Elden Ring - It's probably fine
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- Опубліковано 25 лис 2023
- The Crystalians are a mysterious enemy with a very distinct appearance, but there may not be much you can speculate from it, since it predates the game they're in by a few decades.
Song used: Ancient Cistern - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword OST - Ігри
Top-down designs usually have more personality, like Radahn having his tiny horse Leonard, and push mechanical development to find ways to represent them. But similarly, bottom-up designs can also lead to creative avenues that may not have been explored otherwise. It's good to have a mix of both, as inspiration can come from anywhere and works on either side of the axis.
I feel like From Software did a fantastic job making the Crystallians fit smoothly in the Lands Between. They never seemed out of place in the narrative and worldbuilding, at least to me. It speaks to their ability to creatively utilize existing material in new and interesting ways while retaining its identity
@@Gakulon With how crystal-heavy the setting already is, it was the best place they could've fit them in.
Makes me considerate the existence of Godefroy, one of the most heavily criticised boss fight in all ER... It was put just because the lore demanded it, and that was a suitable place?
Or it was a repeated boss whose developers decided to give him a backstory?
You know what, I actually think bottom-up design is more important for a game as the games should prioritize 'gameplay' before the 'story'. This doesn't have to be the case for every game but this philosophy is just what Fromsoft mostly design their games with for so long and many people love this approach. To me it always felt like the stories of souls games were made up later and wasn't the priority.
I think that a balance between aspects that are largely explored in the lore and others that are much more vague helps making the world feel "real". Different granularity levels help immersion.
Crystallians really say 🗿💎
They were 🗿 before 🗿even was a thing
Exactly why I like them.
lol they’re so out of place that it’s funny as hell.
@@EchoStylesTheYveltalAre you sure? What if Elden Ring takes place in the future?
@@Gakulonyes sir. Moai.
Move set wise they remind me a lot of the ruin sentinels in ds2
I can only think of the spin attack
That's it, I knew they felt familiar but wasn't sure what. Their skinny stature is also really similar
@@darkwhispersstories47 The one that throws discs is also similar to their shield throw move they can do if you stay far away for too long.
@@darkwhispersstories47They have a wide sweep move too I think
Even those have more variety in their moves lol
What I find interesting about them is that they fit into something indicated in multiple parts of lore, where some ancient being or beings once dwelled in the Lands Between that left, but are expected to return some day. Even the Dragonlord Placidusax had that as part of his lore. It implies a continuation of the world's history, that the fight for the new Elden Lord is just a moment in a continuing narrative, rather than the your character's victory being the ending of it.
This. Probably with the exception of Bloodborne, most of the Souls games seem to feature the player cleaning up the messy parts at the end of one cycle to usher in another. The cyclical lore and custodial nature of the player is really something.
I forgot DS2 allows you to end the curse at least for yourself so that’s something too I guess
@@alexanderbowlby4568 But then 3 basically tells you Wolnir hunted you down if you did that and killed you to melt your crowns into his.
@@vitriolicAmaranth I did not know that! So all your efforts get relegated into some bling for a joke boss
@@alexanderbowlby4568 Pretty much. It's weird how disrespectful base DaS3 feels toward DaS2 (ESPECIALLY with Wolnir) when the only thing wrong with the latter was that it was ostensibly a sequel to a game with which it had very little to do (and the graphical downgrade and false advertisement thing that kicked off the hate train for it that lasted several years- but that's not even a problem with the game as a product, it's a problem with bandai namco's scummy advertising), and then how Ringed City was the complete opposite and felt like a love letter to 2.
Unless you help Ranni lol
What is strange to me are their red cloaks, as Crystallians have no need for fabric to warm their bodies it must be a sign of distinction, but with their lore so very vague, it is probably a detail that doesn't mean anything except to specify which side is their left.
If Hawkshaw's color theory video is anything to go by, the red hue of the cloaks they wear may literally be the thing that gives them life.
@@endermage77 I saw the video but I don't think that piece of fabric would be that powerful, especially because I think Crystallians have an inorganic life far more strange that any Elden Ring could affect.
It’s likely a signifier of their creator. They wear a red cape because their creator did. Also because their creator put it on them.
