A Thorough Deconstruction Of Elden Ring’s Lore And Themes. 

"You know, when society decided to make child labor illegal we took the rune of child labor out of the metaphorical Elden Ring"

An hour and a half into discussing the game, Ceave says "yeah I like the game." Never change, Ceave

The Elden Beast's sword is also LITERALLY Radagon's corpse. Look closer at the hilt.

"Don't worry, that's not the actual final bossfight yet, that's-oh wait no it's the actual final bossfight" Hysterical

Ceave Gaming: With this, Mario is able to make the jump. Hooray! Ceave Perspective: And, so, we are able to understand the duality of religion and nihilism; death and rebirth. Hooray!

🚨 BANGER ALERT 🚨 Ceave has dropped a feature length video on Elden Ring! This is not a drill!

Ceave Perspective is honestly one of the only RU-vidrs I have bell notifications on and it's so worth it

after probably several hundreds of hours of playing and watching elden ring videos this is somehow the first time ive Ever heard anyone bring up the idea that melina in the frenzy ending is merged w ranni in some sense, which is actually really interesting to think about given their connections dang

The Age of The Duskborne Explained: Marika ruled over the Lands between when she withdrawned destined death, After she won Every War. So there is no Wars, There is no Change. With the Golden Order established It can be read as The Current Idea of the World and Order will never die. This is seen as Spirits roam the Lands Between and are lead to the Erdtree to be reborn into the same order as the same person they were. Death does not exists if you are yourself after death and if the world stays the same. When the Mending Rune of Death (Godwyn) is added to Order, they break this idea of constancy. Order will change. The Dead will have a future chosen by themselves. Death is a part of Life and Change is the only constant. Like this, Godwyn witch is soulless can live as a new Body and a New Person. Those that rejected Death and Reincarnation can move foward without needing to start anew. They can have a new start with the experiences they gained and face change however they see fit as long as they to not die.

1) The Greater Will isn't an Outer God. In the original Japanese translation of the text, the term Outer God refers to those gods as being outside of the Golden Order; circumstantial evidence makes it pretty clear that the Greater Will (if it even exists) is very different from the Outer Gods, both substantially and on a power level scale. 2) The ring Melina picks up from the ground in the Frenzied Flame ending is actually Torrent's whistle. That being said, the video is phenomenal, just like all the rest of your work. Keep up the good work, mate, you deserve all the credit you're getting for it!

It’s honestly crazy how quickly he can put out those 1,5h masterpieces

I am really looking forward to watching this (no time right now, so algo-boosting comment for now), but I'd like to say one thing. I find the old title format better. Having a copy-and-pasted title like this is much less memorable than "Bloodborne, Pregnancy, Nietzche, and God", or "Outer Wilds - An Existentialist Masterpiece". I remember the first time I saw "Super Mario Wonder - The Second Best Platformer Ever Made", where the title alone was so catchy I talked to friends about it. (Note that the title doesn't take away from the sheer quality of the videos, which I still avidly watch.)

I was literally JUST thinking "I wonder when the next Ceave Perspective upload will be? I'm itching to watch it". Then my notification popped up a couple seconds later

Oh thank god. Makes me feel less stupid for not knowing.

Algorithm boost

Excellent video! This was a great literary analysis of Elden Ring. Thanks for taking the time to put in the philosophical research. I don't really have much to add other than you did a great job and this was a very enjoyable and informative video. "Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” - Oscar Wilde

fwiw the actual philosophy of nihilism, as expressed by someone like camus, is somewhat close to the description of the age of the moon- not a world devoid of meaning, but one in which meaning must come from within, and be created by one's will and one's own actions. meaning that is not a prison but a home, a city, a construct

I really appreciate the way Ceave talks about philosophy! It's a great balance between "this is a thing some people believe" and "this is not necessarily true but not necessarily false either" and "This Story is (most likely) based on this philosophy, so in the context of this story this philosophy is completely true". Its a much more understandable way (for me) to understand how different philosophies work and how they apply to real life, because you can compare a fictional world to our own and think on where they differ and where they are the same!

