to distrust and resent it. This religion eventually gets out of control, causing the death of millions 2. Leto, known as the *God Emperor*, created the *Golden Path*. In his vision, the only way to save humanity would be to make it suffer, make it *struggle*, so humans became stronger and freedom seekers. The only way to end his dictatorship was to kill him, as we "kill" Marika, which led to the freedom of humanity 3. The death of Leto caused an event known as *the scattering* 4. Leto, in order to become a God, has to leave his humanity behind, similar to how Miquella leaves his heritage and everything thats golden behind Those are the coincidences i find most interesting, there are others. Clearly not a direct analogy, but I'm convinced it might have served as inspiration to GRRM and/or Miyazaki P.S.: sorry for my english, not my first language
You're english is great, no worries! It is very possible that Dune was an influence, because all things made by man are influenced by all other things made by man. The beauty of great art, and sharing it, is that we get to see that we are all not so different after all, there are shared feelings and experiences that we all have. It just takes us talking to one another to learn how similar we are. Mimics to mimics and apples to apples we are not so different after all. Thank you for sharing!
Elden Rings story is the reason why i have over 700 hrs on it right now. Every time i play i discover some small lore bit that helps me put the overall story together. This game is a true masterpiece
I 100% agree. The way the term is used in original Japanese text doesn't imply any Eldritch or otherworldly origin. Based on its usage in the English text, I have always interpreted "Outer God" to mean "God outside of the Greater Will's plan/ideology". But it's FromSoft, so, ambiguity will out.
@@MK-zl7hj yes, they seem less sentient with their own goals and influences, but instead they feel more innate to life itself. Like they are supposed to exist in this word as part of the general course of life. Whereas outer gods are specifically the things that are sentient and have their own ambitions
Eh, I view it as akin to the Aedra and Daedra in the Elder Scrolls. Stereotypically the Divines and evil entities from Oblivion, respectively, the names are Elvish for "our ancestors" and "not our ancestors". The Aedra were the ones who took part in creating Mundus and weakened their beings in the process, the Daedra did not take part in creating Mundus. The Greater Will probably did not create the world, but is the current cosmic status quo, and so might be too "inner" to qualify as an Outer God. But it is still an inscrutable, abstract being who acts through vassals, so if someone wants to call it an Outer God, I'm not confident enough to stop them.
broooo allz i gotta say is i love you vids man. big elden ring lore fan big game of thrones fan and even a huge berserk fan. and just like you i love seeing all these titles influence one another. keep it up man youve got my follow!!!
Great video man. I am currently playing the game and watching/reading game of thrones. It is also insane how the music in Game of Thrones can easily be placed side by side to the Elden Ring OST. Not only did the story, and world take great inspiration but the music as well.
12:00 - "Martin - a writer known for its intrinsic, clockwork plots" - I have to say, that is a really odd way of characterizing Martin's writing style in my opinion. He himself correctly describes his writing style as gardening. In fact, narrative obfuscation is very much the name of the game for Martin as well. His books produce entire libraries of fan theorizing about what's even actually going on in his world after all.
I really see GRRM’s influence with characters like the Night King and the Gloam Eye’d Queen. It would be really cool if one of them was the big bad in this upcoming expansion or possibly a later one
Don't get mad at me, I just read what Miyazaki said 😉
Fine, I'll just be mad in general...
Michael talks about stuff.
Go watch his Elden ring videos and how it may finish ASOIAF
ua-cam.com/video/ru8XgbGRzI4/v-deo.htmlsi=usnMdjKp2tV8Jf-3
It starts with this one; brief cameo half way in of my German shepherd and I
Nah, not getting mad, I mean you said it yourself I think. Mr. Martin wrote the characters base, who they are because of who they really were. But Miyazaki distorted them as they used the power of the rune fragments they had and the problems they experienced after the shattering all these years. As much as I respect and admire the works of G.R.R. Martin I clearly see how Miyazaki deviated some characters from what they might have been originally and they are now heavily influenced by other works, such as Berserk as an example. Clearly, Miquella was not Griffith but Miyazaki basically turned him(her?) into that, the whole Eclipse thing, Miquella's cocoon... So sure, kind and pure Miquella was created by Martin but changed by Miyazaki and the events post The Shattering. Don't know yet what's to come but the references are really clear to me, at least in that specific case. :) Anyway very good video it was really interesting to hear about all the work and these interviews. I really enjoyed it. ❤
Not mad, but this video is very far from you just reading Miyazaki's answers
i loved the part when Boc said "There is nothing more powerful in the world than a good story. And who has a better story than Miquella the Mangled?" and miquella became the elden lord.
Everyone clapped
You don’t know how right you are. Look forward to the next video
That's kinda what Leda actually did tho...
And the Tarnished was like, "..." and slaughtered them all
Aged like fine wine
Correct. A lot of people are underestimating GRRM’s involvement in the lore and his overall influence in the story
I just don’t want to accept that a guy who destroyed modern fantasy made something good. Granted he had several other writers to keep him in check. But at least with Elden Ring he helped fix it.
@@SecureInMyHead What do you mean he destroyed modern fantasy?
you mean overstsate, right?
@@SecureInMyHeadhe made on of the most successful fantasy series of all time. Wtff do you mean he destroyed it😂
@@benl8962 you’re wrong, but do explain why you think otherwise
I’m glad people are finally making content regarding grrm’s contributions to ER. I got into ER because of my love for ASOIAF and the similarities between the two are absolutely insane. It feels almost like a disservice to make theories about ER without knowing a bit about grrm’s work to me. They have so many themes in common it enhances analysis of both franchises.
I’m kinda the opposite version of you, I got into GRRM after falling in love with Elden Ring. I watched GOT which was so good it got me back into reading. Currently on aCoK. I’d love to hear some of your ASOIAF related ER theories.
Dark Souls lore nerds looking to Berserk for explanations of Elden Ring Lore, meanwhile ASOIAF lore nerds are mining Elden Ring looking for spoilers for A Dream of Spring. 🤣
If that doesn’t explain me I don’t know what does
@@JackisaMimicAt least Shadow Of The Erdtree has a release date.
🤣 legendary comment
LITERALLY ME, the moment i saw the magma wyrms i was like I KNEW IT theyre giant lava salamanders with an amphibian lifecycle (in the books). esp when you consider aerea's horrible death due to being infested by parasitic tadpoles that required a hot environment to survive.
and miquella on radahns back reminded me of hodor. miquella's charm powers reminded me of warging as well at least in the way bran wields it, which is tyrannical . not to mention the zamor warriors being white walkers as well as the parallels between farum azula and old valyria
@@sicklecuthammerfallthe magma wyrm is literally a copy from Berserk you caneven look up the manga page 😂
I've been saying something similar to this since launch day. People are ignoring GRRMs works and only focusing on the story aspects they are familiarized with though Miyazakis works. I still believe that GRRM gave away the ending to of ASOIAF for Elden Ring, Marika/Radagon being the stand in for Bloodraven/Bran with the big twist being they are vassals of the Elden Beast (The Great Other)
The endings are very GRRM: you have Fire(Frenzy), Ice(Dark Moon), or status quo with minor change(Mending Rune/Fracture Ending). The last one may not make sense until you realize the mending runes are all shaped like different types of Suns, and that the Sun Realm has long faded away...
Look into Lucifer means Lightbringer aSoIaF theories. YEARS before Elden Ring ever came out he reasoned that the Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa were fighting against each other within the Weirwood network. To me that sounds exactly like the Radagon/Marika situation. It's astonishing how right he was.
Oh don't worry, I am very familiar with his theories!
@@JackisaMimic Do you really believe that the mending rune, made to complete the ring and reject all outer god influence is a small change to the status quo?
@@realfnneato3111not outer gods, just gods like Marika and her offsprings, that's why the mending rune says "The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology, can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods no better than men." The rune is blaming everything the gods like Marika, Ranni, Malenia etc for everything wrong with the lands between.