This is kind of a shot in the dark; but it could represent scarlet rot. My only reason for thinking this is due to the past rot civilization int lake of rot being under a glint stone sky under the Reia Lucaria Academy (presumably built atop the glintstone
Also the fact that the rotten crystalians exist, but that could also easily be explained by scarlet rot being able to infect non-organic substances like the land of Caelid
Building on what others have said, it's not so much "the only thing giving them life" as it is something to "aid" them. A little bit of red, to balance our their blue nature. The lore does specifcally state that the thought processes, their "cogitations" are basically fundamentally alien to a human perspective; their point of view is fundamentally different to a human's - which makes sense. They are crystal constructs, possibly crafted by some ancient hand. They don't do much - just sit around. They don't cooperate really with anyone. There is no outright mention of them being on friendly terms with any faction, even if you could make a case that they are somewhat amicable to sorcerors due to their locations.
Many sorcerors seek understanding of the "primeval current" some mystic force or font of sorcerous power. The Crystalians natural talent for crystal sorceries displays their innate understanding/connection to it. Presumably many sorcerors have tried to communicate with the Crystalians.
I think the red cloaks are either gifts or an attempt by one side of this attempt at communication to actually communicate. Perhaps the sorcerors gifted red cloaks to the Crystalians to establish a friendly relationship with them, as well as balance out their natures a little bit. To bring the Crystalians just that much closer to humans. Or perhaps the Crystalians took the cloaks up themselves in an attempt to reciprocate and understand a human mindset.
Surely human minds are just as unfathomable and mysterious to these entities of Crystal as their minds are as alien to us?
I always thought the Crystalians took great inspiration from the Golem from the eponymous German movie from either 1915 or 1920, since both share the same hairstyle and are associated with magic.
Smough Town just made this connection in another video and went into some theorizing about the connection and what it might mean, I was wondering if Zullie had seen that because its a deadringer for the Golem’s design
At 3:10 you show the Omenkillers when mentioning enemies that are more for gameplay than lore, but I personally quite like the Omenkiller's lore relevancy and its general atmosphere. They're intimidation done right; they're essentially just dudes, but their weapons, mask and way of fighting really makes them feel like monsters or dark creatures. I think they're a very well-done design
And give more insight on how the omens were hated, but their design really is the best part about them
They're Capra Demons with a new skin and name - an example of an enemy that was made and then inserted into the game rather than an enemy designed to fulfil a narrative need within this particular title.
@@skachor That's speculation though. The the whole Omen thing is really fleshed out as was their role society so Omen Killers might have existed ni the design and draft process before they knew they would re-use the capra demon. I don't think they had the Capra Moveset lying around and THEN thought that Omen Killers should be a thing, personally.
If the lore idea came first and then they use existing game mechanics to fill that up it's still technically top down design because the lore and fluff came before.
@knightloltrec no its not. Play the games
@@skachor yes they are. play the game.
I love how the Crystalians are able to make profound weapons made of pure crystal in this game, something said to be impossible for humans. Which rings true in Dark Souls, where magic was also the source of crystal weapons, created by Seath's tampering with sorcery he didn't understand. And any crystal upgrades you apply yourself inevitably make your weapons and armor much less durable.
The lore for FromSoft games all bleeds together, and I dig it.
Are they or were they mabye made with their weapons as a package?
It occurs to me that FromSoft would make great developers for a Final Fantasy spin-off, considering FromSoft's games and the FF series have similar recurring elements, like magical crystals... Coincidentally, back in the day, when Sakaguchi was conceptualizing the first Final Fantasy game, he considered naming it "Fighting Fantasy" (he wanted the game's title to be abbreviated as "FF") but obviously couldn't go with that option since the title was already taken and copyrighted.
It's more like retreading similar concepts
Others tie in characters, From Soft ties in lore
@@SleeplessZombie Bro what? The Lore Bibles are avaiable man, no such thing as making stuff up.
I like the mix of design-from-narrative and narrative-from-design. I find this happening a lot when designing DND characters. Some character backstories spring from a desire to play a certain class or race, while with other characters I create a backstory and pick a class that most matches the vibe
My headcanon background for my BG3 character literally sprang from wanting to play a Great Old One Warlock, and stumbling on the heterochromia options and the eye tattoo that looks like writhing tentacles coming out of the eye. I find it really fun when your own character's backstory almost isn't even of your design. Just, like, "That is this character's backstory: I didn't create it." Kinda feels like how Michelangelo said he was liberating the forms imprisoned in the marble.
