Call and Response BSC Roundtable: Endgame
Added 2023-09-16 00:35:18 +0000 UTCHey folks! It's time to write in with your responses on the endgame in Elden Ring. The relevant areas are... you know, I think you can figure it out. The part where you fight the final boss. Submit your response as a comment on this post! As always, keep some guidelines in mind.
- Keep your responses and stories specific to the endgame.
- Please keep your responses brief. Think two short paragraphs, or around 200 words.
- Specificity is preferred over generalities.
We tend to get a lot of responses, so please don't feel bad if we omit your response, or edit it for length.The deadline is the end of the day, Sunday September 24th!
Comments
What was the Greater Will’s strategy for dealing with this whole Shattering fiasco? We were told at the beginning of the game to go out and kill the demigods by the Two Fingers. When we get to the Erdtree the first time, the way is blocked and we are told the Fingers are communing with The Greater Will but won’t be able to respond for thousands of years. For building up an empire over a millennia, its response to it collapsing seems…barebones. Which is where the Elden Beast would supposedly come in. But its lack of presence in the rest of the game makes me question the nature of the Elden Beast’s role as vassal. How is the Elden Beast supposed to fulfill its role as vassal if it doesn’t exert its force on the petulant lords usurping the “perfect order” which the beast embodies. Similarly to how weird Godfrey’s absence from the rest of the game felt, when thinking about Elden Beast it feels weird to me that it didn’t make its presence felt at all. Would love you hear your thoughts on this! As an aside, thank you for an amazing season! It’s hard to imagine we’ve reached this point. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying all of your discussions of the game!
Ethan Ward
2023-09-25 19:50:38 +0000 UTCI spent many hours in the lands between and the world had more of a hold on me than the mainline story. I beat ALL the bosses except the end boss and a few months went by and my students kept asking what ending I got. My reputation was being tarnished having not finished the game so I went back and finished it. Now demons souls, dark souls 1-3 and bloodborne you couldnt stop me but elden rings lack of clarity gave me lack of focus here. Have you guys ever fell in love with the world and not the story? To the point that when the worlds complete you feel complete with your playthrough?
Ray Oliver
2023-09-25 19:39:59 +0000 UTCI know Elden Beast gets a lot of hate, but that music does something for me. Feels fitting at the end of such a long journey, and it’s not as twitchy or sweaty of a fight as many of the others. I find the whole experience relaxing, weirdly
Lucas West
2023-09-25 18:02:03 +0000 UTCI loved Hourah Loux when I misunderstood his lore. That is to say I always assumed he had taken the name Hourah Loux AFTER being banished, as if he lived a whole new life and identity as a tarnished. This idea really resonated with me. Then I learned he was probably Hourah Loux first and I decided the whole thing was pretty dumb. All in all, the final run of bosses does culminate in a beautiful fight against an aspect of an outer god. My question now is: was the elden beast actually loyal to the greater will? If so how did Marika get away with removing the rune of death? The elden beast as betrayer of the greater will could make sense if it’s a primordial serpent type of figure, but this is sadly totally speculative as there is so little actual tangible lore about the beast and it’s role in the day to day of Marika’s empire.
Matthew Morel
2023-09-25 02:36:11 +0000 UTCI'll try to offer a more well-reasoned defense of Hoarah Loux as someone who doesn't really like wrestling but liked this boss fight. For me, it was neither tone-breaking or lacking in dignity. As with other characters in the game, his dual identity. In this case, he sheds the identity he adopted and chooses to fight/die as himself. The over-the-top elements didn't really set off any alarms in my head, the grappling style really did just feel like From wanted to do a new type of boss and hand-to-hand was one they hadn't done before. I actually think they manage to fit a good amount of characterization in Godfrey's fairly limited screen time. We see his gentleness with his son that indicates a caring figure that could conceivably make a great leader and then the brutality that would make Marika see a use in him but also require that it be kept in check. Is he and his reveal underdeveloped? Sure. But I like that he is, in some sense, a sellout who abandoned his people and ways to become the consort of his would-be conqueror and her eventual tool she would discard who, in his final moments, reclaims his old self to fight as who he truly is. I think that's where you'll find the dignity in this fight.
