I feel a little silly using the same song for two videos in a row, but I tried a dozen songs and this was a Twilight Realm video whether I wanted it or not. The fact that the Elden Beast is referred to as a "Beast" has always felt a little strange, but it feels notable that there's some precedent for the Greater Will evidently "uplifting" Beasts to use to its own end, with the Beastmen of Faram Azula, and the fact the Fallingstar Beasts are similarly named raises some question about the basic nature of the living stars.
I know people rag on having to fight the Elden Beast right after Radagon, but honestly I don't mind it. I really like that fakeout too, and the battle itself is really cool. I feel people wouldn't mind it so much if we could summon Torrent. Because while I do enjoy the fight, the absolute worst part is having to chase this dratted monster from one end of the horizon to the other over and over and over again. It unnecessarily draws out what is already a long battle between both Radagon and the Beast back to back.
The Greater Will is often nearly described as more of a force than an actual being, but seeing as how the Elden Ring itself had its form with the Elden Beast, it makes me wonder what kinda cosmic horror the Greater Will actually is...
I have a theory that the Greater Will is actually the Devil, or a devil-like entity, posing as a god. This is based on my speculation that Radagan/Marikka serve as a sort of Baphomet figure, combining male and female features into a single being, posing as a false or "Anti-Christ" figure. Reinforcing this theory is the Elden Beast's name - Elden BEAST - coupled with Radagon/Marikka's decidedly evil actions throughout the plot, flying in the face of the Golden Order's pretense at holiness. But hey, that's just a theory. (I won't say it)
@@ManFromThePits It would be on brand, ER doing the Demiurge trope, considering that the whole of Dark Soul the age of fire is for the Gods not pygmy human and Gwyn manipulate everything to preserve it
It probably functions similar to the Cthulhu mythos in that the entity of the Gods like the Rot God, Fire God, Greater Will, etc are fathomless, existential beings that are impossible to comprehend. The closest you can come to understand them are through sigils, runes, the creatures or aspirations they manifest in their place and even in dreams. The closest I can offer as a reference to what it "might" look like is Earthbound's Gygas as it's just a constant, nightmare fueled induced background you end up fighting with audio breaks and disturbing text to boot.
@@WASDLeftClick One could certainly read it that way, yes. I'm not into Gnosticism myself, and tend to interpret things through a Christian lens. Supporting my position, I would also point out that the Elden Beast is a being of light that is filled with darkness, resembling stars and the void of space. Similarly, the devil was originally a being of light before becoming a being of darkness. None of this is to take away from your suggestion, it just occurred to me as I was answering.
I don't think it's just that EB is more "properly" formed, but rather that the other forms are illegitimate, non-sanctioned by higher law in some way. "Naturalborn" is another term for bastard, and the weapon we can get from Astel is also called "Bastard's Stars". Another reference within that weapon's description is to "debris", which indicates these other beasts might be formed of some fundamentally similar property, plus space and/or earthly gunk. This makes it sound like there's an archetypal seed, a substance, which in the EB is pure born and orthodox, but bastardy, impure and heterodox for all the others.
Yeah my thought was that essentially similar to the Golden Order the Elden Beast is a sanctioned paradigm of transformation from the Greater Will. But the Primeval current may send lots of things that may crash onto the lands between and find compatability with the varientsalso derived from the Greater Will that are no longer considered orthodox like the beast. Kind of like how the Crucible seems to have formed and diverged multiple stable orthodoxies even before the current tree and as such that multitude may find compatible forms that are not officially sanctioned.
That's cool to know! It feels to me like the Greater Will wants SOMEONE to rule the Lands Between, and that's what the Empyrean selection is for - a sort of, you all pick your champions, and if one of them is strong enough to unseat the current ruler, it means their time is over, and to the victor go the spoils. I'd like to think that Ranni's order, where she promises to keep the stars far away, is an outlier, but given that the Carians also serve what sounds like an Elden Beast-level god, it's probably not THAT much different in the end.
That's part of what I like about Fromsoft games generally. With a lot of the bosses, even some of the really twisted inhuman/alien ones, you get the sense that they know stuff you don't, and if you and them could talk this out, you'd be able to fix things, or at least understand the world a lot better. Unfortunately, you are fated to destroy each other, and probably the rest of the world too. It's good storytelling!
I love Ludwig fight but man, at the same time it would have been so cool if he stopped attacking in phase two and just chilled around the Nightmare afterwards sharing his wisdom. I think he would have been a cool mentor for the hunter
@@apisashla8650 to me it just feels unsatisfying. I get why for plot reasons we need to kill them but just not being able to know important info just for the sake of it sucks
An interesting thing about Elden beast to me is, right after the cutscene where it appears, the first thing it does is seemingly bow, even holding its left hand up where a person would over their heart! And right after, it uses its extremely powerful gold fire breath, almost as if it means to say "Tarnished who's beaten even Radagon, it was a pleasure to meet you, now die" lol
yea I saw it that way too although you could more see if as the elden beast acknowledging you defeated it's vessel so it's now testing you to see if your worthy enough
I love the fact they used "star sounds" for Elden Beast's idle even tho there's no way players would have noticed it. It really does feel like everyone on the team at FROMSOFT goes above and beyond just to tell little bits of story whenever possible.
Late to the party, but this also reminds me of the pitch-shifted sounds trees make. Scientists have recorded the ultrasonic pops that plants make when under stress. Perhaps this is not the Elden Beast emitting the sounds of a star, but the Erdtree under stress?
Man the visuals for the arena and the lore implications just makes the universe of Elden Ring so vast and it makes me want to know more about the Greater Will and the cosmos at large, and if those Erdtrees we see in the arena are other worlds it has influenced.
That's how I interpreted it. I instantly had a feeling of celestial insignificance, all of the toiling and hardships I endured to fulfill my goal just to realize Our world is one of infinite others with countless others fighting the same fight, or the opposite fight, and none of it really mattering in the larger context of the universe
I kind of thought it's nervous system was indicating the cosmological expanse of the greater will. And so we were seeing the trees as expressions of essentially it's influence on our plain of existance, worlds rather than galaxies
It does make me think they took the fan theory that Ash Lake was showing a bunch of different worlds which isn't true of Dark Souls and actually used it for Elden Ring.
Something very interesting is the start of the fight with it, I think. It always starts the same way, with the beast almost formally greeting you. Holding it's arm in a manner similar to the reverential bow. To me, it seems like it actually knows what your arrival and defeat of Radagon actually imply.
It may be more akin to the Biolizard, from Sonic Adventure 2: It's basically mindless, but still has enough intelligence to understand it's purpose. In both cases, both creatures serve as a final roadblock to prevent interference with the plans of Gerald Robotnik, and the Greater Will respectively.
There is an interesting piece of dialogue from Melina you can miss in the early game if you don't exhaust all her grace dialogues (I always encounter it near Roderika's grace site). She says "if the rays of grace signal the castle, then the Elden Ring beckons you. As an ally by pact, I pray that you are fit. To face the challenge presented by the Ring." And if the Elden Ring is the Elden Beast then it's likely it's testing if you're worthy in this battle. I mean, if it wanted you out of the picture outright it wouldn't allow you to walk on the water of its domain and would just drown you. And you know it's not shallow waters because the beast dives deep to move away from you.
@@Demokaze That actually seems like some really important dialogue that most of us would've forgot. And ur theory does sound pretty plausible so I would choose to believe it.
"Amazing observation" - Bro really out here acting as if Zullie is revealing some grand discovery and crediting it to them, when other people have already discovered this since like the first month of the games launch 💀
@@Runefather As far as I know, the only specific vid with a compilation of sounds is "Elden Ring Sound Design - Elden Beast" by Sen, which paints a much clearer idea of what the sound artists intended than what Zullie shows here. It's meant to sound quite otherworldly. Otherwise it's just generally known in the lore community that EB makes peculiar, "spacey" sounds, some of which you can hear in-game during the fight if you turn the music off. This subject might pop up in lore vids when discussing EB, but I cannot recall one to point you to.
If you watch the Elden Beast cinematic intro with the music off, you will hear it emit sound when it glows right before the fight begins. I always thought the sound was it trying to say something to our character that was incredibly beyond our grasp.
That detail about the noise that makes being reminiscent of signals from stars is one of the most awesome yet somewhat terrifying factoids I have ever heard
2:43 Y'know, interestingly, cosmic horror actually has some amount of presence in Lord of The Rings. There are hints to creatures that existed before the creation of Arda, LOTR's Earth, that reside deep beneath Moria that ISN'T the Balrog, referred to only by Tolkien as "The Nameless Things" throughout all of his writing, and it is thought that The Watcher in The Water that guard the hidden Gates of Moria is possibly one of these Nameless Things, Gandalf claiming it to be among creatures that are "older and fouler things than the Orcs". It's said that these Nameless Things were so unbelievably deep below the earth that not even the deepest reaches of the Dwarves' depths were even *close* to reaching the depths of The Nameless Things. It's also said that they're still active, just in hiding. It's said that when Goblin-town was established beneath the central Misty Mountains that "the original owners" never left the caves, they merely withdrew to "odd corners, slinking and nosing about", and this is *not* in reference to Gollum, as it's thought that Gollum may have even encountered these creatures himself. A quote from Gandalf in The Two Towers, after having pursued and defeated the Balrog Durin's Bane in the caverns of Moria and returning to The Three Hunters: "Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by *nameless things.* Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day." Unfortunately, Tolkien never wrote too much about The Nameless Things prior to his passing, so to this day they remain a bit of a warp in the world and lore of Lord of The Rings, as it's fervently said and damn-near hammered into the minds of readers that *nothing* existed before Eru brought the universe, therefore Arda, into existence through song. It's a bit of a shame really, since The Nameless Things are really one of the only prime examples of cosmic horror in Fantasy as a genre. Both Tolkien and Lovecraft took inspiration from Norse mythology for their "horrors residing deep beneath the earth" themes in their works on account of things like Nidhogg gnawing on the roots of Yggdrasil, and from my understanding Elden Ring takes quite a lot of inspiration from Norse Mythology, as we do seem to encounter The Elden Beast only *after* reaching The Erdtree, Elden Ring's own Yggdrasil, and defeating someone of mortal and comprehendible form, before evolving into the Elden Beast's otherworldly and almost alien physicality. Coincidence?