One character of mine sprouted from “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a tiny creature piloting a warforged mech?” And another was “Oh man, What if there was a kid who was taken from the streets and groomed into being the king’s underground worker”
Leo and Oliver are my favorite characters I’ve made thus far.
While it's possible (and likely probable) that their weakness to Strike damage came from the story they themselves are pulled from, it's worth pointing out that this isn't something unique to that story either. Fantasy games have long considered enemies made of glass/stone/crystal/bone or some other similar mineral/material to be weak to smashing/blunt weapons while resistant to most everything else. The Crystalians falling into that same category would only make sense due to the many years of this trope being a thing since before Miyazaki even started making games of his own.
Very true, even in FromSoft's King's Field games strike damage was more effective than slash and pierce weapons against golems and skeletons, long before Miyazaki joined the company.
I think it’s actually because it’s easier to smash a piece of glass or crystal with a hammer, than it is to try cutting it with a knife, or poking through it with a needle, or trying to chop it in half with scissors.
Bro, they took the design from the story. Why wouldn't you assume they took the weakness from the same story with the same characters?
@@milesedgeworth132 Did you miss them saying it's very much probable that they /did/. They were just pointing out another possible source, or in my opinion, the twinned source that reinforced that decision.
@@milesedgeworth132 you don’t really know if they took the design from the story, and weakness to strike/piece/slash is something they add to a lot of enemies and there are some consistent rules to what weakness enemies will have.
This is the first time I've seen a close-up of Crystalians, and the derpy frown their mouths are frozen into made me laugh
They are literally 🗿
Same haha
It's silliness is heightened by the fact that they are artificial beings.
Someone deliberately made them that way.
perpetual "😬" face
Their bowlcut hair is, I think, inspired by 1915's "The Golem", a black and white film.
absolutely. crystalians may also be representative of Jewish golems
I enjoy lore as much as the next guy, but I'm grateful for the mini-lesson on game design. It's a phenomenon I've absolutely noticed, and now I'm grateful to have the language for.
Wait, if they took inspiration from Fighting Fantasy, we can draw a straight line from Deathtrap Dungeon to Elden Ring now. This makes so much sense.
Damn that’s two things I haven’t heard of
Deathtrap Dungeon was a direct inspiration for Dark Souls if I'm not mistaken
All roads lead to warhammer and berserk and than to lotro and Celtic myths. Xd
@@Erick-tv8oq no it was Berserk
@@snakebebop A game can be inspired by two or more things at the same time
The spear wielding Crystalian can suck a fat one tho, jump attacking 57 times in a row
He took the "jumping attack is the most reliable move" to the extreme
SMH another non-parryhead bites the dust 😔
Lion’s Claw flattens them even without a stance break. Good way to deal with them since it’ll also hyper armour through the crystilian’s poking.
Yes, the easily avoided, long windup, very unique sound queued, attack that moves in a straight line.
I think the Crystal boy here is not who’s sucking a fat one
@@bbluva20 I sometimes don’t feel like waiting 10 seconds for them to finish their hop pokes just to get one attack in.
Craziest thing: I recognised the artwork in the thumbnail, since I used to collect the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks myself, but when I started the video I was sure I must be mistaken as there is no way anyone in Japan could have got hold of something so niche... But yeah, I used to have loads of those books, starting from the Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I even played an entirely crystal character with the same inspiration in a freeform roleplaying environment for years...
Fighting Fantasy was the shit back in the day, I remember cheating to get a perfect character in Crypt of the Sorcerer just to have a slight chance at beating the final boss.
Fighting Fantasy did reasonably pretty well in Japan, there was a decent niche for tabletop formats in the mid-late 80s. Remember that Record of Lodoss War, their first big home grown fantasy IP, began as transcripts of tabletop games played in various formats, printed in Compatiq. Fighting Fantasy's companion magazine Warlock published all the way into 1997 in Japan, when its publication ended in only 3 years (83-86, 13 issues total) in its home country.
@@gtf234It's a pretty interesting rabbithole that continued today.
Japan surely has its core TTRPG fandom of players, but it's quite different form the West.
At the same time, pseudo-TTRPG things are very popular. Just Yesterday I was browsing through some import stuff and I stumbled upon a couple of decks that looked out of some collector cards game, but were actually Japanese RPGs!
Basically, you make a character and the game is developed by picking up a card and the group roleplaying (with some guidance from the rules) the events as by the cards.
It's a weird mix of card game, no-GM cooperative RPG and storygame with focus on roleplaying over merchanics.