There's creatures in Martin's books that are massive aliens traveling through the cosmos and is said that they can give/increased Magic/psychic powers. There's a theory that the red comet in Asoiaf is one of them. I wonder if that was part of the inspiration for astel
Read his Thousand World books (or watch Preston Jacobs on UA-cam) and you will not be shocked!
In my Carian history video I joke about how Memory Stones kind of look like a cellphone's black screen when turned off and the "Lost Black Moon" that they came from may be an exploded space ship. It's very GRRM, and while I dont think in Elden Ring its ACTUALLY a lost space ship, it very well could have been what GRRM envisioned when he wrote about the Numen who come from another world.
In Japanese, the Outer Gods are more explicitly meant to be aspects of existence excluded by the Golden Order not lovecraftian creatures. They are arguably forces of nature not sentient others like the Great Ones.
I tend to think Astel and malformed stars are born from the currents and again not terribly sentient
@@JackisaMimic Yo, the fact you mention Thousand World books ... my hat's off to you. This is the first video of yours I've ever watched. Just started the video but was strolling through the comments and this caught me, hehe
@@specialnewb9821with Astel having a whole remberance I think it’s more a vessel for something sentient
GRRM having him involved in the story is the biggest thing that got me interested into Elden ring., and I really felt a lot of Georges writing style throughout the story.
Same! I was hooked to ASoIaF the instant I started to watch lore videos. He's a lore master, you can speculate on so many levels about the worlds and plots he creates
@allthe1 this may be bad but I first read a game of thrones when I was 12, and I was obsessed with the fantasy genre. GRRM is my all time favorite writer. The lore and the world building is absolutely MASTERCLASS, his creativity is actually insane and he’s a garden writer so he has a small idea and writes then it expands like holy shit his ideas just come at him. I love Tolkien don’t get my wrong LOTR is amazing but the dialogue, the world building, the drama, all the political intrigue that goes on is absolutely immaculate. Sorry if I’m glazing this man like Kristy Kreme donuts. He’s just my favorite writer.
@@TheTrueAegonTargaryen I wish I had known ASoIaF earlier, I read it when I was about 30, after A1&2 of the show had come out. Still is one of my favorite authors of sci-fi/fantasy of all time! He built on the shoulders of giants, and he has this incredible synthetic imagination, a bit like a child's. You can really feel the real world politics and struggles of his life in his art.
@@TheTrueAegonTargaryen What I really enjoy about ASoIaF is the honest POV style. I think that was a dream of his to be able to pull this off in an epic fantasy series, and he really did it. I'm convinced he was inspired by The Karamazov Brothers, I know of nothing like the sort, it's completely revolutionary.
I noticed mostly the incest, and the GOT refs was there more?
Dude you’re speaking facts. When you broke down the part about him writing these characters as “more human” vs what FromSoft turned them into means TON of character elements would stick around from GRRM’s writing.
Carians actually having a turtle religion is not a far reach since their towers involves killing ghost turtles :v
"Testus" and "Chelona", at least, are direct references to turtles too, in case the ghostly turtles weren't enough.
And of course, let's not forget the obvious, our dear Dog Pope: Miriel Pastor of Vows
Rykard is my favorite character based off the fact that he was willing to go blow to blow with malkeith.
i mean with that health pool id feel comfident AF going after everyone in the lands between.
Thank you for this.
As much as I love Berserk, I feel like most of the lore fan base have become too hyperfixated on the possible references from Berserk, letting those references shape the lore in their minds, to an almost unhealthy degree.
This video is a great reminder that, at the end of the day, George RR Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki are still the geniuses who created Elden Ring's narrative, not Kentaro Miura, as much of a genius as he was.
People need to learn to separate inspiration from the actual product.
As one commenter said, people are treating Elden Ring as basically "Berserk: the game," which I think is a great disservice to the masterpiece both of them had created.
Thank you! Elden ring is it's OWN universe completely SEPARATE from Berserk. The people trying to tie these two together are REACHING. Miyazaki wouldn't dare try to imprint ANYTHING Berserk into ER. Gotta remember, Miyazaki's baby is Kingsfield. Everything comes from Kingsfield.
They obviously also took inspiration from berserk as well as i e and fire and to say otherwise is crazy
@@Taylor-j8xthen why is it alright for people to compare jrrm other works? It's a separate thing like you just said. Inspiration for elden ring was drawn from more than once source.
Thank you for making this video. I think some people forget the importance and influence of Martin. He is a huge history nerd and it's written all over the mythos and world of Elden Ring and his books.
I'll probably make it a video in the future but here is a short reddit post I recently did about the origin to the name "The Lands Between"
www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/1bc49f1/the_meaning_of_the_lands_between/
You are right, he is a HUGE history buff!
Thank you so much for this, as a massive fan of both A Song of Ice and Fire and Miyazaki's games one of the things I was most excited for was seeing a synthesis of crazy ASOIAF theories and Dark Souls lore hunting into creating a grander picture of the game but sadly the GRRM half was just totally neglected in general lore discussion and i ended up bouncing off. But im glad to see that seeming to change in recent weeks!
You and me both. It's why I made my channel, I wanted to try to steer the discussion in another direction, even if it is only slightly. A fish cannot change the course of the river, but when he leaps and breaches the surface, he can make ripples in the water.
Thank you, Jack. Far too many people have done George and themselves the tremendous disservice of disregarding the sheer scope of his legendary contributions which can be so easily felt infused with Miyazaki’s as you play through this world. Brilliant as always!
People already thing Elden Ring is great, I just think it's better than that and then some! I want others to feel that way too!
The writer who took the name of the Githyanki from GRRM's "Dying Of The Light" and put it into D&D was none other than Charles Stross, who's a pretty phenomenal author in his own right. He was the one who adapted them into what we see today.
Stross' contributions to not only science-fiction but also Dragon Magazine helped shape a lot of what we consider the "Spelljammer" setting today. Check out "The Atrocity Archives" as it's his best-known (and probably most well-rounded) work.
PS
The recommendation is for those not familiar with Stross (obviously haha).
@@MapleFried The Launcry series is pretty damn good all the way through. Thanks for reminding me of his hand in Spelljammer - d'you know if those old Dragon articles are archived anywhere?
As an aside, the Singularity Series was also good if you like your science fiction a little on the bizarre side.
Nice one! I've felt like many people are quick to dismiss Martin's influence after what happened to GoT, but it would make sense for it to be everywhere. I would love more videos exploring any parallel you can find.
That "coat of arms" pun is rather funny. I do not think I have heard anyone else point it out.
I think you may have misinterpreted the GRRM interview where he discusses not naming characters after his initials. The way he discusses that he’s named characters in previous works that begin with G, R, and M and it had nothing to do with it being about his initials makes it seem that he did name all of the key characters when it comes to the demigods/Radagon/Marika.
Yeah the alliterative naming convention definitely seems like Martin. Though maybe he didn't come up with all of them, maybe Miquella for example. Or maybe the DS2 thing is a coincidence.
@@been_rly_n2_paragliding_latelyMaybe is just the DS2 team pulling inspiration from GRRM. The last book of the series, A Dance with Dragon was released in 2011, while DS2 is from 2014, by that time the story of a young boy (Bran) and the big tree on top of Bloodraven's cave had been already out there since A Storm of Swords from the year 2000. There might be more of GRRM's works in Dark Souls than we imagine, :) not everything is Berserk like some people think. 😅
@@been_rly_n2_paragliding_lately It's a super coincidence. The god Quella in Dark Souls 2 is actually named Nera in Japanese. DS2 is general has a lot of names that have been localised into different names in English, perhaps because the translation team didn't feel like they vibed well in English. Vendrick was named Vanclad, Nashandra was Dyunashandra and Targray had the bizarre name Garainduuk.