The cosmic element of LoTR is really fascinating, with the other planes being connected to Arda at different points, some out there and some underneath. The Ocean at the End of the Lane has been my favorite skip across the unknowable cosmic depths of reality. Annihilation was a great example of cosmic horror in that when something mimics intention with out perceiving purpose, the results are horrifying, I mean mostly bewilderingly beautiful, but also when we can't understand the purpose of the thing that doesn't understand the purpose of us, the outcome is not our expectation of ideal. I went off on a bit of a tangent, heh.
Reminds me of the Lich: *"Before there was time, before there was anything... There was nothing. And before there was nothing... There were monsters..."*
Ungoliant is a better example. She came from the black abyss beyond the stars, not as one of Eru's creation. She has an undying hunger and wants to consume everything, including light and power. She can weave webs of darkness around herself so that not even the gods can see her. After teaming up with Melkor and consuming the light of the Silmarils, she grew so large and powerful that she turned on him and would have killed him had he not summoned his legion of Balrogs to drive her away with fire.
@@BitTheShed I would have included Ungoliant, but Ungoliant has a name and plausible theories as to their origins and where they came from. That, inherently, isn't cosmic horror in my opinion. I always found that the scariest parts of cosmic horror, and this is what makes Lovecraftian horror so unnerving, is the lack of imagery and not being able to understand (or so much as even comprehend) their form or their capabilities. Even the names of the Elder Gods from the Lovecraft Mythos are, as said by Lovecraft himself, unpronounceable by human tongue, just spellings of their names in comprehendible human script. The Nameless Things are, like I said, a *warp* in the lore of LOTR, they put the timeline of creation itself into question merely by existing. They're like the Gobekli Tepe of LOTR's lore, they have no definable place in the chronology of the world as we know it, and make us question "do we have the story right?" We know what Ungoliant can do and what they look like, but we barely even understand what The Nameless Things even *are* in physical terms, The Watcher in The Dark being the only true visual we possibly have of them, much like The Elden Beast, but even then The Watcher in The Dark isn't even confirmed to be a Nameless Thing. And, if even Gandalf refuses to speak of them out of fear and the dread it will bring by mentioning their existence, you know they're scary as hell. Of course, this walks the fine line between "Mystery/Cosmic Horror" and "Lazy writing", but that's just my two cents on that.
lovecraft seems to be a stronger influence here, and lovecraft's stuff is just chock full of monsters and aliens from beyond the stars. The **most** humanlike are fleshy cones which use machines like we do, but have entirely unspaceship like, psychic ways of traveling through time and space.
@@chancetherappersburner6338 Honestly, I can't care less abour reused animations in this games if Fromosft keeps having this level of detail. I just discovered that Radagon does makes sounds when you hit him, and in one of them, you can hear him AND Marika after hitting his body, I love this franchise man
Also, since you didnt point this out in connection to the Malformed Stars: Elden Beast's delayed explosion & big golden AoE attacks use slight variants of Astel's delayed explosion & Teleport AoE visual effects. This further cements the connection between them and the idea that the Elden Beast is a "Fully formed" Star.
The Elden Beast also bears some striking similarities to the Night Walker, the nocturnal form of the Spirit of the Forest from Princess Mononoke. I feel it's similar in nature as well, granting intelligence and speech to beasts, while being a force of nature itself.
I also feel like the elden beast has something primordial about it. It’s design reminds me of ancient creatures from the Cambrian era, it’s face particularly reminds me of Tully’s monster
The aquatic structure of the Elden Beast is quite beautiful in a sense, as it implies that these creatures are meant to swim in the vast ocean of the void between the stars to find its home in a world capable of sustaining life. And with the Elden Beast, we have more context with the Astels, or malformed stars, as it implies these creatures perhaps were warped or twisted in some capacity during their evolution, perhaps they landed far too son and were malformed by the very crust of the world they landed on unlike the Elden Beast that was fully grown by the time it landed on the Lands Between.
@@masonjohnson4310 their features are all over the place. Human skull, mandible that were once horns, legs that turned into arms, tail like that of a scorpion. Perhaps they weren't meant to resemble anything due to their malformed state
I think it may relate to the Crucible. Features of it are all around and reoccurring as shown with the Omens. The beast may be non malformed due to only being influenced by the greater wil ratger than the phasmagoria of influences extant in the world. Or more specifically with only a singular source shaping it the variation endemic to the world may have been reduced.
Also, in Elden Ring, Space, Afterlife and Water/Ocean are the same thing. Yes, like Bloodborne. This makes her both a fish, an alien, a progenitor and a being of pure spirit. Yeah, this is why the main Boss-Summons (Rennala, Loretta, the Elden Beast itself) fights on a big place of water and why Tibia Mariner are, well, mariners.
bro the creator of these monsters needs a raise like most mobs in rpgs are just humanoid/lizard but the beasts in elden ring are like on another level the stuff of nightmares irl
It's a pretty symbolic fight and puts a lot of things together. All the game you're learning about how weird and evil Marika/radagon is... And it turns out they're not even really responsible for anything. They're just a tool that this...thing... Uses to extend its will into our reality. No wonder she doesn't abide by the rules of our reality, she's a godamn cryptid.
@@slyseal2091 ok I'm ready to put my tinfoil hat on for this one. I've always been suspicious of the fingers. So the claim is that only the fingers can interpret the greater will, but only in vague cryptic ways. Oh, and they don't just tell people what the greater will wants, nonono, there is an order of special finger readers who are the only ones the Fingers will speak to, and again in another layer of cryptic vaugery. And thats not the end of it, because the finger readers too only speak in riddles that have to be interpreted by each individual listener. Kinda sounds like the Fingers are wielding the greater will as a means of subtly shaping the world... I buy it.
One of the elements I find the most fascinating and intriguing about the Elden Beast's design is t's limbs. They are... RIDICULOUSLY human. Not only the hands and feet being incredibly human shaped, but their proportions, shapes of the knees, elbows, and other sections of em, and specially their positioning relative to eachother on the body. Once you see it it really starts to feel like the Elden Beast is something like a being whose base form may have included a general human shape, and "ascended" or elongated and molded through whatever other elements it has to have this more draconic and aquatic shape.
I love Elden Beast's design. The use of 'eldritch' (as in, unknowable or foreign to humans) without the 'horror' it's usually paired with means it provokes a different reaction than, say, Amygdala. The noises that sound like cracking glass when idle or when being hit adds to that feeling that this thing is beautiful but ultimately beyond human comprehension. I hope FromSoft leans into this aesthetic more in future titles. As a lore aside: I wonder if everyone who seeks to claim the Elden Ring has to fight an Elden Beast, or whether it specifically opposes us. Is there just one, or did Marika fight a different Elden Beast to take the throne?
Theorycally this is the first time that someone fight the beast because we are forcing the reshape of the world and order we must fight the beast because the beast represent the old order that must be shattered since it can't shape himself anymore unlike marika that by becoming the vassal of the beast(remember elden ring=elden beast its always the same beast) had the authority to actually shape the order of the world we didn't had such authority and thus we had to fight the old order itself
I'm pretty sure we're the only ones to ever fight it. Marika wasn't trying to become the Elden Lord; she was the *vessel* of the Elden Ring, and therefore would've had the Greater Will's blessing until she tried to shatter the Ring. And then after her, nobody but us ever made it into the Erdtree to challenge the Beast in the first place, so the protagonist Tarnished must be the only one to have ever fought it.
It is for this very reason why I always usurp the first flame in DS3. I feel like it makes more sense since the essence of the flame incarnated as soul of cinder starts fighting us like it is trying to protect itself. It fights without any qualms and even switches styles merely driven by the existential threat. And it doesn't even play fair. The Elden Beast starts fighting us as well without thinking that we might repair Elden Ring and restore the golden order. This makes me think that in the next ER game the golden order must be entirely absent or in such an abysmal state that it is about to be expelled entirely from the Lands Between.
@@nayyarrashid4661 It's established that the Tarnished returning to the lands between and claiming the Elden Ring were Marika's plan. She banished the tarnished so they could grow stronger in order to kill her and claim the ring. It's pretty clear that Marika is rebelling against the Greater Will for some reason. She shattered the ring, and was punished for it and the entrance into the erdtree was sealed. Both Radagon and the Beast fight you because _a tarnished is not meant to become the elden lord._ Morgott was empowered and given the grace of gold so he could hunt down the tarnished and protect the erdtree from them. Tarnished lordship is a ploy orchestrated by Marika in order to rebel against the Greater Will somehow.
Elden Beast, despite its flaws, has become one of my favorite bosses in all of the souls games because it really puts into perspective the scope of the Greater Will's incomprehensible power and how even a mighty God like Marika/Radagon is merely a tool of their greater influence.