I'll never stop being surprised that this kind of stuff is popular in niches over there, Call of Chtulu is extremely popular and that WOTC still fails to sell DnD in Japan and the East in general lmao.
The last bastion of TTRPG outside of 5e DnD influence.
Somewhat related but I liked seeing the reincarnation of the asylum demon and Capra demon in elden ring. I recognized the stance and moveset of the omen killer and thought I had the encounter in the bag when he did his easily punishable leap attack. I snapped out of that muscle memory when he decided to do 2 more leaping attacks immediately afterwards
As one who has only played ER and knows a bit about the Souls series, is the Omen Killer the same rig as the Capra demon? And the avatars are the asylum demon?
@@argentum909The omen killers pretty much use the Capra demon's animations and the Tree sentinel's the Asylum demon's respectively.
@@argentum909 Yes, they are. The differences are in having animations with different timings and a different way to string them together as well as new ones to use with that animation rig/animation skeleton.
(And of course the skin, so to say.)
The asylum demon actually even dates back to the vanguard demon from Demon's Souls.
@@Sinhsseax Ah that's super cool
@@justsomeone883 the asylum demon's is the erdtree avatar not the sentinel.
I hope this popular youtuber making a video which points out the fact that Crystalians are weak to Strike damage will finally solve the problem of people summoning me for coop and then them immediately getting one shotted by these things while attempting to kill them with a dagger
Their appearance also seems inspired by the 100 years old silent film The Golem (considered by many the first Horror Movie Franchise). Not only they are both constructs, but the titular monster in the film has that exact same “haircut”.
im glad im not the only one who thinks this
Paul wegener (writer, director and actor of the golem trilogy) would be pleased.
Its so cool how the Zelda-OSTs all manage to convey a mysterious feeling perfectly matching your content!
Assets? Who was talking about assets?@@ZeroFanfare
1:05 these three made me rage quit soooo many times in my first playthrough, i hadnt figured out about the mechanic yet so i was running around just trying to fight all three of them at once 😂
Welp, now you know how to break them easier, at least?
They also got nerfed later on, like many other multi bosses. Specifically, their AI was limited so they wouldn't all attack you at the same time.
@@CrombellsThat really was a fucking game changer. I tried so many times to just aggro a single one with an arrow or spell from behind the crystal structure, but they'd all just rush at me.
But it was a completely different experience in NG+, after it got modded. 😂
@@Crombellswhere do you get that info? Without summons, they still wombo combo me into submission
@@KABLAMMATS Yeah if you run in front of all three they definitely will all attack you
damn. never got to play ER, but it feels like every single vid i see of if it showcases a different enemy/area/npc, holy hell the game is huge
You should one day
@@ky7501 What he said ☝
Elden Ring has been described as being Dark Sould 4, 5 AND 6.
look at the dunkey video of elden ring, even if you replay the game it feels huge, not boring or empty, huge, It is like skyrim for me in the sense that is a confort food that I like to go back and replay more than once.
Oh you have no idea how huge it is until you play it lol and when you do it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger
Zullie videos are just such a vibe.. the music, the pacing, the in-game shots. Even that lasting feeling when the video ends.
Zullie is the GOAT 👑
2:25 "Caverns of the Snow Witch"... now THERE'S a blast from the past! ;-D
Honestly, I have such bittersweet memories of reading all the Fighting Fantasy books while growing up... I say 'bitter', since, in their own way, they could be EVERY bit as bastard hard & unforgiving as any Souls game!
( _Still, didn't stop me from reading them over & over again, though... Good times._ )
What do you mean by the books being bastard hard and unforgiving? Is the narrative devastating like many beloved characters are killed and such?
@@somerandombub Fighting Fantasy is a gamebook, basically a choose your own adventure story book with dice-rolling.
@@somerandombub I meant unforgiving in that, depending on how the book was written, literally ONE single mistake could screw up your entire run, forcing you to start over from scratch... well, unless you decided to cheat; which, tbh, I usually ended up resorting to in the end!
Basically, trying to do a 'flawless' run of your average FF gamebook was the equivalent of trying to play through a "Souls" game without saving once - yeah, _technically,_ it was doable, _BUT,_ you truly needed to be a special kind of masochist to even try..!
Fun fact, their design also bares some resemblance to the golem from the 1920s silent movie!!