Worth mentioning that Miquella is just Mikera in Japanese.
Yeah this was my feeling too. I don't see what about Martin's explanation there suggests that he didn't make that names
Yes it’s possible that he didn’t name them all or they were slightly altered after the fact by From. It’s also possible that the characteristics or domains of specific characters wasn’t elaborated by Martin so when the team at From saw the name Miquella they decided to tie the character to dreams as a reference to Quella from DS2.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, I'm so glad you're bringing it up! George R.R Martin is an excellent writer, and not only do we need to remember him and his works more as we explore the lore, but we need to give him the credit he deserves!
The DLC is just another exploration of Martin's characters and world, and Miyazaki's interpretation of those characters.
That reverse breakdown you did of Godrick was great makes me wonder what the process would’ve been like for someone like Radahn or even Godfrey, especially Serosh and the fact that’s he’s an extension of Godfrey’s emotions. Nevertheless very good video🙏🏽
I was laughing just thinking about how Godrick is literally wearing a coat of arms. I know we have a turtle wearing a pope hat but coat made of arms is the funniest thing to me
@@JackisaMimicI'm so glad someone else picked up on the turtle pope connection!! I remember watching someone stream the game and ranting about how grrm had basically no influence, and he SPECIFICALLY pointed out the turtle pope and said "you think THAT is something grrm would write in?" it was literally the worst example he could have possibly used 😂 the man wears a hat with his 'great and powerful turtle' on it everywhere he goes 😂 having the pope be a turtle is probably the most blatantly GRRM thing in the entire game
@@JackisaMimic
My favourite pun is the Serpent Sages in Volcano Manor. They wear their embryonic sac as a head dress. They are literally eggheads. You can't tell me that isn't a GRRM thing to write in.
@@JackisaMimic I can see the equivalent being Martin writing "Radahn never abandoned his steed" and Miyazaki twisting that to "Radahn, despite growing to an enormous size, learned gravity magic so he would never have to abandon his steed".
I can picture GRRM writing something like "Radahn defied the stars" to mean he resisted the course of fate or fought against the odds, and Miyazaki making it much more literal. Or like "Godfrey's beloved pet calmed him and stayed his bloodlust."
oh the last part with bloodraven was an absolute treat! I always loved the world of GoT, and having that juicy connection to ER now is scrumptious
Look forward to future videos with more connections. There are A LOT!
After playing the DLC, the theme of cyclic vengeance being a core underlying theme of the entire mythos feels very GRRM. Miyazaki even kind of signposted this with Castle Morne and the Grafted Blade being an obvious nod to the Iron Throne.
The whole point is that the foundations were flawed to begin with. You can't build eternity on sandstone. The only thing that does last forever is the hatred you inspire in those you step on to get what you want.
The Frenzied Flame ending embodies this perfectly with Malenia vowing vengeance against you. Even burning all of existence away couldn't end the cycle of revenge...
Thank you for pointing this out, I think for most lore channels they are going by what they know, what and how it was in previous games, thus they easily overlook the importance of Martin in the lore and the world.
I am thrilled to see you addressing it. I am well conversant in both Elden Ring and ASOIAF lore and as happenstance would have it I can report that there are ASOIAF UA-cam lore channels finally delving into Elden Ring to try to predict what GRRM is up to. If you would be interested I think you should make a collab video with the channel Michael Talks About Stuff. He has expressed interest in talking to someone who knows a lot about Elden Ring Lore.
I saw that video! I would love to talk to him, I left a comment on his video letting him know if he was interested in sharing ideas!
I've been going through GoT over the last few months and also getting into ASoIaF books again. Reading them and watching lore videos.
If your only experience with Martin's work was the show I could see how people assume he didn't add much to ER. Because the show runner stripped most of the fantastically Elements from the show. Because they didn't like the magic part of the series as much.
But the books have so many similarities with ER's world and mechanics
I love the show for what it was but it is a shame how much of the fantastical elements are missing
FINALLY. Before I indulge in this doubtlessly amazing video, let me say:
This might not mean much to you but I absolutely love what you are doing. You are my favorite Elden Ring lore-tuber bar none and I've been refreshing your channel 3 times a day for the past week since discovering you.
The way you look past the surface level clues and engage with the material on not just a "archeological" level but also on a meta level allows your analysis to have much greater depth than what I am used to from the usual Souls analysis.
Not only are your analysis and discoveries great, but your character as well, be it the Black Swordsman, Jackivus Mimicus or Jack.
Thank you for what you are doing.
it's kinda crazy that while miyazaki held a huge respect toward GRRM and literally state the GRRM is the one who wrote entierety of elden ring mythos. the fans underestimating it and treat GRRM like only play minor part of the story. he literally wrote the base of the lore and that might include shadow land which miyazaki continue to mess it up (in a good way) to look like what we see now
Yeah I don’t get how that seems like a bad thing, but that’s what I’m seeing in some of these comments.
It be should exciting that a master of world building made a world and lore for Miyazaki and FROMSOFT to turn into a Dark Souls type game.
Like, imagine if Tolkien wrote a lore and mythos for Miyazaki some how lol
That’s not crazy to say: 10s of millions of people have seen “Lord of the Rings”, and 10s of millions of people have watched” Game of Thrones”. Their popularity and familiarity is pretty much the same
@@JackisaMimic true. That is the whole reason miyazaki collab with GRRM in the first place.
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The way i understand why people dont like the idea of GRRM having significant contribution, is probably because most of fronsoft fans didnt relate or familiar with martins works. That might created the feeling of denial since they cant relate to it, unlike how they relate to berserk for example. Then we come to this situation.
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Tbh i do feel like this fron time to time. i dont really like talking about berserk influence, despite massive refeence in souls games because that work of fiction traumatize me
I put a very heavy trigger warning on Berserk. Although I love it and it means a lot to me, it isn’t for everyone because of how heavy the subject matter is and how graphic the gratuity is.
One thing that Miyazaki is excellent at is being able to interpret some of the same concepts and themes as Berserk without needing to be too “gross”.
He is also able to exemplify the themes of struggle that Berserk bases its whole story on through the power of play, by making his games a struggle.
The influence of Berserk is more than skin deep when it comes to his games, but I also feel the analysis we get is just “this monster looks like this character” and nothing really meaningful.
@@JackisaMimic yeah true. i appreciate miyazaki able to create the right balance on this theme.
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for comparison, i get people sentiment toward berserk influence, i mean, it's literally one of the biggest piece of work that influenced miyazaki. but only refrencing berserk might make miyazaki work look and feel very shallow, like all he did is just copying berserk without any attempt to look other source.
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that is why im more interested in youtuber that dig many other influence, since everyone already talk about berserk at this point and it become common knowledge that everybody know.
i'm glad to see someone finally talking about this!! i've thought for a long time that morgott was a sort of high fantasy parallel to tyrion's story. the proud golden first child no longer being available as heir(jaime takes a vow swearing to set aside his birthright/godwyn's soul being killed) and the younger child, despite being a more worthy heir than the original, is denied and shunned due to their perceived curses(tyrion having dwarfism/morgott bearing marks of the crucible). if you wanted to round out the lannister sibling trio you could also say that mohg's connection with bloodflame mirrors cersei's obsession with wildfire, although i'll admit that's definitely a bit of a stretch.
You can find ASOIAF characters, or the aspects of them, across many characters. Some feel like they are one to one, and others have bits and pieces, but that is mostly because GRRM likes to rewrite the same characters over and over agian and remix them. I don't know how many of his stories have the fat genius or the androgynous man/boy with superpowers, but its a lot of them.
I think the most clear cut example's are the ones I mentioned in this video but Rykard and Tanith being Stannis and Melisandre really jump out at me.
Godfrey being Robert Baratheon and Serosh being the Lion of Lannister clawing at his back, subduing his blood lust.
