Elden Ring - It's hidden in plain sight 

Thank you for your hard work, Zullie!

@diaz5029 the duality of Zullie the Witch fans.

Noticed this on my first playthrough and have been patiently waiting for this video ever since. Every act I would zoom in on my pc’s face to see if I got more or less gold in my eyes, an obsessive attention to detail I apply to fromsoft games due to all the lore videos I watch hahah.

What about Radagon? what colour are his eyes? I dont think ive ever noticed what colour they are but you'd think they are fully gold. In terms of why basically everything has gold in their eyes, this could be the Erdtree being desperate for the Elden Ring to be reforged and giving everything the grace until finally giving it back to the Tarnished.

@@diaz5029 Zullie is originally a character from Dark Souls 2.

perhaps that's why everyone is hostile to us as well

And the Godskins look like Baron Harkonnen and Mark Zuckerberg

I had no idea the Vulgar Militia looked so.... special.

They look like a couple of Collin Robinsons.

@@viljamtheninja There's a reason they're called Vulgar. :p

i got so thrown off with the Nox warrior face, before i read the text i was like "what is this literal baby faced enemy???"

Really good looking too

this is because human NPCs are created using the player character creator. i believe this goes back to at least dark souls 1

And it’s funny knowing they know even if normal players will never see it, they know dataminers will

​@thisisnotaustin1 While I hesitate to call myself a "character artist," since I haven't worked in any projects that have released (yet 🤞)... I have done character modeling and it's very common to add details that are unlikely to be noticed, reasons ranging from it simply being a fun part of the creative process to trying to fully realize a concept for the purpose of maintaining story consistency during the construction process... Also yeah, reusing assets.

I love that you literally can’t understand the game without being a data miner.

Hell that's not even getting into eyes being SUPER important to Fromsoft in general. There must be some intent here.

@@Onyx1987 EXACTLY like how many times has Fromsoft gone "you know what would be fucked up" and eyes keep popping up everywhere??? This is so exciting!

@@LeviAckerman-cl6iy ah Kos, or some say Kosm. Grant Us Eyes, GRANT US EYES!

I wonder if their design bible (or artist equivalent?) had some rules about eye coloring for enemies / NPCs based on their relationship to the different factions. With perhaps some shared texture to use between them. I'm not too familiar with character design for games, but that would be my wild guess.

@@NeverduskX I wouldn't doubt it for a second, they're really smart with how they use motifs and patterns not to mention their use of colors in general for the game. It really wouldn't be a surprise if the lead artist and designers all had a set plan for this either from the start or after a while of development so in regards to a shared texture, if all of the bits of gold are actually apart of a rune or The Rune for the lands between just super zoomed in that would be something real special. If that is the case then differences in how much of the eye is gold or what part of the rune/pattern they're pulling from could have even more implications!

Makes sense, but then wouldn't that mean all carnivorous animals in the Lands Between would have gold in their eyes then?

@@Sleepy12ftPanda I think the implication is that the dogs & crows specifically consume humans.

@@mitchellbutler2307 OH SHIT THAT'S WHY IT'S A RUNEBEAR!!!

runebears are their own thing too, they show signs of (technically) being dragons@@Sleepy12ftPanda

@@Kodaivahow???

So if you use the frenzied flame to get to Farum Azula, then use the Miquella Needle on yourself, then kill Maliketh and become Elden Lord without burning everything. Does that mean she will have both eyes opened?, that would be interesting to witness.

@@anstornerdoubtful because the golden order isn’t completely destroyed in any other ending

@@DrPeculiar312 It is destroyed (or at least wholly replaced) in Ranni's ending.

@@watchfulwanderer6443 Ranni seemed to a competitor to Melina in the beginning but it didn't go anywhere.

