I look around the hanging bodies in the storeroom and think about all the insane bosses we could've battled before Messmer burned it all away. That one horned giant humanoid looked like a tough SOB.
P.S. That storeroom definitely put a new twist on the Ancestor and Regal Ancestor Spirits. In fact, this DLC has me looking at the horned ancestral follower enemies in a whole new light now.
@@christopherlyndsay8611If you know how violent, vicious, and dangerous hippos are in real life you can totally get why a giant one with quills would make a great guard animal if tamed. It's definitely a unique choice. There's quite a few big hippos relaxing in watering holes in the Shadowlands
I always wondered why there was this random Hippo in the middle of Messmer's castle. Then I got to the Specimen storehouse and realize that it was probably being kept as a live specimen for research purposes. It also explains why the Church district is flooded, they were using it as a habitat for it to swim around and exercise in.
The hippo head with a lion tail and crocodile looking feet reminds me of Ammit, the "Devourer of souls" from Egyptian mythology. Ammit specifically devoured damned souls, making it fitting within the Land of Shadow.
They originally planned for Messmer to have a third phase where he rides on a flying Golden Hippo while he wields two spears but the computers programming it spontaneously caught on fire, so they scrapped it.
“Why are they called it a hippo? It looks nothing like a hippo” My brother in Grace, have you seen an actual hippo’ skull/skeleton? That thing is accurate minus the rhino horn
I saw a glimpse of it on UA-cam before I finished my first playthrough and thought it looked something like this. I think it was the wings that looked like horns.
So it has wings, is labelled as aquatic and it can curl up and roll around? I'm honestly surprised none of these things dig tunnels, it's the only traversal method this species has yet to master. Heh.
One of the biggest bag fumble in Elden Ring: not putting the hippos under the water instead of the ulcerated tree spirits It coulda been a duo fight where you can sneak and wake one up then the other
@@aswifte5743 I mean its a boss design that survived being scrapped from DS3 in 2015. Honestly good for them for gloating about it and being everywhere, they deserve it.
@@aswifte5743they know *exactly* how annoying they are to fight with their giant health pools and big sweeping attacks and double down by putting them in annoying areas (read: poison swamps and the triple ulcerated tree spirit gank area). More power to them.
Yeah I mean they’re near sources of water all game but that would’ve been a better choice honestly. The two near the river downstream (next to the waterfalls) don’t really need to be there and could’ve been replaced.
@@Joranthalus It's a popular theory that Runebears are bears that are midway into transforming into dragons, based on cut content from the network test and some details of the final model. The new Roar of Rugalea incantation pretty much debunked it, though.
Especially with the "Aquatic Beast" internal name, he's got some pretty significant Godwyn/Fortissax vibes going on with the thorns & unused wings. Really cool to see this stuff as always, so thanks for sharing all of these!!
@@anonymous01201 Yes. I mean, bad enough you're fighting something that big in a small arena, but adding WINGS to it would definitely make it so much harder to see what's actually going on.
The Golden Hippopotamus would have been such a fun outdoor open-world boss. Just like we saw in the first reveal trailer. And one of them smaller hippopotamuses would have been perfect in Shadow Keep. God, I hate the walls/camera. So much of this game has changed from reveal trailer to final release. Just like the base game's network test and retail version.
@@Cyn_likes_corpses I don't need people to validate my opinions, feel free to be wrong. The Prequels fucking suck. Terrible dialogue, Terrible Story, Terrible Acting. You can let nostalgia win but anyone with eyes can see the lack of quality.
Elden Ring overall has a "medieval ideas about how the world works are how this world actually works" thing going on, so my first impression of the hippopotamus was that it's based on those medieval manuscript depictions of animals. The ones where the designs are way off because it's being drawn by a monk who has only ever had the animal described to it secondhand from sone guy who saw it months or years ago.
The internal name is aquatic beast? It looks a lot like the sea monsters in the map of the base game Also, with the wings the hippo is giving Sanctuary Guardian form DS1 energy
To the Greeks and Romans, especially the Greeks, The hippopotamus was an incredible mythological creature. To them is was much the like the unicorn and dragons to us. In fact, it's thought that the later ideas in Europe of horses living in water, like kelpies, may have stemmed from the myth around the hippopotamus.
