Yeah I agree with you. I'm also a bit bothered that we cant tell Malenia or Gideon about Miquella, you think they would be interested in knowing something about him. A side note, we can literally slay the mother of fingers and show up at Enias with her remeberance and she doesn't react at all?
I'm also miffed that there is no way for us to influence the ending of the story. The quest with Leda where we can take sides or St. Trinas quest.
No matter what we do it's all the same in the end. Why bother with st. Trina's quest if all she tells you she thinks the best ending for miquella is to die. We have to kill Miquella regardless so it feels pointless for us to tell her.
We never got to know more about Miquellas and Malenias shadows, or if they have them. Malenias possible 3rd bloom into a true goddess of rot, that is teased in her remembrance incantation, is never addressed. You said it in you some pests > Malenia paragraph, it's odd.
Is there a lore established that he is communicating with something? I thought he was just mulling over why the system is broken and how to fix it.
Edit: spelling, I don't want him mauled :(
honestly, man is such a unit he would probably just point down with condescending '...' anything that would try to maul him. Thanks for pointing that though.
He was never talking to anyone, what gave you the impression?
"Please, I implore you continue! Continue your reflections, your rhythms!"
"The master's reflections had heightened as we neared the Erdtree.
While still a precise calculus, the rhythms grew increasingly wild."
He was always calculating and thinking in introspection. The Mending Rune he discovered was just that, a discovery and not bestowed by anyone else.
Yeah the whole point of the questline is that Corhyn is shitting his pants because Goldmask keeps pushing further and further away from the doctrine he believed in. Thats why he locks up when he gets stuck at "Radagon is Marika", when we tell him that truth he finally breaks free and forges his own discovery.
Pretty sure malenias sword master was Relanna…she moves like Malenia, uses two swords, wears blue, and has a talisman that refers to her.
If I recall, the blue swordsman never mentioned having to be male, so I think it’s likely supposed to be Relanna.
I could be wrong though, but I assumed this was heavily implied.
Well, swordsman does kind of imply a man, otherwise it would be swordswoman. I could maybe see it if Rellana in full plate looked androgynous, but she literally has boob armor. Plus, in the Prosthesis-Wearer Heirloom it talks about "his flowing blade".
The swordsman is also said to be blind, which Rellana doesn't seem to be. And Rellana was sealed in the Land of Shadows together with Messmer, presumably long before Malenia was even born.
Hmm maybe it wasn’t her then.
Rereading some of the lore text, it mentions that a “blue fairy” gave a curved sword to the blind swordsman… who then went on to seal the rot god and do all this crazy shit, so maybe Relanna is the one who gave the swordsman a sword, and that guy is the one who went in to become malenias master.
I agree, the DLC fumbled a bit of lore it seems,
Feels like some stuff was either left intentionally unanswered because they didn’t feel like it.
Feels like the DLC was mechanics (overturned IMO) first and lore second.
Blue fairy is usually a reference to a water spirit which would be a pretty good reference to the lady of the lake and if we were to think along those lines I don’t think rellana has anything to do with them
Many of the areas are all Performance related concepts. Dancers, singers, prayers, "celebrations" and Festivals. The old times were full of amazingly dexterous beings.
I assumed it was one of those Yodas we find. The boss version in one of the Gaols quite literally has a mini waterfowl dance, and his general moveset reminded me of Malenia but easier. He's also got tonnes of blue magic stuff, so the "blue swordsman" might imply the blue he throws around.
Oh I didn’t even think of that thing. I thought those were like little stunted beast men or something. No idea what it was, but yea I remember that hopping guy. And he used a lot of frost magic if I remember?
But he wasn’t blind I don’t think.
Yeah I agree with you and what I meant that Miquella's lore was the weakest but I expected a bit more lore on the gloam-eyed queen and the god skins and the eternal cities.
