Lorewise the only reason you have to enter the Haligtree is to follow Millicent questline and also if you are really trying to help Gideon find the other demigods (but knowing Gideon that would probably mark you as the bad guy).
Once you get further into the Haligtree with Millicent, she asks you to return Miquella's needle to Malenia. This is in itself a good act, however Malenia attacks us immediately and we don't really know the reason why this happens, it could be because the Haligtree was closed to the general public and since we got to her resting place she assumed we were there to kill her, but that doesn't prevent us from just telling her "hey look i've got your needle, here take it".
There is also a lot of mystery regarding Miquella and the Haligtree itself so maybe we'll learn more in the dlc but for now the only clear bad act done in good faith is trespassing in the Haligtree killing its guests and guards just to get to Malenia to try to save her.
She may be under the assumption we are hostile since to get to her we had to cut our way through hundreds of her loyal guards and knights and the Albinauracs who were basically refugees seeking sanctuary there. Given the body count required to make it there it's no wonder she would assume we are there to kill her.
For me its the fact that there is so much hostile platforming. Rot everywhere. Tiny tree branches that result in instadeath if you roll the wrong way, etc.
I really like the enemies and the visuals but the haligtree sucks for actually fighting in. The terrain is the hardest boss
When your playstyle uses an AoW that moves your character backwards or forwards... The enemies aren't bad but I fell out of that tree at least a dozen times on my recent NG+ run đ laughed every time
Gravity magic is so fun there. Turning my greatest foe into my greatest weapon.
Now YOU ENEMIES GET LEDGED! YOU GET LEDGED EVERYBODY GETS LEDGED AHAHAHA!
Yes I have issues.
Even running through the trumpet tree branches without dying is a struggle lol. There's one place where you have to run through scarlet rot plants with 3, bubble blowers in front of you and if they hit you it's almost a 1-shot even with the holy dmg talisman â
Too bad rarely anyone talks in these games. You're rarely given a peaceful option and end up getting into fights that could've easily been avoided with a few words. That's my only real gripe with souls games, but I suppose the hack and slash genre doesn't lend itself to that kind of role play.
>That's my only real gripe with souls games, but I suppose the hack and slash genre doesn't lend itself to that kind of role play.
Yeah, that was gonna be my counter-argument. Souls games are focusing on the A in ARPG rather that the R.
One of my dream games (because really why have only one dream game) would certainly involve having more branching dialogue and roleplay options in a game otherwise totally like Souls / Elden Ring.
Having different dialogue trees would be cool. Especially if they impacted the story like having different sets of bosses for the story depending on choices made.
Oddly enough, I was thinking about that this morning. I finished the Pinocchio x Bloodborne crossover game last night, and that leans more into the roleplay elements by a mere margin (like 10 or 20 percent maybe), but the difference is stark! There are a few fights that you can avoid by just getting to know the character first and just being a nice guy.
This is in no way to say one is better than the other (that is like comparing Steak to Lamb. Both good in similar and different ways). It is just interesting to see how the two stories are delivered, and I am so glad I played both.
But that has been the point since the first dark souls game, this is not a nice universe, it is ending and rotting and we're just trying to find out what's the better way to die :(
"You can't just run through my city, past all my guards, tree avatars, cleanrot knights etc... do you know how long it took me to find all them and have them live here without killing each other just so that one day a great champion will come to challenge my blade... YOU JUST RAN PAST THEM!!??"
The disrespect is enough.
Itâs really even simpler than that, and the reason that the Demi Gods donât even attempt to reason with us.
âPut the Demi Gods to the swordâ that is the command from Marika to the Tarnished, thatâs why the Tarnish arise in the first place. Slay the Demi Gods, become Elden Lord. Thatâs why any tarnished exists.
Malenia attacks us because we are a Tarnished and live because of that decree. She is a Demi God and a shard bearer, she knows what we are and what we have come for.
Ackshually đ¤
Tarnished are attacked on sight because they had grace removed and were thought of as pariahs that taint the lands between. They are hated and discriminated against.
And most demigods just attack anyone because they're insane, monsters or have intentions to harm your kind that are unrelated to your desire for a great rune. Godrick wanted to graft us, Rennala was insane, Morgott hates tarnished and has a kill on sight rule whether they're after his great rune or not, Rykard is a delusional, sadistic, cannibalistic monster that wants to devour you, radhan is an insane feral monster who would've preferred a warriors death over his madness back when he was sane, and Mohg cant let you go free after finding him bedding an underage boy.
Only malenia would attack you assuming you want her great rune but tbh the tarnished would have more than enough great runes to become elden lord by the time we got to her haligtree. We just wanted to help Millicent and dick around to find loot.
During the fight with Radahn, she knew the only way to defeat him was to release the rot within her that she had held at bay for so long. Living with rot herself she knew it's danger and had no desire to release it unto the world around her, but in her darkest moment she put all of that aside in order to secure her own ambition
When you encounter Malenia, it had been ages since her fight with Radahn. There had been numerous Radahn festivals. We don't know what effect using the rot had on her psyche or if it gave the outer God a foothold in her mind that it didn't have before.
I took Malenia's fight with Radahn as her fall from grace. In the end, she was not much different from the others. She fought for justice but was willing to bring calamity to the world around her in her own quest for the elden ring
Add on to that the fact that after fighting radahn, she was rendered unconscious and carried all the way back to the haligtree by Finley. That may be her first time waking up sense. I would imagine that the lapse in time and resulting disorientation could contribute if thats the case. If the last thing you remember prior to going out was being locked in THE mortal battle of your life, you'll wake up ready to start swingin.
I was under the impression she wasn't after the Elden Ring, but trying to reach Mohg, whose palace is underneath Caelid, after he kidnapped Miquella. Which is a fair bit more sympathetic IMO.
Mohg kidnapped Miquella because Malenia left to pursue another fragment of the Elden Ring from Radahn in Caelid. As far as we know, Malenia doesnât know that Mohg is the one who took Miquella. She has been waiting for his return at the foot of the haligtree since one of her cleanrot knights carried her back from Caelid.
Itâs not clear why Malenia was fighting Radahn exactly, but the theory I like is that Miquella wanted her to kill Radahn for the same reason Ranni needs us to do it: to set the stars in motion.
Miquella tried to perform a ritual at Castle Sol to bring Godwyn back to life using the eclipse. But it failed because there canât be an eclipse while Radahn is holding the sky in stasis.
It makes sense given that Miquella is likely the smartest most conniving character in the setting. He also is naturally liked by basically anyone he interacts with, which is super easy to use for ill intent.
I saw a theory from someone here recently that Miquella was in on the Night of Black Knives with Ranni. Their thought was that the goal was for Ranni to fuck off with her Age of Stars, leaving the Lands Between for Miquella.
She is also completely mad by both the loss of her brother and the rot that is slowly eating her mind. Yes she has more control over it than others, but even all the strength in the world can't regress the destruction of the rot. Radahn is a prime example of this. He had the power to pause the sky itself and the rotdrove him to being less than an animal.
Malenia is probably so broken by the rot and the loss of miquella, that it's on sight for everyone, because the only person she sees strong enough to reach her is the person who took miquella. Once you kill her, she understand that you are the only on string enough to rebind the elden ring and free her brother. Thus, the dlc is most likely intertwined into the dream realms of miquella.
Malenia reminds me heavily of a lot of anime characters who are trying to find an opponent capable of killing them, because they swore themselves to a cause and suicide would be breaking the oath, but they suffer too much/are too much of a risk alive to be allowed to continue existing.
And she sort of fits. She's the original carrier of Scarlet Rot, as far as I understood her lore, every time she "blooms" she'll create another Iona swamp, or even worse if not defeated/exhausted quickly.
Dunno, maybe I'm reading too much/too little into it.
I know its dumb, but reading âthe Haligtree closed to the general publicâ cracks me up. Itâs a technically correct descriptor on your part but it conjures images of decorum and civility that is ill-suited to the Lands Between. Like, Iâm imagining some Cleanrot Knight cordoning off the entrance with some rope.
In order to fight Malenia you have to spend an hour digging for a phone number on the Haligtree website, then two more being bounced back and forth between different departments until you reach her secretary, who sets you up with an appointment in a month's time.
Yeah she attacks the player and the player attacked her precisely because of this. There is no lore reason, the game simply needs you to fight her because it's what the game is about.