@@ZeldaTheSwordsman not everything is turning into a dragon, the hippo does match the description of the catoblepas, an old medieval monster based on word of mouth regarding the hippo and never seeing one.
@@kingcazar2285 It does, yes... because it's turning into a dragon. While not _everything_ is turning into a dragon (or a tree, or a crab), this hippo sure seems to be. That nose horn is a dragon's, the elongated tail is like a dragon's, some of the growths are draconic...
@@monteroa7 They have an animation for the quills disappearing though, so it seems like this might have been a scrapped attack, if it's not just very rare.
No clue why, but probably one of my favorite animal enemies in the game. Heart broken to see we were robbed of a flying Hippo. Life could've been grand.
I wonder if Messmer got a golden hippo to guard the gate cos it’s right in front of the giant Marika statue, and this thing is blonde. Like it reminds him of his mom AND it’s an insult at her LOL!
As a good guess, I could say that the golden hippos is where Hornsent of the tower harvest the yellow spikes of holy power, like at Midra's mansion with the row of decapitated corpses.
When you've been joking about having a slippery hippo with wings as your spirit animal for a decade but then Miyazaki and co decided to whip up this glorious monstrosity....
There's a fairly large dead tree in that area so perhaps its a failed attempt to create a minor erdtree but it is still guarded by two ulcerated tree spirits. Messmer seemed like the type of guy not to take the minor erdtree from his mother's village so he tried to recreate one but it died instead.
The multiple keratinous growths look painful, giving the impression that not all Crucible aspects were beneficial. The wings seem unfinished, so they were probably cut rather early on. Aside from having to move the quills around a lot to look good on the model, the wings would have likely obstructed too much of the player's view or clipped into the walls. For a next video, could you please check why the Putresence Sorcerers carry babies?
Huh, despite being able to cast incantations, it completely lacks the grace of gold in its eyes. Is it because all of them have a skibidi fragment in them?
Pretty sure every crucible thing like omens (besides morgott), misbegotten, and the few hornsent who actually have horns are graceless. And the crucible knights are the only exception because they aren’t actually born of the crucible they just use it.
@@rogerarayasaborio549 The hornsent were purged because Marika is a shaman, and we know what the hornsent did to the shamans. They lack grace because it wasn't extended to them.
Okay, insane theory time: It's got these quills that sprout from it's back, as well as a pair of wings. It also has the legs of an alligator or crocodile and the horn of a rhinoceros, though that's unrelated to my theory. My theory, which I came up with when this hippo was revealed in an early trailer, was that the Elden Beast was the epitome of the crucible and what all the parts originate from. Elden Beast has aquatic elements (tail and fin), avian elements (wings on back), mammal elements (quadrupedal shape, tail and hands), draconic elements (fire breath, also tail and wings) and even plant elements (roots on tail). We see this reflected in the quill rain attack, which resembles an attack the Elden Beast has where it goes on all fours, spreads it's wings and rains down similar projectiles. We also see the fins in the aquatic parts on the Hippos, the breath in the Crucible Knight guarding Tanith, the wings in Edredd and various Crucible knights, the tail in various Crucible Knights and the plant parts in Devonia.
Messmer couldn’t find an animal to ride on like his homies Radahn and Gaius so he had a hippo captured and put in his keep for guard duty.
he doesn’t need to ride a snake when he can become the snake (objectively cooler)
Pretty sick how Messmer, Gaius and Radahn were all speculated to be good friends.
"Are those actual corpses or just massive statues?" ur perception is negative 10
@@crunchysalmons who are you even talking to
@@crunchysalmons?
1:14 - POV your friend's dad just cracked the worst joke and he's waiting for you to laugh
Holy jumpscare man. Shouldn't have tapped that stamp
Haha tha got me good lmao
It looks as if it has a dad mustache too lol
Never cook again Lil bro
Lol
Close enough, welcome back Sanctuary Guardian.
I look around the hanging bodies in the storeroom and think about all the insane bosses we could've battled before Messmer burned it all away. That one horned giant humanoid looked like a tough SOB.