Zachary Webster
2023-09-25 01:49:24 +0000 UTCI had a mixed experience with the religious themes and symbolism of Elden Ring. On the one hand, the final encounter looks like a genderbent Jesus Christ who comes down off their cross to beat the crap out of me so they could protect the status quo. (At least that was my first read of it). On the other hand, an obviously divine being sacrificed herself so I could inherit a throne of glory and mend the world's injustices. There’s an thematic bias against the idea of eternal life, and there’s a recurring motif of becoming independent from the influence of divine meddlers. For a game about demigods and Outer Gods, I do think it’s humanist at its core, but you as the player are never above the cycles of power and violence. I would bet 99% of players slew Radagon and the Elden Beast for the first time without really understanding what it meant cosmologically, although this is definitely at least partly due to the narrative weakness of the final encounter. I like that there are multiple endings. There are shades of religious allegory everywhere, for good and ill. The Golden Order ending seeks a purer and more just version of the laws of morality than the Order’s mortal namesake. Ranni’s ending sees her take mortals on a journey to transcend the frailness of the flesh and seek a higher plane of understanding. Organized religion never really steps out of the crosshairs as a target for critique, but the alternatives of Curse and Frenzied flame are poor substitutes. The game implies that some structure and order is necessary, and I don’t think it’s an accident that the player is a hero from the banished masses as opposed to a big cosmological player. I also don’t think it’s an accident that they still get to the Elden Throne by cutting a path of violence and death through the Lands Between, often for no other reason than to gain strength or violence for its own sake; what’s the difference between being ruled by demigods and ruled by a Tarnished who became powerful enough to slay them? Apologies for the long comment, but I wanted to get everything out for the last roundtable. There are weaknesses in the cohesion of the narrative, especially the end, but it definitely gave me a lot to think about in terms of religious themes in particular. The main thing I can’t shake is Melina’s sacrifice. Maybe because it's most reflective in my own beliefs, or because it’s the most hopeful.
Wil Wright
2023-09-25 01:07:12 +0000 UTCI kind of like bullying Gideon Ofnir even if the fight isn’t great. It takes me back to the Dark Souls 1 and 2 days when you can quickly chunk boss health bars. That being said, I wanted more of a challenge in my NG+ run. My friend and I had a +10 Jar cannon, so we stupidly committed to fighting him with it, exclusively. It took a while, but we eventually bullied him into a corner and took turns staggering him with explosive bolts as he monologued until we were victorious!
Chase
2023-09-24 23:48:33 +0000 UTCReflecting a bit more on the endgame, I think my biggest disappointment was how little there was to the Erdtree itself. You'd spent half of the game getting to it, another half of the game getting inside it, and all you get in return is a pretty confusing cutscene straight into the final boss and ending, all taking place (ignoring the Elden Beast funzone) on a little platform. I was fully expecting at least a mini dungeon, a Great Hollow style descent to the final showdown, perhaps revealing just the right amount of lore along the way. What we got instead felt strangely small and rushed given how massive the rest of the game was. I appreciate that it's ridiculous to ask for even more content out of an 120 hour game, and as much as I loved it I was ready for it all to be over by this point. But I think the way it all played out left me feeling a bit... hollow (WINK)
Jack Darcy
2023-09-24 19:38:37 +0000 UTCMy first experience with Elden Ring soured hard in the endgame. Good pacing goes up in flames along with the Roundtable. From Farum Azula to the final boss, you have only a single proper level to – depending on how you count 'em – a good 10 bosses, nearly all concentrated right before the finish line. It's a full-on boss rush and coupled with most of them being difficult, often not in the right ways, I was eventually groaning and wanting the game to be over more than I was enjoying the spectacle and challenge. For the player who finds their delight in fighting hard bosses and memorizing dozens of moves and patterns this may have been heaven. I found myself stuck between a ”skinner box” and a space slug in a ten-hour face-bashing purgatory. I don't dislike memorizing movesets, but this was far too concentrated a dose, with too little to break it up, right at the end of very long game where fatigue has well and truly set in, topped off with some particularly egregious annoyances like the Elden Beast. After a few playthroughs it's not so much of an issue, as you're more selective with your content and have gotten more comfortable with the bosses. But it feels like From ran out of time and resources to put together the entire post-Leyndell part of the game as elegantly as the rest. A lesson for the inevitable Elden Ring 2 is that more is not always more. Cutting about 20% of the game's size in the form of fairly superfluous sub-dungeons, camps and random overworld space might have been enough to dole out content more evenly and polish up some lategame slop.