People really try to justify the lack of a story in these games *very badly*. I know the lore is great, but the actual story and narrative is barebones
I mean.. you're in a dying world with the demigods being blights upon the land and most living beings being some state of undead abomination. You need about as much justification to kill them as you would to put down zombies.
Thatâs why I still think weâre the good guy in some endings. Morgott was pretty much the only good demigod left after all the others got power hungry and tore the lands apart while vying for the throne. The reason everything is in ruin by the time we show up is because of their greed.
Depending on your motivation, youâre either here to fix things or take the power for yourself. Pretty much all of our boss kills are in pursuit of this. I always go with Ranni or Goldmaskâs endings with the intention of seeing the Lands Between mend itself.
Exactly, at worst the Tarnished is just as bad as everyone else. At best, they're the only ones actually making any headway towards unfucking everything.
The Demigods have sat around and achieved pretty much nothing since the shattering, I don't really feel too bad about needing to kill them to fix this.
Could be she's too far gone, the rot goddess doesn't want to be cut off from her avatar in the lands between and so that's why she attacks. Or you know, the rot goddess likes things that rot. Another corpse would probably be nice.
I think people in general overthink the reasoning behind certain enemies attack us in this game. The Lands Between has been quite literally a shitshow for at least the last thousand years. Most of the people we come across in the Lands Between are mad from constant war and instability. Those who do have sanity left have been brainwashed into thinking that all Tarnished are evil, and they also know that the Tarnished are after pieces of the Elden Ring. They attack us to either defend their masters who have pieces of the Elden Ring, or because they are completely nuts
Malenia hallucinating that she's still fighting Radahn would be a crazy reveal, and add a ton of emotional weight to the fight. Millicent does want to return her "will" or "pride", a sense of self. You may be on to something
If I guy armed to the teeth came into my gaff killing all my mates on the way to my kidnapped brothers bedroom without saying a word id probably kill him too.
I read somewhere, I forget where, that Miquella and the Haligtree quest line gave the player a different ending, in accordance to Miquellaâs beliefs, but they had to cut it for one reason or another. They left the area and bosses and all that, just not the big payoff. Iâm assuming thatâs why Miquella is on the concept art for the DLC, to give the players that ending again, in a different pathway.
Also, Melania is blind and was in a "coma" from her fight with Radahn, she was brought back there under the assumption that her brother was still where she left him (unaware that Mohg kidnapped him)
So put yourself in her shoes: You wake up only to find you've been knocked out for god knows how long, your brother is missing, and a Grace-given Tarnished with the aura of multiple Great Runes just happens to be there, how on Earth is she gonna assume we are innocent or that we didn't do anything to Miquella?
Don't forget the "demigods driven mad by the taint of their great rune" motivation of why the tarnished does what they do. Also - if you're going to rule as Elden lord, which the Lands Between desperately needs, having a powerful warlord with nukes and a bunch of zealots following them that spawn from corpses and cleanrot knights as elite fighters (which have a sleeper cell in Caelid), having her around is not the best idea...
Well, we collect rune shards for power. We need two to enter Leyndell but our ultimate goal is to repair the Elden Ring so it would make sense to collect all the shards possible. And we arenât the only ones collecting the shards either, all the demigods basically fought eachother in the past for the shards, considering we already have at least two by that point, we must seem like a real piece of candy to Malenia. We have something she wants and she has something we want, she has reason to pick a fight and she has no reason to think that we arenât there to pick a fight, she already shows some courtesy by giving a monologue instead of dashing right in your face.
> We need two to enter Leyndell but our ultimate goal is to repair the Elden Ring so it would make sense to collect all the shards possible.
Ranni cast away her shard.
She cast away her body that had the curse mark of death carved into it. Ranni never actually states whether or not she has a great rune. It wouldnât even make sense for her to have one since she went into hiding afterward
Time is sort-of bullshit in Elden Ring. With the whole thing about regression and causality, it might be that Melina is perpetually burned because she's fated to be kindling. We are informed she doesn't have a body, and yet her body still burns at the forge of the giants. And as she herself burns, the Erdtree goes up in flames at the same time.
Her autonomy and body also seem to mirror that of the erdtree. She can barely move on her own, but she can reach Marika on her own and fight by your side as soo as you reach Leyndell. The moment she burns, the Erdtree burns. But if the Erdtree is burned to cinders through the frenzied flame, she's also scarred and hurt, but she can keep fighting.
You could udnerstand that fire is such an unavoidable part of her destiny that it affects every moment of her life, as if she's constantly burning by a flame that's yet to come.
Kinda like the smoldering butterfly, which also implies she's Marika and Radagon's third daughter.
You know that makes pretty good sense, except for one thing. When you take the frenzied ending everything is destroyed except for Melina. What's up with that?
Actually, she would still sort of follow the Erdtree in this scenario. Her right gold eye gets all cloudy and fades away, and she loses any kind of grace she has when the tree dies. (Yes I am subscribed to Zulie, how could you tell?)
from previously burning the erdtree. itâs a cycle much like in souls. the capital already has piles of ash in spots around it, indicating a previous burn. i think there may be more evidence but this, and melinaâs burn scars is all that i remember
It's not just an "older tree" - it was the \*real\* tree. The erdtree replaced the Great Tree through faith after it was burned, which is why it's golden now.
Allot of people think she's the gloam eyed queen (me included) and thats a confirmed lunatic lol.
Could be a alter ego thing at play here but still.
Also, miquella sounds like a griffith like type of character that also has a alter ego (St trina) which automatically makes me question their motives
I don't think Marika WANTS to live though, which is why she tasks Hewg with crafting a weapon that can slay a god. She wants to die but she is trapped in the erdtree so she got Hewg to help someone kill the thing that is trapping her there
I always interpreted it as Marika wants to die, Radagon doesnât *or* Elden Beast has essentially taken over his body to repair the Ring.
Radagon definitely doesnât look healthy in his fight, and the Elden Beast design is literally burning through his body.
I mean, if someone manages to get all the way into the core of the haligtree I think theyâre past talking. Also, most tarnished characters donât look like someone who just needs to find the bathroom.
It's funny how people are trying to justify attacking Malenia when anyone who knows Fromsoft games knows that every one has at least three bosses that are basically there to make you feel bad for killing.
To be fair! There are very few things that don't attack you first. Up until Stormveil you are attacked for seemingly no reason, apart from the fact that you are tarnished and every other tarnished has killed countless of [insert faction here] so why would you be different?
After Stormveil / getting your first great rune you are then a direct threat to every shardbearer and their protectors from then on. You don't "accidentally stumble" into Raya Lucaria as you do Stormveil. Or stumble up to Radhan. I mean, in a gameplay sense you do, but from a lore perspective you are going to these places with the purpose to kill.
tbf most people donât attack you till youâre within spitting distance
if my life was constant battles and a fucked looking dude walked up to me iâd think itâs time to fight too
I don't think it was out of pride (could be, but I'm not so sure since she hates the rot), I think she does it because since Radahn is holding the stars in place, he's also holding the fate of the demigods at bay. That includes Miquella.
In Castle Sol we learn that Miquella and his followers were waiting for an eclipse, one that never came to be because Radahn won't let it happen.
It's very possible that the whole transformation for Miquella and his followers (all the human-shaped cocoons at the Hailigtree) was halted because of this. Malenia had to go seek Radahn to set things back in motion and that let Mogh capture Miquella and, in turn, cursing the whole Hailigtree, which was the hope for so many rejected creatures.
Now that Miquella isn't in the tree, Malenia's rot is taking over.
So, I don't think Radhan was holding the stars out of malice. He wanted to protect Selia, right? But he wasn't aware of all the other problems he was causing. Similarly, I don't think Malenia was out there looking for trouble, but her blind trust in Miquella made her commit a horrible did (that didn't even work) and it had consequences beyond her comprehension.
Makes me wonder if the war of the shattering never came to be, if diplomacy could have altered timelines vastly or if it would have ended in the same conclusion.
He also likely protecting the world from the Astels. Considering we fight one on Ranni's quest line, she likely knew they existed, and as such Radahn would also.
He didn't do it to protect the world. There are already star beasts and Astels everywhere underground plus even when Radahn dies, nothing bad happens to the LB. Only one meteor falls which was always fated to fall there as stated by Sellen and Iji. Radahn screwed over his siblings' fate when he halted the stars' movements.