P.S. That storeroom definitely put a new twist on the Ancestor and Regal Ancestor Spirits. In fact, this DLC has me looking at the horned ancestral follower enemies in a whole new light now.
@@VictorIV0310it's called the Specimen Storehouse, they're not statues lol
Yeah I feel like just having a hippo was a bit weird - especially the placement
@@kalzero3319 There's a giant corpse of a Torrent-like animal as well
@@christopherlyndsay8611If you know how violent, vicious, and dangerous hippos are in real life you can totally get why a giant one with quills would make a great guard animal if tamed. It's definitely a unique choice. There's quite a few big hippos relaxing in watering holes in the Shadowlands
Hippo, porcupine, rhino, lion, crocodile. My brother in Ra, take your pet back to Egypt.
*chefs kiss* brilliant joke
I always wondered why there was this random Hippo in the middle of Messmer's castle. Then I got to the Specimen storehouse and realize that it was probably being kept as a live specimen for research purposes. It also explains why the Church district is flooded, they were using it as a habitat for it to swim around and exercise in.
I don't know if it's smart to let a test subject swim with tree spirits
@user-tq6tf5wn1x That would be why the hippo is kept in its room, with the door big enough for it closed.
maybe theye feed it tree spirits@@user-tq6tf5wn1x
Looks more like the flooded the Church District after that old Fire Knight started to revive the dead
@@user-tq6tf5wn1x the tree spirits are its food
The hippo head with a lion tail and crocodile looking feet reminds me of Ammit, the "Devourer of souls" from Egyptian mythology. Ammit specifically devoured damned souls, making it fitting within the Land of Shadow.
That explains a lot
EVERYTHING HAS WINGS, EVEN THE SNAKES, EVEN THE MEN, EVEN THE HIPPOPOTAMUSES!!
Edit 1: 999 Likes
Edit 2: 1k Likes
And with the Crucible Wings ash of war, the Tarnished can have wings too
EVEN THE DRAGONS... oh wait....
EVEN THE CROWS... kinda
Meow
I mean roar
Red bull put some heavy marketing into the lands between and land of shadow
They originally planned for Messmer to have a third phase where he rides on a flying Golden Hippo while he wields two spears but the computers programming it spontaneously caught on fire, so they scrapped it.
Man, I didn't know Miyazaki was a Super Mario RPG fan.
can confirm, my dad works for fromsoft 👍
I'm guessing they called it Messmer the Impaled?
Why does that unironically sound funny
Seriously who leaves a hippo in their library unsupervised? Messmer truly is a villain.
wasn't in the library, it was guarding the library door :D
@@thedarkgenious7967 Lobby hippo is acceptable 👍
“Why are they called it a hippo? It looks nothing like a hippo”
My brother in Grace, have you seen an actual hippo’ skull/skeleton? That thing is accurate minus the rhino horn
What about the moustache?
@@twistedpear18 He got that manscape sponsor. Stop hating. 😤
@@midouban628 Gonna need more than just a trimmer, have you seen the quills?
@twistedpear18 I heard somewhere they're meant to be based off of medieval interpretations of hippos in paintings and tapestries
It looks like how a medieval artist who had never seen a live hippo would depict the beast, working only from skeletal remains and 2nd hand accounts.
"You know what? Hippopotamus!"
-Miyazaki, probably
*Tanimura
Messmer was just trying to build a zoo, all along.
I like to imagine Miquella demanding a pet hippo is what really kicked off the demigod troubles.
Must have ticked them off knowing it was the sanest thing they saw him do.
Gay 😆
Probably was plucked from the area that became the castle watering hole or the nearby rauh ruins.
“I wanna hippopotamus for Christmas”
@@lethalethan07 There it is XD
This is more what I was thinking when I heard the last boss was called "Elden Beast" but hadn't seen it yet.
I saw a glimpse of it on UA-cam before I finished my first playthrough and thought it looked something like this. I think it was the wings that looked like horns.
Ah yes, because the Water Demons here in reality weren't enough....
Interesting detail: the heavy clinging tips of the fur suggest it was designed to match an environment with a damp floor. Just a neat detail.