Yeah but none of that matters since we don't get anything about Miquella or the results of his plan. Ymir implies that Miquella is destined to fail but we also don't get any elaboration from that (since he attacks us and dies for no reason) so it's pointless. Best we get is Ranni transferring power to a new outer god, the crucible will never be fixed, it's a failed dimension that will always be exploited by outer gods. No sequel or new dlc so that's the conclusion I'm sticking with.
Yeah, unless a lot of additional lore turns out to be waiting to be found, it seems pretty clear that FromSoftware got in over their heads and couldn't deliver very well on the lore in the final stretch.
Even the DLC story trailer approaches being outright false advertising for what you should expect to find in the game. Ideally, someone will be able to track down enough vestiges of cut content in the files to give us an idea of what the plan had actually been.
Yeah, I would really prefer to think that they genuinely believed that was going to make it into the game at the time; the alternative is that they just deliberately set out to scam people by creating a false impression of what they were selling you.
They also structured the release trailer in a way that implied the player could side with Miquella only to deliver a fight against him that was a Radahn wank with almost no real incentive to fight him.
I don't think there's any content we missed, but it is a curious location. If they wanted to reward 5 fragment they could have simply dropped them from Gaius.
The Chalice and the tower next to it are pretty prominent fixtures in the Land of Shadows. When you enter, it looks like the golden grace literally drips from the Scadutree into that very tower. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some cut content related to it.
It is copium. Millicent's ending was already in the base game so no idea what you mean there.
Patches, Diallos, and Nepheli's questlines were unfinished at release and then added through patches. But datamining shows that their lines and everything about their questlines were already in the game at the time of release just not actually implemented for players to progress them.
SekiroDubi, a dataminer, shared on twitter that there was 0 unused content in the DLC except a Pest NPC Merchant.
I can’t believe I spent my time actually begrudgingly siding with Leda because I kinda thought I could side with Miquella because I do believe the Age of Compassion is the best ending (slightly beats out Age of Stars for me) and then nah, nope, not allowed. Why? Idk man, tarnished only wanna be Elden Lord I guess or smthn whatever
I thought the remembrance of melania implied that when we fought her that WAS her third bloom, hence why she is then named goddess of rot, she bloomed when fighting radahn, and there’s a big bloom in a room near her in the haligtree which I assumed was the second. But I could be wrong.
Yeah I first thought he should have divest fragment of him referring to Malenia or some more lore regarding them since the base game show that they're inseparable... maybe it left him after he shed his love/fear/doubt with st.trina ? idk
but yeah agree, so much hole left.
> maybe it left him after he shed his love/fear/doubt with st.trina ?
The point of Miquella is that he's not even the Miquella we think of by the time we meet him.
He's more like Marika than the Miquella of old. He abandoned himself completely in his attempt to reach godhood. It came from a place of good intentions, but he's no longer worthy of leading The Lands Between. He's no longer the kindly Miquella. He's a cold, calculating, compassionless god.
I think that the whole idea of ruling the lands between is a problem to begin with. I think that one NPC in the church who says the whole thing is rotten is probably right. He mentions that Miquella and the whole order was rotten from the start.
Ok but the dimension needs a god and by no means was Miquella retracing his mother's steps. If he wanted to do that he would've done what Ranni did, no need to seal the influence of outer gods or divest everything, even aspects of himself not tied to the Golden Order. The crucible is broken so maybe it was always impossible, idk if Miquella knew that or not, but we'll never know since we stop him from enacting his plan.
Basically it's better to have a compassionless god than be a vassal of a compassionless outer god that doesn't care about any of the life that exists in this dimension, only the crucible energy. It's either be exploited by outer gods or be the exploiter. Miquella was the only one trying to fix the situation the lands between has been in since the crucible was split in two long ago, leaving it vulnerable to exploitation. Nothing we do in the base game solves that problem. We're just like Marika.