Cersei and Jamie being Marika and Radagon, but Radagon and Rennala being Ned and Catelyn.
Tyrion and Morgott are also a great parallel as you mention.
Blaidd is Jon Snow because theyre both dumb and lovable.
a golden lineage bearing lion heraldry describes the lannisters just as much as it describes godfrey and his descendants, although i believe the succession of stormveil castle draws a parallel a different house in a song of ice and fire. a true/worthy successor not being found among godfrey's golden lineage, the lords of the land turn to nepheli loux a bastard child of godfrey's alter ego, hoarah loux. in a song if ice and fire, robert baratheon, the previous lord of storm's end and recent king, dies, leaving a very hairy succession in his wake. the books haven't been completed yet but the likely inheritor of storm's end(in my opinion) will be edric storm, a bastard of robert baratheon, who unlike his three false "golden" siblings has black hair, and a personality much closer to their father.
bran stark and miquella are both children who wield a deceptively sinister power that is connected in some way to a magical tree and both are associated with wolves, bran through his direwolf summer, and miquella through the three wolves we see in statuary, and can summon through the lone wolf ashes of war.
@@JackisaMimicoh interesting, I hadn't thought about marika/radagon as jamie/cersei before! i personally connected them more to lyanna/rhaegar but i think there are probably interesting echoes of both! throughout!
Many compare Jamie to the Norse god Tyr, both of whom famously have one hand, and so does Radagon in his boss fight. Read up on Tyr, he’s an interesting Norse character, I bet you’ll see Radagon in the thoughtful god of War (not the game lol)
yup.. the fire giants? ice dragons/ elemental dragons in general, sacred trees, convoluted/dramatic family tree and interactions, that tortoise priest among other things, the mysterious black stones, prophecies and so on.
i like that the miyazaki soulsborne assets collide with GRRM's world lore base. GRRM world was the playground, Miyazaki ate it up and sprinkle the the soulsborne magic dust.
the grand conspiracies of the night of the black knife and the mystery of the whole thing is pretty inspired choice.
I'm really sick of those who associated everything in Elden Ring with Berserk. Yeah, Miquella and Griffith share some similarities, but they have different motives, values, and perspectives. great video btw.
Great video! I just came from Michael Talks About Stuff’s video where he gave you a shoutout and I’m glad I did.
Since release I’ve always felt GRRM’s influence in the game. None of the previous souls games have had a family tree/lineage for the main bosses. Also the influence of the outer gods automatically made me think of thousand worlds and asoiaf which I’ve always viewed to a certain extent as sci-fi masquerading as fantasy. These two were the most glaring examples on my first play through.
As a die hard fan of both asoiaf and the souls games I couldn’t believe GRRM and Miyazaki would be collaborating and was honestly shocked at how quickly the community wrote off any GRRM involvement/influence. I’m happy that that sentiment seems to be changing though.
So happy to have you here! The reason I made my channel was because I was not seeing any Elden Ring analysis that incorporated GRRM's influence. As a massive GRRM fan I wanted to fix that lol
I hope you enjoy my other videos!
To the "who wrote Ranni", I think it's a very interesting question. We could say that Miyazaki assumed certain things about her and then added certain philosophical elements to her that GRRM hadn't - or did he write a little about her personality, and then it developed from there? I really appreciate how this video is here to remind people they were co-writers 100%. This was the case of one creative with years of experience and ideas and knowledge coming together with another, who would have likely stuck to the "manual" like glue - if the reverance for GRRM's work is anything to go by.
Miyazaki is well read, experienced and massively creative in his own right obviously, but my understanding now is that GRRM laid the foundation and everything else is riffing off of that in exciting and sometimes familiar ways. I am all for credit where credit is due, but to pretend this game's narrative and lore was a 1 man job when it is so clearly stated it was a collaborative effort is just offensive to even the guy people hold in such high esteem.
It's kind of like GRRM wrote the recipe, and then Miyazaki went off and made the dish 😅 adding this and that, but it still needed to follow the rules to work!
Exactly the response I was looking for! Elden Ring is such a masterpiece because two masters of their craft’s came together to create it. It is Martin and Miyazaki togethaaa
Great video. It would be very heartening to see more lore analysis from the community that takes into account GRRMs works and influences.
My only disagreement would be I think GRRM did name all of these characters from the pre shattering era. I think his comments about it are saying that he did name them, but not for the reasons some fans made a conspiracy about.
Very possible, but since he didn’t notice the coincidence, characters such as Quella from DS2, and Miyazaki specifically stating that Martin named the Lands Between leads me to believe that the names were changed.
In my next video I briefly go over why the Lands Between name is significant, keep an eye out for it!
One of the first things I noticed about Elden Ring, in stark contrast to the proverbial FromSoft games, was how each of these factions were mentioned like someone reading off a collection of medieval lineages. It's honestly what initially turned me off to the lore, because I thought it was too much. Now, I have since changed my mind on that point, and I actually believe that the variety of houses actually adds to the narrative's depth. But that bit alone had Mr. Martin written all over it.
Not gonna lie, when I heard they were working on a game together, my first thoughts were, "you could not have picked two writing styles that were any more opposite than those two..." But, past me was wrong, and the blend ended up being awesome. I can't believe I'm saying this, (for several reasons) but I actually like how Martin injected so much life into the world, that it doesn't feel as hopelessly bleak as Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and especially Demon's Souls (all of which I love). Not that I don't love dark, but it was just nice to have something a little less hopeless- even though that is entirely my perspective on EVERYTHING. lol
Great video man! You pointed out alot that I didn't connect the dots on. Keep up the good work, and nice Guts design!
I feel like a big contributing factor is that a lot of the souls community is only familiar with Martin through the show Game of Thrones instead of any of Martins actual work. There are too many degrees of separation there and since most of the people in the lore discussion haven't actually read asoiaf they're going to miss the vast majority of the parallels and similar themes. But seriously though thankyou for making this. This is literally the video I've been waiting on ever sense the game came out.
I agree, I think it’s just a degree of unfamiliarity. It’s not a bad thing to not have read a 5000+ page book series(excluding the side stories)
What stinks though is that even though I provided evidence for how much GRRM was involved with Elden Ring I’m still getting dismissive (and sometimes rude)comments.
Cast a wide enough net you’re bound to catch some trash.
Just don’t get the hostility, like I’m not lying that there are similarities between two pieces of fiction the same person wrote lol
I agree that we should consider multitudinous sources.
I feel like there's lot's of references to Weird Fiction; I choose to believe Grand Lift of Rold is a reference to *Roald* Dahl's "Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Elevator" and Demon Princes in DS3 were a reference to the Jack Vance sci-fi novel series. (Maliketh's) Black Blade is a reference to Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer (there's also a Blue Öyster Cult [boc?] song about it)
One of the core theme's to Elden Ring is mimicry. When you look deep enough you will see mimics in all things.
"Thus does the copy pass into becoming the genuine article"
Great video! I always think that it makes no sense for Miyazaki to collaborate with GRRM, the author of his favorite series only to incorporate little of his writing into the actual game lore. People who think everything in Elden ring is related to Berserk really overlook this fact. Like why would you had a critically acclaimed author wrote a story for your game when you’re just gonna use Berserk as a foundation anyway? Make zero sense.
We couldn't agree more! We've uploaded a couple videos connecting Elden Ring to ASOIAF (with more on the way), and we'd love to know what you think if you ever have time to watch them. We're just happy to see people finally give GRRM the credit he deserves. Keep posting!
With a name like that how could I not watch your videos! Ill give them a watch and let you know in your comment section!