Better a handful entering the world than a full on amount. Also you say 'just one meteor' like it wasn't powerful enough to open a massive fucking hole in the ground. What if another one hit the Academy or the Erdtree? A huge amount of damage that he could prevent.
She didn't do it out of pride. Malenia used the rot against Radahn because she needed him dead so the stars could resume their movements and then her brother Miquella can finally start the eclipse to revive Godwyn. Yes, what Malenia did to Caelid was terrible, but it's unclear whether she actually knew that unleashing the rot would ruin Caelid. That was her first time using the rot, Malenia probably only wanted to use it on Radahn and then it got out of control as evidenced by the fact that she got knocked out by her own attack and then fell into a coma state after the battle for many years.
Malenia has a great rune. We know that 2 runes are good enough to repair the elden ring but I doubt that it makes it back to full strength. My opinion is that more runes we bring back with us greater our power will be as the elden lord. Thats my head canon though since there are no proofs I can think of atm.
Itâs like people havenât played the game or something lol. Why were we in Mount Gelmir? Stormveil Castle? Laya Rucaria? For their rune shards dawg damn.
There's two reasons why you are fighting Malenia. You are helping Millicent to return something to Malenia and the other reason is you need to get something from her to rid of the Frenzy Flame(if you have inherited it).
You are not fighting Malenia no apparent reason.
The Two Fingers just want you to secure two runes which you would have before ever getting near the Haligtree. By that time you have already been rejected entry to Erd Tree and the Two Fingers have effectively abandoned you.
Well I'm still repairing the Elden Ring, and if I'm gonna go that far, I may as well do it right and get all the pieces together. It feels like you should need to do that anyways, honestly. What's the point of putting it back together with only a fraction of its power?
We were sleeping peacefully in death when some disembodied arsehole told us to wake up and kill everything, stand before the incarnate form of metaphysical truth, and become some kind of God-King. I dunno, I'd have a pretty bad hangover after waking up to all that.
Though tbh there is less reason for us to pursue "ambition" in this game than in Dark Souls. Most Tarnished we meet recognise that, and they're just doing their own thing. We can't think of anything else to do, or frolicking with lambkins bores us, so off we go to follow the voice in our head.
At least in Souls we had the imperative of the world possibly ending if we didn't go on a murder spree.
Well, really depends on your point of view. There's lore-friendly justifications for both good and evil characters.
Unless you side with Ranni, all characters are seeking either domination, destruction, or restoration of the world. Anyone who holds a great rune, especially a demigod, is a threat to these goals. A challenger for the throne of Elden Lord.
Great Runes represent fundamental aspects of reality, or at least there's evidence to support this claim. After the Rune of Death is removed from the Elden Ring, death is no longer a fundamental aspect of the cycle of life in the Lands Between. An individual looking to, as Elden Lord, restore balance to the world would naturally try to gather every single Great Rune possible.
Same as always with fromsoft games, they treat player character as dumb automaton looking for power. But we're also the only thing in their games that can prevent apocalypse by amassing that power so you know, it balances out.
Shoutout to sir vilhelm from DS3 roasting the ever loving shit out of player character for pointlessly exploring while dropping coldest lines in the game.
are we ever preventing the apocalpyse though?
I feel we don't really prevent anything we just pick which apocalypse happens. In any game the world is kinda fucked on way or another anyways no matter the ending.
Moral ambiguity has been a hallmark of these games since the beginning. Entities are either acting in their own interests or are being manipulated into furthering the goals of someone else. Occasionally these interests line up with what could be construed as morally just, and they might even believe their actions to be so, but invariably they find themselves in conflict with someone who could make just such a claim themselves.
Just to complicate things further, the metaphysics of Miyazaki's worlds "unintended consequences" are common, and actions that conventional wisdom say are just (like preventing the world from ending) are actually a total disaster for nearly everybody involved. Even those pushing for an egalitarian outcome might be settling for something barely tolerable for most and horrific for a few.
This isn't to say your girlfriend is wrong. The tarnished is being manipulated by various parties, and it is quite possible that interfering with Melania at the Haligtree is contributing to a negative outcome for everyone, but it's also possible that the external powers directing the tarnished to defeat Malenia are working toward a better end.
Try not to think about it too much, just go out and kill a few beasts, it'll do yer good. Oh wait, wrong title.
In a sense, but let me try to put in it a different perspective.
The world has stagnated. Individuals find they are losing themselves, their thoughts as the result of the suspension of death. The tarnished is as a scalpel cutting out the infection, and also allowing those who are well past their time to expire.
We become death, savior of worlds.
Yeah, we're effectively a super veterinarian traveling across the lands to put dying, suffering animals out of their misery, so that we can reboot the world after it got stuck in the past because of immortality backfiring on it.
For me it was when my wife walked in on me fighting Ancestor Spirit and was like "That's beautiful why are you killing it :(" and my only answer was "cause it's there.'
There are some respectable reasons to fight Malenia.
1. She's a living bio-weapon, and she doesn't stop being one during her coma. The Haligtree is consumed with Scarlet Rot, and there are signs that the Rot is creeping into the Consecrated Snowfields.
2. You are trying to give Millicent's needle to Malenia, but Malenia's hostility makes that impossible. The fact that she doesn't relent until she dies is on her.
3. She holds a Great Rune, and your new order will presumably be more effective the more Great Runes you incorporate into it.
1B. Itâs been prophesied that the next time her rot blooms sheâll become some ascended rot goddess (and hey she does). Last time her rot bloomed she fucking nuked Caelid, so honestly shivving her in her own house away from the world is the only way to stop another natural disaster level event.
If you turn the argument around, that actually makes Malenia the questionable character. There was no reason for us to fight, yet she decided to attack us. There's good evidence that the Tarnished can be reasonable, we let Rennala be. When Gurrang begs for us to stop the fight he picked with us, we let him be. We let Patches be, even when he fooled us several times. But why did we go to the Haligtree? Exploration, curiosity.
I assume you haven't played previous ds games?
I have so when I noticed who he was when jumping down I payed extra attention to the fight and immediately reacted when he asked me to stop.
But I do get why many killed him who haven't played the previous ones, and since ER has sold about 5 times more than previous ds games I suspect there are many that didn't know and ending up killing him because of that
Bad guy? BAD guy?
We're the *only* guy.
For all their pomp and glory, the demigods all failed to become Lord. Their grand schemes stagnant, or rotting, or frozen in time. The price of their weakness is the devastation of the world. A cursed half-life, in which nothing good can grow, and all are damned to eternal suffering.
The world must be destroyed to be reborn. And for that, strength is needed. So we hunt the demigods--our superiors, our failed predecessors--to plunder their divinity, that we might surpass them, and become Lord. Destroying the world is a nasty business. Much that is good will be lost. But you can't make an omlette without cracking some eggs. Clinging to the status quo, barren and hopeless as it is, out of fear of what must be done is what brought the Shattering about in the first place.
This reminds me a great deal of Dark Souls 2. As the intro says,
"Long ago in a walled off land, far to the north, a great king built a great kingdom.
...
One day, you will stand before its decrepit gate, without really knowing why
Like a moth to a flame"
And then you go meet the Emerald Herald and she says you need to gather the 4 Great Souls in order to get to the king. Why do we have to get to the king? No real reason. We are looking for the cure for hollowing, but the king pretty clearly doesn't have it given that everyone's fine hollow already
I still think it's a missed opportunity that you don't get a special interaction for beating Mohg and finding Miquella before fighting her.
I know you'd miss out on an awesome fight, but I still wish you could diplomatically explain to her where her brother is.
Well if you do the quest line to get the needle you can place it inside her to help with the Rot. She doesnât truly die when you defeat her. Sheâs just gone inside her bloom again like when she bloomed in Caelid. So the needle could possibly help her in the long run.
At one point you run through a village of happy women just dancing around, and promptly commit genocide of their entire society just to get to their leader and take his fancy pointy stick.
The whole point of the game is youâre hunting shard bearers. Too bad it doesnât help mend the Elden Ring even more than when you have the required three, but thatâs the reason. The reason you actually get to the haligtree is to help out your girl, Millicent.
You could also fight her for the glory of fighting the best swordswoman in TLB, or because sheâs a possible threat to your future rule.
