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300iqprower · 2 years

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So I was playing Elden Ring and just noticed how every boss is literally weakened by the passage of time. Is this a thing in all Fromsoft games? Elden Ring is the first one I've played and it's fascinating how Fromsoft made it a point to show bosses facing their end because they've been eroded by time.

Is that a thing mechanically? Like I know its open world so do the bosses you choose to do later get scaled down/dont scale to your new level to make it so the later you do a boss the weaker they are? If that's what you mean, no that is an Elden Ring thing.

If you mean lorewise, does the game show how these are ancient beings who are long past their prime and at best a hollow shell of what they once were pretending to be the legend described, oh yes that is very much a FromSoftware thing. And I dont know WHY IN GOD’S NAME I felt a need to systematically break down some examples, but I super did. So here we fcking go. [BUT THATS YOUR TLDR: “YES.” WTF IS WRONG WITH ME THE REST OF THIS IS LIKE 4K WORDS. Oh and sorry in advance for the length before the break but it only lets ya put one Keep Reading i guess...]

Gonna put a spoiler break only later on for heavy spoilers. In the meanwhile there will be light spoilers for Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, and Bloodborne. There will be no Elden Ring or Sekiro spoilers in this post (albeit only cause I've avoided spoiling myself as much as possible on both lol)

Again, the answer is basically “yes.” Like, that is Fromsoft design 101. That has been the core philosophy of every final boss across Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, and Bloodborne. Hell, most bosses in the series in general. It's even a thing in Sekiro, albeit a lot of it is presented very differently (As far as I am anyways. See above.)

> Light spoilers for Bloodborne follow.

Father Gascoigne, the first mandatory boss of Bloodborne, sets the tone very well for this sort of thing. Hunters are very clearly supposed to be the ones who keep order and cull the insane and the beasts during the Night of the Hunt, and when you encounter the only named Hunter thus far it starts out exactly like that, finding a priest in a graveyard with the same weapons you start with, dressed similarly to the default Hunter's attire and hacking at a beast...except, it becomes immediately apparent that it’s already long dead, less a hunter killing prey and more a butcher obsessed with a carcass. Upon noticing you, a fellow hunter, he says “Beasts All Over The Shop…..You’ll be one of them….Sooner Or Later….”

before turning around and revealing he's blindfolded as he lets out a raspy, feral growl. ...And then halfway through the fight he turns into a fucking werewolf.

Yeah, despite being a Fromsoft game, Bloodborne is very quick to make clear what's going on in it. Between the insane mob of villagers, the werewolves running around, the giant roaring abomination that's supposedly a Cleric, and now the first fellow hunter you meet (one working for the Church that is supposed to be the governing authority no less) is as crazed as the beasts themselves and several times as deadly in his brutality, this is clearly a place that has gone to hell long ago, and Gascoigne already told you why: "Sooner or later, you'll be one of them too." Between Gascoigne turning into a beast moments after telling us we'll eventually be one ourselves, and the cryptic lines from our hub dream world about how this is all happened before and is a tradition that will continue, it's pretty clear Bloodborne is about ‘he who fights monsters’ in the most literal sense, and it demonstrates that by having you fight people who have been fighting monsters for far too long to hold onto who they were. This world where crusading hunters once took up arms to defend their home from a plague of beasts are now as bloodlusted as the beasts themselves, to the point where the second mandatory boss ALSO transforms from human to monster before our eyes.

It's really the DLC that goes all in on this idea though. without properly spoiling anything (this is all stuff that is literally in the official description and its CALLED The Old Hunters), names that you heard lauded as great heroes finally make their appearance proper...but as twisted and broken beings who bear no resemblance to their legends and every resemblance to the things they were meant to destroy.

> Light to moderate spoilers for DS3.