From Soft knew that a hippo with wings would be too terrifying for all of us. They haunt the land and water they don't need access to the sky too
The Hippos FEEL like the purest form of the crusible. Beast with primordial power
So it has wings, is labelled as aquatic and it can curl up and roll around? I'm honestly surprised none of these things dig tunnels, it's the only traversal method this species has yet to master.
Heh.
Bet u are happy its not a dargon too?
The wings are cut content/unfinished assets.
One of the biggest bag fumble in Elden Ring: not putting the hippos under the water instead of the ulcerated tree spirits
It coulda been a duo fight where you can sneak and wake one up then the other
Someone at Fromsoft is extremely proud of their work on ulcerated tree spirits and convinced everyone to place them everywhere
@@aswifte5743 I mean its a boss design that survived being scrapped from DS3 in 2015. Honestly good for them for gloating about it and being everywhere, they deserve it.
@@aswifte5743they know *exactly* how annoying they are to fight with their giant health pools and big sweeping attacks and double down by putting them in annoying areas (read: poison swamps and the triple ulcerated tree spirit gank area). More power to them.
@@kirbyis4ever*they're just lazy
Yeah I mean they’re near sources of water all game but that would’ve been a better choice honestly. The two near the river downstream (next to the waterfalls) don’t really need to be there and could’ve been replaced.
I mean why not? The bears are turning into dragons.
Did I miss something?
@@Joranthalus yea the bears turning into dragons
@@Joranthalus The Runebears eyes. Bear similarities to dragons
@@Joranthalus It's a popular theory that Runebears are bears that are midway into transforming into dragons, based on cut content from the network test and some details of the final model. The new Roar of Rugalea incantation pretty much debunked it, though.
@Dinoman972 oh I never new that, was that in game item descriptions or like internal code
1:14 he thinks he's so funny 👀🦷🦷
Everything a fucken game to him 🤦♂️
Hippopotamus + Rhino + Mole-rat + Purcupine + Eagle = This thing.
The thought of a boss fight with one of these flying will haunt my nightmares
Messmer: "I want a hippopotamus for christmas, only a hippopotamus would do"
can't wait for Prepare to Cry: Golden Hippopotamus to drop the sweet sick lore as to why there's a gotdamn hippo in the middle of this castle
Especially with the "Aquatic Beast" internal name, he's got some pretty significant Godwyn/Fortissax vibes going on with the thorns & unused wings. Really cool to see this stuff as always, so thanks for sharing all of these!!
For some reason, I can't unsee the image of an old, wrinkly, bald man.
Oh good god. First off: that looks awesome with wings.
Secondly: I am so glad I didn't have to fight it with wings.
yeah they probably scrapped it cause they realised those wings made the camera even worse
@@anonymous01201 Yes. I mean, bad enough you're fighting something that big in a small arena, but adding WINGS to it would definitely make it so much harder to see what's actually going on.
@@TheFableChronicler exactly
The Golden Hippopotamus would have been such a fun outdoor open-world boss. Just like we saw in the first reveal trailer. And one of them smaller hippopotamuses would have been perfect in Shadow Keep. God, I hate the walls/camera. So much of this game has changed from reveal trailer to final release. Just like the base game's network test and retail version.
To quote a totally well respected and not hated Disney film made in continuation of a well-known film franchise,
They fly now!?
Better than the prequels
@@aaronapley258unpopular and objectively wrong opinion, those are bad star wars and mostly bad movies
@@Cyn_likes_corpses I don't need people to validate my opinions, feel free to be wrong. The Prequels fucking suck. Terrible dialogue, Terrible Story, Terrible Acting. You can let nostalgia win but anyone with eyes can see the lack of quality.
@@Cyn_likes_corpses It's called that comment was bait and you fell for it 🤣
@@aaronapley258 cough cough, so baaaad a baaaiiiit... I'm dyyyiiiiiing
Glad From finally started including Pokemon into the game.
1:14 How bro looks at me while the teacher is having a mental breakdown
You can tell it’s a golden hippopotamus because of the way it is.
This is indeed a creature of the Crucible.
"Wait a minute...They fly now?!!"