​@@awhellnah__I am sure Morgott and Mohg would disagree

The Golden Order isn't just Marika's ruleset, but that of the Two Fingers. After all, Marika doesn't know the whole of it, and when she learned more of it she turned against it. Grace is also most likely the Erdtree's blessing, since every reference to it refers to it coming from the Erdtree. It also may be separate from just having golden eyes, since Morgott's Great Rune explicitly refers to Omens as graceless. Maybe the gold in the eyes of Omens, Misbegotten, and the like are remnants of the grace they had, before the Erdtree forsook them (it definitely isn't supporting them now, seeing as it explicitly did not care for Morgott).

I have come to believe that the greater will was initially an alliance of two gods. A sun god of order and an earth god of chaos. And the events we hear Marika play out is the falling out between these gods. With the sun god trying to force its agenda despite the earth god deeming it a total failure. This even explains the elden beast and the fire god of the Giants. Elden Beast was a vassal to the sun god. The fire god served the earth god. So of course the pawn of the sun god, Marika, would seek to further bind the chaotic gods by killing off the Giants. This line of thinking even makes what are outer gods clearer. They are literal foreign gods not beholden to either of these pantheon.

Are the omen also the product of the crucible? Everything about them implies that they are the product of a curse, obviously Dung Eater's curse. I've always assumed they were created by him.

@@watchfulwanderer6443the golden order is a recent development and they are graceless in the golden order they where viewed as blessed I view the fingers we see as frauds that are completely corrupted and depleted the fingers speak in the language of light and are supposed to be brilliant and emit light and grace we see this from the two finger talisman yet the fingers we see cast no such language of light and are dull and sickly even the finger reader tells you to burn the erdtree and commit a cardinal sin right in front of the two fingers implying she doesn’t respect its authority so the words of our two fingers and its motivations are scewed at best and but are likely corrupted like gideon is he wants us to struggle onto eternity we don’t know what a true two fingers would think of marika but we know they are vassals and adherents of the greater will first off corhyn views the two fingers prayer book having no lineage from the erdtree and as heresy meaning the doctrine of the true two fingers and the erdtree conflict nexts lets observe her actions shall we she removes destined death from the elden ring an offense to the greater will because he clearly meant the rune of death to be part of the elden ring when he first cast it down into the lands between next abhorrently treating all that comes from the crucible another aspect of creation the greater will clearly intended yet marika defied since before her age gold was different more virile and full of vigor since the chaotic growths of omen and missbigotten their visage and powers come of the elden ring not of the erdtree and to marika their souls bodies and every aspect of their existence not being under her thumb is a great offense so she mistreated them we don’t see the greater will and marika clash but there is a clear distinction between what the greater will intends with his actions for the lands between and what marika wants the greater will wanted death and the crucible to be a thing marika doesn’t and lets not forget the work of the two fingers the greater wills closest vassals and servants are seen as heresy by her order same category as dragons and fire giants in fact enemies of the erdtree not of the greater will or the elden ring

@@ulasgursoy2838 The "Curse" existed long before dung eater showed up. Said curse is just being born an Omen which was seen as a blessing back at the time of the Crucible. In Marika's Golden Order however, they along with the Misbegotten are seen as abominations.

Morgott is a bootlicker

@@youronlyrealfriendit’s his mom and dad bro. Sorry you don’t love your family or worse that it doesn’t stand for anything

@@llab3903 ok he licks his parents' boots

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@llab3903what his mom and dad did to him and other Omens was horrendous. I can see where Morgott is coming from, but with a family and society like that, I’d personally want to burn it all down myself. (And yes I do hate my family and don’t believe blood means anything at all. I don’t know what you mean by “it doesn’t stand for anything” tho.)

@@llab3903 Huh? A major theme throughout the game is that the Golden Order is monstrous, they're the bad guys, and your interactions with many sympathetic NPC's is supposed to reinforce that. Boc is willing to die to just appear human because of the bigotry of the Order has taught him to hate who he is, the nice merchants you meet are buried alive with corpse piles you struggle to climb over in such a shocking display of genocide that Melina has to beg the player to not exact revenge on the world. Over and over you see the misery of the world due to their bigotries and the lengths they'll go to to secure their own power. Morgott is indeed a bootlicker, his whole tragedy is that no matter how much he played by the rules of the system and did nothing but try to be accepted they were never going to reciprocate. The game just spends so much time beating you over the head with this, how are you missing it?

i legit thought it was a joke. good for her though, gotta get that bag.

im glad zullie is bein paid, she works hard she deserves to get paid

It's funny how the most jarring bit is the game SFX. I've been watching for so long and never even noticed that when Zullie does put on non-music sound, it's very quiet and just the animation she's currently showing.