You know how Elden Ring does that thing at the start where it shows you all these long fallen characters you yourself will eventually encounter and stuff? Yeah that’s something of a staple of Fromsoftware, specifically what they did with DS1 and 3. While 1 is a lot more coy about it and waits til like the halfway point, though, 3 makes it clear it’s doing the same thing DS1 did right out the gate. “The world is dying, you’re gonna face these guys, and you’re gonna catch on quick they’re all mere shadows of the legends they’re meant to be, in fact we are literally telling you this in the intro.”

And much as I love taking any chance whatsoever to rave about how the best boss in the entire series is The Abyss Watchers, it’s actually everyone’s favorite DS3 meme Yhorm the Giant who takes it. He’s possibly the most built up of all the bosses: Last of the giants and their king, a being who can’t even be killed by the weapons of men, a descendant of a conqueror and a warriors king in his own right...now nothing but a mindless, burnt out husk quietly waiting for death on a subconscious level. He once wielded a greatshield but now two-hands his sword, having long since stopped acting as a ruler in the face of all he’s lost and becoming nothing more than a weapon. Long ago he would give the Storm Ruler, the giant-slaying sword, to those who did not trust him to rule as an act of honor; now it lies carelessly strewn alongside his throne, and Yhorm will attempt to crush you long before you reach it. His one friend Siegward joins you because he knew from the start Yhorm would be like this, and seeks to put the husk out of its misery, even if it costs him his life. Siegward makes clear he would rather die than let his once friend Yhorm spiral ever further into a decay that he is too great to be consumed by yet not great enough to escape, and that’s the entire point. Greatness is a curse, not a blessing. Immortal Life can do nothing to stop the world around you from succumbing to erosion and decay. Just as Yhorm awoke from kindling to find his people still suffered, just as his empire inevitably fell and left him alone, so too did the entire world begin to die as the fire faded ever further. Hollowing is inevitable, because you will always be powerless against entropy in the end. Yhorm knows this beyond any other Lord of Cinder. Whereas the others all went astray in their selfishness or simply went insane from corruption, Yhorm is the one who truly despaired and simply...gave up, on trying to hold onto what he was. His body persisted as a hollowed husk of a once incredible being, but the mind within it died in the face of an immutable reality. Even in gameplay he’s just a walking shell, one of the easiest boss fights in sosulborne history thanks to him having kept a weapon designed for killing him at his side; the Storm Ruler isn’t some measly damage buff against an enemy type, this thing kills him in like 5 hits. From the start you weren’t ‘fighting’ something that was meant to be fought, but to be put down.

> Moderate spoilers for DS1 (middle third of the game or so)

DS1 arguably has the most wide scale example of this, since the entire point of the game is that every major boss is a once great god gone astray, and you have an entire city demonstrating this. At the start of the game we’re shown all these incredible being of old, and it’s made out as if we’re watching legends who created the world give us context on our upcoming adventure. These beings are made out as distant entities so much greater than any of us, meant to be acted in the name of as we kill dragons and stuff. But then, around the third to halfway point, it becomes clear we’ll be fighting them ourselves, and these ‘distant almighty gods’ have fallen from their glory and become what are simply more monsters to be cut down. Nito the lord of the dead is least changed but acts entirely in self interest at this point, dwelling the dark catacombs after imposing the very concept of death onto the world and not caring the slightest for what came after, to the point that what truly weakens him is not Pinwheel’s fucking about, but rather the sheer energy he is putting out to impose the concept of death onto an ever more undead world. The Witch of Izalith? Where to start, how about the fact that in her hubris of thinking she could recreate the first flame, that as a being who had lost their glory she could simply recreate that glory, she turned herself into a horrid abomination and shit-tier boss fight? Because of COURSE that happened. How could you reclaim the height of your power when even at the height of your power you could not hold onto it? How about Seath? Oh the things to say about Seath, what can we call him? Cruel, Jealous, Spiteful, literally and figuratively jaded, insane, pathetic, but of all the things we can call him those things are not “glorious” or “immortal”. He became desperate for the immortality he supposedly “proved” he didnt need by killing his scaled brethren. From declaring he did not need his peers’ immortality, to going insane over his obsession with cloying at whatever possible escape from death there might be.

