Bonfireside Chat 219: Ainsel River Well
Added 2022-07-24 23:48:53 +0000 UTCWe have just a few more stops to make before we break into the Academy of Raya Lucaria. First we head to the Carian Study Hall, if only to talk about the ways it currently thwarts our advances. Then we talk about the bull-filled ruins of Uhl Palace before taking the elevator to Ainsel River Well. Here, we learn once again that the world of Elden Ring is bigger than we first thought, and gain some fleeting glimpses of the layers of civilizations long gone that make up the strata of the Lands Between.
Comments
God I hope we can just skip past the “everything is a mistranslation “ phase ☠️☠️ I much prefer the “Hawkshaw just made a 5 hour long tell all” stage.
Jessie joy
2025-04-18 11:05:07 +0000 UTCI like to think that the giant skeletons are named after the cities they are found in or vice versa. Purely speculative but imagine the giant people founding these cities then wasting away in their thrones. Something odd about the giant skeles, is that there is another, empty throne in nokstella that feel like it would fit the one in the pit better. Just some observations.
Epsilon The Protogen
2022-08-24 05:35:16 +0000 UTCReally nice discussion of deep time in Elden Ring, I hadn’t really thought of it in that way but it’s a very satisfying way of looking at it. Re lore, I feel the broad strokes of the Elden Ring story are actually clearer than many of the Soulsborne series. The major factions, characters and even most motivations are relatively apparent from a single playthrough. Expecting finely resolved detail on, for example, the history of all the outer gods for me seems somewhat unrealistic. The whole theme of the game is that there’s a plurality of competing powers and potential world orders, the idea of there being a single truth is an illusion perpetuated by people for their own purposes. (I’m talking in-game here but the parallels with some of the lore communities is striking!). Things like the Formless Mother, for example, just exist to reaffirm that but I don’t need a detailed backstory on it, to expect that seems like missing the wood for the trees somewhat.
John Paterson
2022-07-31 12:29:02 +0000 UTCAdditionally, I’ve just found out from a YouTube video that in v1.00 the Ancestral Followers were worshiping with the stomping animation at the shrine in the location just after the lake of rot in Ainsel river, but have since been replaced with the rot worshiping centipede people.
Artalam
2022-07-29 16:20:10 +0000 UTCI think people also largely forget how much time it took for many of the Souls games to develop robust lore communities and to uncover some of the guiding design philosophies via datamining. Elden Ring will make more and more "sense" as time goes on, because nothing exists in a vacuum online. What channels like yours (Love it btw!!) do is help build and push that foundation. All in due time. PS we don't even have a DLC yet which is where the bulk of things get wrapped up more concretely in a majority of the Souls games!
gwenny_
2022-07-29 08:02:04 +0000 UTCthis was a great episode, ive played this game so many times and never once made the connection between the mudmen and the oracles, now it seems clear as day. they even have the same slow-motion animation style!
unluckychloe
2022-07-27 23:16:01 +0000 UTCI also had a "Try arrow moment" and I was going to talk about it when we actually flip it. -GB
Duckfeed.tv
2022-07-26 17:42:10 +0000 UTCHey! Just started listening to the episode and I totally agree with you about this frustration seen from Youtube lore people, and as a Youtube lore person it often feels a little revisionist history to me that Dark Souls is treated comparatively as so clear and the lore so tight when that's never really been the case. Like Solaire, there have always been popular community interpretations that rise to the surface, but not until a period of time passed. That's not to discredit anyone who states issues with the worldbuilding and storytelling, I have them too, but it kind of feels to me like people want it to be something different than the Souls games have ever been, and being unable to draw these grand conclusions about the story I think people are missing out on the myriad of cool details in the world. I also just think that this wave of creators making "Does Elden Ring Lore Even Make Sense?" videos just creates a tone that stifles coming up with some creative ideas. Anyways, rant over and I'm just going to keep making talking about what's cool and enjoying your thoughts and interpretations on the show.
thelorehunter
2022-07-26 15:09:55 +0000 UTCOne of my favorite memories of Elden Ring comes from the Carian Study Hall. After struggling against Maryam for a while and fighting my way to the top of the tower I was stumped on how to progress. Still, I remained fully convinced that there HAD to be a way to proceed. I messed around for longer than I should have until I came across a message on the rafters with thousands of ratings. The phantom in the message was pointing up to the ceiling and the note was something along the lines of "try arrow". Sure enough there above me was a small square button. "Eureka!" I thought. "Very clever, Elden Ring, but now I've got your number!" I immediately left a positive rating on the message, so confident was I that they had finally set me on the right path. I whipped out my bow, lined up the reticle, fired a shot and... nothing happened. Huh. I moved a little closer, lined up the reticle again, and fired. Nothing. The realization sank in. I'd really been trolled - not just by the devs but by the entire community. 10/10 would get duped again. (P.S. a few months later I played Dark Souls II for the first time and came to the Dragon's Sanctum where you really DO have to hit buttons on the walls and ceiling with arrows. Naturally I completely failed to make the connection and ended up looking up what to do on the wiki.)