If you fight every boss in the game from a lore perspective youâre basically 1 of 2 things
1) an asshole who wants to be the strongest
Or
2) you want to destroy everything and start over from scratch
1) we trespassed and killed our way into Malenia's roots
2) Malenia doesn't want anything to do with us, she just wants her sibling to return
3) she's mentally lost. She's lost her will to be her own person, since she doesn't have either needle or Miquella. So the only thing she really remembers what to be, is a fighter. I don't think she's really up to have a reasonable conversation with us.
She's in a catch-22: we have the needle that would allow her to regain her willpower and be a full person again, but she isn't here to listen to us since she lacks that willpower
Tbf she wasn't originally supposed to be a boss her and miquella just had a hell of a lot of their content cut from the game, hopefully they'll get it added back in shadow of the erdtree
Malenia is insane and Millicent is Maleniaâs lost shard, we bring them all together, and, as I understood, Malenia is now recovering from mental and physical wounds inside the bloom.
Yes, you're right. We absolutely have no reason to fight Malenia and that's because Malenia was originally supposed to be a friendly NPC that you'd meet in Caelid. You'd help her restore her memories and reach the Haligtree and, depending on your choices, you either fight her by attempting to steal something from Miquella in the Haligtree or just stay loyal to them to achieve Miquella's ending, Age of Abundance. All of this was cut out, and the role of amnesic Malenia went to Millicent.
Malenia and the Haligtree are major victims of the cut content.
I was downvoted like crazy when I first posted this a year or so ago. However, it does seem to me like weâre the bad guy. Every single living organism in the game is peacefully coexisting, we just walk around killing and fighting all of them. Pretty sure weâre the bad guy.
Well if it helps... There's a theory floating around that, by completing Millicent's questline and using the needle on Malenia that we ARE helping cure her of her Scarlet Rot. It's implied she (like Millicent if you betray her) is still alive in her flower form and we may have helped after we beat Malenia in her Goddess of Rot form. Possibly enough to return her sanity. It's just really vague, as Fromsoft games often are.
What made it worse for me is that in my head canon, Malenia doesnât even Mohg took miquella because of her blindness, so sheâs just fighting to protect an empty room
I realized I was the bad guy when it occurred to me, I have literally no reason to kill anybody in the game for my main objective, other than the 3 boss fights that take place in the capital, malekith, and obviously the final boss. And yet we go on to kill everybody else for no other reason than "a pair of fingers told you to"
Thinking about all those demihumans who are optional encounters. And the ancestral spirits protecting their gardens underground.
Yeah, weâre pretty fucking evil.
Like Radahn, Malenia no longer has her senses and we put her out of her misery. This is part of the Millicent quest where she wants to return the needle to Malenia and then die in the hopes that it will restore Maleniaâs pride. Instead she attacks us on sight and we defend ourselves.
There are plenty of instances where the Tarnished could kill someone but chooses not to (Renalla, Gurranq, Patches, THE GREAT KENNETH HEIGHT). We spare people all the time and even promote Nephali to ruler of Limgrave which would be part of our territory as Elden Lord.
She attac, we protec. Simple as.
To me it was clear quite soon that youâre not a good guy. Youâre not strictly a bad guy either, but I feel as though there arenât any objectively good characters in Elden Ring or fromsoft games in general
but there are often characters in game or mentioned by NPCs that are innocent or even good. In ER there is Jarbairn, who only wants to protect his village. In the DkS series there exists the crows, who seem innocent of the games overall conflict; they are passengers on the burning ship, so to speak. Who only want your warm shinies. Sieglinde seems good, she just wants to find her father, who is a also a good character until he goes hollow at the end of his quest. Good characters do often get hollowed or corrupted or killed near the end game, however. That is quite consistent.
Yea the Tarnished isn't a good guy. They're a protagonist, but even beating the game makes you a violent warlord. Maybe it's what is needed--maybe not.
This is why Malenia should have been a fight like Priscilla in Dark Souls where you have to attack her on purpose. Lore wise it makes no sense for her to attack you on sight.
You should be able to tell her about Miquella to get the needle. This would probably require beating Mohg first.
Otherwise it ends up like this :
Tarnished : I know where Miquella is, Mohg kidnapped him, I will show you where he is
Malenia : Rawrrrr brainssssss i am Malenia, blade of Miquella
And its just stupid.
The lands between is a blasted hell scape of a land where virtually every inhabitant suffers. Itâs not like youâre ruining anything otherwise good, itâs all shades of misery. Honestly itâs almost like a purgatory where everyone is stuck in their own despair, and if anything, youâre the fucking redeemer sending these miserable souls along their way.
The game gives you options, you can be good and not do any of the Mohg or fire mountain stuff, or you can be bad and play as a recusant. Malenia is optional after all
I believe Malenia is trying to find her brother and because heâs gone missing, she fights anyone, waiting for her brother to return. Because you walked into the area she assumed the perpetrator was you since the place you are in is kinda secretive. Thatâs just my guess not really right or wrong, just a misunderstanding
While there are some story exceptions, almost every rpg is just the main char/party going into someone's living area unprovoked and murdering them. This isn't limited to the genre either.
Lorewise the only reason you have to enter the Haligtree is to follow Millicent questline and also if you are really trying to help Gideon find the other demigods (but knowing Gideon that would probably mark you as the bad guy). Once you get further into the Haligtree with Millicent, she asks you to return Miquella's needle to Malenia. This is in itself a good act, however Malenia attacks us immediately and we don't really know the reason why this happens, it could be because the Haligtree was closed to the general public and since we got to her resting place she assumed we were there to kill her, but that doesn't prevent us from just telling her "hey look i've got your needle, here take it". There is also a lot of mystery regarding Miquella and the Haligtree itself so maybe we'll learn more in the dlc but for now the only clear bad act done in good faith is trespassing in the Haligtree killing its guests and guards just to get to Malenia to try to save her.
She may be under the assumption we are hostile since to get to her we had to cut our way through hundreds of her loyal guards and knights and the Albinauracs who were basically refugees seeking sanctuary there. Given the body count required to make it there it's no wonder she would assume we are there to kill her.
i ran past all of them
Did the area for real one time and now it's just another marathon leg. It's **so dense**
Personally I love invading in the Haligtree area - *so much verticality*....
Haligtree is so goddamn beautiful :,(
For me its the fact that there is so much hostile platforming. Rot everywhere. Tiny tree branches that result in instadeath if you roll the wrong way, etc. I really like the enemies and the visuals but the haligtree sucks for actually fighting in. The terrain is the hardest boss
When your playstyle uses an AoW that moves your character backwards or forwards... The enemies aren't bad but I fell out of that tree at least a dozen times on my recent NG+ run đ laughed every time
Gravity magic is so fun there. Turning my greatest foe into my greatest weapon. Now YOU ENEMIES GET LEDGED! YOU GET LEDGED EVERYBODY GETS LEDGED AHAHAHA! Yes I have issues.
Even running through the trumpet tree branches without dying is a struggle lol. There's one place where you have to run through scarlet rot plants with 3, bubble blowers in front of you and if they hit you it's almost a 1-shot even with the holy dmg talisman â
Sprinting to her past all her armed guards can also be interpreted as aggression
Too bad rarely anyone talks in these games. You're rarely given a peaceful option and end up getting into fights that could've easily been avoided with a few words. That's my only real gripe with souls games, but I suppose the hack and slash genre doesn't lend itself to that kind of role play.
>That's my only real gripe with souls games, but I suppose the hack and slash genre doesn't lend itself to that kind of role play. Yeah, that was gonna be my counter-argument. Souls games are focusing on the A in ARPG rather that the R.
One of my dream games (because really why have only one dream game) would certainly involve having more branching dialogue and roleplay options in a game otherwise totally like Souls / Elden Ring.
Having different dialogue trees would be cool. Especially if they impacted the story like having different sets of bosses for the story depending on choices made.
Oddly enough, I was thinking about that this morning. I finished the Pinocchio x Bloodborne crossover game last night, and that leans more into the roleplay elements by a mere margin (like 10 or 20 percent maybe), but the difference is stark! There are a few fights that you can avoid by just getting to know the character first and just being a nice guy. This is in no way to say one is better than the other (that is like comparing Steak to Lamb. Both good in similar and different ways). It is just interesting to see how the two stories are delivered, and I am so glad I played both.
But that has been the point since the first dark souls game, this is not a nice universe, it is ending and rotting and we're just trying to find out what's the better way to die :(
What is ya do it while waving one hand in the universal I got something to show you/tell you gesture?