I agree that the Elden Beast itself is likely a subjugated tool of the Greater Will, which is probably an unknowable force that simply exists, like The Nothing in The Neverending Story; a consequence of existence being a thing that happens.
@@rueben225 And then they go ahead and display "God Slain" after you beat it, even though, it's just a trained pet. I get that within the Lands between, the residents who don't know about the Greater Will, consider Marika to be a God, but the majority of players are led to believe that the tarnished defeats a God, when in reality they just beat a tool of influence.
its so damn satisfying, along with the heavenly music playing and the sound of the water, i get that EB is a drag to fight for some people, but man i loved everything about it
One really interesting detail that I feel is commonly missed is that there's a direct connection between the move sets of the Elden Beast and Placidusax. In Placi's big showstopper nuke move, they stab their spear into the ground and the music stops until it detonates with a distinct, high pitched whine. This is one of two attacks that pause the game's music. The other is an attack where the Elden Beast stabs it's sword into the ground, momentarily stopping the music, and then causes a detonation with a similar, high pitched sound effect. It's the exact same move, but Elden Beast does it much faster and with a smaller explosion.
I think that’s partially due to Placi’s nature as a former Elden Lord. Perhaps music-stopping explosion attacks are a signature incantation of the Greater Will in some regard
@@katashiakia6763 Perhaps the Greater Will is like a great mind. All the music in the game is just songs that the Greater Will is currently thinking/singing to. But in those two attacks, any thought of music dies, as if the Greater Will's attention was drawn away. As if the attack itself was so impressive that it caught the Greater Will's attention enough to disrupt the music.
Radahn's music stops for his meteor attack, but I think that's just bc he leaves the boss arena. Kinda funny to think that the dramatic orchestral soundtrack is just the bosses' walkman
I think Elden Beast is a representation of life since it has parts of many living beings: tail, roots, arms, wings, etc. It also attacks by swimming, flying, walking on two and four legs, etc.
I've always taken the Elden Beast to represent a fantasy, god-like version of "The Great Attractor", which is the central point of the supercluster as you say. This could mean the the Great Attractor is a living being, weaving together the cosmos and seeding the worlds within with it's own golden lifeforce. Possibly subjugating them? This is represented by the trees in the arena, a glimpse of these other worlds, or at least their connections within the supercluster. This is also why Rani moves the world through her portal, to escape the supercluster completely. Or not. Who knows?
@@impcit5717 I'd say yes, and the theme of "duality" is found all through the game. It's especially obvious in the Marika/Radagon relationship, but also the Golden Order's combination of holy incantations and magic. Faith and Intelligence if you like. The Elden Ring wiki states that it's "capable of integrating conflicting ideologies and practices" which I'm inclined to agree with.
I love Elden Beast so much. It's one of my favourite bosses in FromSoft because of it's atmosphere, music and design. I've been thinking of learning UprisingGrand's piano arrangement of its theme for months. Maybe I just got lucky and didnt get spammed with annoying attacks or didnt have it excessively running away, but Elden Beast was a beautiful fight for me.
If you look at how the elden beast is shaped from above, it seems to resemble Robert Fludd's tree of life, its wings being the 10 branches and the end of the tail being the root "crown" of the tree.
In my opinion, Elden Beast's translucent body with its gold, branching nervous system bears a resemblance to Melibe Leonina; aka the lion's mane nudibranch. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a partial source of inspiration for Elden Beast's design.
Another point of evidence for the connection to Astel creatures is the few similar moves they share, like the one where they "toss" out a bunch of sparks that then explode.
Worth noting that falling star beasts and astel are the same creatures in different stages of their life cycle, meaning that the stars probably arent living beings but more akin to eggs. they hatch into a larval form that pupates into astels, a process we see in 3 stages. the falling star beasts, the hanging astels under ground and the fully grown astel
I love how it’s blobby head is translucent and with that glowing eye that it has, I can imagine how it’s probably got little to no blind spot *eternally watching..*
The remembrance description stating that it was sent by the great will and that killing it gives "god Slain" instead of "Demigod Defeated" always made me think that it is the physical embodiment of the greater will, and by killing it you severed it's ties to the lands between
The Greater Will being severed is the implication with the ending, regardless of what ending you choose, The Greater will is going to take a good Thousand years to respond to the developments of the Erdtree not opening up to you and then get notified that the Elden Beast was slain.
My favorite text message was in BB, where every time you kill a boss, message shows "Prey SLAUGHTERED" but only for mergo's child and for Orphan of Kos it shows NIGHTMARE SLAIN.
The Elden Beast is the most beautiful, otherworldly being in video games history - in my opinion. The fact that its veins are starry gold reminds me of Laniakea Supercluster, and because this being is sent by the Greater Will, it's CLEARLY an alien. The Lands Between are just its host, and so are the planet, by extension. On the backgrounds when we fought it, there's lots of golden pillars.. probably thousands of Erdtrees in many planets.
The Elden Beast was the golden star sent to the Lands Between by the Greater Will. It looks like a dragon because the dragons were the first inheritors of the Elden Ring, in the age before the Erdtree.
I find it interesting that this lore shares similarities with Dark Souls (from my perspective), with a world coveted in dragons only to be changed by some outside force.
The golden lights making up what looks like its skeleton looks like the strands of gold that Marika is holding the Shadow of the Erdtree story trailer.
Elden Beast is everything I wanted Moon Presence to be. A final ultimate cosmic boss but with actually enough health to let me enjoy and appreciate it. I know some don't enjoy the fight but I actually thinks it's a great fight minus Elden Stars which is the one attack that there seems to be just no consistent way to completely avoid. The other thing that relates to Elden Beast and it's potential for intelligence is how much autonomy it may NEED to have, because when you go back to the Two Fingers after being blocked from entering the Erdtree by the thorns, Enya tells you that the Two Fingers need to consult the Greater Will and that this will take so long she thinks you'll be long gone by the time they hear back. This implies the Greater Will is extremely far away in space and whatever method of direct communication isn't terribly fast or efficient for our sense of time. This also seemingly confirms that Elden Beast is not in communication with the Two Fingers and perhaps is even/has become disconnected from the Greater Will itself. This leads me to believe that Elden Beast is more of an envoy of the Greater Will, able to act on it's own according to what it believes is right in the name of the Greater Will. We see the final arena with all the ethereal Erdtrees but even though this may symbolize all the other ones that potentially exist nearby in the universe I think it just goes to the scale of the Greater Will's influence in the universe and if anything these are likely closer to us spatially than the Greater Will.
The most accurate description is that Elden Beast is the antivirus. And after you defeat it you are allowed to configure the programming (Elden Ring). The Erdtree (and each pillar of light) is most likely closestly analogued to a server.
I love how when you get blocked by the thorns the fingers are like "Yeah not even we know what's happening. We'll have to ask the boss so come back in a few business days" lol
You know, now that I think about it... The cosmic beasts aspect of Elden Ring is like Martin or Miyazaki read H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Colour out of Space' and then decided to massively expand that story's premise.
The concept of Space Leviathans are definitely an influence, it's one of my favorite concepts in sci fi actually and the fact that they translated it into a fantasy game makes me wish it happened more often
Some people don't believe that Elden Beast is Elden Ring itself, but even damage sounds of Elden Beast - are cracks of runes, like breaking glass, the same sound we hear when we crack Runes we can collect in the world to earn Runes. There is a theory that Elden Beast lives inside of Elden Ring and Elden Ring is actualy those Golden Trees we see during fight, just in different perspective.
@@thejuiceking2219 No,the Elden Ring isnt a physical a ring but something metaphysical capable of controlling the laws of reality.We use the runes to mold what our character is supposed to be,who has the Elden Ring does it at a much larger scale.
@@thejuiceking2219 And then we also see the ER inside Radagon just in the wrong position. All the runes you get in the game are all part of the Elden Ring,the great runes you get are all made from parts of the 4 rings of the ER,yet they are all inside Radagon too.
I also note that it combines elements of land (hands and legs), sea (tail and fins) and sky (wings) animals. There is some evolutionary tree of life feeling in the design.
Despite the hate this boss gets, I personally love this boss’s design. It clearly looks like something that doesn’t belong in this world/universe which is clearly what they were going for. The nebulas/stars in its body along with the tall glowing Erdtrees in the background prove that this thing has conquered many worlds and we’re the first to go against it. Gold is one of my favorite colors. To see it used like this was pure eye candy. And that soundtrack, so graceful, so majestic, it sounds so…..holy.
History Channel's 'The Universe' did a episode about Neutron Stars and how some of them make a consistent rythem beat in radio recordings. Your 'sounds of space' segment reminded of that cool episode 😊
It has huge "Princess Mononoke Forest Spirit" vibes. When the forest spirit leaves its deer form to become The Nightwalker, and they shoot off its head.
So, this “Elden Beast” is basically a Great One. Miyazaki and FromSoftware are no strangers to putting Lovecraftian and cosmic horror elements in their games - we’ve seen this with not only Bloodborne, but also Demon’s Souls, and perhaps even the Dark Souls trilogy with its “Age of the Deep.”
@@ARSD219 basically the greater will is the platonic demiurge he took a giant mass of united matter and from it it created everything life, death, etc. And the elden beast is the thing that allow us to manipulate the concept that the greater will created since the elden beast IS the elden ring as the video say the beast is order itself we don't even truly slain the beast because the ring still exist we slain the previous order but not her true essence
@@massimilianoreali4398 Maybe we slain a remembrance of the Original Elden Beast, or something similar to Ancient Spirits, but yeah, she remains the Elden Ring. P.s: If you notice, the Radagon we fight uses only Faith and his body, cracked and empty, is filled with Dark and Elden Ring. Like the Elden Beast is wearing and using him as a puppet to defend herself.