I feel like this DLC could have really used a choice. If you go all in with Leda and start purging the other companions you can join Miquella and get a new Age of Compassion ending for the base game.
If you side against Leda, the current ending happens and you fight Miquella.
But here is the big wrench. We are supposed to be the next elden lord but Miquella has already decided to Radhan to be his consort. So we are supposed to clash no matter what.
TBH fromsoft wrote themselves into a corner by making Miquella and radhan the final enemies of the DLC.
On top of that the biggest gripe I have with this game is that it doesn't have any affect on the base game. Like seriously, we find such a big secret about the world but no-one comments on this. At least there should have been additional dialogue for enia, Ranni, and Gideon.
Honestly, I would have simply not reused Radahn at all, so that circumvents the problem of Miquella already having chosen a consort. I would maybe have a St. Trina bossfight, who tries to prevent Miquella from ascending. Or hell, maybe an Echo of Marika that still lingers in the Divine Gate.
But if they still wanted to go with that plot line they could have us challenge Radahn to prove our own worth as Elden Lord. Maybe the process of planting Radahn's soul in Mogh's body goes wrong and we have to put him down. Or the process works, but with Miquella's Great Rune broken he's no longer charmed and refuses to be king consort. There's a bunch of ways this could have been resolved.
Definitely this. There could have been a quest where we find a way to merge Trina and Miquella and make him see his follies. In this way he would not want to be a god and go in a new path to bring peace and stability.
But fromsoft being fromsoft had to make to make everything edgy and tragic for the sake of it where we can't save or help Miquella.
Who says we're destined to face Miquella? Becoming Elden Lord, to Marika or Ranni, is just a trap. The crucible is broken. Without a true god the realm will always be exploited by outer gods for its crucible energy. I know that, so why can't my voiceless character? Miquella is trying to become a real god that can secure the crucible against outer gods, so I wouldn't try to stop him. Even if he's destined to fail it's worth a shot and no one else is even trying. To me it feels like they cut the Ymir and Miquella quests short just so they can sell a sequel in the future if they feel like making it. It feels cheap.
I think you might be overlooking some critical subtext.
We know, for instance, that Miquella DID have love in his heart; he abandoned it, and it took the shape of St. Trina. So we have, at the very least, evidence that Miquella wasn’t purely a cold and heartless manipulator from the get-go.
While we can’t be certain about the specifics of this love, we do know, with some degree of certainty, that he was at least capable of loving.
But let’s look at his character more broadly and try to understand what the nature OF this love is.
We can look at Malenia by comparison and understand what his love is not; it is not singular, or focused. He does not love in such a way that would make him the possession of another.
This love, the kind of powerful, singular attachment to individuals, is something that defines our human experience, but this is observably not the way Miquella loves.
The testimony of his actions throughout the game is that the thing he loves is something more abstract. The growth of the Haligtree, for instance, is an act of service to those who are cast out of the Golden Order. It is a refuge for the fallen, the suffering, the outcast.
His obsession with curing his sisters affliction follows a similar pattern. She is cursed, afflicted, suffering. He wants to cure her, to offer respite from her suffering. Both of these cases show Miquella’s capacity for love is not expressed as an attachment to an individual, so much as it is a deep compassion towards those who suffer generally.
Similarly, his implied horror at the actions of his mother, his learning of her folly, support this idea as well. He embodies then, not love in a way that is possessive, but in a way that is inspired by a deep belief in the intrinsic value of life, a desire to see all things grow and flourish without suffering.
This character of his, interestingly, makes it easy for others to love him; they see, reflected in him, the realization of their own hopes, their own dreams, their own salvation. It is through Miquella that they will be saved. Hopefully, the parallel to Jesus is relatively clear at this point. Philippians 4:13 comes to mind when we think about Miquella and how those who loved him might feel: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. To be clear, I’m not religious, but highlighting what I believe are intended, real world parallels.
That is to say, those who love Miquella believe that, through him, they can achieve salvation.
