Bonfireside Chat 310: Roundtable Roundtable Shadow Keep (feat. Sophie Pilbeam)
Added 2024-12-02 01:14:28 +0000 UTCThis week we are joined by Sophie Pilbeam of the Sinclair Lore YouTube Channel. We talk about the world and narrative design of Shadow of the Erdtree, and how well it meshes with the base game. Afterwards, we read your responses about the Cerulean Coast and Shadow Keep areas of the game.
Comments
Hi there! I know I'm a little late but it's nice to hear Sophie on BSC again!
mattia malvezzi
2025-01-21 01:51:25 +0000 UTCDespite not coming to the same conclusion, I really enjoyed listening to Sophie's criticism of the DLC's story. Her arguments were hard to disagree with, as she made excellent points, so I chose not to and that was liberating. It showed me that listening to an educated and well-formed opinion doesn't have be tiresome, but insightful. It also helped that you two took about the same position as I did, in that you accepted and acknowledged her criticism, while still appreciating what you enjoyed about the Shadow of the Erdtree's controversial narrative. In the future, I would not just love to see Sophie come back to Bonefireside Chat, but for you, Gary and Kole to have a contrasting opinion from someone you admire, especially if you both aren't particularly happy with what you are covering. Respectful disagreement feels so underrated these days as podcasters struggle to express their disdain and approval while not talking over or burying their cohosts/guests. I won't name names, but I appreciate this episode doesn't count among them.
Mike G
2024-12-15 18:11:32 +0000 UTCI wasn't sure if you were replying to me directly - I was trying to be as considerate as possible to Sophie's situation while trying to point you in the right direction. If I erred, this slightly clueless cis male apologises
Oliver Tripp
2024-12-09 23:42:46 +0000 UTCI searched Sophie. That’s all I need.
Crystal Watkins
2024-12-09 05:23:50 +0000 UTCHey babes. Dead names are dead names and I didn’t know it to search. And I shouldn’t. However, if they can’t change it, Pillbeam does work.
Crystal Watkins
2024-12-09 05:23:20 +0000 UTCHi there As enjoyable as the interview with Sophie predictably was, it was a little depressing to hear the sentiment of "challenge runners = jocks" trotted out yet again. Apart from perhaps LittleAggy, I don't really see the culture of beating these games at level 1/without summons/with a particular weapon as being macho dick-swinging at all. And in the spirit of 'don't let them divide us' that you allude to in your readers response section, I really encourage you to have a level 1 runner on to maybe understand the appeal of doing these runs. Similar to people like Zullie who play with the format and design of these worlds in order to gain greater understanding, taking on these bosses and levels at an even greater disadvantage can yield interesting results and engagement with the adversities within. And the onebros subreddit is full of really helpful, awesome people shorn of all of the toxicity of the main eldenring sub. I felt compelled to write this as you spent so much of the episode railing against unfortunate stereotypes and labels, while at the same time I feel you are giving challenge runners short shrift and it would be lovely for one of us to give our perspective in order to aid community harmony.
Oliver Tripp
2024-12-09 02:00:19 +0000 UTCSophie was known by a previous first name, don't know if that helps you
Oliver Tripp
2024-12-09 01:21:10 +0000 UTCIt is so cathartic to hear someone so reputable as dismayed by the total drop of Godwynn having any importance to relation to Miquella in the DLC.
MIKEISTKRIEG
2024-12-05 18:26:54 +0000 UTCFinally a criticism. I couldn’t agree more with your guest regarding the narrative of the DLC. Fanboys will tell you that the vagaries and inconsistencies are ‘just Miyazaki’s style!’ but throwing a bunch of symbols and metaphors into a pot doesn’t make a good story. I can’t stand this excuse for half-assed, lazy storytelling, but I guess the majority of the fanbase is content to let Miyazaki off the hook entirely, preferring to believe that the answers are there if we just fruitlessly search forever for that ‘missing piece of the puzzle’. Sometimes there is no grand mystery, and it’s just bad writing. The total failure of the DLC in this regard made me take a hard look at the base game that I once regarded as a work of genius, and on second glance you can see that the writing team really had no idea where they were going with this thing. The problems with the storytelling really started pretty early in the game - after the questlines in the Liurnia zone things start to make less and less sense. The Radahn stuff in particular had me pretty annoyed. Thousands of threads left open from the base game that FromSoft could have picked up and ran with, but instead they choose to re-open one of the most complete and coherent story arcs in the game? Bizarre choice, but one that makes more sense once you read the article where Miyazaki explains that Radahn is his favourite character lol I love Elden Ring, it’s a great game, but Miyazaki fucked it up like the inevitable disaster that all later seasons of an anime are fated to turn into.