Great video! As far as the Miquella not being Griffith thing I don’t think we need to go so far as to eliminate any comparison between the two. What I take from this discussion about GRRM’s influence and Miyazaki’s influence is that it can be both! George brought the backbone and we can see Miyazaki provides connective tissue. So we can see GRRM and ASOIAF in Mohg and Miquella, and we can also see Griffith there, especially after the DLC trailer
As a big ASOIAF fan to me all the lore is so reminiscent of that world. The whole idea of having ancient crumbling castles from an earlier time. The duelism in the religion. Stormveil castle is basically Storms End. The weird dark side of all the magic elements. The special emphasis on turtles. I'm not really into Dark Souls so it's hard to sus out which parts are GRRM but it's clear it was a good collaboration.
I'm so glad you've made this because I have been saying this since the game came out - there are so many Martinism's in the history of the lands between and it does depress me a little that lore hunters never highlight them.
I don’t know how I missed this for two weeks. It’s really awesome to see someone finally give Martin some credit for his work on Elden. I’ve seen so many people say, that the only “direct reference” in the game to Ice and Fire is the Grafted Greatsword. That Martin’s work on the game would be a single pages worth, and it was just marketing. Anyone who has read Martin’s books, would be able to see his hand at work throughout the entire game. I am also confident, that Miyazaki and Martin, are both far more competent storytellers than to make Miquella, a Griffith rip off.
Well glad you found the video! Elden Ring has such an amazing story that I don't think people actually give it enough credit. That sounds crazy to say with how popular the game is and lore theorizing is but people have barely scratched the surface, I think.
@@JackisaMimic I agree completely. No other dlc that I’m aware of. Has ever had the impact on a fan base as this has. To make us all realize just how little we still truly know, sparking mass wonder. Is an incredible achievement in storytelling. These days, most people just constantly trash Martin for either how little involvement he had in Elden, or for the next book. Far too much damage has been done to storytelling in every medium. Only for us to trash, and discredit one of the last great authors we have. The video was really inspiring man, subbed immediately.
Please consider watching my video on the Eclipse! It will prepare you for its sequel video that you won’t want to miss! Let me know what you think about it if you do watch it!
wow! I have been a fan of George and the ASOIAF books for years and didnt notice any of this and struggled to figure out how much he influenced the series. But with those interviews, it feels so obvious and like a total surprise at the same time. Totally amazing video and i cant believe i hadnt seen your channel before! And you did a great job explaining the details from the books for new people where elden ring might be their first experience with GRM's writing, I dont think ive seen anyone else do that very well.
Every word you said was increasingly correct. Totaled up to 100% correct.
I still have a theory of some read-between-the-lines lore about Sir Gideon Offnir. He must've been some kind of condemned spymaster like Littlefinger in ASOIAF. GRRM has a habit of using names that perfectly encapsulate his characters (ironically, or in a nominative-determinant way) I think "Offnir" must've been a name given to him when he was killed or exiled in the past, presumably for spying and it's meant perhaps to be read like: "Off with his ear" -> Offnir, which would tie into his ear motif plastered all over his armor and in the opening CG. May be a bit of a reach but I think it also fits with the way he has beetle spies all throughout the lands between and is called "The all-hearing brute" by Latenna. He probably prefers to be called the noble title "Sir Gideon Offnir, The All-Knowing" but he may just be an egotistical spymaster who's survived so long few people exist who can call him out, rather than someone who's actually further enlightened (Goldmask, Miquella).
Having your face there talking to us really made it easy to follow along. Helped me view the characters and the world in a whole new context, quite fascinating in which ways Miyazaki twisted Martins words. Great Video! :)
Thanks, glad you got something out of this!
Excellent multifaceted analysis mate, very refreshing to see people finally covering this. The asoiaf UA-camr Michael talks about stuff recently put out a video discussing the shared ground between the properties and how the elden ring story may influence the continuation and conclusion of asoiaf. I would recommend his channel to everyone.Thsnks for the video man
I saw that video! I actually made a community post asking people to watch his video and leave some comments! I had never seen his stuff before but I loved it, especially his theories about the Starks being the wards for the "Old Ways" and how there are villainous undertones in the history.
I knew the Weirwoods weren't 'good' but it is such clever writing that our favorite POV characters that we love and are rooting for are actually unknowingly on the side of an enemy of humanity as it were, that they are Ice not to contend with Fire, but the Ice that could destroy humanity.
It makes you wonder then, we know the Flame of Frenzy isn't a good outcome for the world but does that make the Dark Moon any better? Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" poem is present in Elden Ring too it seems.
Maybe next week I'll do a video on how there are no good endings 🤔
I’m only minutes into the video but thank you for speaking it out so clearly. Completely agree. Still, love all the discussions and theories :)
I gotta thank you for making this great video :D creative direction and world building are such pivotal parts of Elden Ring and to discredit or brush over GRRM's or Miyazaki's work in any way based on their additions to the lore and story is saddening. Both of these men are great creative minds! As an aspiring writer myself, I understand how collaborative endeavours can go very wrong but I think GRRM's and Miyazaki's collab in Elden Ring is one of the best. I recently started reading ASOIAF and GRRM's influence in the game is becoming increasingly more apparent!
Thank you! Good luck with your writting!
After you've read ASOIAF read his sci-fi short stories set in the Thousand Worlds like "In The House of the Worm" or "A Song for Lya" and you will see how deep the rabbit hole really is.
@@JackisaMimicThank you so much :D I'm 100% going to be checking that out next!
This video felt the equivalent to me saying Miyazaki also directed Dark Souls
The reason GoT wasn't being finished is because GRRM put a LOT of time into ER. 😆5,000 years of the story's history... I would kill to see what his journal looks like. They contacted him years before the game's release, so he was working on it for a while. Did you see his interview with Colbert in 2022?
Really great video!! I see so many people kind of just forget about his influence and conception of the story and its characters.
Its the illustrious Kitetales!
ASOIAF and Elden Ring are so similar that Shadow of the Erdtree is probably going to the closest thing we get to a conclusion for the books lol.
If you wanna see what GRRM knowledge looks like in action please consider watching my video on the Eclipse, I am working on a massive video that will (hopefully) be a great lead into the DLC!
@@JackisaMimic Awesome will definitely check it out! The DLC speculation is just so much fun; can’t wait to see how close we all get!
I've ranted about the discreditation of GRRM's work within Elden Ring a couple times. I'm glad this discussion has started to become more vogue, I thought I was going insane.
That's why I made my channel. I would post on reddit or in discords and feel like I was being gaslit lol
This is so facinating. So many interviews, especially those released after Elden Ring came out, seem to describe GRRM's involvement as having written things about 5000 years prior, where the demigods seemingly led peaceful if dramatic lives. It's been mentioned before that Miyazaki and the fromsoft team made the downfall of the world happen, so I was led to believe the night of black knives, the shattering, etc were all Miyazaki. It's truly interesting that those were all events GRRM wrote of.
The black knives plot is to detailed and clear in terms of motivation and execution to ever be something Miyazaki would write.
It's really interesting that GRR Martin came up with the name "the lands between" -- a number of people have suggested that it might be a callback to Berserk (the interstice) or Dark Souls 2 (things betwixt). GRR Martin's naming makes it feel much more like a real place on a globe rather than an "interstice" as implied by the Berserk comparison.
YESSS another new Jack Mimic video!
I've still been spending hours on each one. No new theories yet but I'm loving it. I bought a copy of Song Of Ice and Fire and I'm going to start reading it soon!
Theories coming soon, just gotta lay this ground work ;) The next Black Swordsman video is going to be PACKED with theories you probably haven't seen before!
Also you are gonna really enjoy these books, I can't speak highly enough about them as you can tell
You are good for the community, brother. Keep it up!
Coming from you that means a lot! You're the only person who I would accept telling me that GRRM's influence was just "all in my head"!
@@JackisaMimic Meant to ask you. Want to do a collab on the Sun Realm and it's lore? I think our 2 approaches could help unlock some mysteries.
