I look around the hanging bodies in the storeroom and think about all the insane bosses we could've battled before Messmer burned it all away. That one horned giant humanoid looked like a tough SOB.
P.S. That storeroom definitely put a new twist on the Ancestor and Regal Ancestor Spirits. In fact, this DLC has me looking at the horned ancestral follower enemies in a whole new light now.
@@christopherlyndsay8611If you know how violent, vicious, and dangerous hippos are in real life you can totally get why a giant one with quills would make a great guard animal if tamed. It's definitely a unique choice. There's quite a few big hippos relaxing in watering holes in the Shadowlands
I always wondered why there was this random Hippo in the middle of Messmer's castle. Then I got to the Specimen storehouse and realize that it was probably being kept as a live specimen for research purposes. It also explains why the Church district is flooded, they were using it as a habitat for it to swim around and exercise in.
They originally planned for Messmer to have a third phase where he rides on a flying Golden Hippo while he wields two spears but the computers programming it spontaneously caught on fire, so they scrapped it.
The hippo head with a lion tail and crocodile looking feet reminds me of Ammit, the "Devourer of souls" from Egyptian mythology. Ammit specifically devoured damned souls, making it fitting within the Land of Shadow.
“Why are they called it a hippo? It looks nothing like a hippo” My brother in Grace, have you seen an actual hippo’ skull/skeleton? That thing is accurate minus the rhino horn
I saw a glimpse of it on RU-vid before I finished my first playthrough and thought it looked something like this. I think it was the wings that looked like horns.
@@Joranthalus It's a popular theory that Runebears are bears that are midway into transforming into dragons, based on cut content from the network test and some details of the final model. The new Roar of Rugalea incantation pretty much debunked it, though.
One of the biggest bag fumble in Elden Ring: not putting the hippos under the water instead of the ulcerated tree spirits It coulda been a duo fight where you can sneak and wake one up then the other
@@aswifte5743 I mean its a boss design that survived being scrapped from DS3 in 2015. Honestly good for them for gloating about it and being everywhere, they deserve it.
@@aswifte5743they know *exactly* how annoying they are to fight with their giant health pools and big sweeping attacks and double down by putting them in annoying areas (read: poison swamps and the triple ulcerated tree spirit gank area). More power to them.
Yeah I mean they’re near sources of water all game but that would’ve been a better choice honestly. The two near the river downstream (next to the waterfalls) don’t really need to be there and could’ve been replaced.
So it has wings, is labelled as aquatic and it can curl up and roll around? I'm honestly surprised none of these things dig tunnels, it's the only traversal method this species has yet to master. Heh.
The Golden Hippopotamus would have been such a fun outdoor open-world boss. Just like we saw in the first reveal trailer. And one of them smaller hippopotamuses would have been perfect in Shadow Keep. God, I hate the walls/camera. So much of this game has changed from reveal trailer to final release. Just like the base game's network test and retail version.
@@Cyn_likes_corpses I don't need people to validate my opinions, feel free to be wrong. The Prequels fucking suck. Terrible dialogue, Terrible Story, Terrible Acting. You can let nostalgia win but anyone with eyes can see the lack of quality.
@@anonymous01201 Yes. I mean, bad enough you're fighting something that big in a small arena, but adding WINGS to it would definitely make it so much harder to see what's actually going on.
Especially with the "Aquatic Beast" internal name, he's got some pretty significant Godwyn/Fortissax vibes going on with the thorns & unused wings. Really cool to see this stuff as always, so thanks for sharing all of these!!
The internal name is aquatic beast? It looks a lot like the sea monsters in the map of the base game Also, with the wings the hippo is giving Sanctuary Guardian form DS1 energy
To the Greeks and Romans, especially the Greeks, The hippopotamus was an incredible mythological creature. To them is was much the like the unicorn and dragons to us. In fact, it's thought that the later ideas in Europe of horses living in water, like kelpies, may have stemmed from the myth around the hippopotamus.
Huh, despite being able to cast incantations, it completely lacks the grace of gold in its eyes. Is it because all of them have a skibidi fragment in them?
Pretty sure every crucible thing like omens (besides morgott), misbegotten, and the few hornsent who actually have horns are graceless. And the crucible knights are the only exception because they aren’t actually born of the crucible they just use it.
@@rogerarayasaborio549 The hornsent were purged because Marika is a shaman, and we know what the hornsent did to the shamans. They lack grace because it wasn't extended to them.
@@ZeldaTheSwordsman not everything is turning into a dragon, the hippo does match the description of the catoblepas, an old medieval monster based on word of mouth regarding the hippo and never seeing one.
@@kingcazar2285 It does, yes... because it's turning into a dragon. While not _everything_ is turning into a dragon (or a tree, or a crab), this hippo sure seems to be. That nose horn is a dragon's, the elongated tail is like a dragon's, some of the growths are draconic...
@@monteroa7 They have an animation for the quills disappearing though, so it seems like this might have been a scrapped attack, if it's not just very rare.
As a good guess, I could say that the golden hippos is where Hornsent of the tower harvest the yellow spikes of holy power, like at Midra's mansion with the row of decapitated corpses.
No clue why, but probably one of my favorite animal enemies in the game. Heart broken to see we were robbed of a flying Hippo. Life could've been grand.
I wonder if Messmer got a golden hippo to guard the gate cos it’s right in front of the giant Marika statue, and this thing is blonde. Like it reminds him of his mom AND it’s an insult at her LOL!
When you've been joking about having a slippery hippo with wings as your spirit animal for a decade but then Miyazaki and co decided to whip up this glorious monstrosity....
The multiple keratinous growths look painful, giving the impression that not all Crucible aspects were beneficial. The wings seem unfinished, so they were probably cut rather early on. Aside from having to move the quills around a lot to look good on the model, the wings would have likely obstructed too much of the player's view or clipped into the walls. For a next video, could you please check why the Putresence Sorcerers carry babies?
There's a fairly large dead tree in that area so perhaps its a failed attempt to create a minor erdtree but it is still guarded by two ulcerated tree spirits. Messmer seemed like the type of guy not to take the minor erdtree from his mother's village so he tried to recreate one but it died instead.
Okay, insane theory time: It's got these quills that sprout from it's back, as well as a pair of wings. It also has the legs of an alligator or crocodile and the horn of a rhinoceros, though that's unrelated to my theory. My theory, which I came up with when this hippo was revealed in an early trailer, was that the Elden Beast was the epitome of the crucible and what all the parts originate from. Elden Beast has aquatic elements (tail and fin), avian elements (wings on back), mammal elements (quadrupedal shape, tail and hands), draconic elements (fire breath, also tail and wings) and even plant elements (roots on tail). We see this reflected in the quill rain attack, which resembles an attack the Elden Beast has where it goes on all fours, spreads it's wings and rains down similar projectiles. We also see the fins in the aquatic parts on the Hippos, the breath in the Crucible Knight guarding Tanith, the wings in Edredd and various Crucible knights, the tail in various Crucible Knights and the plant parts in Devonia.
Elden Ring overall has a "medieval ideas about how the world works are how this world actually works" thing going on, so my first impression of the hippopotamus was that it's based on those medieval manuscript depictions of animals. The ones where the designs are way off because it's being drawn by a monk who has only ever had the animal described to it secondhand from sone guy who saw it months or years ago.
I can see why they decided against the boss having wings as well. It's already hard enough to see what's going on, if the hippo had wings as well it would be nearly impossible.
I like to think it's implied to be the "outer god" or god of the Crucible. But if so, it would be really different from the other outer gods. Since some form of pain leads to meeting an outer god.