dshamz_
2024-12-05 15:47:04 +0000 UTCI’m personally ok with SotET changes to the narrative from how I interpreted ER’s narrative at the time. The way I view it is we’re getting pieces of the original short stories GRRM wrote for FromSoftware via the game as a medium. There actually is an original source to divinate from here, and hopefully we get to experience those short stories in full someday. Maybe those are what the rumored tv adaption is about? I love GRRM’s writing and dialog style. From what I understand, he basically wrote out what happens in the story before the game in regard to the demigods and Queen Marika. The Night of Black Knives and The Battle of Aeonia to me especially seem very GRRM-coded.
JackelZXA
2024-12-04 23:36:16 +0000 UTCHurray Dark souls 2 shout-out! I actually played DS2 for the first time this year and am listening to the backlog episodes of Bonfire side chat. I agree it had a lot of mechanics that I wish had been pulled forward. I also don't understand why it is considered the Dark Horse of the series, I definitely enjoyed it more than DS3...
MeltyHam
2024-12-04 08:41:49 +0000 UTCI'm 100% ready for top 10 Velkas in the Snack Covenant.
Victor
2024-12-03 22:35:56 +0000 UTCBoth Ringed City episodes.
Victor
2024-12-03 22:16:16 +0000 UTCI also have a different read on Miquella, but it's OK! Everyone gets different reads :) -GB
Duckfeed.tv
2024-12-03 17:53:05 +0000 UTCI enjoyed the interview. I hope it's OK to be a bit contradictory here---I think some of the stuff Sophie said about Miquella in the base game isn't really present to the degree that many have internalized, and Miquella's actual presence in the main game is pretty well aligned with his character in the DLC. For example, Miquella prayed for Godwyn: this is never actually stated in the game. It just says that a younger brother prayed for Godwyn's true death, and of course Godwyn had a lot of younger brothers. Or the statues that supposedly depict Godwyn protecting Miquella and Malenia: this is pure speculation, never mentioned in the base game at all. On the other hand, if you look at Castle Sol, where Miquella was supposed to bring the eclipse for Godwyn, I find it consistent with his character in the DLC that he just never showed up and never told anyone he wasn't going to show up, so they stayed there waiting for him for eternity. He used them, just like he used Mohg, Malenia, and Radahn, and discarded them just like he discarded St Trina. I think there's even a reading where you can say he used Ranni and Melina to get the Tarnished to kill Radahn and Mohg (via the passing of Torrent and the Spirit Calling Bell through those characters) to advance his plans. And he maybe even used the albinaurics and all those folks he brought to the Haligtree. In short, I think after what we learn about Miquella in the DLC, you can look at everything we know about Miquella in the main game and find it completely consistent. Just my opinion of course.
lylebot
2024-12-03 13:50:40 +0000 UTCOh great, 2 more channels to watch / listen to! Sinclair Lore and Tarnished Archaeologist, RIP free time.
erix84
2024-12-03 11:09:02 +0000 UTCIs it possible to edit old show notes? I tried looking for Sophie’s old episodes and the Ringed City didn’t come up with her name.
Crystal Watkins
2024-12-02 20:54:12 +0000 UTCWe <3 Sophie!
Kyle C.
2024-12-02 18:48:25 +0000 UTCLoved this interview with Sophie
Charlie Frame
2024-12-02 13:47:34 +0000 UTCI agree that a fair amount of base-game characters come out of the DLC confusing and worse but one character I liked a lot more coming out of it was Marika. And the reason isn't any of the points directly connected to her; all of that, outside of the Shaman Village, makes her come off terribly. It's because you can see Marika's tragedy through the prism Miquella. Before any of the atrocities she committed she was, like Miquella, a survivor of a war that ruined all she knew. Like Miquella she sacrificed so much in her quest to "fix things" that she lost herself entirely. And the grand tragedy is that unlike Miquella, Marika succeeded, to the detriment of everyone, including her. I came out of it with a much clearer viewpoint of her and her theme (all of this purely my opinion, of course).
corvidnoah
2024-12-02 02:29:07 +0000 UTCoh rad! i enjoy sinclair lore!
Pondo Vyher
2024-12-02 01:54:05 +0000 UTC