​​@@mitsuri3096So they can then take sponsors as well? Seriously what's with people immediately getting on a bandwagon just because someone took a sponser.

I legit thought she was fucking with us for a second.

The description of the clothes of the wandering nobles as like, the pathetic products of eternal life, and the bizarre contradiction in the golden seeds description makes this sound plausible. Like Marika is so obsessed with life that even a SEED, the exact thing needed for new life, is somehow an affront to people's understanding of the erdtree and life within the order..

From Soft has a big history of "Immortality is a curse, not a blessing"

@@taylorbrecht8049 true! that's essentially the gist of dark souls, in a way. You are undead and cannot fully die so instead you will lose your mind and forget all that makes you yourself, becoming a danger to all you ever loved

The golden eyes could also be a sign of the Greater Will's influence, which is not the same as the Golden Order. The Greater Will follows a principle of periodic burning and rebirth, while the Golden Order follows a principle of life without death, excising the burning from the equation. The giants and their flame were the burning part of the world under the Greater Will.

@@iotaje1 Where did you read that about the Greater Will? I don't remember hearing anything like that in any item desc or lore video. I mean, yeah, Destined Death was taken out of the Elden Ring, but that doesn't necessarily equate with the Greater Will practicing some kind of burning and regrowth. Specially as it is implied that the fire of the Fire Giants come from a different outer god based on the descs of the fire giant items.

Notably, the *position* of the Great Runes / pieces of the Elden Ring is established to be important, with grace flowing down from the upper parts down to the Rune Arc at the bottom (probably a reference to Jewish mysticism, where the Sephirot work much the same way). So there may very well be importance to the direction of the gold.

​@@cranapple3367probably with how pure their connection to the order is, the brighter and fuller the closer they are, and vice versa

Godwyn

Is that maybe Goldmask's intent?

​@@prexot2341 Possibly. He's a compassionate person, even if he's not going about it the right way (making the Order accept everyone is fine, but his rune doesn't guarantee that, and it still has the problem of making everyone subordinate to a set of artificial constraints imposed by the agents of an alien deity).

From the Crucible Feather Talisman: "A vestige of the crucible of primordial life. Born partially of devolution, it was considered a signifier of the divine in ancient times, but is now increasingly disdained as an impurity as civilization has advanced." Hence, it is patent that the Golden Order does not sanction the persecution of creatures showing atavistic traits of the Crucible. "Ancient times" in all likelihood also covers Placidusax' reign, and we know that he was ordained by the Greater Will since there's an effigy of the primordial Elden Ring in Maliketh's arena AND he himself was an Elden Lord. During his time then atavists, so to speak, were left to their own devices; it would only be with the advent of Marika's reign (or whatever is implied by "civilisation") that they would become oppressed. It somewhat mirrors late nineteenth-century conceptions of degeneracy, a great fear that took hold as Darwinian evolution theory was more and more embraced, and at a point where our conceptions of refinement and civilisation were ever more valued, as Western powers were exposed to peoples that they deemed especially uncivilised.