About beasts being given five fingers as an accompaniment to sentient intelligence: Astel has five fingers and a thumb, for a total of six digits, in each hand. I understand this is just to add to its creepiness, but maybe something's worth exploring here. Namely, what if Astel is a "failed vassal" of some outer god? Or an attempt by Renna/Ranni to have their own smart beast to rival the Golden Order's. Astel looks creepy but it behaves in a manner I would call intelligent, especially in how it employs tactics and trickery. By contrast, fallingstar beasts behave no more intelligently than a, well, bull.
Astel are clearly aliens, as the channel has covered before. In cosmic horror stories. Aliens are often much more intelligent than humans. To the point where humanity can not comprehend it. So yes Astel are probably far more intelligent than humans.
@@MasonCasey-fh6bo Astel remembrance says: “A malformed star born in the lightless void far away. Once destroyed an Eternal City and took away their sky. A falling star of ill omen.” Also meteorite of astel spell says: “A manifestation of the power with which Astel leveled the Eternal City.” Enough to say he wasn’t made by the nox.
Would be funny because Astel(s) are blind, smart, but cannot observe the world, that said, canonically they precede Ranni, the Nox/Numen in their hubris, attracted those beings there, and paid the price
You always come up with the most interesting topics for your videos. I was initially kind of meh about the Elden Beast as the final boss, but this definitely made me look at it differently.
This videos raised an interesting point regarding five fingers and intelligence. Due to beings like the twin and three fingers, fingers can be significant in this universe. The fact that beastmen got their intelligence alongside their fifth finger could be interpreted as a coincidence or it could be the reason for their intelligence. This would explain the elden beast having intelligence since it has five fingers.
This video reminded me how I still wait for the day someone posts a 2 or more hours long video of Elden Beast’s idle sound. I’d fall asleep to that in a minute.
I think the topics related to the Elden Beast and the higher will are the most interesting in the game. I'd love to explore more about this in coming dlcs or somethig. Basically the cosmic stuff
It would be such a cool concept the elden beast crashing on loch ness being revered by the Celts and Norse, offering Human female sacrifices to the lake shores and burning boats to summon the god and its favour on battle and crops
Being an otherworldly alien being, possibly even Lovecraftian, I would suggest that not only does the Elden Beast possess a level of intelligence, but that it's intelligence is in fact superior to human intellect. Vastly superior. Like the difference between a human being and an amoeba.
I really love Elden Ring (and Bloodborbe's) approach to sci-fi and cosmic horror in simply grounding it in more archaic understandings of space. Astrology WAS astronomy after all, and there's no lack of personifying planets and stars in the ancient world to a degree where the leap from "god" to "alien" is actually fairly small. The cosmic horror aspect comes into it by making so many of these enemies what Kenneth Grant would have dubbed "trans-Plutonian", or "beyond our solar system", out in the darkest reaches of space. It would be like if Rome, with their gods like Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, etc, suddenly came into the temple and found a god called "2012 DA14". And it wouldn't look as anthropomorphic as the others.
I think that within 3D spacetime lore, we’re all “vassals of the greater will” We’re just shapes of the universe, being played or projected from the ribbon of the wave function, manifested from the rippling excitations of fields. A human, an ant, a dog, it’s all just universe shapes, atoms, “particles”, excitations and patterns. I think a “human” is simply a shape that narrates its actions in real time, and tells a story about its existence
To think that the stars are actual living creatures is in a way scarier than all that outer god tales, because we can actually see them looking down right now.
Likely the reason why the Elden beast looks somewhat of dragon, is likely due to the increase in worship for the dragons in the order causing the beast to resemble a dragon.🤔🐱
Literally the first thing I said out loud when I saw the Elden Beast my first time was “it’s head is a finger” like the creature feels like a hastily cobbled together body attached to a singular finger that is the Greater Will itself directly trying to stop us.
I feel a little silly using the same song for two videos in a row, but I tried a dozen songs and this was a Twilight Realm video whether I wanted it or not.
The fact that the Elden Beast is referred to as a "Beast" has always felt a little strange, but it feels notable that there's some precedent for the Greater Will evidently "uplifting" Beasts to use to its own end, with the Beastmen of Faram Azula, and the fact the Fallingstar Beasts are similarly named raises some question about the basic nature of the living stars.
It's a good song.
Hey, your content would still be 10/10 even if you used the same song three times.
Nah the fact that the AI on this is called "NebulaDragon" makes up for the soundtrack
I was about to say that I think this ost goes pretty well with your videos, it match the weird ambience of the twilight
Your music choices always elevate the video in an interesting way. Zelda songs give that little bit of whimsy.
This makes me appreciate the end boss fakeout even more. Is the last enemy a dude? No, it is an alien _wielding_ a dude.
Shutup
I know people rag on having to fight the Elden Beast right after Radagon, but honestly I don't mind it. I really like that fakeout too, and the battle itself is really cool.
I feel people wouldn't mind it so much if we could summon Torrent. Because while I do enjoy the fight, the absolute worst part is having to chase this dratted monster from one end of the horizon to the other over and over and over again. It unnecessarily draws out what is already a long battle between both Radagon and the Beast back to back.
"I'm an alien playing a dude disguised as another woman!"
@@ApapaneNuithat and it would help to have a checkpoint after killing radagon, like in the final bosses of bloodborne.
The Elden Beast took “beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker” a little literally, I think
Weird how I never felt the Elden Beast WASN'T sentient
@Micali-mz6hp The Erdtree is a wacky place
@Micali-mz6hp yea I always thought of it as a puppet or something
@Micali-mz6hp I like the analogy.
I mean, have you ever seen a non-sentient creature using a sword?
@Micali-mz6hp Perhaps, in the scale of things, the Elden Beast has to be somewhat sentient or intelligent in order to protect the Greater Will.
"I swear, if we get to the final boss and it's another Ulcerated Tree Spirit..."
~A very unfortunate man
Hey! This one isn't ulcerated!
Woolsworth.
Only if it dropped another stonesword key.
WOOLIEEE
the ulcerated tree spirits are some of the funnest(not a real word) bosses
The Greater Will is often nearly described as more of a force than an actual being, but seeing as how the Elden Ring itself had its form with the Elden Beast, it makes me wonder what kinda cosmic horror the Greater Will actually is...
I have a theory that the Greater Will is actually the Devil, or a devil-like entity, posing as a god. This is based on my speculation that Radagan/Marikka serve as a sort of Baphomet figure, combining male and female features into a single being, posing as a false or "Anti-Christ" figure. Reinforcing this theory is the Elden Beast's name - Elden BEAST - coupled with Radagon/Marikka's decidedly evil actions throughout the plot, flying in the face of the Golden Order's pretense at holiness. But hey, that's just a theory. (I won't say it)
Maybe the Greater Will is the demiurge to the One Great’s supreme being?
@@ManFromThePits It would be on brand, ER doing the Demiurge trope, considering that the whole of Dark Soul the age of fire is for the Gods not pygmy human and Gwyn manipulate everything to preserve it
It probably functions similar to the Cthulhu mythos in that the entity of the Gods like the Rot God, Fire God, Greater Will, etc are fathomless, existential beings that are impossible to comprehend. The closest you can come to understand them are through sigils, runes, the creatures or aspirations they manifest in their place and even in dreams.
The closest I can offer as a reference to what it "might" look like is Earthbound's Gygas as it's just a constant, nightmare fueled induced background you end up fighting with audio breaks and disturbing text to boot.
@@WASDLeftClick One could certainly read it that way, yes. I'm not into Gnosticism myself, and tend to interpret things through a Christian lens. Supporting my position, I would also point out that the Elden Beast is a being of light that is filled with darkness, resembling stars and the void of space. Similarly, the devil was originally a being of light before becoming a being of darkness.
None of this is to take away from your suggestion, it just occurred to me as I was answering.
I don't think it's just that EB is more "properly" formed, but rather that the other forms are illegitimate, non-sanctioned by higher law in some way. "Naturalborn" is another term for bastard, and the weapon we can get from Astel is also called "Bastard's Stars". Another reference within that weapon's description is to "debris", which indicates these other beasts might be formed of some fundamentally similar property, plus space and/or earthly gunk. This makes it sound like there's an archetypal seed, a substance, which in the EB is pure born and orthodox, but bastardy, impure and heterodox for all the others.
I was looking for this. Good work!
Yeah my thought was that essentially similar to the Golden Order the Elden Beast is a sanctioned paradigm of transformation from the Greater Will. But the Primeval current may send lots of things that may crash onto the lands between and find compatability with the varientsalso derived from the Greater Will that are no longer considered orthodox like the beast. Kind of like how the Crucible seems to have formed and diverged multiple stable orthodoxies even before the current tree and as such that multitude may find compatible forms that are not officially sanctioned.
Nice catch! I always assumed "naturalborn" just meant "native"
That's cool to know! It feels to me like the Greater Will wants SOMEONE to rule the Lands Between, and that's what the Empyrean selection is for - a sort of, you all pick your champions, and if one of them is strong enough to unseat the current ruler, it means their time is over, and to the victor go the spoils. I'd like to think that Ranni's order, where she promises to keep the stars far away, is an outlier, but given that the Carians also serve what sounds like an Elden Beast-level god, it's probably not THAT much different in the end.