Sammi Boi
2022-07-26 03:30:11 +0000 UTCI think that's probably fine, as long as it's related to the area!
Duckfeed.tv
2022-07-26 00:42:11 +0000 UTCCuriosity - if the spoiler walls come down after Raya Lucaria, does that mean the Liurnia response episode will be spoiler-open? The discussion of Uhl and the ancestral worshippers caused me to think of a theory, but it requires spoilers to share haha
Nat Isnice
2022-07-25 23:25:24 +0000 UTCIt's alright, Gary, I'm still a coward on my 8th playthrough and I will forever be a FromSoft coward, sheathed beneath my comfort blankets weaved from staffs and panic rolls.
Jenna Kelly
2022-07-25 20:19:54 +0000 UTCIt's really interesting listening to this season immediately after the Sekito season because the phenomena you talk about in so many things being kind of the same thing like seven different ways of turning into a dragon or four different types of Fire.. I think Cole is the one who used the term "two arms trying for the same arm rest" feels like a logical conclusion of how sekiro had four or five different types of immortality that felt like they should have been trimmed down to only one or two types.
Dani Doyle
2022-07-25 17:52:13 +0000 UTCIt's definitely skirting really close. It strikes me as on the precipice, but I wouldn't blame anyone who thinks it's all the way. -GB
Duckfeed.tv
2022-07-25 17:50:23 +0000 UTCIt never particularly occurred to me that the giants might be older than the Eternal Cities, since all the thrones we see either empty or with the giant skeletons resemble Nox architecture more than the seemingly older civilization that the Malformed Star is hanging out in. One thing timeline wise is that the Eternal Cities, despite their name, are younger than the advent of the Greater Will coming to the Lands Between. These giant skeletons could be a failed creation of the Nox, making them relatively recent depending on when the Eternal Cities were made. I don’t want to dive too much into it since a lot of that has to do with the Nox themselves which we’re not at yet spoiler wise, but I feel like there is a chance that there are people in the world that know exactly what these beings were.
Lucas West
2022-07-25 16:20:46 +0000 UTCI'm not sure that I agree with your interpretation that the ancestral followers or anything more than an offensive portrayal of indigenous peoples especially indigenous Americans... You even mention yourself the idea that they avoid technology and use things like bows and axes out of wood as opposed to metal and the idea of them having a close relationship with nature including the ancestral Spirit which just feels like a westernized version of the idea of spirit animals or them having flocks of spectral sheep / deer etc... Even the details that are unique to them such as the infant head kind of just feels like the stereotypical "shaman ritual " stuff ...
Dani Doyle
2022-07-25 15:29:27 +0000 UTCOne possibility for the connection between the scarlet rot and the Ainsel river could (stress could, this is a very tenuous connection) is that the description of items related to the horned people and the rot miracle you can get have similar perspectives on the cyclic nature and similarities between death and life
Artalam
2022-07-25 10:42:50 +0000 UTCAlso, we are not saying Blasphemoussy
DealerUmbra
2022-07-25 07:05:54 +0000 UTCThe "stone with googly eyes" part got me. Watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, everybody
DealerUmbra
2022-07-25 06:28:29 +0000 UTCI managed to miss this entire area somehow and now im going to have to go check this out.
Paige Herrmann
2022-07-25 06:24:43 +0000 UTCBIG Lorian for BIG Dark Souls
J Pack
2022-07-25 03:38:08 +0000 UTCDragonkin soldier reminded me of the Lorian from dark souls 3, enjoyed the fight
Alex Brewington
2022-07-25 02:47:12 +0000 UTCYou guys are the only podcasters out there that would even give us notice about such a minor delay. Mad respect
BAAAAAARNES
2022-07-25 02:39:58 +0000 UTCWork ethic unparalleled.
shea dewar
2022-07-25 01:42:21 +0000 UTC