I would love to! Your analysis has actually inspired a major part of my upcoming video. You can find my contact information on my page
I don't think anything you said here is controversial or rude, and I really liked your thoughts on everything! I can't wait to watch your future videos on this topic and more!
Thank you! Happy to hear you liked the video! I hope you like what I got cooking up, please let me know your thoughts in the future!
You mentioned Romeo & Juliet, and I was thinking about another of its lines...
Oh, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities.
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give.
...besides having "mickle" (meaning "abundant" and sounding like a certain character whose chief trait is abundance, constant youth in the face of aging and rot) and "grace" (hmm) it's pretty relevant in other ways. Friar Lawrence is saying that every little thing on the earth, even the ones reviled as poison, offer some unique goodness. Miquella created a haven for the shunned with much the same attitude.
One thing that GRRM and Miyazaki have in common is that they are both prolific borrowers. This is why it is so important to incorporate an understanding of GRRM when analyzing Elden Ring, it helps reveal mimicry in all forms.
Great eye, that's an amazing catch, thank you so much for sharing!
@@JackisaMimic …though after thinking about it, I’d guess the name “Miquella” is more likely inspired by “miko.” That’s what the Japanese dialogue calls Kuro, and Miquella definitely fits into that Kuro/Lothric type: willowy heir, with a strong but disabled protector, attempting to break the cycle in hopes of a better world (that, plus all the Bran parallels you mention)
The funny thing is that Berserk really never has informed the story of any of the Souls games in a significant way despite the obvious inspirations. Ex. Artorias is an obvious visual references to Guts, but Artorias and Guts are really nothing alike. Yharnam has clear visual roots from Innistrad from Magic: the Gathering, but again, nothing alike on a deeper level. Miyazaki has so much respect for Miura's work and chooses to honor it with visual and perhaps SOME degree of narrative similarity, but never 1:1. It'd be disingenuous to Miyazaki's skill as a creative director and writer to say that all he does is borrow or rip off plot beats from Berserk; he's better than that. People should let Martin and Miyazaki's story be Martin and Miyazaki's, and let Berserk be Berserk.
Absolutely agree. To be fair, the most Berserk influenced game from Miyazaki is Demon's Souls, which was his first attempt at directing a non-Armored Core game. It's essentially fighting apostles in the mysterious fog until you go meet the Idea of Evil, and choose whether to become an apostle yourself.
His first attempt at dark fantasy being the most like one of his favorite pieces of dark fantasy media makes sense.
I'm so glad that someone with a big platform has finally addressed this. As a GRRM fan, Elden Ring is so full of his ideas and themes that the game has confirmed fan theories about aSoIaF that had been around for years before Elden Ring ever came out.
I can also confidently say that the tree and moon symbolism also comes from GRRM, though I do agree that Miyazaki added his own touch.
Tree symbolism, definitely. Moon symbolism, I am not sure. Mostly because Rennala gives me major Catelyn Stark vibes. Check the Tully colors and the robes Rennala wear, as well as the grief they show for their children, and their husbands who both need to go to the capital while they grieve over a child ;)
@@JackisaMimic "He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi,’ the Lysene girl said. ‘Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. "
Radagon and the Golden Order have sun symbolism. And I don't need to explain about Rennala and the Egg.
ASoIaF pre-history hints towards an ancient cataclysm that came from a destruction of a moon, and the Carian royal house has similar symbols.
Oh I am not denying the importance of the moon in ASOIAF, just that what the moon symbolizes to Miyazaki and what the moon symbolizes to Martin are different.
I will say this though - a moon breaks in both ASOIAF and Elden Ring.
In ASOIAF "the moon was an egg, Khaleesi" and dragons spilled from it.
In Elden Ring, we have the lost Black Moon and the memory stones are said to be fragments.
If you've read any Thousand Worlds, like Tuf Voyaging, I am seeing some Ecological Engineering Corps in both of these
@@JackisaMimic The mysterious oily black stones in aSoIaF are probably moon fragments too so there is another connection.
Bro, thank you so much for this video. You are super underrated. I love GRRM, but every time I brought him up in an elden ring discussion my friend group turned me down saying that his contributions to elden ring were likely minimal at best. His name was just attached for marketing, and maybe some names of areas, but not much more. I can't wait to shove this video in their faces, because this concisely explains the points I was making but with easily digestible evidence to support it. This is going to open so many doors in the theory world, people just need to have the heart to watch this!
The outro was clean. We are all mimics.
i'm so excited for the DLC!! More lore to explore and more videos from you
amazing video man! I really wanted this knowledge for so long so thank you so much!
Jack, your voice is growing in powerful delivery, cadence and resonance. It's a privilege to witness your becoming on this channel 🙏
Thank you! I am excited to share the next chapter in the Black Swordsman saga, I really hope to impress you all with what I have been working on.
@@JackisaMimic I, we, eagerly await the next chapter. Thank you sir!
Awesome stuff, love that you backed up GRRM's history in writing. Never had the thought that Miquella might be a Bran type of character. Blew my mind!
The connections between Elden Ring go VERY deep! Miquella and Bran are not the only ones, I look forward to sharing more in the future!
People nitpicking whether Martin or Miyazaki are Whole-Cloth responsible for certain elements in game are people who have never worked collaboratively on something creative before.
19:39 Wow amazing find with this quote, an official statement that says lore comes first.
I feel as though If the community had an ounce of respect for Miyazaki’s integrity and Honour, we’d be a lot closer to the true answers of Elden Ring.
It should be common knowledge that George created the background-lore of the game (character arc and motives, events and wars, eras and history). But for some reason or another, people think Miyazaki is being dishonest when explaining these things. It was collaborative. We should equally accept any and all of those who have their own interpretations from ASOIAF that could relate to Elden Rings story, and vice versa we could take Elden Ring’s ideas and concepts that George may use in TWOW and ADOS. We should flex our understanding of Elden Rings creation, and be more accepting of those who have theories as an ASOIAF fan - because it is equally as valid as researching about themes Miyazaki typically uses in his games, especially for this unique case for Elden Ring where it a *collaboration*
Great video, Jack !
Thanks! Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm just one guy, my goal is to introduce more people to the creative inspirations and origin to Elden Ring so more people can put their brains together and we can understand this piece of art better.
I love this game, and I want others to be able to get the same joy out of it that I do.
33:10 I think GRRM wrote up to ursurped or at the farthest, who ursurped him. I definitely see the "bones" of Martins mythos in Elden Ring. Most of my suspicions were corrected watching this video. The part where he said Martin created (part of) the setting, the Lands Between.
As a writer, I totally understand what "snippets" he means now. Setting, characters, and conflict. Setting being the Lands Between. Characters being the Emperyeans, and conflict being the Shattering.
Exactly right! To me, Miyazaki made the muscle, flesh, and skin of Elden Ring: what powers it, what fills it, and what we see on the surface, but without the bones that Martin made it would be just a fleshy pile.
Martin gave Elden Ring structure; Miyazaki gave it purpose, meaning, and emotion
I think the Souls community in general has a limited understanding of even Miyazaki's influences in general... Not just Elden Ring, that was co-authored, but literally every game he's made... "It's just him and Berserk!" People also forget that the white haired pretty boy predates Griffith in fantasy... It started with Elric Melniboné, a character recreated by British author Michael Moorcock, who's works were popular enough in Japan to inspire Yoshitaka Amano and be the reason why Final Fantasy has so many white-haired swordsmen.