Would that be an explanation for the star’s strangely human features?
never have I ever wanted more badly to just be able to talk to bosses in a game so intently designed to not allow it.
i really want to know what would radagon have to say
@@mausebas "I locked my front door specifically to keep you out, so you burned down my fucking house, and NOW you want to talk?"
That's part of what I like about Fromsoft games generally. With a lot of the bosses, even some of the really twisted inhuman/alien ones, you get the sense that they know stuff you don't, and if you and them could talk this out, you'd be able to fix things, or at least understand the world a lot better. Unfortunately, you are fated to destroy each other, and probably the rest of the world too. It's good storytelling!
I love Ludwig fight but man, at the same time it would have been so cool if he stopped attacking in phase two and just chilled around the Nightmare afterwards sharing his wisdom. I think he would have been a cool mentor for the hunter
@@apisashla8650 to me it just feels unsatisfying. I get why for plot reasons we need to kill them but just not being able to know important info just for the sake of it sucks
I love the Elden Beast's design.
I want to pet the space dragon-slug.
I need a smaller one to carry it on hands.
cute chungus whale dragon
I want to BE this creature. I love cosmic magic and monsters so much and the Elden Beast is one of the best.
@@Cosmic-Sorceress-17 This was the same thought I had. Oh, to be a star-slug swimming through the cosmos.
@@vsevolodpoddyh8191 Wouldn't that be a phantasm from bloodborne? They're also stellar slugs, small enough to hold in your hands.
An interesting thing about Elden beast to me is, right after the cutscene where it appears, the first thing it does is seemingly bow, even holding its left hand up where a person would over their heart! And right after, it uses its extremely powerful gold fire breath, almost as if it means to say "Tarnished who's beaten even Radagon, it was a pleasure to meet you, now die" lol
yea I saw it that way too although you could more see if as the elden beast acknowledging you defeated it's vessel so it's now testing you to see if your worthy enough
Vassal, not vessel.
@@EndonaeRadagon do be both tho
@@HeckYep The Elden Beast is not Radagon, and may not be the Sacred Relic Sword either.
@@Endonae the sword is radagon, as the elden beast wields him after his death
I love how elden ring depicts cosmic beings. they're not incomprehensible nightmares like is often portrayed. they're awe-inspiring and beautiful
>Astel
>Beautiful
Well, in some way maybe...
@@Hollow__Heart just wanted to say that
@@RustemKonan Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.
@@erickchristensen746 true but it's still hard for me to understand how someone find skulls atttactive
But, y'know, still very much incomprehensible nightmares
I love the fact they used "star sounds" for Elden Beast's idle even tho there's no way players would have noticed it. It really does feel like everyone on the team at FROMSOFT goes above and beyond just to tell little bits of story whenever possible.
I figure they know people like Zullie will notice and point these things out. So the effort is never wasted.
Thats why Western developers hate From Software. The effort they push in their games is making the latter look bad.
Late to the party, but this also reminds me of the pitch-shifted sounds trees make. Scientists have recorded the ultrasonic pops that plants make when under stress.
Perhaps this is not the Elden Beast emitting the sounds of a star, but the Erdtree under stress?
Man the visuals for the arena and the lore implications just makes the universe of Elden Ring so vast and it makes me want to know more about the Greater Will and the cosmos at large, and if those Erdtrees we see in the arena are other worlds it has influenced.
That's how I interpreted it. I instantly had a feeling of celestial insignificance, all of the toiling and hardships I endured to fulfill my goal just to realize Our world is one of infinite others with countless others fighting the same fight, or the opposite fight, and none of it really mattering in the larger context of the universe
I kind of thought it's nervous system was indicating the cosmological expanse of the greater will. And so we were seeing the trees as expressions of essentially it's influence on our plain of existance, worlds rather than galaxies
It does make me think they took the fan theory that Ash Lake was showing a bunch of different worlds which isn't true of Dark Souls and actually used it for Elden Ring.
Elden ring 2: featuring planetary travel to other types of erdtrees
It created the whole universe!
Something very interesting is the start of the fight with it, I think. It always starts the same way, with the beast almost formally greeting you. Holding it's arm in a manner similar to the reverential bow. To me, it seems like it actually knows what your arrival and defeat of Radagon actually imply.
i always saw it as that yea glad to see I wasn't the only one
It may be more akin to the Biolizard, from Sonic Adventure 2: It's basically mindless, but still has enough intelligence to understand it's purpose. In both cases, both creatures serve as a final roadblock to prevent interference with the plans of Gerald Robotnik, and the Greater Will respectively.
There is an interesting piece of dialogue from Melina you can miss in the early game if you don't exhaust all her grace dialogues (I always encounter it near Roderika's grace site). She says "if the rays of grace signal the castle, then the Elden Ring beckons you. As an ally by pact, I pray that you are fit. To face the challenge presented by the Ring." And if the Elden Ring is the Elden Beast then it's likely it's testing if you're worthy in this battle. I mean, if it wanted you out of the picture outright it wouldn't allow you to walk on the water of its domain and would just drown you. And you know it's not shallow waters because the beast dives deep to move away from you.
@@Demokaze That actually seems like some really important dialogue that most of us would've forgot. And ur theory does sound pretty plausible so I would choose to believe it.
If I had a nickel for every comparison between this game and the Sonic Adventure franchise, I'd have 2 @@Umbra_Ursus
The sounds are legitimately an amazing observation. This is why Zullie is so good
This has been known for like two years though.
@@kimlee6643 its 10 am stop hatin
"Amazing observation" - Bro really out here acting as if Zullie is revealing some grand discovery and crediting it to them, when other people have already discovered this since like the first month of the games launch 💀
@@kimlee6643 Can you point me in the right direction, a place where I could read more about it?
@@Runefather As far as I know, the only specific vid with a compilation of sounds is "Elden Ring Sound Design - Elden Beast" by Sen, which paints a much clearer idea of what the sound artists intended than what Zullie shows here. It's meant to sound quite otherworldly. Otherwise it's just generally known in the lore community that EB makes peculiar, "spacey" sounds, some of which you can hear in-game during the fight if you turn the music off. This subject might pop up in lore vids when discussing EB, but I cannot recall one to point you to.
If you watch the Elden Beast cinematic intro with the music off, you will hear it emit sound when it glows right before the fight begins. I always thought the sound was it trying to say something to our character that was incredibly beyond our grasp.
That detail about the noise that makes being reminiscent of signals from stars is one of the most awesome yet somewhat terrifying factoids I have ever heard
That's an interesting factoid
2:43 Y'know, interestingly, cosmic horror actually has some amount of presence in Lord of The Rings. There are hints to creatures that existed before the creation of Arda, LOTR's Earth, that reside deep beneath Moria that ISN'T the Balrog, referred to only by Tolkien as "The Nameless Things" throughout all of his writing, and it is thought that The Watcher in The Water that guard the hidden Gates of Moria is possibly one of these Nameless Things, Gandalf claiming it to be among creatures that are "older and fouler things than the Orcs". It's said that these Nameless Things were so unbelievably deep below the earth that not even the deepest reaches of the Dwarves' depths were even *close* to reaching the depths of The Nameless Things. It's also said that they're still active, just in hiding. It's said that when Goblin-town was established beneath the central Misty Mountains that "the original owners" never left the caves, they merely withdrew to "odd corners, slinking and nosing about", and this is *not* in reference to Gollum, as it's thought that Gollum may have even encountered these creatures himself.
A quote from Gandalf in The Two Towers, after having pursued and defeated the Balrog Durin's Bane in the caverns of Moria and returning to The Three Hunters: "Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by *nameless things.* Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day."
Unfortunately, Tolkien never wrote too much about The Nameless Things prior to his passing, so to this day they remain a bit of a warp in the world and lore of Lord of The Rings, as it's fervently said and damn-near hammered into the minds of readers that *nothing* existed before Eru brought the universe, therefore Arda, into existence through song. It's a bit of a shame really, since The Nameless Things are really one of the only prime examples of cosmic horror in Fantasy as a genre. Both Tolkien and Lovecraft took inspiration from Norse mythology for their "horrors residing deep beneath the earth" themes in their works on account of things like Nidhogg gnawing on the roots of Yggdrasil, and from my understanding Elden Ring takes quite a lot of inspiration from Norse Mythology, as we do seem to encounter The Elden Beast only *after* reaching The Erdtree, Elden Ring's own Yggdrasil, and defeating someone of mortal and comprehendible form, before evolving into the Elden Beast's otherworldly and almost alien physicality.
Coincidence?
The cosmic element of LoTR is really fascinating, with the other planes being connected to Arda at different points, some out there and some underneath. The Ocean at the End of the Lane has been my favorite skip across the unknowable cosmic depths of reality. Annihilation was a great example of cosmic horror in that when something mimics intention with out perceiving purpose, the results are horrifying, I mean mostly bewilderingly beautiful, but also when we can't understand the purpose of the thing that doesn't understand the purpose of us, the outcome is not our expectation of ideal.
I went off on a bit of a tangent, heh.
Reminds me of the Lich: *"Before there was time, before there was anything... There was nothing. And before there was nothing... There were monsters..."*
Ungoliant is a better example. She came from the black abyss beyond the stars, not as one of Eru's creation. She has an undying hunger and wants to consume everything, including light and power. She can weave webs of darkness around herself so that not even the gods can see her. After teaming up with Melkor and consuming the light of the Silmarils, she grew so large and powerful that she turned on him and would have killed him had he not summoned his legion of Balrogs to drive her away with fire.