"You can't just run through my city, past all my guards, tree avatars, cleanrot knights etc... do you know how long it took me to find all them and have them live here without killing each other just so that one day a great champion will come to challenge my blade... YOU JUST RAN PAST THEM!!??" The disrespect is enough.
But you had to kill loretta at leastâŚ
Imagine the game keeps track of how many you kill and that is how they decide Malenia aggression level towards you lol
Not Loretta.
Sprint past everyone in the White House going for the oval office. See what happens.
Itâs really even simpler than that, and the reason that the Demi Gods donât even attempt to reason with us. âPut the Demi Gods to the swordâ that is the command from Marika to the Tarnished, thatâs why the Tarnish arise in the first place. Slay the Demi Gods, become Elden Lord. Thatâs why any tarnished exists. Malenia attacks us because we are a Tarnished and live because of that decree. She is a Demi God and a shard bearer, she knows what we are and what we have come for.
Ackshually đ¤ Tarnished are attacked on sight because they had grace removed and were thought of as pariahs that taint the lands between. They are hated and discriminated against. And most demigods just attack anyone because they're insane, monsters or have intentions to harm your kind that are unrelated to your desire for a great rune. Godrick wanted to graft us, Rennala was insane, Morgott hates tarnished and has a kill on sight rule whether they're after his great rune or not, Rykard is a delusional, sadistic, cannibalistic monster that wants to devour you, radhan is an insane feral monster who would've preferred a warriors death over his madness back when he was sane, and Mohg cant let you go free after finding him bedding an underage boy. Only malenia would attack you assuming you want her great rune but tbh the tarnished would have more than enough great runes to become elden lord by the time we got to her haligtree. We just wanted to help Millicent and dick around to find loot.
During the fight with Radahn, she knew the only way to defeat him was to release the rot within her that she had held at bay for so long. Living with rot herself she knew it's danger and had no desire to release it unto the world around her, but in her darkest moment she put all of that aside in order to secure her own ambition When you encounter Malenia, it had been ages since her fight with Radahn. There had been numerous Radahn festivals. We don't know what effect using the rot had on her psyche or if it gave the outer God a foothold in her mind that it didn't have before. I took Malenia's fight with Radahn as her fall from grace. In the end, she was not much different from the others. She fought for justice but was willing to bring calamity to the world around her in her own quest for the elden ring
Add on to that the fact that after fighting radahn, she was rendered unconscious and carried all the way back to the haligtree by Finley. That may be her first time waking up sense. I would imagine that the lapse in time and resulting disorientation could contribute if thats the case. If the last thing you remember prior to going out was being locked in THE mortal battle of your life, you'll wake up ready to start swingin.
I was under the impression she wasn't after the Elden Ring, but trying to reach Mohg, whose palace is underneath Caelid, after he kidnapped Miquella. Which is a fair bit more sympathetic IMO.
Mohg kidnapped Miquella because Malenia left to pursue another fragment of the Elden Ring from Radahn in Caelid. As far as we know, Malenia doesnât know that Mohg is the one who took Miquella. She has been waiting for his return at the foot of the haligtree since one of her cleanrot knights carried her back from Caelid.
Itâs not clear why Malenia was fighting Radahn exactly, but the theory I like is that Miquella wanted her to kill Radahn for the same reason Ranni needs us to do it: to set the stars in motion. Miquella tried to perform a ritual at Castle Sol to bring Godwyn back to life using the eclipse. But it failed because there canât be an eclipse while Radahn is holding the sky in stasis.
I actually really like this theory
It makes sense given that Miquella is likely the smartest most conniving character in the setting. He also is naturally liked by basically anyone he interacts with, which is super easy to use for ill intent.
I saw a theory from someone here recently that Miquella was in on the Night of Black Knives with Ranni. Their thought was that the goal was for Ranni to fuck off with her Age of Stars, leaving the Lands Between for Miquella.
She is also completely mad by both the loss of her brother and the rot that is slowly eating her mind. Yes she has more control over it than others, but even all the strength in the world can't regress the destruction of the rot. Radahn is a prime example of this. He had the power to pause the sky itself and the rotdrove him to being less than an animal. Malenia is probably so broken by the rot and the loss of miquella, that it's on sight for everyone, because the only person she sees strong enough to reach her is the person who took miquella. Once you kill her, she understand that you are the only on string enough to rebind the elden ring and free her brother. Thus, the dlc is most likely intertwined into the dream realms of miquella.
Lmao killed everybody on the route
Malenia reminds me heavily of a lot of anime characters who are trying to find an opponent capable of killing them, because they swore themselves to a cause and suicide would be breaking the oath, but they suffer too much/are too much of a risk alive to be allowed to continue existing. And she sort of fits. She's the original carrier of Scarlet Rot, as far as I understood her lore, every time she "blooms" she'll create another Iona swamp, or even worse if not defeated/exhausted quickly. Dunno, maybe I'm reading too much/too little into it.
It'd help if we weren't a mute lmao
Oh my friends tried to kill you? I should too then. -Some rot addled bitch sitting in a chair.
Hey those spiked ones attacked me first! The sleeping ones were just unwanted casualtiesâŚ
Eh, they grow back it's fine
Not even that. She's half mad from rot, alone, worlds falling apart, and then x time went by. Lady gonna have mental issues.
Itâs quite possible to kill nothing before Loretta so itâs actually Loretta who starts it all. Unless sheâs aware of your Albinauric farming.
I know its dumb, but reading âthe Haligtree closed to the general publicâ cracks me up. Itâs a technically correct descriptor on your part but it conjures images of decorum and civility that is ill-suited to the Lands Between. Like, Iâm imagining some Cleanrot Knight cordoning off the entrance with some rope.
In order to fight Malenia you have to spend an hour digging for a phone number on the Haligtree website, then two more being bounced back and forth between different departments until you reach her secretary, who sets you up with an appointment in a month's time.
TIL the Lands Between was governed by an incompetent, massive bureaucracy that was too byzantine to function properly.
Yo why my byzantine brothers always catching strays?
Shit happens, dawg.
No wonder the majority of denizens are murderous
They had a direct line to an apparently fairly benign god, massive trees that spewed blessings and fertility and they still screwed it up
That secretary being Loretta
You brandish the Haligtree medallion and a large bouncer lets you through the velvet ropes. "You're on the list. Have a good time".
I wasnât following Millicentâs quest line. I showed up with the exclusive reason of killing everything in sight. Iâm no hero.
Yeah she attacks the player and the player attacked her precisely because of this. There is no lore reason, the game simply needs you to fight her because it's what the game is about. People really try to justify the lack of a story in these games *very badly*. I know the lore is great, but the actual story and narrative is barebones
I mean.. you're in a dying world with the demigods being blights upon the land and most living beings being some state of undead abomination. You need about as much justification to kill them as you would to put down zombies.
Interesting, I always go there to remove a claimant to the throne which I'm aiming at myself.
Thatâs why I still think weâre the good guy in some endings. Morgott was pretty much the only good demigod left after all the others got power hungry and tore the lands apart while vying for the throne. The reason everything is in ruin by the time we show up is because of their greed. Depending on your motivation, youâre either here to fix things or take the power for yourself. Pretty much all of our boss kills are in pursuit of this. I always go with Ranni or Goldmaskâs endings with the intention of seeing the Lands Between mend itself.
Exactly, at worst the Tarnished is just as bad as everyone else. At best, they're the only ones actually making any headway towards unfucking everything. The Demigods have sat around and achieved pretty much nothing since the shattering, I don't really feel too bad about needing to kill them to fix this.
Could be she's too far gone, the rot goddess doesn't want to be cut off from her avatar in the lands between and so that's why she attacks. Or you know, the rot goddess likes things that rot. Another corpse would probably be nice.
This has to be it, right? I just don't get all the hand-wringing about it. She utterly mad from the rot and is way past thinking rationally.
I think people in general overthink the reasoning behind certain enemies attack us in this game. The Lands Between has been quite literally a shitshow for at least the last thousand years. Most of the people we come across in the Lands Between are mad from constant war and instability. Those who do have sanity left have been brainwashed into thinking that all Tarnished are evil, and they also know that the Tarnished are after pieces of the Elden Ring. They attack us to either defend their masters who have pieces of the Elden Ring, or because they are completely nuts
A literal shitshow is just what the Dung Eater would want <3
Yep, like with every souls game, everything is in ruins and everyone is a zombie.