WHY DOES CEAVE ALWAYS PUT OUT VIDEOS ABOUT GAMES IM IN THE MIDDLE OF PLAYNIG?! I’ve been playing Majoras Mask on and off for 6 months with that video lonely sitting in my watch later for all that time! Elden Ring was my most wanted to play game for foreeeevvvveeer, and I finally got a PC, about 40 hours in and just beat Morgott, and now I have a great reason to speed it the heck up! Love your vids!

This video did more for my understanding of Elden ring than probably a 100 hrs of Vaati and Smoughtown. Amazingly well done, sir .

Really fantastic video, you managed to actually express a thematic meaning of Elden Ring that genuinely sounds intentional and embedded in the game rather than just a stretched personal interpretation, and it's the first time I've seen it.

I'm always impressed by how thorough you are with not only the information provided, but in your explanations and interpretations. Constantly looking forward to new uploads!

I am always amazed at how you are able to discuss complicated and sensitive topics in a respectful and engaging manner. Absolutely loved this video, and it makes me want to play through Elden Ring again so I can solidify some thoughts on where I agree and disagree with you. I think your interpretation of the overall theme is my favorite, very nice work.

What's Elden Ring? Everyone Else: "A Fantasy RPG" Only Ceave: "Well in 1943..."

when one of my favorite content creators from Mario maker (a game I literally never played) covers Fromsoft games (my literal favorite games) I am happy. Glad to run into again Ceave!

As someone who loves learning new things and has watched almost of all lore videos of Elden Ring, I am impresses that I have found something that has profoundly given me a better understanding of a game I felt I wouldn't learn much more from until the dlc. Subbed. I can't explain easily how much this made Elden Ring make more sense on a deeper level for me. Thank you

The way I interpreted Fia's ending was that before Marika removed the rune of death from the Elden Ring, there were a people who lived as undead (known as Those Who Live In Death) and were labeled heretics simply for existing since as they revived before the rune of death was removed, they weren't able to be revived in the "holy" way like all of the other characters were. As a result, they were hunted by the Golden Order to ensure that only the Erdtree's resurrection method existed. I'm not sure if Fia herself lives in death, but I believe she made the mending rune to replace the Erdtree's resurrection with undeath since it's not inherently bad, it's just frowned upon by the current ruling class. Thematically, it could be considered to be similar to a different religion that believes in rebirth after death (I'm not going to try and pin a specific one because I don't know enough about them) that's not the current accepted ruling religion and thus is othered simply for existing. Also support this man on Patreon STAT, I made an account just to support him.

Don’t listen to that guy about the title, I wouldn’t have clicked on any of those titles and I didn’t but this drew me in for the perspective on the games lore and grew to a wonderful synthesis on the reflection of the real world in Elden ring

This was an amazing video! I genuinely hope this video gets pushed through the algorithm, you deserve way more views.

This aligns with my interpretations as well kind of. I always thought of the Elden Ring itself as the player having agency to choose how the world is ordered and the vagueness of the storytelling reflects the uncertainty of making those decisions. Some part of the vague decision making made me feel a bit uncomfortable, which upon reflection feels like a great place to learn from. Great video, you're really coming into your own here on this channel.

Algorithm boost. This is brilliant, but I’m afraid that the beginning is so dense that it will lose a lot of casuals. Please keep bringing us this style of video. Loved the philosophy you covered here.

Woah the entire video is a masterpeice...but that whole beginning explaining order and Tao was exceptionally done. Bravo 👏

I have a newfound appreciation of the Blessing of Despair ending, seeing as it is an alternate way of breaking free of the Greater Will's dogma

This deserves so much more views. This should be brought to all the elden ring lore youtube channels. Please tag them!!!

"And I never complained about the game repeating boss fights" - That made me laugh, seriously. Thanks for this review Ceave, it was a pleasure seeing this take on the story.

I am blown away by this video... made me want to ask everyone the question this game asks.

This is a really good analysis of the themes and endings, awesome stuff

This video is unreal. Thanks for doing all this work and going into so much detail!