The Golden Hippopotamus is named... Gloria from Madagascar!
Oh don't say that 😭😔 Gloria ain't this crack addict looking demon bro
Elden Ring overall has a "medieval ideas about how the world works are how this world actually works" thing going on, so my first impression of the hippopotamus was that it's based on those medieval manuscript depictions of animals.
The ones where the designs are way off because it's being drawn by a monk who has only ever had the animal described to it secondhand from sone guy who saw it months or years ago.
The internal name is aquatic beast? It looks a lot like the sea monsters in the map of the base game
Also, with the wings the hippo is giving Sanctuary Guardian form DS1 energy
I always wondered about what type of horned/tusked animal was used for Radahn’s helmet. Now, I believe it belonged to a Hippo
dog owners be like, "he don't bite"
its funny that they put a set of wings on it and weeks after dlc launch british scientists actually found out hippos can (probably) fly
i guess that the research if hippos can fly is proven correct
To the Greeks and Romans, especially the Greeks, The hippopotamus was an incredible mythological creature. To them is was much the like the unicorn and dragons to us. In fact, it's thought that the later ideas in Europe of horses living in water, like kelpies, may have stemmed from the myth around the hippopotamus.
Hippos can fly everyone knows that 🦛
Ah yes, the HedgeHippHarassceros
I feel that a better name for this "Hippopotamus" would be "Catoblepas", 'cause only look it him
It's turning into a dragon.
@@ZeldaTheSwordsman not everything is turning into a dragon, the hippo does match the description of the catoblepas, an old medieval monster based on word of mouth regarding the hippo and never seeing one.
@@kingcazar2285 It does, yes... because it's turning into a dragon. While not _everything_ is turning into a dragon (or a tree, or a crab), this hippo sure seems to be. That nose horn is a dragon's, the elongated tail is like a dragon's, some of the growths are draconic...
I didn't realize the little hippos could do the quil attack? I've never gotten them to do it
Me neither buddy
I just nihil it, didnt see sh1t from all the blood magic and being stuck in a corner...
Pretty sure they can't do it normally, and the video is just showing them do the same animation to compare to the big one.
@@monteroa7 They have an animation for the quills disappearing though, so it seems like this might have been a scrapped attack, if it's not just very rare.
@@nightscout9979It was in the trailer I believe
They have wings
Wow, I did *not* notice the wings in that one animation. Neat!
Bet the Golden Hippos make great emergency food supplies.
No clue why, but probably one of my favorite animal enemies in the game.
Heart broken to see we were robbed of a flying Hippo. Life could've been grand.
They wanted 2 of them, one that has wings and the one we got.
At some point the winged one got shelfed...
The moveset with the wings isn't any different, it's mainly an aesthetic change
Yes, but thats just efficient, same enemy + more moves = more bosses.
The crucible knights share some of their moves too.
Maybe at some point we were supposed to get the "Aspects of the Crucible: Wings" from a winged hippo instead of that black knight
A trip to the zoo in this fantasy realm would really just be instantaneous death, huh
Everybody gangsta 'till the hippo starts flying.
♬ I'd be done see'n about everything when I see an hippopotamus fly ♬ ♬
Amazing Design! And Great Video to showcase this!
I wonder if Messmer got a golden hippo to guard the gate cos it’s right in front of the giant Marika statue, and this thing is blonde. Like it reminds him of his mom AND it’s an insult at her LOL!
Ah the famous wingpotamus.
Jokes aside it looks like a hybrid between hipotamus and rhino.
Yet another thing turning into a dragon!
It’s like an unholy mashup of a hippo, rhino, crocodile, lion, and porcupine. They remind me a lot of the pontiff beasts from ds3
So this what happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hippos
Wasted opportunity to make a boss of "all crucibles"
As a good guess, I could say that the golden hippos is where Hornsent of the tower harvest the yellow spikes of holy power, like at Midra's mansion with the row of decapitated corpses.
My first thought when I saw the thumbnail was Sanctuary Guardian
Makes me wonder what a creature would look like if all the aspects of the crucible combined seamlessly.