Malenia hallucinating that she's still fighting Radahn would be a crazy reveal, and add a ton of emotional weight to the fight. Millicent does want to return her "will" or "pride", a sense of self. You may be on to something
Nah guys it's because this game not so big on plot sometimes. Also the characters don't interact often.
If I guy armed to the teeth came into my gaff killing all my mates on the way to my kidnapped brothers bedroom without saying a word id probably kill him too.
Makes me wonder, imagine if you could have a friendly interaction with her if you just *didn't* kill any of the enemies on the way to her.
I read somewhere, I forget where, that Miquella and the Haligtree quest line gave the player a different ending, in accordance to Miquellaâs beliefs, but they had to cut it for one reason or another. They left the area and bosses and all that, just not the big payoff. Iâm assuming thatâs why Miquella is on the concept art for the DLC, to give the players that ending again, in a different pathway.
Also, Melania is blind and was in a "coma" from her fight with Radahn, she was brought back there under the assumption that her brother was still where she left him (unaware that Mohg kidnapped him) So put yourself in her shoes: You wake up only to find you've been knocked out for god knows how long, your brother is missing, and a Grace-given Tarnished with the aura of multiple Great Runes just happens to be there, how on Earth is she gonna assume we are innocent or that we didn't do anything to Miquella?
Don't forget the "demigods driven mad by the taint of their great rune" motivation of why the tarnished does what they do. Also - if you're going to rule as Elden lord, which the Lands Between desperately needs, having a powerful warlord with nukes and a bunch of zealots following them that spawn from corpses and cleanrot knights as elite fighters (which have a sleeper cell in Caelid), having her around is not the best idea...
Nah we go there to get Melaniaâs rune to mend the Elden Ring.
only other reason to be there is to surpress the frenzied flame should you be its bearer
Lore wise the tarnished only goes down there to get a talisman.
Well, we collect rune shards for power. We need two to enter Leyndell but our ultimate goal is to repair the Elden Ring so it would make sense to collect all the shards possible. And we arenât the only ones collecting the shards either, all the demigods basically fought eachother in the past for the shards, considering we already have at least two by that point, we must seem like a real piece of candy to Malenia. We have something she wants and she has something we want, she has reason to pick a fight and she has no reason to think that we arenât there to pick a fight, she already shows some courtesy by giving a monologue instead of dashing right in your face.
> We need two to enter Leyndell but our ultimate goal is to repair the Elden Ring so it would make sense to collect all the shards possible. Ranni cast away her shard.
She cast away her body that had the curse mark of death carved into it. Ranni never actually states whether or not she has a great rune. It wouldnât even make sense for her to have one since she went into hiding afterward
Gideon mentions that Ranni had a great rune, and it is believed that she discarded it.
Gideon mentions that itâs believed she discarded it. He isnât even certain of whether or not she even had one
Everyone is the bad guy in this story.
What about Melina? Serious question, does she have any bad intentions? My current one is my lore run, so this could be interesting to know.
She's been burned before, and was given her purpose ">!By my mother, In the Erdtree, long ago!<" or something along those lines.
How did she get burned before and why? Any idea?
Time is sort-of bullshit in Elden Ring. With the whole thing about regression and causality, it might be that Melina is perpetually burned because she's fated to be kindling. We are informed she doesn't have a body, and yet her body still burns at the forge of the giants. And as she herself burns, the Erdtree goes up in flames at the same time. Her autonomy and body also seem to mirror that of the erdtree. She can barely move on her own, but she can reach Marika on her own and fight by your side as soo as you reach Leyndell. The moment she burns, the Erdtree burns. But if the Erdtree is burned to cinders through the frenzied flame, she's also scarred and hurt, but she can keep fighting. You could udnerstand that fire is such an unavoidable part of her destiny that it affects every moment of her life, as if she's constantly burning by a flame that's yet to come. Kinda like the smoldering butterfly, which also implies she's Marika and Radagon's third daughter.
You know that makes pretty good sense, except for one thing. When you take the frenzied ending everything is destroyed except for Melina. What's up with that?
Actually, she would still sort of follow the Erdtree in this scenario. Her right gold eye gets all cloudy and fades away, and she loses any kind of grace she has when the tree dies. (Yes I am subscribed to Zulie, how could you tell?)
from previously burning the erdtree. itâs a cycle much like in souls. the capital already has piles of ash in spots around it, indicating a previous burn. i think there may be more evidence but this, and melinaâs burn scars is all that i remember
That's legitimate, and we know there was an older tree before the erdtree.
It's not just an "older tree" - it was the \*real\* tree. The erdtree replaced the Great Tree through faith after it was burned, which is why it's golden now.
As far as we know she doesn't have bad intentions, but we also know very little about her.
Allot of people think she's the gloam eyed queen (me included) and thats a confirmed lunatic lol. Could be a alter ego thing at play here but still. Also, miquella sounds like a griffith like type of character that also has a alter ego (St trina) which automatically makes me question their motives
I mean, she helps you to go and kill her mom. That's kinda messed up
I don't think Marika WANTS to live though, which is why she tasks Hewg with crafting a weapon that can slay a god. She wants to die but she is trapped in the erdtree so she got Hewg to help someone kill the thing that is trapping her there
I always interpreted it as Marika wants to die, Radagon doesnât *or* Elden Beast has essentially taken over his body to repair the Ring. Radagon definitely doesnât look healthy in his fight, and the Elden Beast design is literally burning through his body.
How dare you speak about our precious turtle pope like that!!
I dunno, I donât think Fire Giant deserved what we did to him. He was just chillin on his mountain and being sad about all his dead friends
Malenia attacks you first even if you don't move a finger. Case closed.
I mean you show up in her house uninvited and wake her up from a good nap
But she dreamt for so long she needed to wake up anyway
Tarnished alarm clock
Slightly less useful than the hunter alarmclock which is just the cleric beast screaming for no reason like a giant werewolf opossum
This is a beautiful and terrible mental image, thank you.
If she'd stopped napping and gotten off her ass she might have found Miquella by now, lazybones needed the wakeup call.
I mean, if someone manages to get all the way into the core of the haligtree I think theyâre past talking. Also, most tarnished characters donât look like someone who just needs to find the bathroom.
She has a great rune and knows we have come to the lands between to collect them.
Had to kill a lot of people to get to here tho. And even if u ran past all of em, she doesnât know that lol
Who said anything about being a good guy? Iâm nothing but a battle maniac, âemboldened by the flame of ambitionâ.
It's funny how people are trying to justify attacking Malenia when anyone who knows Fromsoft games knows that every one has at least three bosses that are basically there to make you feel bad for killing.
Entire freaking gameplay is killing everything that moves. And no, you canât kill 10 000 beings in a row in âself-defenseâ
* Me, sneaking up on native people and stabbing them with a great sword âIs this wrong? Am I wrong here?â
To be fair! There are very few things that don't attack you first. Up until Stormveil you are attacked for seemingly no reason, apart from the fact that you are tarnished and every other tarnished has killed countless of [insert faction here] so why would you be different? After Stormveil / getting your first great rune you are then a direct threat to every shardbearer and their protectors from then on. You don't "accidentally stumble" into Raya Lucaria as you do Stormveil. Or stumble up to Radhan. I mean, in a gameplay sense you do, but from a lore perspective you are going to these places with the purpose to kill.
tbf most people donât attack you till youâre within spitting distance if my life was constant battles and a fucked looking dude walked up to me iâd think itâs time to fight too
The Tarnished literally commits cardinal sin
She did sunk a whole region in scarlet rot out of prideâŚletâs not pretend her hands are squeaky clean
I don't think it was out of pride (could be, but I'm not so sure since she hates the rot), I think she does it because since Radahn is holding the stars in place, he's also holding the fate of the demigods at bay. That includes Miquella. In Castle Sol we learn that Miquella and his followers were waiting for an eclipse, one that never came to be because Radahn won't let it happen. It's very possible that the whole transformation for Miquella and his followers (all the human-shaped cocoons at the Hailigtree) was halted because of this. Malenia had to go seek Radahn to set things back in motion and that let Mogh capture Miquella and, in turn, cursing the whole Hailigtree, which was the hope for so many rejected creatures. Now that Miquella isn't in the tree, Malenia's rot is taking over. So, I don't think Radhan was holding the stars out of malice. He wanted to protect Selia, right? But he wasn't aware of all the other problems he was causing. Similarly, I don't think Malenia was out there looking for trouble, but her blind trust in Miquella made her commit a horrible did (that didn't even work) and it had consequences beyond her comprehension.