I always appreciate ideas that start mechanically and end up not only pushing the narrative to find a space to fit in, but also sometimes directly enhance it as a consequence of needing to fit within the world. Sometimes, even well written narratives are left with a mechanically shaped gap.
Narrative designer here, we also use the terms top-down and bottom-up for more wider things such as systems and whole stories depending on if a single concept directed each part (top-down) or if it was made by a bundle of ideas adding to form something bigger when assembled (bottom-up).
Didn't knew about the origin from Magic though so I learned something today !
I just want to take a moment to say how good Zelda music fits for Dark Souls and Elden Ring images/videos.
Actually, Zelda music is just good, period.
That's because Zelda is the GOAT when it comes to charm
Played Elden Ring feels more like playing classic Zelda than modern Zelda does. Every time I go through Stormveil I end up humming the Hyrule Castle theme.
Ancient Cistern is such a good theme
Yay! Always excited to watch one of your videos! Thanks for making them and sharing them!! Great work☺️
The red eyes from Steven Jackson's Sorcery! are also clearly inspirations for the Frenzy Flame. They have fire in their eyes from a deep eldritch force beneath the earth. Anything they look at burns into flames as they shoot energy bolts from their eyes. Originally the merchant Kalé was known as red eyes Kalé and spearheaded the quest for the Frenzy Flame.
In Sorcery! the red eyes originate from a city called Kharé. Which is would be pronounced the same as Kalé because the whole "l" and "r" lack of distinction.
Absolutely love everything you put out! Always fun learning about my favorite games.
Interesting note, a guy named Marc Gascoigne worked on the "Fighting Fantasy" books when published under Puffin Books. I highly doubt that Miyazaki didn't use that name for Bloodborne bc it's badass
Always love your videos!
Aside from intriguing content, I love the form of your videos. Ambient game tracks and text based information with visual representation in the background. It’s a very tight combo. Nice work on the vid, as always.
With their ‘hair’ they reminded me of the Golem from the German 1920 film Der Golem. I’d thought with that visual, they were alluding to the Crystallian’s nature being crystal golems.
This such a deja vu trip, I feel like I watched this exact video from you before. The picture from the book over the Crystalian especially gives me deja vu vibes.
Kind of unrelated to the video’s point, but the crystalians’ hairdo, which is the main difference between them and their direct inspiration, is definitely a shout-out to the one sported by the Golem of Prague in the 1920 film. After all, the golem is the iconic man-made being
Sometimes you cover things I already knew about the game, but I still watch it all the way through because you deserve the view
Yet another very interesting video from you. Thanks!
What I think makes Elden Ring an all-time great is that as a whole it’s both top-down and bottom-up. IMO it’s some of the best gameplay and the best story / narrative, better than most games that only focus on one or the other. I think this is evidenced by the two drastically different cohorts of Elden Ring content creators; your Zullie The Witches, Quelaags and Tarnished Archeologist AND your challenge runners like Bushy and Gino Machino etc. it’s mad that one work can inspire so much in two completely different disciplines.
@@unrighteous8745 "Kill the tree" is only really accurate if you're going Frenzied Flame. More broadly the story is "Become Elden Lord" and "Mend the Elden Ring", the first part being the same for everyone and the second part being where the endings diverge.
@@unrighteous8745my boy there’s like a character driven drama as a central narrative foundation of the game it’s just not in uh, in cutscenes
@@unrighteous8745It's in Eastern story format. If you want the details, you must hunt for the context. Every item in the game helps pull the story together, so long as you're willing to read.
I love the simplicity of your video format. It’s just facts.
It's amazing how many details like this come up after so many years.
1 year to be exact…
Soooo many years…… it’s been eons….. decades even…
@@xxXKogasaWe3dL0rd420Xxx All the same this statement could be a generalization for all the stuff Zulie has found across the entire souls series, which WOULD be so many years. Not to mention the idea for these things came from 2009
The game came out like last year, it wasn’t that long
I also have a well-worn copy of Titan (the Fighting Fantasy guidebook) sitting on my shelf.
I knew there was a reason I was initially drawn to the Souls games, and it's probably a large part my love of the Fighting Fantasy series as a kid.
Same here. I still have my copy of Out Of The Pit.
love your storytelling!
The titan book was written by a Mark Gascoigne. Name rings a bell haha! It has got to be a reference.