Bro thinks he’s the Elden beast
Wonder if that's a subtle nod to the study that hippos can fly 😂
That's a face only a mother could love... Maybe... Possibly.
Such a cool design looking at it it up front
When you've been joking about having a slippery hippo with wings as your spirit animal for a decade but then Miyazaki and co decided to whip up this glorious monstrosity....
I'm here 2 minutes after this video released
They also seem to share some movesets with Sulyvahn’s beasts
It looks like a mix between a hippo, rhino and a porcupine. And it has wings.
Looks like something the crucibles or misbeggoten would tame..
The patches along its body remind of the omens whose horns have been cut off.
Well least i can make the hippos flying excuse when they say pigs fly
I half expected this dlc to have some crucible beast as the final boss, like how the elden beast is the final boss in the main game
It would have made so much more sense to have this be the underwater monster instead of another tree spirit
There's a fairly large dead tree in that area so perhaps its a failed attempt to create a minor erdtree but it is still guarded by two ulcerated tree spirits. Messmer seemed like the type of guy not to take the minor erdtree from his mother's village so he tried to recreate one but it died instead.
@@silenthero2795 that is true but I was so disappointed when I drained the water.
Show this to Charlie, Hippos DO FLY!
...we don't need a giant tree-hippo that can get on the roof, no.
Sanctuary Guardian, is that you?
Bro drank a lot of red bull
Rhinopopotamuscupine
The multiple keratinous growths look painful, giving the impression that not all Crucible aspects were beneficial. The wings seem unfinished, so they were probably cut rather early on. Aside from having to move the quills around a lot to look good on the model, the wings would have likely obstructed too much of the player's view or clipped into the walls. For a next video, could you please check why the Putresence Sorcerers carry babies?
Hopefully an Elden Ring sequel lets us fight all kinds of crucible beasts like this in their original formes
it really is the elden hippopotamus
one of my favorite "what the FUCK" moments in this DLC was walking into this fucker's boss room. sublime.
Man, not sure if this is what I want for Christmas.
As if hippos weren't terrifying enough
Seems like the Hornsent inquisitors used their spikes to craft torture devices.
Looks like me after 3 days of no sleep
I wondee if it is same thing that happens to rune bears that they slowly turn into dragons.
Huh, despite being able to cast incantations, it completely lacks the grace of gold in its eyes. Is it because all of them have a skibidi fragment in them?
The power of the crucible predates Marikas golden grace. As the hornsent lack of grace was the justification for the crusade to purge them.
Pretty sure every crucible thing like omens (besides morgott), misbegotten, and the few hornsent who actually have horns are graceless. And the crucible knights are the only exception because they aren’t actually born of the crucible they just use it.
He is a crucible bro, they did it before it was cool.
@@rogerarayasaborio549 The hornsent were purged because Marika is a shaman, and we know what the hornsent did to the shamans. They lack grace because it wasn't extended to them.
@@ETBrooD I know, I said it was a justification, as in that is what the crusaders believed to be the reason.
Man’s got a moustache
Surprised there was no elephants in the DLC
Huh, when I beat the open world hippos, none had the thorns when I fought them.
wings ?? this guy seems to have porcupine quills !
Ma! There’s a wired looking stray cat outside! It looks like grandma the fuckin thing.
If I remember correctly, there was a MTG card that was a hippo with wings
Okay, insane theory time:
It's got these quills that sprout from it's back, as well as a pair of wings. It also has the legs of an alligator or crocodile and the horn of a rhinoceros, though that's unrelated to my theory. My theory, which I came up with when this hippo was revealed in an early trailer, was that the Elden Beast was the epitome of the crucible and what all the parts originate from.
Elden Beast has aquatic elements (tail and fin), avian elements (wings on back), mammal elements (quadrupedal shape, tail and hands), draconic elements (fire breath, also tail and wings) and even plant elements (roots on tail).
We see this reflected in the quill rain attack, which resembles an attack the Elden Beast has where it goes on all fours, spreads it's wings and rains down similar projectiles. We also see the fins in the aquatic parts on the Hippos, the breath in the Crucible Knight guarding Tanith, the wings in Edredd and various Crucible knights, the tail in various Crucible Knights and the plant parts in Devonia.