Dude this was an amazing video. Probably the best GRMM, interviews and lore analysis combination. I think the value of Miyazaki not asking GRRM to write the narrative directly allows for the tarnished to make actual choices. To role play so to speak. To support either Ranni's age of stars or frenzy flame etc. This approach makes sure the foundation is solidly supported by the rich imagination of GRRM while the recontextualizations regarding game design are left to Fromsoftware to figure out. Keep up the great work! I really liked the Bran Stark inference there and although I'm not as knowledgable about Martin's work as you do, I did watch the entirety of GoT and Bran is truly not a bad analogy for Miquella. Again, I'm sure they wont be the exact same but I can see the threads of inspiration for sure. It is definitely a shame more knowledgeable people about his works don't interpret the story from this lens. It is not only natural but the most likely avenue to explore BEFORE berserk and Griffith while trying to understand the intentions. And I say this as someone who loves berserk.
Thanks man, happy you enjoyed the video! I have a Berserk tattoo and no ASOIAF tattoos, so I think that shows where I stand on how I feel about these pieces of art.
I'm not pushing back on what the Berserk influences are because I don't respect it, but because I love it so much and I disagree with the consensus.
On an unrelated note, are you excited to check out Dragon's Dogma 2 soon?@@JackisaMimic
Yes! I loved Dragons Dogma, and after I finish my next Black Swordsman video I am going to play!
@@JackisaMimic That'a great to hear. You'll REALLY like my next video then :)) I've never played the first DD but I'm excited to jump in this time around
This was a new perspective, I didn't know anything about this Blood Raven from Song of Fire and Ice, thanks for sharing. Makes me curious about what other characters we can find parallels for like this.
I think a much more poignant comparison to Bloodraven lies elsewhere; Marika. Both her and Bloodraven ruled highly authoritarian regimes before being punished for transgressions they commited for the sake of the world. They're both (wilfully?)trapped in a tree and heavily implied to resurrect dead people. There's also parallels in the use of changing forms for purposes of deception, the Mimic's Veil being called "Marika's Mischief", while in Brynden's case it's the use of Warging.
Bran is also not someone who compels affection as much as he's quite literally stealing the body of Hodor through the use of Warging. I wouldn't say the parallel is off in general tho, but there's another GRRM character who is much more similar to Miquella in my mind, which also happens to be part of the book that Miyazaki told every new From employee to read; Fevre Dream's Joshua York.
I haven't read Fevre Dream yet but I have it on my bookshelf, I guess I should crack into it! You are not the first person who I have seen compare Joshua York to Miqeulla!
@@JackisaMimic I think Julian, the antagonist of the book, has a few parallels to Mohg(and potentially Messmer) too. I'm curious where you heard it before? 😶
@@JackisaMimicFevre Dream is soooo good. Everyone is always focusing on ASOIAF so, it has been put on the side too many times, sadly. :(
I saw someone on Reddit say it in the comments, but they didn’t expand further on it
Well hopefully after I read it I can make a video that will give it more eyeballs!
You can easily notice GRRMs involvement just from the larger focus on the family drama compared to past games.
There really is a big divide between Souls nerds and the ASoIaF/GRRM fandom. There’s very few of us in both camps. More people need to point out the numerous connections between GRRM’s writings and ER, otherwise the lore can never be fully understood. I think that’s why a lot of seasoned Souls lore-heads say that ER’s story/lore ‘makes no sense’.
Love seeing a name like Bittersteel popping up in my comments! I have seen numerous comments all over the place saying that the lore is incomplete due to cut content, or something along similar lines.
You have probably followed ASOIAF theorizing for a while too, so we both know how much you can learn about the story and lore of a GRRM world just based on troop patterns!
Understanding how he writes his stories and the implications something like "where is the standing army located" makes mysterious in Elden Ring make much more sense.
Here is an example:
Consider that Godfrey became Tarnished in Limgrave, and that his last campaign was in Caelid where dragons roost. From there, we can hypothesize a series of events where the Ancient Dragons attack the capital and Godfrey goes on the offensive. While the king is away from his throne, the Night of the Black Knives occur and Godwyn, the heir apparent is killed. Opening up for situation where then Godfrey gets divested by Grace and Marika can raise Radagon as Elden Lord.
This is just a rough draft of a theory but I think with enough elbow grease and investigation we can see how Marika is able to depose her current Lord and raise "herself" as Elden Lord.
@@JackisaMimic true! there is so much crossover, and it’s equally interesting on both sides. I’ve been suspecting for a while now that Miquella is going to be the all powerful Skinchanger of the ER universe, as he is very much in line with the classic GRRM telepath/skinchanger trope. I also suspect that his bewitching or “Skinchanging” powers are tied directly to the process of creating puppets originally practiced by the Nox - and there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest that. First of all, Selivus is unusually confident that his special draught will let him puppet even a demigod, but how does he know? Maybe because he knew it had been done before? The Amber Starlight Shard needed to make the draught is found where? In the place coded in the game files as Miquella’s Hideaway, which happens to have a giant statue of him in it. I think Selivus caught wind of Miquella’s methods but was overconfident and failed to recreate it successfully.
Edit: also worth mentioning that the amber starlight shard is the same color as unalloyed gold, and is shaped like a needle in an inverted position compared to Miquella’s Needle. Perhaps these are what his famous needles are made from?
If I were you I would make sure you keep Selivus around for the DLC ;) I suspect one of the key items we get from his quest will be useful in the Land of Shadow. No need to give Gideon that flask
@@JackisaMimic oh I have, lol. I’m keeping Selivus, Radahn, Mohg, Malenia and Millicent alive for the DLC release to mine for Easter eggs and random dialogue lines. I used the first draught on the Dung Eater but I haven’t given him the Amber Starlight Shard yet.
FINALLY! I love Berserk and Elden Ring but Miquella ≠ Griffith. I'm so glad someone brought up GRRM's old work. Looking into the lore and story it doesn't make all to much sense for Miquella just to be an ass pull of being a Griffith reference. I have explained many times about inconsistencies with the theory. Miquella is not a copy of a character, he is far more than that.
I really love both examples you gave of Godrick and Miquella.
The bran stark comparison was something I never considered before, I kept hearing about Griffith instead! I’m sold, I’m subbing!
Thank you! I hope you like my other videos!
@@JackisaMimic actually watching the eclipse vid rn, I love this work man well done truly
12:31 the way you said this was so heartwarming lol
I am very glad you made this video, and I hope many lore video creators watch this.
I hope they do too, I would love to chat or collaborate with some of them!
Dig it! I often think : Miyazaki probably came to GRRM saying he wanted to make a game kinda based on Game of Thrones, but would love GRRM's thoughts on deviating - so it was similar but different. And they probably talked big picture about the nature of legends and religions - ending at the idea the gods are usually reborn, going through cycles - just as the moon and the sun seem to go around the earth, and were repeatedly turned into gods by old humans. So the earth is literally the "land between" these 2 cycling forces. and then what if : something shattered this cycle? gods might be reborn without flesh, or at different points in time, or split into two genders, or mixed with other species - and then miyazaki takes this core idea explores examples of each branch. GRRM comes back with rykard as a blasphemous god who rejects the family cycle. Perhaps they talked about the lineage of gods being like a literal holy tree, and the runes as a map of this family tree-that is shattered into different aspects the player can collect.
Babbling. but I'd bet this is how that sort of consultation and series of conversations would go. Trusting a master writer like GRRM to lay out ways they haven't seen fantasy legends perverted, maybe with heart breaking dramatic ideas for specific characters - then miyazaki taking that and weaving in his influences from enjoyment of A song of ice and fire.
Some time ago, I watched Preston Jacobs’ videos on GRRM’s old sci-fi stories looking for parallels to ER. There are lots of Martin motifs all over the game (red heads, albinos, etc). Video series is worth a watch for lore hunters.
I will probably do a video on it in the future but In The House of the Worm from his Thousand Worlds series has so many ER parallels all the way down to the conflict between silver and gold.
When I first came across your videos I did indeed think of you as a headcannon lunatic. And now after watching many more of your videos out of curiosity, I’m 100% on your side in terms of lore interpretation lmao
Wow, this dropped on my landing page and if your channel and this video don't both blow up, then I will be shocked. Great, methodical approach that has me thinking again (did Miquella know the killing of Radahn would release the stars and so he sent Malenia to kill him). Also brings back great memories pre launch when we knew nothing. Your thorough work is very thought provoking.