Huh, I always figured that Crystalians were based on the ol' Golem from Jewish folklore. Maybe that's what the fighting fantasy guys were based on :v
All Caelid is basically Nausicaä, the insects, rot, Malenia, giant skeletons, fungus
Oh, and Torrent
It amazes me how captivating your videos are. I watch them with the same interest that I watch nat geo documentaries almost as if it’s real life lore lol. I suppose we owe thanks to fromsoftware but they really do need channels like yours to make the more symbolic/clandestine parts of their games shine. Thanks for your effort and content you provide :)
Good music selection for this one. Really fitting for the subject matter.
honestly i dont know how many people say this to you, but i truly appereciate the level of effort you put into these videos, everytime a new one pops up in my recommendations i always get the feeling that you're the type of person who understands how and why some choices are made in development vwithout judging them and with respect. I think youre fun to talk to about this nerdy stuff and im glad you found an audience for it
sorry im baked af
Cool video Zullie. I like the music choice as well. It fits it perfectly.
Their design reminds me a lot of the golem from the movie "Der Golem/The Golem (1915)". Same exact hair style as the movie's golem. A golem is from Jewish folklore where it's a guardian made of clay (the movie is slightly different, but that's the origin). Just switch out the clay for crystal, and it's a pretty close match. Or maybe the Titan book you mentioned got it's inspiration from the movie. Either way, it's pretty spot on.
The Crystalian's head design is also heavily based on the Golem's head from, The Golem (1920), which is fitting as golems are human shaped constructs given life in jewish folklore.
meticulous enemy and art design in from software games is exceptional. Thanks for giving us the chance to observe these details. Lords of the fallen or any game can not keep up with this high quality work
Crystalian, seems like from Houseki no Kuni, a remains that came from human's inner bone that crystallized over thousand years... coincidence tough!
If I was a being of crystal with a permanent haircut that could loosely be described as the hideous lovechild of an afro and a bowlcut, I'd frown all the time too.
They also look like the golem from the eponymous black and white movie
I never saw their faces up close but they do give off a certain "stones together strong" vibe
This Video got me wanting to play now. Thanks lol
Crystalians remind me so much of that golem dude that appeared in that old Jonny Quest cartoon - always fun when I see them :D
I thought this was a pretty cool little homage by Fromsoft: In the Fighting Fantasy book pictured in the vid at 2:27 (I was able to find the original scan by googling) it describes the Crystal warriors as having been created by a Snow Witch.
We know Ranni's mentor was a Snow Witch, thanks to the item description on the armor set of the same name.
That would actually be a pretty plausible explanation for who created the Crystallians in ER: An old mysterious crone hanging out in the forest, teaching forbidden sorcery to little girls and making crystal robots.
Great video 👍🏼
That's actually a really cool way to think about idea conceptualization. I'll have to try some of this out!
Zullie: "It's fine to utilize story and fiction from other sources as inspiration for enemy types, especially if they were given gameplay features based on the narrative of the character."
Me: "Oh, that's cool! Flattery to an original source and basing the mechanics on that concept. Makes me want to go back and look over my old story ideas for something new." :D
Person who doesn't understand the video: "MIYAZAKI STOLE FROM FIGHTING FANTASY!"
I have never been able to look at the crystalian's faces so close-up ingame - they look way more derpy and less zen-like than I would have expected.
It seems like a sensible way to handle things is to come up with both top-down and bottom-up concepts and then try to match them up together. This will inevitably lead to a lot of loose ends on both sides that have to be discarded, but the matching pairs should result in higher quality to make up for it. Also, often in the process of trying to pair up mechanical and narrative content, it can lead to a mutation in the resulting fusion, a bending of one or both concepts so that they mesh better with one another, giving an end result that is more unique and interesting. I've had this happen a number of times while writing D&D homebrew.
I love this channel
Thievery is step one in creativity.
I've never taken a closer look at their face.
I miss that time.
"Before you stands a CRYSTAL WARRIOR, one of the Snow Witch's personal guardians who has been sent to deal with you. He is made of quartz which is animated by the Snow Witch's sorcery. Edged Weapons will not harm the Crystal Warrior - your sword is useless! If you possess a war-hammer you may succeed in smashing the Crystal Warrior to pieces."
Wasn't expecting references to both MTG and Fighting Fantasy from this channel, but I'm pleasantly surprised.
Thanks! I grew up reading FF books in the 80s and I felt I had seen the crystalians before, but never made the connection.