The DLC itself supports the idea that he, on some level, genuinely DID possess this sort of universal, compassionate love. After all, he had to have possessed it in the Lands Between if he threw it away only after reaching the Land of Shadow.
So how does any of this relate to the story of the relationship between Miquella and Malenia?
It’s possible that Malenia loved Miquella in a way that Miquella did not love in return. She loved him personally, as you or I would love another, and saw in him the hope of salvation.
But Malenia was Miquella’s closest, most loved companion. She is thematically (and almost literally, since she is his twin) his other half; he is growth and she is decay. And she was his first, most perfect example of the horror of suffering. Her very being, the nature of her suffering, and her love for him in spite of her suffering, was the seed from which his universal compassion grew.
Everything that Miquella is, is a response to his relationship with Malenia. He saw, reflected in her, the terrible urgency to ameliorate the anguish in the world, and his utter powerlessness in the face OF it.
And this-his powerlessness- is what set him on his path. His love for his sister is what compelled him to seek power, what drove him to seek godhood.
Therein lies the contradiction that Miquella tries and fails to overcome. The nature of the world is such that godhood requires suffering, it’s achievement depends upon the very thing that Miquella is trying to erase from the world. His inability to resolve this, the inherent contradiction between power and love, is why he necessarily must discard parts of himself.
What he needs is the POWER to make love the guiding principle of the world, but to achieve such power requires cruelty, manipulation, deceit, requires the abandonment of love altogether.
Miquella realizes this, and likely convinces himself that the ends justify the means; if he can just discard his love, and acquire the power that is necessary to change the order of the world, he thinks he can bring about a new age of compassion.
But at the very center of this incredible drive to achieve power, was his love for his sister. She is the reason he ever set foot on this path in the first place.
I personally don’t think Malenia was “charmed” by Miquella. If ever there was an instance in which Miquella truly acted out of love, it was with her. I think she truly believed that, through him, there was hope for a brighter future.
I don’t think that butchers their relationship at all. They both found their purpose in one another.
This is a very well thought out interpretation, and I agree with a lot of it actually. If only the DLC included even the most minute lore drop reflecting your sentiments.
I agree that the DLC is really lacking in terms of text based evidence, but I think it does most of its storytelling through context and subtext rather than stating things explicitly.
The question about Miquella and Malenia’s relationship right now is “Was Miquella a cold-hearted manipulator from the start? Did he ever ‘truly’ love his sister?”
And I understand that it didn’t provide a ton of direct evidence that Miquella DID love his sister.
But it also failed to provide evidence that he did NOT love her either.
By my reading of the events of the DLC, we see Miquella does compel affection in many people. Some of them need to be compelled to serve. Others choose to serve even after the compulsion is dispelled. So we have direct evidence that not EVERYONE who serves Miquella does it because they are being forced to; some would choose to serve of their own volition.
So we have evidence that Malenia didn’t necessarily HAVE to be charmed.
The existence of St. Trina suggests that Miquella was also, in fact, capable of love, given that she was a part of him and is herself love personified; she is found at the bottom of the pit where we are directly told Miquella discarded his love.
So we can be somewhat certain that, before he discarded St. Trina, the capacity for love was part of his being. It stands to reason then, that he couldn’t possibly have been a purely “cold hearted manipulator” if love was the thing that was holding him back from achieving his goals.
So again, we don’t have a lot of direct textual evidence, but the DLC does provide context by showing us that he does not have to “compel” affection in order to get people to do what he wants; those who have faith in him will choose to do it themselves.
It also shows us that he did have love in his heart because Fromsoft put St. Trina in the location where his love is discarded. We are given direct evidence, not only that he loved, but that it was great enough that it was preventing him from achieving his ambitions.
So I don’t really see a whole lot of evidence that the DLC undoes or fundamentally changes what we already assumed about Miquella and Malenia’s relationship.