Joacim Tornéus
2023-09-24 13:14:23 +0000 UTCThink I'm potentially in the minority here, but I really struggled with Mr. Ofnir. Maybe it was because I listened to his whole monologue before making a move. Maybe it was because I still hadnt worked out that respeccing is good, actually, and stubbornly persisted with dual wielding a great mace and brick hammer, naked as they day I entered the Lands Between. Whatever the reason, his surprising agility and his plethora of stolen magics ripped me to shreds again and again. I just couldn't keep up. By this point, I was so ready for the game to be over that after a few attempts I Mimic Tear'd my way through it (double the amount of maces, hammers and nakedness? Checkmate you asshole!). When you try and piece together his non-existant back story, or examine his motives, I think fundamentally he is not an interesting character at all. But I actually quite like the idea behind him as a boss... his moveset made sense from a lore perspective, the way he effectively scaled with how much you had completed the game was neat, and the sheer variety of moves and seeing them all in one place was interesting. And, even though having to fight him at some point was the most predictable thing in the world, it somehow still took me by surprise? Maybe it was just by virtue of being sandwiched between the other endgame bosses in the way that he was. Whatever the case, I was glad to see the back him. Good riddance Gideon, you patronising prick!
Jack Darcy
2023-09-23 22:54:42 +0000 UTCTLDR at the end It really bothers me how much energy I put into trying to understand the "why" and "how" of these games and their worlds to ultimately end up with unsatisfying fractured conclusions. I'm not certain how thin the line between being enigmatic and a baseless chaos can be, but when I entered the final room to find a crucified Marika break her shackle, I was having trouble making sense of the events in front of me. First, what is it about walking into the Erdtree that allowed her to break free all of a sudden, was she not hanging there against her will? She shapeshifts into her Radagon form, is this how the Marika/Radagon shenanigans throughout the story with the Carians/Godfrey took place? Back and forth with long absences? Are these two different people as one, or one person in the form of two? Were they two separate people before that merged into a single person? Marika shattered the ring, Radagon went to repair it? Lastly, Radagon is a crumbling shell of a man around a ghostly black figure suspending the Elden Ring, which apparently is a "rune" (whatever that even means in this game?) rather than some piece of jewelry that was destroyed on an anvil? Also, it's a giant angelic whale monster? The community around this game is trying to make it make sense, but it seems to me that would be the responsibility of the source writer. I like having scarce pieces of a puzzle and being able to build a theory on the facts with some connections being a tenuous head canon every once in a while, but having such a wonderful experience over the course of a hundred hours hit the final moments of its story and fail to pay off the tension of its mysteries is a frustrating down side of being invested in these games beyond the wire frame. This is not a feeling I isolate to Elden Ring, I find this ending sequence to be just as unsatisfying as The Soul of Cinder or The Moon Presence. We spent a whole game caring about the movers and shakers in the lore, and for what? The painted world of Ariandel? TL;DR Having done everything there is to do in this game and consuming all of the content put out by creators that painstakingly study it, I don't find it cute, enigmatic, or interesting to have unsatisfying non-answers to the some of the central questions surrounding the events, characters, and places in Elden Ring. The known details and rough structures of information about these things is still a cut above anything else in similar games, but somehow it fails to seal the deal and make any goddamn sense when taken at face value. - A Neanderthal STR Build
Coty Davis
2023-09-21 12:21:30 +0000 UTCYES! I would hum to myself “Oh Radagon! Oh Radagon!”
Mansoor
2023-09-20 01:15:51 +0000 UTCElden Ring is perhaps the greatest game I've ever played. I bought it twice (PC & PS5) and have zero regrets. My first playthrough was unforgettable through discovery of the world and my second was just as fun with more co-op and role-playing. I'm just a little disappointed that I didn’t have a clear way to end the game as a Godskin. It would have been super cool to have an option to have a cloak made out of Radagon/Marika/Godfrey, etc. and skip around NG+ bragging to each boss while wearing a piece of them. I guess if I want to kill all the gods, the Frenzied Flame is a fine consolation.