Again, a wonderful and very well researched video. Thank you very much. I am already excited for a possible gameplay analysis.

the sheer amount of content that you didn't even get to touch in this video is insane... i would love a series of videos of your thoughts on the game honestly. great, very interesting, video. i've enjoyed everyone of the videos on this channel, and always make sure i have a day that I can set aside a solid block of time to watch your videos without interruption. looking forward to whatever you do next.

Along your line of thinking, I believe Fia's ending could be the counterpoint to the Dung Eaters ending. If the dungeater seeks a worldview where the living are all sinful so that no one can cast the first stone, Fia seeks a world where there is no divine punishment.

I'm not sure what award you should win for this, but whatever it is, you should win it.

I legit am going to order and eat a whole large pizza while watching this. No one can stop me, and it will be lit

Thank you for this video! I've seen a few interpretations but the way you presented yours and how its connects with nihilism finally made things click.

Great video man. Amazing work!

werd mir das videi jetzt mal zum schlafengehen anhören und dann morgen ordentlich schauen. hilft sicher mit den stats auch ein bisschen 😁😁 aber erstmal vielen dank für die arbeit, die du in die perspective videos steckst. ich hab mir immer schon längere videos von dir gewünscht, und freu mich dementsprechend immer extrem wenn von dem kanal was neues in meiner abobox ist. also danke 🙏🙏

I love when video essays about games include more context and references. I want more deep readings of text/ meta text, and less play by play rehashing of the plot. I hope this video gets a lot more views!

Okay so now I want to actually play this game, this was a fascinating video essay

This is good stuff man throughly enjoyed listening to your perspective on the meaning as well as the connections via peripheral books and statements.

As always, an amazing analysis. Very much entertained. Leaving a comment for the algorithm

Always love your content and the way you discuss games, themes, and concepts, thanks for all your hard work and for the great video!

Woah the channel isn’t even a year old? This is seriously impressive quality and super interesting!

your stuff always amazes me, great work

Best ER lore video I’ve seen so far, great job!

Every video i learn something new about different ideologies en history. Keep doing what you're doing. You're one of the only ones on this platform that actually is interesting and informative. Keep doing what you love and i'll be there for all the video's to come.

Great video! Hard work shows

Farum Asula also have a Dragon Corpse in the Midle of it Giving it Order. The Storm is holding the Chaos Together. Thats a great fucking point

I personally like the theory that Melina is some kind of spirit projection of Miquella.

I am just amazed by your work. Although I didn´t get to play Elden Ring myself, your analysis of the philosophy and its counteracting themes is easily the most interesting and thoughtprovoking video I seen in a while. It really is a joy to dive into new topics and beliefs while discovering the way the game chooses to present them. I am already looking forward to your upcoming videos. Or in other words: Thank you for your analysis and your brilliant work. Lots of hugs

Awesome Video! I think the game essentially is Marika’s story of survival. It seems the current god of an age has to die or vacate to an Empyrean for a new era to begin. The player killing the Erdtree Beast ends the Greater Will’s control over Marika's "destined death" I think this is why we see so many dead finger readers in Leyndell because they predicted her death, possibly that a Tarnished will ursurp her. Also why Godfrey gets to the Erdtree before us. I think Marika intended Godfrey as a Tarnished made by her to become her consort cheating the prophecy but the player wins instead

Everyone must watch this man, RU-vid algorithm.

Post-watch algo boost comment + thoughts. Great as always, with a quality that makes any topic interesting. I didn't disagree with your analysis on this video, but I swera you could write an entire video essay saying things I disagree with one after the other and I'd still watch it.

Amazing Video as always

Nice vid as always!

Glad to see another video! Will there be main channel videos soon?

Yess new ceave video I hope it finally blows up and u get the views you deserve

Fun Fact the story of Elden Ring is: you the player need to lay the smackdown on personalities and/or monsters in 'the lands between' to become king and find the one ring.