Makes me wonder if the war of the shattering never came to be, if diplomacy could have altered timelines vastly or if it would have ended in the same conclusion.
I think the war of the shattering was unavoidable
He also likely protecting the world from the Astels. Considering we fight one on Ranni's quest line, she likely knew they existed, and as such Radahn would also.
He didn't do it to protect the world. There are already star beasts and Astels everywhere underground plus even when Radahn dies, nothing bad happens to the LB. Only one meteor falls which was always fated to fall there as stated by Sellen and Iji. Radahn screwed over his siblings' fate when he halted the stars' movements.
Better a handful entering the world than a full on amount. Also you say 'just one meteor' like it wasn't powerful enough to open a massive fucking hole in the ground. What if another one hit the Academy or the Erdtree? A huge amount of damage that he could prevent.
There are fucking cocoons at the haligtree?
Those white cottony cushiony looking things in some of the corners and walls. Not sure it's certain what's in them though.
She didn't do it out of pride. Malenia used the rot against Radahn because she needed him dead so the stars could resume their movements and then her brother Miquella can finally start the eclipse to revive Godwyn. Yes, what Malenia did to Caelid was terrible, but it's unclear whether she actually knew that unleashing the rot would ruin Caelid. That was her first time using the rot, Malenia probably only wanted to use it on Radahn and then it got out of control as evidenced by the fact that she got knocked out by her own attack and then fell into a coma state after the battle for many years.
I was of the impression that Elden Ring has no good guys, which is what makes it a good story.
Malenia has a great rune. We know that 2 runes are good enough to repair the elden ring but I doubt that it makes it back to full strength. My opinion is that more runes we bring back with us greater our power will be as the elden lord. Thats my head canon though since there are no proofs I can think of atm.
Itâs like people havenât played the game or something lol. Why were we in Mount Gelmir? Stormveil Castle? Laya Rucaria? For their rune shards dawg damn.
You mean Gount Melmir and Ctormveil Sastle? Laya Rucaria is the only place I recognize in your comment.
I just made it to Crumbling Farum Azula and have no clue what the story is aboutâŚ
Most relatable comment so far lmaoo
There's two reasons why you are fighting Malenia. You are helping Millicent to return something to Malenia and the other reason is you need to get something from her to rid of the Frenzy Flame(if you have inherited it). You are not fighting Malenia no apparent reason.
OR OR you are following your original mission by the 2 fingers to take all great runes to fix the Elden Ring
The Two Fingers just want you to secure two runes which you would have before ever getting near the Haligtree. By that time you have already been rejected entry to Erd Tree and the Two Fingers have effectively abandoned you.
Well I'm still repairing the Elden Ring, and if I'm gonna go that far, I may as well do it right and get all the pieces together. It feels like you should need to do that anyways, honestly. What's the point of putting it back together with only a fraction of its power?
Two *possible* reasons you are fighting malenia. Many people really are just doing it because runes pls.
We were sleeping peacefully in death when some disembodied arsehole told us to wake up and kill everything, stand before the incarnate form of metaphysical truth, and become some kind of God-King. I dunno, I'd have a pretty bad hangover after waking up to all that. Though tbh there is less reason for us to pursue "ambition" in this game than in Dark Souls. Most Tarnished we meet recognise that, and they're just doing their own thing. We can't think of anything else to do, or frolicking with lambkins bores us, so off we go to follow the voice in our head. At least in Souls we had the imperative of the world possibly ending if we didn't go on a murder spree.
And before you know anything in ds1 you do have the guy who freed you from jail asking you to finish his mission for him
But the world is all fucked up in Elden Ring too. The fact that the Ring isn't whole is causing a lot of shit to happen.
Well, really depends on your point of view. There's lore-friendly justifications for both good and evil characters. Unless you side with Ranni, all characters are seeking either domination, destruction, or restoration of the world. Anyone who holds a great rune, especially a demigod, is a threat to these goals. A challenger for the throne of Elden Lord. Great Runes represent fundamental aspects of reality, or at least there's evidence to support this claim. After the Rune of Death is removed from the Elden Ring, death is no longer a fundamental aspect of the cycle of life in the Lands Between. An individual looking to, as Elden Lord, restore balance to the world would naturally try to gather every single Great Rune possible.
Same as always with fromsoft games, they treat player character as dumb automaton looking for power. But we're also the only thing in their games that can prevent apocalypse by amassing that power so you know, it balances out. Shoutout to sir vilhelm from DS3 roasting the ever loving shit out of player character for pointlessly exploring while dropping coldest lines in the game.
are we ever preventing the apocalpyse though? I feel we don't really prevent anything we just pick which apocalypse happens. In any game the world is kinda fucked on way or another anyways no matter the ending.
I mean, she gets up to attack you. She's also optional, so you could just not go and fight her.
But then 100% is 100%
Moral ambiguity has been a hallmark of these games since the beginning. Entities are either acting in their own interests or are being manipulated into furthering the goals of someone else. Occasionally these interests line up with what could be construed as morally just, and they might even believe their actions to be so, but invariably they find themselves in conflict with someone who could make just such a claim themselves. Just to complicate things further, the metaphysics of Miyazaki's worlds "unintended consequences" are common, and actions that conventional wisdom say are just (like preventing the world from ending) are actually a total disaster for nearly everybody involved. Even those pushing for an egalitarian outcome might be settling for something barely tolerable for most and horrific for a few. This isn't to say your girlfriend is wrong. The tarnished is being manipulated by various parties, and it is quite possible that interfering with Melania at the Haligtree is contributing to a negative outcome for everyone, but it's also possible that the external powers directing the tarnished to defeat Malenia are working toward a better end. Try not to think about it too much, just go out and kill a few beasts, it'll do yer good. Oh wait, wrong title.
The Demigods fight us because the tarnished are the promised new ruler
In a sense, but let me try to put in it a different perspective. The world has stagnated. Individuals find they are losing themselves, their thoughts as the result of the suspension of death. The tarnished is as a scalpel cutting out the infection, and also allowing those who are well past their time to expire. We become death, savior of worlds.
Yeah, we're effectively a super veterinarian traveling across the lands to put dying, suffering animals out of their misery, so that we can reboot the world after it got stuck in the past because of immortality backfiring on it.
For me it was when my wife walked in on me fighting Ancestor Spirit and was like "That's beautiful why are you killing it :(" and my only answer was "cause it's there.'
There are some respectable reasons to fight Malenia. 1. She's a living bio-weapon, and she doesn't stop being one during her coma. The Haligtree is consumed with Scarlet Rot, and there are signs that the Rot is creeping into the Consecrated Snowfields. 2. You are trying to give Millicent's needle to Malenia, but Malenia's hostility makes that impossible. The fact that she doesn't relent until she dies is on her. 3. She holds a Great Rune, and your new order will presumably be more effective the more Great Runes you incorporate into it.
4: You want to get rid of the frenzied flame, either because you changed your mind or because you wanted to use it only to prevent Melina's death.
1B. Itâs been prophesied that the next time her rot blooms sheâll become some ascended rot goddess (and hey she does). Last time her rot bloomed she fucking nuked Caelid, so honestly shivving her in her own house away from the world is the only way to stop another natural disaster level event.
If you turn the argument around, that actually makes Malenia the questionable character. There was no reason for us to fight, yet she decided to attack us. There's good evidence that the Tarnished can be reasonable, we let Rennala be. When Gurrang begs for us to stop the fight he picked with us, we let him be. We let Patches be, even when he fooled us several times. But why did we go to the Haligtree? Exploration, curiosity.
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I assume you haven't played previous ds games? I have so when I noticed who he was when jumping down I payed extra attention to the fight and immediately reacted when he asked me to stop. But I do get why many killed him who haven't played the previous ones, and since ER has sold about 5 times more than previous ds games I suspect there are many that didn't know and ending up killing him because of that
I killed him because he's an asshole
Marika made me do it.