Jared Mogen
2023-09-19 05:58:51 +0000 UTCI know the Elden Beast is widely maligned for how much it plays keep away, but honestly I kind of liked that aspect of it. It made actually getting to him part of the fight and I enjoyed the slow rhythm of dodging each attack, even when he begins to stack them. Perhaps it would be better if you could have Torrent, but I feel like that would trivialize him a bit too much. It also helps that it has my favorite boss theme in the game with Radagon’s as a close second. The first couple of tries ended in me just staring at the attack where the beast flies into the air and the vocals swell. Something about this presentation gave me pause. I began to doubt if what I was doing was right (obviously it is, Golden Order gotta go). In Bloodborne and even in Elden Ring we’ve fought many a nasty beast and grotesque outer god, but rarely have they been so beautiful and majestic. Side note: did anyone else think of the Great Mouse Detective every time someone said “Radagon”??
Stephen Veilleux
2023-09-18 18:17:03 +0000 UTCWhen I first saw the First Elden Lord, I was pretty stoked to fight him. The first phase was fun, but when he switched to Hoarah Loux and grabbed me through my fingerprint shield I was pissed. Even for Melenia, I was able to keep my tank build and stagger her enough to stop the healing. But I couldn’t get away from Loux’s grab attacks with my slow rolls. I eventually changed to a twinblade build and instantly fell in love with the fight. It also showed me one of the best benefits imo of having summons: seeing attack animations from a third person view. Watching Loux raise my mimic tear to the sun and slam the poor thing in the ground was incredible. Big Angry Man just wants a little hug.
Ben
2023-09-18 16:53:27 +0000 UTCHoarah Loux crew here. When I see someone coded as being a bearded first king, who is the greatest grappler and has a bestial friend, buddy you’ve got a Gilgamesh. Maybe because of that story I’ve always thought of ancient kings as needing to be the best wrestlers in town. There could be more links, he does live in a walled city, but as soon as I heard the beard king with a lion on his back was a wrestler, there was only one interpretation for me. Fight mechanics may vary to tastes and builds, but I love me a Gilgamesh.
Randomsome
2023-09-18 14:02:34 +0000 UTCThis is the first game I 100%-ed and I was proud enough to shed a tear or two when the trophy appeared on my screen. When discussing this emotional journey with a friend, I realised the perfect name for my play style, and I wonder if it has been used already. I told him that I basically „forrest gumped“ it, in that I stumbled through the epic, world changing events of the game without any real idea of what was happening around me, and oblivious to my impact on the future of this universe. If I’d know this would have been my journey, I would have designed a very different character at the start. Thank the gods for your podcast! You made the lore (a little) less oblique. Keep up the good work.
Staś Werno
2023-09-18 11:37:37 +0000 UTCI cannot believe we spent so much of this game closely inspecting how large dragonish creature-type bosses have finally been fixed with horseback mobility, only to have our good good boy robbed from us at arguably the most important fight of the game. In terms of lore and presentation, the Radagon and Elden Beast finale was everything I had dreamed of all these years since the announcement trailer, but Radagon should have stayed dead after you defeat him, and Torrent should have been usable against Elden Beast. This was so very close to a slam dunk, but instead felt like I smashed my face against the backboard, landed on my neck, and had the ball hit me in the goolies as I drowned in my own blood. Repeatedly.
Tom Young
2023-09-17 21:35:08 +0000 UTCHaving just finished my second playthrough, I am in two minds about the final boss. One the one hand, the one-two punch of Radagon and the EB is challenging (second only to Milenia in my experience) and serves up possibly the greatest moment of visual splendor in a game chock full of visual splendor. The EB cutscene in particular is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a video game. In terms of scale, the boss rush within a boss rush that is the finale feels suitably grand. Narratively though, I find it a tad unsatisfying to defeat the strongest of the demigods and cross into the realm of the cosmic only to find myself fighting an entity who is only a proxy for the Greater Will. I acknowledge that what we get is probably preferable to the game going all Half-Life and having its final act in entirety different realm. What would a direct confrontation with an outer god even look like? And yet, having the ultimate boss being a faceless, implacable blob feels somehow underwhelming in a game whose lesser villains (Rykard, Radahn, Rennala) are often brimming with character. I imagine it’s a bit different for people who have experienced the Frenzied Flame ending as they get to follow one tentative climax by unleashing world-shattering chaos.