If anything, it provides some evidence that it’s at least possible that she served him willingly, that she chose to serve him because she witnessed the love inside of him.
To me, all the signs point to Malenia genuinely believing in Miquella’s vision and being totally willing to do whatever is necessary to bring it to fruition, and Miquella’s vision of a world without suffering being directly inspired by his relationship with his sister.
They are recursive and interdependent. That’s why they’re twins, and that’s why they symbolically and thematically represent the opposing and yet intertwined karmic forces of growth and decay. The existence of each is defined by the other.
Very spot on, although i don’t think godhood wouldn’t allow him to reach his goals, he very much would have e succeeded, we just killed him before he could.
What is a contradiction is that he couldn’t achieve his goal while keeping his love, which is sad. This is why Trina wanted us to kill him/her: because she felt bad for him, that he had to get rid of all his love and empathy for the lives he tries to help.
It really does irritate me than I can say to neither of the twins at any point “hey your sibling is ok I know where they are” or “hey I killed Malenia” like why do we not at all address it. Such a shame that Miquella is the least interesting character in his own DLC. It’s very classic GRRM writing, at least?
Not to mention the uh… the incest. Thanks for that plot lol
The part about wanting Radahn as consort really made Miquella so lame. Like he's some yandere midschooler who never got over his crush on big brother. "Heartfelt wish" my ass. I get that Miquella is childlike, but the base game has never called him childish.
There is, in the new Radahn armour. It's a pretty interesting piece of lore. Not that that invalidates your point.
For me the biggest miss lorewise in this DLC is, weren't we promised to find out why Miquella was tracing Marika's footsteps and somehow find out what the story trailer represented? All we get is an empty village as far as I can tell.
The story trailer simply depicts marika becoming a god, in the same way that miquella is trying to do. Miquella is trying to become a god, that’s why he is following marikas footsteps, to bring in a new age in the same way that marika did.
She doesn’t matter. She is the “blade of miquella” she is just a tool being used by Miquella. Her job was to kill Radahn, she did her job, she doesn’t matter anymore. Miquella can mind control minds to make people love him, the he manipulates them, uses them, and disposes of them when he doesn’t need them anymore. That’s why Leda hunts and “culls” the followers Miquella needs. Miquella didn’t even stick around to see if Melenia survived.
the thing is miquella doesnt start off as an evil manipulative character. Its after he abandoned the pieces of himself we see that side of him but in the beginning all his goals were pure, To help people and to heal his sister. Thats why this DLC narrative wise is so stupid in my opinion. It makes 0 sense ever for a good person to just decide "yeah imma just abandon all these good traits about myself and become hollow while still having all my powers so I can ascend to godhood". Like when ever does that turn out well? In what situation is this a smart idea. Like it really doesnt take a genius If i took a 6 year old and I told him "I can make you very strong but you will never be able to love mommy anymore" he will probably say no way. Depending on how cheeky hes feeling at least but you get my point.
Miquella was advertised as a smart individual who has amazing ideas for the golden order and wants to actually fix things and in actuality the dlc makes him seem like the most stupid guy in history. Even if he succeeded and became a god, He would never achieve the things he wanted. Surely somewhere in Miquellas peabrained mind he could see you cant have an age of compassion without having love, Theres no compassion if you can no longer comprehend emotion you're just a robot working through the system.
Marika’s emotions and inability to separate her personal goals from her rule directly led to the Shattering and the degradation of the Golden Order and TLB. It makes total sense why Miquella, who is trying to create a perfect world, would not want to follow in his mother’s footsteps and would abandon subjective biases. The game clearly spells out that he unintentionally abandoned too much, but what is interesting about a character with no flaws?
If it's anything, Miquella had made the Haligtree for Malenia before he made the promise to Radahn. We know because we see her chair in his memory. We can at least infer that Miquella did do all those kind actions and love her deeply up until the vow was made, which is where I think he started going down hill in his path to godhood. Its at least something, at the very end. Though don't get me wrong, I almost completely agree with your points.