I get a bit annoyed when people smugly say 'George RR Martin' didn't do much.' When he wrote an entire RPG world and Elden Ring is just one adaptation of that text. I think they expected what FF16 ended up being and expected GRRM to be writing character dialogue.
Great video, going to watch a few more
Happy you liked the video and for your support! I'll raise you one though: Did Miqeulla know that Malenia rotting Radahn's brain would leave the stars in stasis until Torrent's chosen Tarnished(us) came by and killed him. Gotta look at the bigger picture when we think about Miquella ;)
The thing that clearly indicate to me that GRRM had a major hand is all the similar names 😂 I remember when I read the book I would get confused as to who was talking. There were so many similar names!
Is this the video where we discuss GRRM'S propensity to write about incest?
it is 1000% GRRM who came up with all the demigods names. Messmer is another one of those demigods that GRRM wrote about. now determining whether GRRM just had written about messmer, and gave the guy a back story, but he was cut from the original game, and then was picked back up with a new created backstory .... just with the same name (this is exactly what miyazaki's latest comments conveyed to me)
I think the messmer character was picked back up, and I think any of the backstory we see in this DLC (or the majority of it at minimum) will be a newly created backstory for messmer. different from the one GRRM wrote, but they used that character as inspiration for this DLC.
I’m definitely sad the GOT community hasn’t gotten more involved with Elden Ring
I think generally Martin probably wrote the shattering, as well as some information about previous civilizations, and information about what's now known as the land of shadow for the DLC, and Miyazaki took the ideas of what was written, had the gameplay elements made, had a large portion of the map made, and then when it came to story, things fell more into place as the development of the game went on, eventually landing with the story being as it is now. This accounts for the many bizarre differences that can be seen with certain pieces of cut content and potential spawns for certain enemies, such as Godrick having his enemy ID tied to the location where Mohg the Omen is. That and a few other things kind of point to the idea that the game may have taken place closer to the events of the shattering some time during the game's development. This makes me think that development story-wise was very fluid because, while they had their background written, they had to figure out where to get these characters placed and how they would be interacted with, leading to development gameplay-wise also being more open ended for FromSoft. Some characters I do believe to have been written entirely by Miyazaki, or at least, not to have been fully fleshed out by Martin, like Mohg, as Mohg has a similar ID thing that Godrick has, placing him as an enemy riding a the rideable chariot within the Gelmir Hero's Grave, and the model name is generic, not being specific to any one character. This could either point to Mohg not having a set visual design, but I think it far more fitting that Mohg either didn't exist in the original mythos created, or was far more nebulous in Martin's work than what we see within the game.
Wow, that was a good essay, very compelling. Btw, I'm currently reading Berserk thanks to your compelling and passionate advocacy. I'm really enjoying it.
What I've gathered until now is that a lot of the major themes, esthetics, and some minor naming conventions of Elden Ring are straight out of Berserk, no doubt.
Just as a quick example, one character is described at one point as a Bestial Priest - I don't think I need to elaborate on that one - but aside from the name and general role in the story the similarities stop there.
All in all I think your last words here best describe what I have though from day 1 of playing Else Ring: I can feel both Miyazaki and GRRM's influence in the game, GRRM to a lesser, more distant and abstract degree, as it should be.
Wow you’re reading Berserk because of me? That’s amazing! I can’t believe that someone I’ve never met is reading something because of my passion for it. I really hope you can enjoy as much as I have.
While the skin, flesh, and muscle of Elden Ring may mostly be Miyazaki, the bones are firmly GRRM’s.
So you may not see it in the forefront they are what hold the characters and plot together.
Hey, Jack! I'm a huge fan of your work, personally i think you're set to become one of the greats when it comes to ER lore!
I've recently been thinking about some similarities i have notest between ER lore and the Dune series, they are not overwhelming but I think you might find them interesting:
1. Paul Atreides was a man who was elevated to Godhood, creating a religion so big and fanatic that even him began to distrust and resent it. This religion eventually gets out of control, causing the death of millions
2. Leto, known as the *God Emperor*, created the *Golden Path*. In his vision, the only way to save humanity would be to make it suffer, make it *struggle*, so humans became stronger and freedom seekers. The only way to end his dictatorship was to kill him, as we "kill" Marika, which led to the freedom of humanity
3. The death of Leto caused an event known as *the scattering*
4. Leto, in order to become a God, has to leave his humanity behind, similar to how Miquella leaves his heritage and everything thats golden behind
Those are the coincidences i find most interesting, there are others. Clearly not a direct analogy, but I'm convinced it might have served as inspiration to GRRM and/or Miyazaki
P.S.: sorry for my english, not my first language
You're english is great, no worries!
It is very possible that Dune was an influence, because all things made by man are influenced by all other things made by man.
The beauty of great art, and sharing it, is that we get to see that we are all not so different after all, there are shared feelings and experiences that we all have.
It just takes us talking to one another to learn how similar we are. Mimics to mimics and apples to apples we are not so different after all.
Thank you for sharing!
Most people don't understand just how prolific of an author George is. Like. At all.
This isn't just some guy that wrote a tv show.
Elden Rings story is the reason why i have over 700 hrs on it right now. Every time i play i discover some small lore bit that helps me put the overall story together. This game is a true masterpiece
As long as we can agree that The Greater Will isn't an Outer God.
I 100% agree.
The way the term is used in original Japanese text doesn't imply any Eldritch or otherworldly origin. Based on its usage in the English text, I have always interpreted "Outer God" to mean "God outside of the Greater Will's plan/ideology". But it's FromSoft, so, ambiguity will out.
I feel like both the greater will and the flame of frenzy are something more primal (chaos and order)
@@MK-zl7hj yes, they seem less sentient with their own goals and influences, but instead they feel more innate to life itself. Like they are supposed to exist in this word as part of the general course of life. Whereas outer gods are specifically the things that are sentient and have their own ambitions
Eh, I view it as akin to the Aedra and Daedra in the Elder Scrolls. Stereotypically the Divines and evil entities from Oblivion, respectively, the names are Elvish for "our ancestors" and "not our ancestors". The Aedra were the ones who took part in creating Mundus and weakened their beings in the process, the Daedra did not take part in creating Mundus.
The Greater Will probably did not create the world, but is the current cosmic status quo, and so might be too "inner" to qualify as an Outer God. But it is still an inscrutable, abstract being who acts through vassals, so if someone wants to call it an Outer God, I'm not confident enough to stop them.
"Please, lord brother. Promise me you will be my consort."
Definitly written by GRRM...
broooo allz i gotta say is i love you vids man. big elden ring lore fan big game of thrones fan and even a huge berserk fan. and just like you i love seeing all these titles influence one another. keep it up man youve got my follow!!!
Great video man. I am currently playing the game and watching/reading game of thrones. It is also insane how the music in Game of Thrones can easily be placed side by side to the Elden Ring OST. Not only did the story, and world take great inspiration but the music as well.
Happy you enjoyed the video! You're gonna love both the game and the books, they are both amazing.
I still think it's funny if you take the first initial from all the demi-god parents it spells GRRM(Godfrey Radagon Rennala Marika)
12:00 - "Martin - a writer known for its intrinsic, clockwork plots" - I have to say, that is a really odd way of characterizing Martin's writing style in my opinion. He himself correctly describes his writing style as gardening. In fact, narrative obfuscation is very much the name of the game for Martin as well. His books produce entire libraries of fan theorizing about what's even actually going on in his world after all.
I really see GRRM’s influence with characters like the Night King and the Gloam Eye’d Queen. It would be really cool if one of them was the big bad in this upcoming expansion or possibly a later one