William Habington
2023-09-17 03:17:36 +0000 UTCA theme I notice in all of the souls games is "Who is worthy to rule?" Fantasy often has conservative roots, but this series seems against them. Specifically, the want for power is inherently immoral. The only “good” rulers in the games’ fictions don’t seek the power they have. This is a well-worn theme in a lot of media, but it’s especially interesting how the player often takes the role of a ruler in the games’ endings. I find it a little incongruous how many NPCs assure the player that they’ll be “one of the good ones” when they become Elden Lord. The player’s drive to power is most apparent and systematized. I feel like the endings where the player becomes Elden Lord are an inherent betrayal of those NPCs’ trust. Ranni’s ending seems the most “No Gods, No Masters” to me. I can see an argument for the Flame of Frenzy ending, but its aesthetics are so horror-coded that I don’t think it comes across.
Autumn M
2023-09-16 17:08:20 +0000 UTCThe Radagon reveal and music drop was probably my favorite moment of the game, echoing the music drop of King Allant in Demon’s Souls, which was my favorite moment of that game as well. I think that scene makes it very obvious that Radagon represents the part of Marika that blindly serves the Greater Will, essentially he has become the puppet of the greater will. A lot of puppetry symbolism as it seems like the cruciform symbol of Marika is actually her being suspended in the air like a puppet. More FromSoft puppetry references.
Erik Heard
2023-09-16 14:59:24 +0000 UTCThis just shows just how variable people’s experience of this game are. (I’m assuming you are speaking of these bosses in order). I struggled with Godfrey and Radagon and destroyed Elden Beast on first try. But a lot depends on build. A pure strike weapon destroys the Elden Beast and I was rocking a Giant’s Hammer.
Erik Heard
2023-09-16 14:54:03 +0000 UTCA succession of laughably easy bosses and one stupidly tough boss. I wish they could have done a bit more with the Ashen Capital, but it's a nice touch all the same.
Charlie Frame
2023-09-16 12:20:13 +0000 UTCThe problems with the Elden Beast are well-documented, but I still don't understand *why* it needed to be such a difficult fight. Obviously a final boss is usually intended to be something of a closing exam, but that's exactly what the Radagon fight is: a tough but readable and well-balanced mano-a-mano duel that feels tuned to remain competitive against every conceivable playstyle. You guys have talked in the past about the power of the deliberate anticlimax, and FromSoft themselves have demonstrated that they know when to tactically deploy a surprisingly easy boss (see the endings of Shadow Tower and Demon's Souls), so I don't know why they went in the opposite direction here, ending a marathon of brutal late-game bosses with one of the most unbalanced mandatory encounters in the entire game. It dilutes the ethereal beauty of what is initially an awe-inspiring set piece and left a bad taste in my mouth after 100+ hours with one of the best videogames I've ever played. Ultimately a small blemish, but it's another of many examples in this industry of a mechanical climax getting in the way of an emotional climax.
Mike Suskie
2023-09-16 04:53:54 +0000 UTCUp until the final boss fight I felt like I was on the righteous path the entire game, faith in the Golden Order and what’s left of it, has ultimately led the Lands Between to ruin. But by the time I saw Space Littlefoot emerge from the endless lake, I began to feel almost a sense of guilt. I felt like I was killing something beautiful, and began to ask myself; am I making a mistake? I began to question whether or not the Greater Will was the true villain, or rather a weapon wielded by the tyrannical Queen Marika, who to a certain extent, chose who would live under Grace’s holy light. By removing the Elden Beast’s and concurrently the Greater Will’s influence on the world, have we created a void where an infinite number of less savory options; Rot, Chaos and others who already have a steady foothold in the Lands Between, are primed to take over? Outside of a few select endings to the game, it was interesting to reflect and have the thought that our whole journey in a certain light, regardless of intentions, was actually about walking the path to the committing Cardinal Sin, and unknowingly flooding the Garden of the Lands Between to ruin. P.S. have been listening to the show sense 2018 and have been thrilled to listen along with this season on a weekly basis for the first time. Lots of love.
Finbar
2023-09-16 01:40:36 +0000 UTCI love the Elden Beast and it’s theme. Should’ve been able to use your horse. Pest threads and big boulder are your best friends against it. I love the idea of a level changing like the ashen capital but I think from a play perspective if it did something like Ashina Castle and entered a new world state that’d be more fun or at least more interesting than running atop ash. Not my favorite end game area but not at all a blemish on a fantastic faced game.
Mateus Silva
2023-09-16 00:40:57 +0000 UTC
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