@@BitTheShed I would have included Ungoliant, but Ungoliant has a name and plausible theories as to their origins and where they came from. That, inherently, isn't cosmic horror in my opinion.
I always found that the scariest parts of cosmic horror, and this is what makes Lovecraftian horror so unnerving, is the lack of imagery and not being able to understand (or so much as even comprehend) their form or their capabilities. Even the names of the Elder Gods from the Lovecraft Mythos are, as said by Lovecraft himself, unpronounceable by human tongue, just spellings of their names in comprehendible human script.
The Nameless Things are, like I said, a *warp* in the lore of LOTR, they put the timeline of creation itself into question merely by existing. They're like the Gobekli Tepe of LOTR's lore, they have no definable place in the chronology of the world as we know it, and make us question "do we have the story right?" We know what Ungoliant can do and what they look like, but we barely even understand what The Nameless Things even *are* in physical terms, The Watcher in The Dark being the only true visual we possibly have of them, much like The Elden Beast, but even then The Watcher in The Dark isn't even confirmed to be a Nameless Thing. And, if even Gandalf refuses to speak of them out of fear and the dread it will bring by mentioning their existence, you know they're scary as hell.
Of course, this walks the fine line between "Mystery/Cosmic Horror" and "Lazy writing", but that's just my two cents on that.
lovecraft seems to be a stronger influence here, and lovecraft's stuff is just chock full of monsters and aliens from beyond the stars. The **most** humanlike are fleshy cones which use machines like we do, but have entirely unspaceship like, psychic ways of traveling through time and space.
I didn't notice that the Elden Beast actually has a scar. Now that I think about it, I think that when you stagger her, the scar glows a little?
It's the riposte spot
When you hit the scar it even makes a nicer sound
Yup, the beast got that scar when Marika shattered the Elden Ring
Its the shattering
@@chancetherappersburner6338 Honestly, I can't care less abour reused animations in this games if Fromosft keeps having this level of detail. I just discovered that Radagon does makes sounds when you hit him, and in one of them, you can hear him AND Marika after hitting his body, I love this franchise man
Also, since you didnt point this out in connection to the Malformed Stars:
Elden Beast's delayed explosion & big golden AoE attacks use slight variants of Astel's delayed explosion & Teleport AoE visual effects. This further cements the connection between them and the idea that the Elden Beast is a "Fully formed" Star.
The Elden Beast also bears some striking similarities to the Night Walker, the nocturnal form of the Spirit of the Forest from Princess Mononoke. I feel it's similar in nature as well, granting intelligence and speech to beasts, while being a force of nature itself.
I think Night Walker was more of a "reverse side" of the generally benevolent Spirit of the Forest, a "death" to complement forest spirit's "life".
The Forest Spirit/Kasuga from Mononoke also seems like the inspiration for the deer boss. Since it's literally "A deer with a tree on its head".
The inspiration is very obvious. Especially, being she the true form of the Elden Ring, she's a true Divine Being of Life and Death.
@@RavenicusI think ancestor spirit is more inspired by norse/celtic mythology. Even the music lends itself to this idea.
Both inspired by cosmic object, Laniakea Supercluster
I also feel like the elden beast has something primordial about it. It’s design reminds me of ancient creatures from the Cambrian era, it’s face particularly reminds me of Tully’s monster
Cambrian Souls when? I want an Anomalocaris boss fight.
I always thought the Elden Beast's design vaugely looked like that of an ancient dragon, but with several fins instead of wings.
@@_JellyWalkerimagine an Ediacaran biota boss. Just a big paddle stuck in the ground that swats you around
The aquatic structure of the Elden Beast is quite beautiful in a sense, as it implies that these creatures are meant to swim in the vast ocean of the void between the stars to find its home in a world capable of sustaining life. And with the Elden Beast, we have more context with the Astels, or malformed stars, as it implies these creatures perhaps were warped or twisted in some capacity during their evolution, perhaps they landed far too son and were malformed by the very crust of the world they landed on unlike the Elden Beast that was fully grown by the time it landed on the Lands Between.
Might have implications for Godwyns aquatic transformation after his death
The Astels look a lot like aquatic insects, dobbson flies IMO, and might be improperly matured entities.
@@masonjohnson4310 their features are all over the place. Human skull, mandible that were once horns, legs that turned into arms, tail like that of a scorpion. Perhaps they weren't meant to resemble anything due to their malformed state
I think it may relate to the Crucible. Features of it are all around and reoccurring as shown with the Omens. The beast may be non malformed due to only being influenced by the greater wil ratger than the phasmagoria of influences extant in the world. Or more specifically with only a singular source shaping it the variation endemic to the world may have been reduced.
Also, in Elden Ring, Space, Afterlife and Water/Ocean are the same thing. Yes, like Bloodborne. This makes her both a fish, an alien, a progenitor and a being of pure spirit. Yeah, this is why the main Boss-Summons (Rennala, Loretta, the Elden Beast itself) fights on a big place of water and why Tibia Mariner are, well, mariners.
bro the creator of these monsters needs a raise
like most mobs in rpgs are just humanoid/lizard
but the beasts in elden ring are like on another level
the stuff of nightmares irl
How have I never realized the Elden Beast's sword is just straight up radagon. That's crazy and horrifying.
It's a pretty symbolic fight and puts a lot of things together.
All the game you're learning about how weird and evil Marika/radagon is... And it turns out they're not even really responsible for anything.
They're just a tool that this...thing... Uses to extend its will into our reality.
No wonder she doesn't abide by the rules of our reality, she's a godamn cryptid.
Hear me out, the fingers are just about the right size to wield the elden beast like a weapon
@@slyseal2091 elden ring 2 bosses be like
At least he's doing the golden order fundamentalism pose. He goes out looking pretty sick.
@@slyseal2091 ok I'm ready to put my tinfoil hat on for this one.
I've always been suspicious of the fingers.
So the claim is that only the fingers can interpret the greater will, but only in vague cryptic ways.
Oh, and they don't just tell people what the greater will wants, nonono, there is an order of special finger readers who are the only ones the Fingers will speak to, and again in another layer of cryptic vaugery.
And thats not the end of it, because the finger readers too only speak in riddles that have to be interpreted by each individual listener.
Kinda sounds like the Fingers are wielding the greater will as a means of subtly shaping the world...
I buy it.
One of the elements I find the most fascinating and intriguing about the Elden Beast's design is t's limbs. They are... RIDICULOUSLY human. Not only the hands and feet being incredibly human shaped, but their proportions, shapes of the knees, elbows, and other sections of em, and specially their positioning relative to eachother on the body. Once you see it it really starts to feel like the Elden Beast is something like a being whose base form may have included a general human shape, and "ascended" or elongated and molded through whatever other elements it has to have this more draconic and aquatic shape.
I love Elden Beast's design. The use of 'eldritch' (as in, unknowable or foreign to humans) without the 'horror' it's usually paired with means it provokes a different reaction than, say, Amygdala. The noises that sound like cracking glass when idle or when being hit adds to that feeling that this thing is beautiful but ultimately beyond human comprehension. I hope FromSoft leans into this aesthetic more in future titles.
As a lore aside: I wonder if everyone who seeks to claim the Elden Ring has to fight an Elden Beast, or whether it specifically opposes us. Is there just one, or did Marika fight a different Elden Beast to take the throne?
Theorycally this is the first time that someone fight the beast because we are forcing the reshape of the world and order we must fight the beast because the beast represent the old order that must be shattered since it can't shape himself anymore unlike marika that by becoming the vassal of the beast(remember elden ring=elden beast its always the same beast) had the authority to actually shape the order of the world we didn't had such authority and thus we had to fight the old order itself
"Eldritch Horror" fans when "Eldritch beauty" walks in
I'm pretty sure we're the only ones to ever fight it. Marika wasn't trying to become the Elden Lord; she was the *vessel* of the Elden Ring, and therefore would've had the Greater Will's blessing until she tried to shatter the Ring. And then after her, nobody but us ever made it into the Erdtree to challenge the Beast in the first place, so the protagonist Tarnished must be the only one to have ever fought it.
It is for this very reason why I always usurp the first flame in DS3. I feel like it makes more sense since the essence of the flame incarnated as soul of cinder starts fighting us like it is trying to protect itself. It fights without any qualms and even switches styles merely driven by the existential threat. And it doesn't even play fair. The Elden Beast starts fighting us as well without thinking that we might repair Elden Ring and restore the golden order. This makes me think that in the next ER game the golden order must be entirely absent or in such an abysmal state that it is about to be expelled entirely from the Lands Between.
@@nayyarrashid4661 It's established that the Tarnished returning to the lands between and claiming the Elden Ring were Marika's plan. She banished the tarnished so they could grow stronger in order to kill her and claim the ring.
It's pretty clear that Marika is rebelling against the Greater Will for some reason. She shattered the ring, and was punished for it and the entrance into the erdtree was sealed. Both Radagon and the Beast fight you because _a tarnished is not meant to become the elden lord._ Morgott was empowered and given the grace of gold so he could hunt down the tarnished and protect the erdtree from them. Tarnished lordship is a ploy orchestrated by Marika in order to rebel against the Greater Will somehow.
Elden Beast, despite its flaws, has become one of my favorite bosses in all of the souls games because it really puts into perspective the scope of the Greater Will's incomprehensible power and how even a mighty God like Marika/Radagon is merely a tool of their greater influence.
I agree that the Elden Beast itself is likely a subjugated tool of the Greater Will, which is probably an unknowable force that simply exists, like The Nothing in The Neverending Story; a consequence of existence being a thing that happens.