@@SirSaladAss Correction: the Greater Will does not inherently sanction the persecution of those blessed by the Crucible. The Golden Order is a function of the Elden Ring, the Elden Ring's wielders, and possibly other factors (Marika explicitly had to learn about it, and that made her turn against it). Plus, don't forget that the Greater Will either sent her to the Lands Between or did jack shit while she traveled there, and while there she both destroyed or conquered just about every rival power in the Lands Between, created the Golden Order (in part), etc, even though it had a direct line there through the Two Fingers, and also that it abandoned the Lands Between when Marika shattered the Elden Ring. Like, I'm not saying that Marika's blameless, but that the Golden Order isn't a good thing even when it isn't filtered through Marika or Radagon. Neither is the Greater Will. After all, the grace is not the domain of Marika (it was, and still is, granted by the Erdtree directly), and that kills people that "earn their honor". The Two Fingers are direct servants of the Greater Will, and they teach the Tarnished to reject everything but the Golden Order's path.

except the truth is what has happened. If oppression were not necessary to the golden order, then the golden order would not have engaged in oppression. This is a the tragedy that well-meaning political liberals like Corhyn and Kenneth Haight represent. They think there can be the gains of imperialism, spread evenly and for the good of all, without someone upon which to force that imperialism onto. They truly believe they can make the whole world wealthy because differing levels of wealth and privilege (yes, even the man who was thrown out of his church for his prophesies, but never killed or enslaved for it), and have never truly looked at the faces and fates of those from whom that wealth and power was violently extracted. They are the metaphor for people who think you can just 'fix' capitalism in modern society, and who do not realize that capitalists are by their nature lazy (maximum revenue for minimum investment resulting in ever-growing margins is the core ethos after all). banana republics would not have been enstated and violently ensured if they could have found a way to thrive without it-not from any moral compulsion from chiquita's board of directors against ordering the mass killings that they did, but just because it's literally easier and less of a headache when you don't have to put a bunch of armed thugs on payroll. They system >needs< exploitation in order to keep the gears turning, and any attempt at simply 'fixing' it while not resolving the core contradictions is only, at best, kicking the can down the road but, in actuality, simply demands that a more perfect class of exploitables be created and then hidden from public eye. The corrupting force in the lands between is the very institution of Lordship, and the notion that there ought to be a monopolic dictator over the very logic of reality. Such a system of governance will always result in those aligned with the ideology of that world logic being uplifted and enriched, while the farther away you deviate the lower you fall in the social hierarchy. Now, since this is magic, it would be great if we HAD the option of imposing a new world logic wherin the very nature of lordship and the accumulation of divine power was metaphysically abolished, and indeed nothing within the laws of the lands between and its magic preclude this inherently. Just like nothing precludes us all deciding that billionaires should no longer exist. but ER is a product of neoliberal capitalism and therefore will always leave its moral questions as 'too ambiguous to say', hiding behind false nuance so as to avoid stating the logical conclusion of "well clearly some form of socialism is needed"

I think they’re his own scions - his heirs, whether cousins or his children. Just as he grafted himself for power, so too were his close relatives grafted. A rather horrific depiction of him clinging to a long-lost lineage and glory, almost like royal inbreeding inverted into monstrous theft and grafting.

Always interpreted them as being Godrick children that he forced into grafting. Like he thought he was doing them a favour by making them "stronger" earlier in life, while he just turned them into monsters.

Took me by surprise as well, I can't imagine many sponsors agreeing to a voiceless spot all that often.

*literal* whiplash? Are you alright?

Obviously not, they got literal whiplash

@@drdca8263 ironically I got actual whiplash today because I have a lot of cervical pains, but it's getting better, thank you

@@comaiscool that too! It speaks volumes to the quality of her stuff and I'm really glad she's getting recognition

as, you know, as it should be if you want to craft a narrative woven between art direction, writing & sound design

Marika had personally removed grace from Godfrey and the tarnished. Her and Godfrey's reign was the age of plenty which ended quickly. It seems by the end of this age Marika was already disillusioned with the golden order and was planning to subvert it somehow, with the tarnished being put outside of its influence seeming like a failsafe.

we know marika herself strips the tarnished of their grace, it is just something she could do, she is an actual goddess after all

i think i saw a video with the theory that they were originally people.

The tarnished were stripped of grace and sent away to be safe from its influence so they could later come back and destroy it

I think the reason the crows and dogs in Caelid have that golden iris is because they are eating corpses laden with runes, similar to the process Runebears are undergoing

Just because they don't provide an in-game encyclopedia or lore pages. There's a ton of detail and richness, you just gotta search harder for it as it's presented differently.