From Nito’s indifference to Izalith’s hubris to Seath’s madness, they are all fallen in their own way. All their attempts to hold onto their glory only serve to further remove them from it. So many millennia and the god of Death has only become weaker as the world dies. The Witch’s magic that is meant to bend chaos to its will could only damn its wielder in the face of nature’s course. The crystal dragon’s immortality is exactly that: crystal, the fruits of his cruelty and madness nothing more than a feeble crystal easily shattered.

But to loop it all back around, it’s the final bosses of the series who really hammer the theme of ‘faded glory’ home.

> Major spoilers for DS1, DS2, and Demon’s Souls to follow, starting with DS1.

First though....Hey remember that bit I casually dropped about an entire city? You arrive to Anor Londo, carried from desolate undead asylum or the dregs of Blighttown to a great golden city illuminated perpetually by the sunset, powerful knights and cleric giants all over the place, lightning and miracle using enemies whose powers are synonymous with Gwyn’s legacy, and at the end of that gauntlet are Ornstein and Smough in their golden armor and every bit tough and lively as their legends portray. Beyond them, you meet the beautiful Gwynevere who gives you the Lordsoul to truly start your quest for the gods in linking the flame. Even if the gods are all fallen or helpless on their own, we can at least see the legacy they created and hopefully spread through the land. We can at least bring this light back to the rest of the world, knowing it can still be sustained.

Except, that was a lie. It was all a fucking lie.

A lie orchestrated by one feeble god desperate to maintain a literal illusion of his family’s grandeur. A god whose main tactic should you fight him is to run away forever in an endless hallway and blast you with magic because he’s otherwise powerless against a simple human. Should you find and successfully kill Gwyndolin, the magic he cast over the city fades, and we see Anor Londo for what it really is: Dark. The city of the gods, the capital of the Age of Fire that stands against the Dark, has itself gone Dark, and we can’t even begin to imagine for how long it’s been that way. The gods, their cities, their subjects, their champions, all of it is just a shadow cast so long ago that it doesn’t resemble that which cast it, and any evidence that their time hasn’t passed is just another lie you’ve been fed. (...Side note, watch this video I subconsciously almost quoted verbatim)

Thus enters the God who lived and died for that lie, unable to accept a reality in which he did not rule. Thus we meet Gwyn himself....or at least, what little is left of him. Because that guy the game has been building up as your ultimate challenge? That top god who by this point has Final Boss written all over him? That guy who STARTED all this crap and is basically Zeus the Dragon Butcher? Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight?

You don’t fight him. You fight a walking husk, and this time I mean that literally. Burnt inside and out with a body of charcoal and soul of ash. You fight one of the easiest bosses in the game, a boss the devs explicitly stated was designed to make sure any possible build would not struggle much with. You fight a guy who doesn’t have a single lightning attack. You fight Gwyn, Lord of Cinder. And by the next game, he doesn’t even have a name. The one who conquered the everlasting dragons and ushered humanity into their first age is barely a memory in Dark Souls 2, simply known as a distant sun god; his own miracles that were so crucial to his legacy don’t even acknowledge him. The one person we meet who remembers he properly existed regards Gwyn as a blind fool who did not save humanity, but damn it. And by Dark Souls 3, Gwyn isn’t even his own being, he’s just one of many nameless souls to link the first flame.

Once the most powerful of all gods and savior of humankind, now no more valued than the random undead schmuck you played as. Without a doubt the one you see fall the furthest in any Fromsoft game is Gwyn, and it’s exactly what he deserved.

> Onto DS2

Because while Gwyn is the definitive example, he’s not the most extreme example; I’d argue that’s Vendrick. You might disagree since his fall was not as far, but what we saw of him WAS harsher than anything we saw of Gwyn. If not the most extreme, he’s certainly the most tragic, because unlike so many other cases of this in the series, Vendrick knew and accepted that this would happen to him. He’s one of a handful of figures across the series who embody the idea that, among all these legends, the ones truly worth being remembered for their glory are the ones who recognized they must eventually let go of said glory.