Godfrey's design happens to be one of those that took a bit too much inspiration from somewhere else. This somewhere else being 'Lord of the Mysteries'. At the end of volume 1 of the novel series there is a few pages of art. Within these pages there is a depiction of a few "sequences" which are the power system in the series. I can't remember exactly but, I believe it was the Giant sequence which had a depiction that looked exactly like Godfrey, including the lion around his shoulder. Of course I won't deny that there's the high chance that it's a coincidence or that the artist for LotM took inspiration from Godfrey instead although the latter is very likely not the case.
Something I wonder about are the Crystalians' red cloaks. They make me think they're outcasts similar to the guards at Stormveil.
ive played like 300 hours of this and never really noticed their face
Same
I saw the thumbnail and instantly knew it was Fighting Fantasy. the art style is just so recognizable. Didn't know Miyazaki played them! So cool!!!
Love these deep dives you go on finding the inspirations for so many beings in the lands between!
On the topic of the Cristalians, i really with their weaponry, or atleast the non rot variants were Infusible. IMO theres not enough weapons with innate Int or Fth scaling that can be infused and their weapons don’t feel special enough to not be infusible
The top-down vs. bottom-up approach for creative design(mechanical and narrative) just made something I've been struggling yo articulate for years click. Thank you, Zullie :)
The zoom on the face caught me off guard🤣 never knew they were that ugly lol
Always nice to see Fighting fantasy´s influence on the souls series said so clearly. It is a too often forgotten fact.
Ancient Cistern music lessgoooo 🔥
1:25 when Zullie has had enough of your shit, she brings out the Bapper.
I really enjoy fighting crystalians, they add a different depth to combat that makes it fun. It's satisfying to land that stance break on these enemies more than others, because not only do you get a critical, you also remove their high defenses. Just a fantastic enemy design and I love their mechanical movements that makes it feel like fighting a wind up toy, which adds a different approach to dealing with a threat.
Miyazaki mentioned a Fighting Fantasy book, Titan, which was written by Marc Gascoigne. Maybe Father Gascoigne from Bloodborne was named after him?
One of my favorite recurring George R.R. Martin-isms is "eating eyes in order to see," which also comes up verbatim in James S.A. Corey's "The Expanse" novels (George R.R. Martin and the authors of the Expanse are long time friends & collaborators, occasionally editing each other's work).
Not totally relevant to this video, but another fun ism that not just comes up in Elden Ring but in Sekiro which was developed alongside.
It's so rich to see such a wide crossover of both influences and artist skill in FromSoftware games~
Welcome back Zullie! Hope you're feeling well 😊
It's interesting seeing the Omenkillers brought up as an example of enemies that only exists for gameplay reasons and not lore reasons, because their outfit is one of VERY few pieces of equipment that has no flavor text at all.
They're waiting for seathe, they just don't know it
I don't think the Crystallians would be very hard to fit into the story, though. Could just be that the freaky lads at Raya Lucaria experimented in creating living Glintstone, succeeded but don't quite understand how they did themselves and the Crystallians eventually left, spread around the world and created more of themselves as time went on.
i will always think of the jerma noise when i see these enemies
miyazaki if coming up with original ideas and not directly copying manga was a challenge:
wow, i never heard of Fighting Fantasy before. i grew up in that era, and i'm sorry that i missed out on those books, reading about them it sounds like they would have been super fun at that age.
I like very much their resemble to the filme Der Golem, but more skinny redenring their brittle nature
Melenia seems to have the Mexican resurrection plant as her flower which can remain dormant until introduced to water.
The bottom up / top down development is really interesting!
I remember the first time I fought the crystalian duo, with my friend in seamless coop. We were both baked as fuck and confused why aren't we doing any damage to them until I managed to break the armor of one of them and suddenly he went down in a few hits. The "wow, now I know" moment was priceless.
Unrelated to the topic, but I adore the music choice here :D
It's really iconic and memorable to find an enemies that resist your strike at first but actually when their shield broken their weakness is the strike attack.
Also for the story, I think it'd be awesome if they're made by 1 of Geniuses of Raya Lucaria or it's actually an Alien Origin dwelling in Glinstone
1:44 It was at this moment I said to myself, as an avid Blogatog reader, "that's top-down/bottom-up!"!
Never knew that crystal couldnt made into a weapon
Their haircuts remind me of the Golem, somewhat. So perhaps they carry on a sacred purpose given to them by their creator? Who knows.