I find funny since there isnt too much to say about AC6 for now

This comes off as incredibly backhanded towards fromsoft players

how is anyone supposed to catch this? a lot of players are playing 20 feet away from their televisions on a playstation (me). There's no way to pause the game while i dive in towards a hostile npc and walk up to the television to squint at their eyeballs. there's no way to pause the game at all

@@purelizardmilk6598Also most of these enemies are constantly moving and trying to kill you, no effin way anyone is spotting this in gameplay

That sounds interesting, though I think he's slightly off on the source: the Three Fingers (and Shabriri) are the ultimate source for all of the Frenzied Flame's presence in the Lands Between, but the Greater Will has far more tools than just the Two Fingers (Marika, the Elden Ring, and the Erdtree, for starters), and grace explicitly comes from the Erdtree.

literally same there should be a poll to see how many of us actually play the game

Same, I'm usually never here this early

same

Dark Souls 2 has the cursemark be visible on your character's left shoulder and grow the more hollowed you get (it's easy to miss if you're always in full armor) so it seems to vary a bit between installments. Really feels like there's a divide between gameplay mechanics and lore sometimes...

'same texture' is a bit badly worded since they would be part of the texture and placed within it rather than its own specific file, but having the same basis for each eye would not be surprising if they just wanted to reuse

Any kind of order is preferable to anarchy and chaos. If denizens of the current world have such a freedom to consider what they want and gifted ability to edit reality, it heavily implies Greater Will favors autonomy. And the one enforcing Order has to be strong for the simple reason that agents of other Outer Gods will inevitably make a move against them.

Who gives grace to the player and makes the guidance of grace is Marika,Marika herself says this and the 2 fingers think its the greater will but when you are refused by the erdtree they are confused and try to contact the greater will and will take ages to do it

The Golden Order certainly isn't Marika's orthodoxy, given that as soon as she learned about its inner workings she turned against it. Most likely, it is the the working of the Two Fingers, since they are the ones who most want it restored, and they are the ones who want the Tarnished to reject every path but that of the Golden Order. Also, the Greater Will has abandoned the Lands Between. The player can add runes to the Elden Ring because the Greater Will isn't paying any attention. The being that grants grace is almost certainly the Erdtree, since basically every mention of where grace comes from says as much. As for what it wants, I think it's pretty clear: it wants people to grow strong so it can feed off their bodies. That's why those blessed by the Erdtree die when they get strong enough, so they can be buried in the Erdtree's roots. It would explain why Gideon saw that when he looked in the Erdtree, but mistook it for Marika's will (it's not Marika's will, or she wouldn't have taken their grace and banished the Tarnished to return stronger than before - if they still had grace, they would have died)(also, it can't be Marika's will because Marika is dead).

@@watchfulwanderer6443 Golden Order is Marika's creation and plan,Golden Order also refers to the present state of the elden ring,so what happens is that she sets learns how the Elden Ring actually works,and discovers something that makes she plan to shatter it and restore,maybe its for her to reign eternally or something else

@@lordanonimmo7699 No, she explicitly says that she is going to study the Golden Order and wants others to as well, then she turns against the Golden Order, refers to Radagon as its "hound", which implies a pretty significant level of disdain for it, and destroys it completely. It pretty clearly isn't her creation. Also, she wasn't trying to reign eternally, since she explicitly acknowledges both that her children may becomes gods, like her, and also that her plan will see her broken. Like, she explicitly acknowledges, to Radagon, that she will be shattered if she succeeds, and then she does it anyways. Even if she isn't truly dead, even the best ending for her has her as a broken statue holding the reforged Elden Ring, and she is never shown getting better.

This got me thinking... since "4 means death" it's possible it's there to send you a subliminal unnerving message? (Though at the point you've reached Hemwick you've probably gotten used to dying and retrying enough that it wouldn't affect most players...)