Regarding the Elden Beast's sword, I thought that was Radagon / Marika's body that the beast repurposed for its weapon (hence the twisting blade design). And the hilt resembles the Radagon statues we see in a few places in the game. I thought it was fitting given Ranni's desire to not be used as a tool for the Greater Will, as failing to defeat us at the end resulted in the Elden Beast (and by proxy the Greater Will) throwing out all pretense and just straight up using Marika / Radagon as weapon to stop us.

This is the first game you’ve covered so far that I don’t really know much about, excited to watch it

I *think* the idea with the Prince's rune of death ending is that you're incorporating life after death back into the Ring in a way fundamentally different to how it was done by Merika. Merika's version is essentially reincarnation - you die, are taken up into the Erd tree, and are reborn from it. With Godwyn's rune, you die and aren't ever reborn, but still you live on in the way Godwyn does. The real issue is we don't really know how Godwyn lives on after death... we just assume that his soul can't truely die until his body does (thus the comments about him lacking a true death), thus it's alive in some way somewhere. What I always wondered is does that ending leave the world with an ever growing number of zombies? Or does it lead to a Dark Souls type world where everyone goes Hollow in the end?

Love your videos Ceave

27:00 Not really willingly as much as she can't really do anything about it, since she's in a catatonic heartbroken state, with the whole second phase being a spell cast by Ranni to protect her.

I liked this video! I enjoy longform video essays! You hear that algorithms?! It’s good!

Amazing analysis. Thank you. I will watch repeatedly. On my Elden Ring playlist. Top quality.

its a little bit complex to understand all these ideologies and abstract ideas but I loved the video. I also admire you for dedicating all this time on putting toghether all this simbolic story bits , and I hope the algorythm really really really helps you out. I would definitely love to watch that post-dlc elden ring vid. This is art man 🎉

amazing video. thanks a lot

I think the Age of Dust Born is about the belief that Death is something to celebrate rather than fear. many old culture used to believe this, like the Egyptian, they used to believe that the life after death is much more important than the life before, so they have many rituals related to death, like mummification.

Elden Ring is a mishmash of legendary books that came before it, the lord of the rings series, and the eternal champion series. Both series reveal that the powerful object everyone is fighting over is a corrupting force, set to destablize. The Eternal Champion series goes a step further and posits that the protagonist is out to balance Chaos and Order, and will fight on either side depending on which side has the most power at the time.

Great video! I have a few remarks: 1. " The philosophy of Nihilism. The rejection of all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless." Meaningless in what sense? Usually the word Nihilism carries a negative connotation. If we want to be philosophically precise, it is usually used to describe a person who not only rejects that life is meaningless objectively, but also subjectively! If I have to formalize it looks like this: Premise 1: Life has meaning if and only if it has meaning objectively. Premise 2: Life does not have meaning objectively. Conclusion: Therefore, life has no meaning. Before we look at the premises in more details, lets clarify what objectively means. In modern metaethics objective means stance independent. Or independent of preferences, emotions, desires, goals etc. Not lets replace the word objective with its equivalent and see how the premise looks like - "Life has meaning if and only if it has meaning independent of preferences, emotions desires, goals." We, the moral anti-realists disagree with that. To say that "things matter independent of our preferences, emotion etc." is unintelligible. It is not communicable in principle. Consider the following: " Nobody in the world liked watching the movie A, but A is a good movie independent of if we like it or not" " Nobody liked the food, but the food is good independent of if we liked it or not" " Nobody liked the joke, but it is good joke independent of our likes" Probably most of us wouldn't be inclined to believe in realism about "a good joke", but we prefer certain jokes over others. We, the moral anti-realist, say for "something to matter" means simply "somebody cares about something". Now, imagine a situation where a person walks around and says "There are no stance independent facts about which joke is good". I imagine many of us will agree with that statement. But we wouldn't call them joke nihilists. We would say this person believes that the truth maker of which joke is good, is a preference. So the joke is fun in a subjective way. Same thing with the meaning of life question. We don't hold that life has meaning independent of subjectivity, so we reject first premise, thus the conclusion that life has no meaning doesn't follow. Same way as there is no jokes that are objectively good (Independent of our likes), but we simply prefer some jokes over others. To summarize my point in 1 sentence - The denial of moral realism, the idea that values are objective, does not entail moral nihilism. It entails moral anti-realism. Which is the idea that value judgments are expressions of attitudes or assertion of our preferences. 2. Even if god existed, which of course is incoherent, theists still don't get moral realism. If the christian god exists, and the bible is true, then we get the 10 commandments. But commandments are expression of gods attitude. It means that god desires that we perform certain acts over the others. So moral anti-realism is true again.