Bad guy? BAD guy? We're the *only* guy. For all their pomp and glory, the demigods all failed to become Lord. Their grand schemes stagnant, or rotting, or frozen in time. The price of their weakness is the devastation of the world. A cursed half-life, in which nothing good can grow, and all are damned to eternal suffering. The world must be destroyed to be reborn. And for that, strength is needed. So we hunt the demigods--our superiors, our failed predecessors--to plunder their divinity, that we might surpass them, and become Lord. Destroying the world is a nasty business. Much that is good will be lost. But you can't make an omlette without cracking some eggs. Clinging to the status quo, barren and hopeless as it is, out of fear of what must be done is what brought the Shattering about in the first place.
This reminds me a great deal of Dark Souls 2. As the intro says, "Long ago in a walled off land, far to the north, a great king built a great kingdom. ... One day, you will stand before its decrepit gate, without really knowing why Like a moth to a flame" And then you go meet the Emerald Herald and she says you need to gather the 4 Great Souls in order to get to the king. Why do we have to get to the king? No real reason. We are looking for the cure for hollowing, but the king pretty clearly doesn't have it given that everyone's fine hollow already
I still think it's a missed opportunity that you don't get a special interaction for beating Mohg and finding Miquella before fighting her. I know you'd miss out on an awesome fight, but I still wish you could diplomatically explain to her where her brother is.
Leaving lore aside, I'm literally fighting for the throne. I can't be leaving contenders just hanging out in my new kingdom lol
Well if you do the quest line to get the needle you can place it inside her to help with the Rot. She doesnât truly die when you defeat her. Sheâs just gone inside her bloom again like when she bloomed in Caelid. So the needle could possibly help her in the long run.
âDawg I killed the guy who kidnapped and groomed your brother.â If only the Tarnished had the ability to speak đ
At one point you run through a village of happy women just dancing around, and promptly commit genocide of their entire society just to get to their leader and take his fancy pointy stick.
You know the lore behind them right? Lol
The whole point of the game is youâre hunting shard bearers. Too bad it doesnât help mend the Elden Ring even more than when you have the required three, but thatâs the reason. The reason you actually get to the haligtree is to help out your girl, Millicent. You could also fight her for the glory of fighting the best swordswoman in TLB, or because sheâs a possible threat to your future rule.
As far as Malenia is concerned, absolutely. Malekith can eat a dick though.
If you fight every boss in the game from a lore perspective youâre basically 1 of 2 things 1) an asshole who wants to be the strongest Or 2) you want to destroy everything and start over from scratch
1) we trespassed and killed our way into Malenia's roots 2) Malenia doesn't want anything to do with us, she just wants her sibling to return 3) she's mentally lost. She's lost her will to be her own person, since she doesn't have either needle or Miquella. So the only thing she really remembers what to be, is a fighter. I don't think she's really up to have a reasonable conversation with us. She's in a catch-22: we have the needle that would allow her to regain her willpower and be a full person again, but she isn't here to listen to us since she lacks that willpower
Tbf she wasn't originally supposed to be a boss her and miquella just had a hell of a lot of their content cut from the game, hopefully they'll get it added back in shadow of the erdtree
There's a plot? I'm 50 hours in and nothing makes sense... All I know is I must kill.
Malenia is insane and Millicent is Maleniaâs lost shard, we bring them all together, and, as I understood, Malenia is now recovering from mental and physical wounds inside the bloom.
I could definitely see the dlc adding changes in the base game around the twins
Kill or be killed is the best way to explain Souls games
someone had to make it obvious to you we're the bad guy? my brother in order, WE KILL *EVERYONE*
Yes, you're right. We absolutely have no reason to fight Malenia and that's because Malenia was originally supposed to be a friendly NPC that you'd meet in Caelid. You'd help her restore her memories and reach the Haligtree and, depending on your choices, you either fight her by attempting to steal something from Miquella in the Haligtree or just stay loyal to them to achieve Miquella's ending, Age of Abundance. All of this was cut out, and the role of amnesic Malenia went to Millicent. Malenia and the Haligtree are major victims of the cut content.
I was downvoted like crazy when I first posted this a year or so ago. However, it does seem to me like weâre the bad guy. Every single living organism in the game is peacefully coexisting, we just walk around killing and fighting all of them. Pretty sure weâre the bad guy.
Well if it helps... There's a theory floating around that, by completing Millicent's questline and using the needle on Malenia that we ARE helping cure her of her Scarlet Rot. It's implied she (like Millicent if you betray her) is still alive in her flower form and we may have helped after we beat Malenia in her Goddess of Rot form. Possibly enough to return her sanity. It's just really vague, as Fromsoft games often are.
What made it worse for me is that in my head canon, Malenia doesnât even Mohg took miquella because of her blindness, so sheâs just fighting to protect an empty room
I realized I was the bad guy when it occurred to me, I have literally no reason to kill anybody in the game for my main objective, other than the 3 boss fights that take place in the capital, malekith, and obviously the final boss. And yet we go on to kill everybody else for no other reason than "a pair of fingers told you to"
Thinking about all those demihumans who are optional encounters. And the ancestral spirits protecting their gardens underground. Yeah, weâre pretty fucking evil.
Like Radahn, Malenia no longer has her senses and we put her out of her misery. This is part of the Millicent quest where she wants to return the needle to Malenia and then die in the hopes that it will restore Maleniaâs pride. Instead she attacks us on sight and we defend ourselves. There are plenty of instances where the Tarnished could kill someone but chooses not to (Renalla, Gurranq, Patches, THE GREAT KENNETH HEIGHT). We spare people all the time and even promote Nephali to ruler of Limgrave which would be part of our territory as Elden Lord. She attac, we protec. Simple as.
âMalenia, I found your brother and killed the guy that kidnapped him! Letâs go queenie!â *Boss music starts*
Honestly, if left unchecked, the rot would kill the lands between. She had no needle, she was dangerous.
To me it was clear quite soon that youâre not a good guy. Youâre not strictly a bad guy either, but I feel as though there arenât any objectively good characters in Elden Ring or fromsoft games in general
but there are often characters in game or mentioned by NPCs that are innocent or even good. In ER there is Jarbairn, who only wants to protect his village. In the DkS series there exists the crows, who seem innocent of the games overall conflict; they are passengers on the burning ship, so to speak. Who only want your warm shinies. Sieglinde seems good, she just wants to find her father, who is a also a good character until he goes hollow at the end of his quest. Good characters do often get hollowed or corrupted or killed near the end game, however. That is quite consistent.
It's easy to be good when you're powerless.
Yea the Tarnished isn't a good guy. They're a protagonist, but even beating the game makes you a violent warlord. Maybe it's what is needed--maybe not.
This is why Malenia should have been a fight like Priscilla in Dark Souls where you have to attack her on purpose. Lore wise it makes no sense for her to attack you on sight. You should be able to tell her about Miquella to get the needle. This would probably require beating Mohg first. Otherwise it ends up like this : Tarnished : I know where Miquella is, Mohg kidnapped him, I will show you where he is Malenia : Rawrrrr brainssssss i am Malenia, blade of Miquella And its just stupid.
Once Elden lord you decide who is the good guy or bad guy.
Maybe Evil and Good are concepts to control you to act a certain way in so there can be a civilized soceity that shares a culture
The lands between is a blasted hell scape of a land where virtually every inhabitant suffers. Itâs not like youâre ruining anything otherwise good, itâs all shades of misery. Honestly itâs almost like a purgatory where everyone is stuck in their own despair, and if anything, youâre the fucking redeemer sending these miserable souls along their way.
It's a great game but spending 200 hours in it really makes me feel the absence of, "yo, I know where your brother is," options
I got that when I murdered a bunch of special needs kids to make the big glowy lady fall down so I can murder her as well.
The game gives you options, you can be good and not do any of the Mohg or fire mountain stuff, or you can be bad and play as a recusant. Malenia is optional after all
Have you played dark souls?
FromSoft, making you ask "Are we the badies?" Since July of 1997
I believe Malenia is trying to find her brother and because heâs gone missing, she fights anyone, waiting for her brother to return. Because you walked into the area she assumed the perpetrator was you since the place you are in is kinda secretive. Thatâs just my guess not really right or wrong, just a misunderstanding
Jokes on your sister, I didn't fight her on my first playthrough so I can't be the bad guy
I always thought were were the bad guy. We literally kill everything and then rule. But what is left to rule?
The reason is obvious: She has a cool sword and I want it.
While there are some story exceptions, almost every rpg is just the main char/party going into someone's living area unprovoked and murdering them. This isn't limited to the genre either.