What I mean by “what we saw” is...well, just like Gwyn, Vendrick is built up over the course of the game as the great king and conqueror who ruled over the world you’re travelling around, and while Gwyn is foreshadowed as the big bad, Vendrick is directly made out to be the final boss. You’re given a quest, you overcome trials, and it’s all directly in the name of reaching this ancient tyrannical being who as a mere man conquered giants and reigned dragons. And when you finally go through a gauntlet to reach him and break his seals...

...you’re met with a feeble, shriveled Hollow who can barely drag his sword.

Gwyn at least gave the player a sense of who he was. He was a husk, and he was weak, but he put up a fight. He was waiting for you, undeniably himself in body if not mind, and commanding the first flame as his own with a blade wreathed in those flames. He stares you down as you enter and rushes you when you approach, his iconic theme playing as he silently lashes out at you. He was a husk, but he was never completely without dignity. Vendrick doesn’t have any of that. He’s hunched and aimlessly wandering his small chamber when you find him, not even attacking until you’ve hit him several times. He has no grand, iconic requiem accompanying his battle. Instead there is the scant few piano chords of a whisper filled dirge fading in and out, as faded as the empty being before your that has thrown away all but his blade and his crown. His robes, his precious ring, all of it cast aside, knowing the fate that awaited him would have no use for them. He’s nothing more visibly imposing than a giant version of the most basic hollows. His only unique abilities are the incredibly durability and raw strength, both of which he can longer wield effectively as one of the most predictable fights in the game; the same bait and strike tactic that works on any starting grunt works just as well on him. The closest thing to a unique attack he has is a single curse spell that represents everything he was trying to defy.

Gwyn was a far cry of his once glorious self, but he was a proper final boss in atmosphere and presentation if not strength or challenge. There’s no comparison to Vendrick, who is downright unrecognizable and was never your true foe to begin with...just a poor hollow to be put out of its misery...

> But Wait There’s [one] More [thank god]! It’s finally Demon’s Souls time.

Demon’s Souls is very much the Proto-Dark Souls in a lot of ways and how it conveys its themes is no exception. The big thing about soulsborne games is how, as you said at the start of this essay, the things we fight have all been eroded by the passage of time. We don’t see what their true potential is. We never meet them in their full glory. We can only strike down what remains of that faded legend. Even when something like time travel gets involved with various DLCs, we fight things like the Burnt Ivory King and Artorias of the Abyss. Even in the past, the legends we face are already corrupted almost beyond recognition. You simply don’t get to see what their prime is, no matter how curious we may be, because that’s the whole point of the theme of fading glory: You can’t get that back. You can only accept that it’s gone.

.....Old King Allant is a massive, blitz speed, Final Explosion-ing, soul sucking exception to this.

Look at this. Look. At. This. LOOK AT THIS SHIT.

This is not a shell, this is not a husk, there is nothing faded about this Alabaster curb-stomper - he’s practically radiant. Whether he’s something exceptional in difficulty is up to debate, but what isn’t up for discussion is how he’s presented, because every. single. attack. of his radiates power. I’m talking, like, Vergil levels of P O W E R. He’s got a winged aura of storm winds, he delays his windups only to then lunge forward at breakneck speed, just the way he draws sword to face you gives off raw “I’m going to fuck you up” energy - the sword in question being Soulbrandt, a blade that he never once let go of out of his infatuation with the way it grew in strength as his soul grew darker. He sends shockwave projectiles, not magic sword beams, pure shockwaves from how hard and fast he’s attacking. He almost never gets stunned compared to any other human, he has resistances against just about everything including the ability to shrug off any magic you throw at him, and his own magic is so powerful he can either one-shot explode you or steal your levels as he kills you. Above all else though, he’s brutal. He’ll attack relentlessly and swiftly, taking out anyone who’s relying on heal-tanking or fucking around to find out. There are various exploits as there always are, but for most players, regardless of difficulty he’s the one boss we all fear: The kind where there is no trick, you just have to git gud at learning his patterns and countering them. And that’s the main thing that stick with you, just like with Artorias or Maria or Ludwig or Gael or every single bloody Sekiro boss [and from what I’ve seen almost certainly Melania], there’s a swiftness, brutality, and efficiency that truly conveys the power of this legendary figure you’re up against.