I always thought of Ranni's ending being about abandoning faith in god and replacing it with science and empirical seek of knowledge. Never thought of the part of taking responsibility for self beliefs and I like this interpretation a lot

I was really impressed that Miyazaki made Elden Ring's central tension and inciting incident revolve around the fact that a cult of religious fundamentalists fractured their religion and nation because they couldn't cope with the fact that god is a trans man.

Ceave and the Gaming Historian dropping massive videos in the same day an hour apart? Well there goes my evening.

Wow, thanks for the video on Elden Ring!

Are there any sources for this video? I wasn't able to find any in the descripton, and giving proper sources is important.

Godfrey is sold by the Order as the first Elden Lord, but we know Placidusax (at least) preceded him. Also, have you seen Max Derat's video about Elden RIng's relation to Alchemy? Particularly, Marika / Radagon are (or become) a Rebis

i actually feel like u gave an answer to an unanswerable question that we didnt even know… wow. thank you and well done sir

FANTASTIC video! Truly this has completely changed my view of this game for the better and I just want to replay it again

I was skeptical at first, but i'm really happy with the job you've done, Ceave. First dive into From Software's work and a banger right from the start. Good food for thought and further personal inquery into ELDEN RING's lore and story

Great video!

well-researched, insightful, 90 minutes... certified banger

*Videogame video essay drops* Oh boy, a lesson on existential philosophy!

I noticed the "two fingers + three fingers = a complete five fingered hand" thing myself, but then quickly discounted it for two reasons. First: This only works if you exclusively count the two Finger things you the player personally interact with. But doing so would be pretty arbitrary, because there are definitely more Finger things out there, such as the one Ranni kills, and the dead ones inexplicably decaying on top of towers. If you count those as well- and I see no reason you shouldn't, the world doesn't revolve around your character's personal journey after all- then the math doesn't work out so nice. Second: Sure, a standard human hand has five fingers. But continuing along the human anatomy comparison route, standard human hands come in pairs. So if you're going with some sort of "hands of the creator" concept, then where's the other hand worth of fingers? It wouldn't make sense to be the other dead fingers, because they all seem to be two-fingered Finger things. And no amount of pairs will add up to the five remaining fingers needed for another hand. Though if you discount the odd thing out with three fingers, (which doesn't seem entirely arbitrary since it seems to be the one rebel of the group... probably?) than five two-fingered Finger things could combine to make a proper pair of hands' worth of fingers. In which case... alive or dead, just how many two-fingered Finger things were in the game again? And one last smaller issue: If you're smashing the fingers together into one hand, then the palm parts should be similarly additively combined, and I can't help but feel like combining the two palms of the two and three Fingers as they are would make for a weirdly wide hand.

Great job 🙌

So excited to watch this!

One of my favorite youtubers dropping an 80 minute long video about my favorite game? Life is good

Good insight about the wedding ring concept, I didn't think about it that way before but makes sense.

Glad to see you back ceave

Finally thank god! I was wondering for so long about the philosopical topics Elden Ring explores, other than Nihilism, Existentialism, Realism, etc.

The difference between The Age of The Duskborn's death and The Golden Order's death is that Marika made it so that death doesn't exist and essentially made her own death which only works for those who worship the Golden Order or those given grace and when they die they return to the Erd Tree's roots and be rebirthed. The Duskborn's death I believe is literally just immortality, when you die, you live again in Death. Which may mean to live within death or as death, as a quote unquote "dead" person.

The title reminds me of Majora's Mask vid👀