@@rueben225 And then they go ahead and display "God Slain" after you beat it, even though, it's just a trained pet. I get that within the Lands between, the residents who don't know about the Greater Will, consider Marika to be a God, but the majority of players are led to believe that the tarnished defeats a God, when in reality they just beat a tool of influence.
Idk but the chunky glass breaking sound design + her glowing from every hit is the best part of her fight
its so damn satisfying, along with the heavenly music playing and the sound of the water, i get that EB is a drag to fight for some people, but man i loved everything about it
MAN i really wish you could torrent for the fight.
Her? It's an it.
@@DestroyDEI why not both? Elden Beast pronouns It/Her?
Then it would be too easy@@ethanawaao1291
When Zullie drops a video, I drop everything and pay attention. Class is in session!
One really interesting detail that I feel is commonly missed is that there's a direct connection between the move sets of the Elden Beast and Placidusax. In Placi's big showstopper nuke move, they stab their spear into the ground and the music stops until it detonates with a distinct, high pitched whine. This is one of two attacks that pause the game's music. The other is an attack where the Elden Beast stabs it's sword into the ground, momentarily stopping the music, and then causes a detonation with a similar, high pitched sound effect. It's the exact same move, but Elden Beast does it much faster and with a smaller explosion.
I think that’s partially due to Placi’s nature as a former Elden Lord. Perhaps music-stopping explosion attacks are a signature incantation of the Greater Will in some regard
@@katashiakia6763 Perhaps the Greater Will is like a great mind. All the music in the game is just songs that the Greater Will is currently thinking/singing to. But in those two attacks, any thought of music dies, as if the Greater Will's attention was drawn away.
As if the attack itself was so impressive that it caught the Greater Will's attention enough to disrupt the music.
Radahn's music stops for his meteor attack, but I think that's just bc he leaves the boss arena.
Kinda funny to think that the dramatic orchestral soundtrack is just the bosses' walkman
I think Elden Beast is a representation of life since it has parts of many living beings: tail, roots, arms, wings, etc. It also attacks by swimming, flying, walking on two and four legs, etc.
the Elden beast also gives off some Hallucigenia vibes to me. with its appendages on it's back. that or maybe a nudibranch, being sea slug like.
Until your section detailing the audio of its idle animation, I'd never noticed that the Elden Beast is heaving exasperatedly during.
I've always taken the Elden Beast to represent a fantasy, god-like version of "The Great Attractor", which is the central point of the supercluster as you say. This could mean the the Great Attractor is a living being, weaving together the cosmos and seeding the worlds within with it's own golden lifeforce. Possibly subjugating them? This is represented by the trees in the arena, a glimpse of these other worlds, or at least their connections within the supercluster. This is also why Rani moves the world through her portal, to escape the supercluster completely. Or not. Who knows?
Without a elden ring life can't exist as the very essence of life is inside the ring just like it had the very essence of death
Wasn’t Golden Order philosophy all about things yearning to become one and pull apart? The Great Attractor theory makes a lot of sense.
@@impcit5717 the golden order philosophy its exactly what the greater will want its mostly manipulated or by marika or by the finger
@@impcit5717 I'd say yes, and the theme of "duality" is found all through the game. It's especially obvious in the Marika/Radagon relationship, but also the Golden Order's combination of holy incantations and magic. Faith and Intelligence if you like. The Elden Ring wiki states that it's "capable of integrating conflicting ideologies and practices" which I'm inclined to agree with.
@@OllyDee123along with the scadutree's twin trunks, almost looking like two lovers embracing
I love Elden Beast so much. It's one of my favourite bosses in FromSoft because of it's atmosphere, music and design. I've been thinking of learning UprisingGrand's piano arrangement of its theme for months.
Maybe I just got lucky and didnt get spammed with annoying attacks or didnt have it excessively running away, but Elden Beast was a beautiful fight for me.
If you look at how the elden beast is shaped from above, it seems to resemble Robert Fludd's tree of life, its wings being the 10 branches and the end of the tail being the root "crown" of the tree.
The Elden Beast is the Hunter of Yharnam after he ate all the umbilical cords and became a great old one.
In my opinion, Elden Beast's translucent body with its gold, branching nervous system bears a resemblance to Melibe Leonina; aka the lion's mane nudibranch. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a partial source of inspiration for Elden Beast's design.
It always makes me think of the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath from the Cthulhu Mythos.
They're often described as confused for trees.
Another point of evidence for the connection to Astel creatures is the few similar moves they share, like the one where they "toss" out a bunch of sparks that then explode.
That one attack it does when flying is absolutely breathtaking
Hear me out: Elden Beast starred as the main character of Disney's 1997 hit film "Flubber".
I'm upset you said 1997. I'm upset that I'm older then Flubber
I love Flubbet. As a child I watch it 100 times on video
@@mesaprime4368 I'm upset I saw it in theatres and you weren't born yet 👴
Worth noting that falling star beasts and astel are the same creatures in different stages of their life cycle, meaning that the stars probably arent living beings but more akin to eggs. they hatch into a larval form that pupates into astels, a process we see in 3 stages. the falling star beasts, the hanging astels under ground and the fully grown astel
I love how it’s blobby head is translucent and with that glowing eye that it has, I can imagine how it’s probably got little to no blind spot
*eternally watching..*
The remembrance description stating that it was sent by the great will and that killing it gives "god Slain" instead of "Demigod Defeated" always made me think that it is the physical embodiment of the greater will, and by killing it you severed it's ties to the lands between
I hope we killed it but I have a feeling the greater will is still messin around out there
The Greater Will being severed is the implication with the ending, regardless of what ending you choose, The Greater will is going to take a good Thousand years to respond to the developments of the Erdtree not opening up to you and then get notified that the Elden Beast was slain.
My favorite text message was in BB, where every time you kill a boss, message shows "Prey SLAUGHTERED" but only for mergo's child and for Orphan of Kos it shows NIGHTMARE SLAIN.
that's why it gives you the oppurtunity to place new runes into the Elden Ring after it's dead.
So basically, the Greater Will is the player and the Elden Beast is its avatar within the Lands Between i.e. the "game".
I love it.
The Elden Beast is the most beautiful, otherworldly being in video games history - in my opinion. The fact that its veins are starry gold reminds me of Laniakea Supercluster, and because this being is sent by the Greater Will, it's CLEARLY an alien. The Lands Between are just its host, and so are the planet, by extension. On the backgrounds when we fought it, there's lots of golden pillars.. probably thousands of Erdtrees in many planets.
Nice thougt provoking video! Your hardwork is appreciated.
The search for the creators' intents really brings you to some random places
The Elden Beast was the golden star sent to the Lands Between by the Greater Will. It looks like a dragon because the dragons were the first inheritors of the Elden Ring, in the age before the Erdtree.
That first sentence is a beautiful prosaic summation of that bit of lore ✨
I find it interesting that this lore shares similarities with Dark Souls (from my perspective), with a world coveted in dragons only to be changed by some outside force.
@@SuperDingaling6 My man Dark souls (1 and 3) were directed by Miyazaki as well.
That's why.
@@rafsandomierz5313 well duh
Miyazaki recycles a lot of the same ideas in each game.
Yo that sound being similar to the frecquency of stars is INSANE! Miyazaki truly can't stop thinking in the KOSMos.
I didn't know the beast had legs. I guess he teleports you to the water dimension because we would look funny dragging his massive tail around
Elden Beast ASMR was something I didn't know i needed
Its that darn space slug again!
get the fucking dex build out its the dam slug again!
The golden lights making up what looks like its skeleton looks like the strands of gold that Marika is holding the Shadow of the Erdtree story trailer.
Elden Beast is everything I wanted Moon Presence to be. A final ultimate cosmic boss but with actually enough health to let me enjoy and appreciate it. I know some don't enjoy the fight but I actually thinks it's a great fight minus Elden Stars which is the one attack that there seems to be just no consistent way to completely avoid. The other thing that relates to Elden Beast and it's potential for intelligence is how much autonomy it may NEED to have, because when you go back to the Two Fingers after being blocked from entering the Erdtree by the thorns, Enya tells you that the Two Fingers need to consult the Greater Will and that this will take so long she thinks you'll be long gone by the time they hear back. This implies the Greater Will is extremely far away in space and whatever method of direct communication isn't terribly fast or efficient for our sense of time. This also seemingly confirms that Elden Beast is not in communication with the Two Fingers and perhaps is even/has become disconnected from the Greater Will itself. This leads me to believe that Elden Beast is more of an envoy of the Greater Will, able to act on it's own according to what it believes is right in the name of the Greater Will. We see the final arena with all the ethereal Erdtrees but even though this may symbolize all the other ones that potentially exist nearby in the universe I think it just goes to the scale of the Greater Will's influence in the universe and if anything these are likely closer to us spatially than the Greater Will.
The most accurate description is that Elden Beast is the antivirus. And after you defeat it you are allowed to configure the programming (Elden Ring).
The Erdtree (and each pillar of light) is most likely closestly analogued to a server.
I love how when you get blocked by the thorns the fingers are like "Yeah not even we know what's happening. We'll have to ask the boss so come back in a few business days" lol
Your videos are so great for someone who doesn't enjoy playing the game themselves. Thanks Zullie.
Tarnished: This isn’t a god… it’s a fucking alien!
Good Hunter: First time experiencing this?
You know, now that I think about it... The cosmic beasts aspect of Elden Ring is like Martin or Miyazaki read H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Colour out of Space' and then decided to massively expand that story's premise.