Not bad for an illusion, eh?

Yeah I’ve ignored that bit long enough. Old King Allant, or to give his other name, the False King Allant, is truly worthy of being called a warrior king at the peak of his glory....because he was created to be that. The game’s final boss, King Allant XII, is not some alabaster tyrant who conquers dragons and command the demons. He is something even lower than Vendrick in its own way, a mass of mutated, inhuman flesh that pulses and can barely so much as reach out to you let alone strike you, unable to even wield the Soulbrandt fused with its lower carcass, still desperately clinging to it even as the power of the Old One has overwhelmed his physical form. He sought ever more glory, ever more certain his could never fade, and so unlike Gwyn who was puppeted or Vendrick who was hollowed, he became something not just less than human, but unrecognizable as human. We saw him in his glory, and while he retained the strength and power to make that zenith seemingly eternal, intent on and complacent with ruling from his dwelling with the Old One as a mere specter goes forth in his image, when confronted he is not powerful at all. He is, if anything, completely powerless.

Gwyn retained his visage and his dignity, but lost who he was, a burnt husk who possesses none of his own legacy and was doomed to ultimately be forgotten for the very reason of desperately holding onto his glory. Vendrick never ceased to represent that which he believed in, but lost his visage, his dignity, his kingdom, his mind, and his soul, ultimately left with nothing but the acceptance of his own inescapable fate.

Compared to the both of them, Allant is still the most on the nose, because unlike the rest we see that glorious legend. We meet it and fight it before we then deal with the reality of what is left of that same legend. Allant is not a once great, now faded light. He is a blazing pyre snuffed out right in front of our eyes. We go back to back from the peak of his tyrannical and power-mad glory, to a wretched and pathetic abomination pleading for mercy and understanding he does not deserve.

.................................................................................................................................... sigh

There. It’s done.

Ideally I would either now go into how Bloodborne does this amazingly as well with its final boss, but i don't want to spoil it. Not even tagged. Bloodborne has what might be my absolute favorite final boss in all video games, both because of themes discussed here and so many other merits, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone under any circumstance. I don’t care if it’s a 7 year old game (oh god my back), I won’t be the person to spoil that experience for anyone, invested or otherwise. Of course, I could go into the much more willing to spoil Lady Maria because just about EVERYONE knows about her, and from what I’ve seen of Elden Ring she might even have been a sort of “Proof of Concept” for Melania, or I could talk about how Maria is an inverse of this philosophy of “fading glory” and how she stands against the idea of holding onto such…

….but i think i already spent far too long on this, especially when for all i know you were in fact referring to a gameplay mechanic in which case this completely unsolicited WHY DID I WRITE THIS-

#long post #very long post #wall of text #literal essay #I realized how stupid this was around the 1.8k mark but i also knew it was too late to back out by then #This isn't even systematic like I claimed but ya know I only have one life to live so-#i can talk about why Maria and Artorias are such iconic characters some other time #same goes for Abyss Walkers and Burnt Ivory King #I spent multiple hours too many on this #writing analysis #video games #game design #video game analysis #writing shit #dark souls #dark souls 2 #dark souls 3 #demon's souls #bloodborne #elden ring #fromsoft #soulsborne #never let me do this again #never thought i’d get an ask #YOU HAD BETTER APPRECIATE THIS I CHECKED THE WORD COUNT ITS FCKING 4075 #vendrick #father gascoigne #gwyn lord of cinder #king allant #normally im not one for mass tagging BUT I EARNED THESE TAGS DAMNIT

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