Well, the Elden beast has feet. I learned something new today.
Well, that's a Miyazaki's game... 😅
The concept of Space Leviathans are definitely an influence, it's one of my favorite concepts in sci fi actually and the fact that they translated it into a fantasy game makes me wish it happened more often
Some people don't believe that Elden Beast is Elden Ring itself, but even damage sounds of Elden Beast - are cracks of runes, like breaking glass, the same sound we hear when we crack Runes we can collect in the world to earn Runes. There is a theory that Elden Beast lives inside of Elden Ring and Elden Ring is actualy those Golden Trees we see during fight, just in different perspective.
is the elden ring meant to be like a physical intractable object?
@@thejuiceking2219 No,the Elden Ring isnt a physical a ring but something metaphysical capable of controlling the laws of reality.We use the runes to mold what our character is supposed to be,who has the Elden Ring does it at a much larger scale.
@@lordanonimmo7699 except...we actively see parts of the elden ring embedded in the hammer radagon uses
@@thejuiceking2219 And then we also see the ER inside Radagon just in the wrong position.
All the runes you get in the game are all part of the Elden Ring,the great runes you get are all made from parts of the 4 rings of the ER,yet they are all inside Radagon too.
@@lordanonimmo7699 huh
Zullie, I just want to let you know you're the reason why I got back into Elden Ring again. Thank you!
cool detail about the star sounds
I also note that it combines elements of land (hands and legs), sea (tail and fins) and sky (wings) animals. There is some evolutionary tree of life feeling in the design.
"What IS the Elden Beast?"
My boyfriend, next question.
Reminds me of No Eyed Girl
@@TheSilly6403Like, Lemon Demon? Your matter tells mine to scatter?
LMAO
@@skin_lizard yep!
Based, we stan the elden beast
Despite the hate this boss gets, I personally love this boss’s design. It clearly looks like something that doesn’t belong in this world/universe which is clearly what they were going for.
The nebulas/stars in its body along with the tall glowing Erdtrees in the background prove that this thing has conquered many worlds and we’re the first to go against it.
Gold is one of my favorite colors. To see it used like this was pure eye candy.
And that soundtrack, so graceful, so majestic, it sounds so…..holy.
History Channel's 'The Universe' did a episode about Neutron Stars and how some of them make a consistent rythem beat in radio recordings. Your 'sounds of space' segment reminded of that cool episode 😊
It has huge "Princess Mononoke Forest Spirit" vibes. When the forest spirit leaves its deer form to become The Nightwalker, and they shoot off its head.
So, this “Elden Beast” is basically a Great One.
Miyazaki and FromSoftware are no strangers to putting Lovecraftian and cosmic horror elements in their games - we’ve seen this with not only Bloodborne, but also Demon’s Souls, and perhaps even the Dark Souls trilogy with its “Age of the Deep.”
Its far far more higher than the great ones
@@massimilianoreali4398 Is it?
Now I fear the Greater Will.
@@ARSD219 basically the greater will is the platonic demiurge he took a giant mass of united matter and from it it created everything life, death, etc. And the elden beast is the thing that allow us to manipulate the concept that the greater will created since the elden beast IS the elden ring as the video say the beast is order itself we don't even truly slain the beast because the ring still exist we slain the previous order but not her true essence
@@massimilianoreali4398 Maybe we slain a remembrance of the Original Elden Beast, or something similar to Ancient Spirits, but yeah, she remains the Elden Ring. P.s: If you notice, the Radagon we fight uses only Faith and his body, cracked and empty, is filled with Dark and Elden Ring. Like the Elden Beast is wearing and using him as a puppet to defend herself.
@@themaniae4803 i know that in fact radagon would be able to know various sorceries ans spell as well
Yay, I’m super stoked to see what you have to say about the Elden beast. Thanks as always!!!!
About beasts being given five fingers as an accompaniment to sentient intelligence: Astel has five fingers and a thumb, for a total of six digits, in each hand. I understand this is just to add to its creepiness, but maybe something's worth exploring here. Namely, what if Astel is a "failed vassal" of some outer god? Or an attempt by Renna/Ranni to have their own smart beast to rival the Golden Order's. Astel looks creepy but it behaves in a manner I would call intelligent, especially in how it employs tactics and trickery. By contrast, fallingstar beasts behave no more intelligently than a, well, bull.
No, it is an experiment of the Nox which both failed and succeeded, it is not some failed vessel, but an artificial tool made by the Nox,
Astel are clearly aliens, as the channel has covered before.
In cosmic horror stories. Aliens are often much more intelligent than humans. To the point where humanity can not comprehend it.
So yes Astel are probably far more intelligent than humans.
@@MasonCasey-fh6bo Astel remembrance says:
“A malformed star born in the lightless void far away. Once destroyed an Eternal City and took away their sky. A falling star of ill omen.”
Also meteorite of astel spell says:
“A manifestation of the power with which Astel leveled the Eternal City.”
Enough to say he wasn’t made by the nox.
@@MasonCasey-fh6bo there is absolutely zero evidence that the Nox made it. None.
Would be funny because Astel(s) are blind, smart, but cannot observe the world, that said, canonically they precede Ranni, the Nox/Numen in their hubris, attracted those beings there, and paid the price
You always come up with the most interesting topics for your videos. I was initially kind of meh about the Elden Beast as the final boss, but this definitely made me look at it differently.
I didn’t realize that was a scar.
This videos raised an interesting point regarding five fingers and intelligence. Due to beings like the twin and three fingers, fingers can be significant in this universe. The fact that beastmen got their intelligence alongside their fifth finger could be interpreted as a coincidence or it could be the reason for their intelligence. This would explain the elden beast having intelligence since it has five fingers.
Plus, any mention of beasts and cosmic beings is a nice bonus Bloodborne reference, even if it's not explicit or intentional.
Ah, so Lovecraft and Bram Stoker were referencing Bloodborne after all...
@@bunnyvillainy no, Bloodborne was referencing HP and Bram, and then that made the concepts wholly the intellectual property of Fromsoft, obviously. 😝
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was my favorite Bloodborne reference lol
Finally !
The single video I've been waiting for the most ever since I finished ER ♥
great music choice
The idle audio blew me away. They put so much thought into their games.
Zullie you are just wonderful! Love your videos SO much!
This video reminded me how I still wait for the day someone posts a 2 or more hours long video of Elden Beast’s idle sound. I’d fall asleep to that in a minute.
The Twilight Princess music is quite fitting!
0:38 this is exactly what I had in mind. god, this channel is 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
"The only good xeno..."
*Pumps THE Greatsword*
"Is a dead xeno."
Keep your activation rune primed!
I think the topics related to the Elden Beast and the higher will are the most interesting in the game. I'd love to explore more about this in coming dlcs or somethig. Basically the cosmic stuff
I always call him Nessie Jesus. This is CANON
It would be such a cool concept the elden beast crashing on loch ness being revered by the Celts and Norse, offering Human female sacrifices to the lake shores and burning boats to summon the god and its favour on battle and crops
Excellent video, Zullie! I love the background on the design of the Elden Beast, this is super cool!
Babe wake up! A Zullie video just dropped.
THANK YOU for highlighting the Laniakea Supercluster comparison!! I've always thought that similarity was fascinating
Being an otherworldly alien being, possibly even Lovecraftian, I would suggest that not only does the Elden Beast possess a level of intelligence, but that it's intelligence is in fact superior to human intellect. Vastly superior. Like the difference between a human being and an amoeba.
And yet it still can't outsmart my giant stone club
@@Smeik2901It doesn't matter how smart you are. You will be dumb and dead after the bonk !
@@Smeik2901 True. It is difficult to outsmart an unstoppable force of nature.
I really love Elden Ring (and Bloodborbe's) approach to sci-fi and cosmic horror in simply grounding it in more archaic understandings of space. Astrology WAS astronomy after all, and there's no lack of personifying planets and stars in the ancient world to a degree where the leap from "god" to "alien" is actually fairly small. The cosmic horror aspect comes into it by making so many of these enemies what Kenneth Grant would have dubbed "trans-Plutonian", or "beyond our solar system", out in the darkest reaches of space. It would be like if Rome, with their gods like Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, etc, suddenly came into the temple and found a god called "2012 DA14". And it wouldn't look as anthropomorphic as the others.
Greetings.
It's awesome to see a fantasy game so full of sci-fi concepts
I think that within 3D spacetime lore, we’re all “vassals of the greater will”
We’re just shapes of the universe, being played or projected from the ribbon of the wave function, manifested from the rippling excitations of fields. A human, an ant, a dog, it’s all just universe shapes, atoms, “particles”, excitations and patterns.
I think a “human” is simply a shape that narrates its actions in real time, and tells a story about its existence
To think that the stars are actual living creatures is in a way scarier than all that outer god tales, because we can actually see them looking down right now.
As one WoolieVs once proclaimed: “That is an AAAAAlien.”
I'm delighted that you pointed out the parallel in appearance to Laniakea. That was my first thought when I saw it.
Likely the reason why the Elden beast looks somewhat of dragon, is likely due to the increase in worship for the dragons in the order causing the beast to resemble a dragon.🤔🐱
or maybe eb was placidusax's god
OMG the laniakea supercluster connection is so cool!!! The cosmic web binding all things together :O amazing!!
Elden beast is an alien slug and erdtree is a parasite makes sense tbh
Literally the first thing I said out loud when I saw the Elden Beast my first time was “it’s head is a finger” like the creature feels like a hastily cobbled together body attached to a singular finger that is the Greater Will itself directly trying to stop us.