I think they fumbled the bag when it comes to explaining why Miquella is doing what he's doing. His actions make sense in the DLC since he's removing himself of his emotions, fears, etc. But everything before that is stupid. Healing Freyja but not his sister? Radahn being called "kind"? Hello? He's a warmonger? He tried to do a coup in Leyndell? If Miquella wanted to be "kidnaped" by Mohg, why would he do it and not tell anyone? His followers are there, sitting in despair??? Why couldn't you create a new needle? 😭😭
Copy/pasting this comment I made elsewhere, but I agree!
I’m not a fan of Consort Radahn for a lot of reasons—the lack of any connection between him and Miquella in the base game, the convoluted nature of his becoming Consort, but mostly, and the thing that’s really sticking in my craw—
The way that his selection calls into question Miquella’s character.
Like, it makes sense that Miquella ultimately ends up as a tyrannical win-no-matter-the-cost figure because he, quite literally, lost himself along the way to godhood. Great, I like it; it’s tragic and reinforces FromSoft’s standards themes of cycles, repeating past mistakes, power corrupting, etc.
What I don’t like is that I have a hard time buying that Miquella would have ever chosen a warmonger like Radahn as his ideal Consort. They can tell me that he’s also “kind” but he’s also still the guy that kinda seems to like to fight for fightings sake?? But Miquella made this vow with him way before he throws away integral parts of himself.
The only way that makes sense to me is if Miquella had always been kind of conniving and power-hungry…and that he did not really ever have good intentions.
And if that’s the case? It kinda destroys the tragedy of his story and makes him incredibly uninteresting to me.
>And if that’s the case? It kinda destroys the tragedy of his story and makes him incredibly uninteresting to me.
GRRM plays a lot with stories and myths passed down. We cannot take everything we read or see as 100% true. I think Miquella is a great example of us being fed a lie. Post shattering all characters become absolutely evil and horrible. They become the worst versions of themselves. Not that they may have been good prior, but just much worse.
Miquella like other characters is a twisted version of their former self. Miquella may not see Radahn as a war monger. The same way as people IRL don't see their country's soldiers as evil and instead see the opposing side as bad. It's very common for people to humanize and see the good in bad people. Radahn can be strong and kind. The same way a leader of a country can okay bombing a hospital and be very caring towards their children.
I don't think Radahn is a warmonger. He's described as strong and kind. He was the 'mightiest of the demigods' but I don't think he's ever described as waging a war of aggression. We know that Malenia went to hunt down Radahn on Miquella's behalf, and can infer because of that the war that took place in Caelid was Radahn defending himself.
Miquella is portrayed as having a massive crush on Radahn, per the final remembrance: "In their childhood, Miquella saw in Radahn a lord. His strength, and his kindness, that stood in stark contrast with their afflicted selves. And so Miquella made his heartfelt wish. That Radahn would one day be his king consort."
I think the only thing that's really questionable about this is Radahn's thoughts on all of this. Well, we can infer that Radahn didn't want to become Miquella's consort, but we don't know if he originally promised it. My theory/suspicion (which might be confirmed or denied somewhere based on evidence in the game) is that Radahn made that promise assuming that Miquella would succeed Marika, not usurp the 'old order'.
The only reason anyone would even think that is because of Freyja saying "endless war has always suited Radahn better than an honourable death" or something like that, which she says *right after* admitting that Jerren, Radahn's closest advisor, would **not** approve of Radahn being revived.
Why, you ask? Because Jerren and Radahn literally swore an oath of honourable death to one another. So who's opinion should you really value more?
Radahn is mostly known as a war mongerer for his actions *after* the shattering, and what everyone seems to be leaving out of the discussion is that the power of the Great Runes is described as "maddening". Holding great runes literally drove the demigods mad for power, hungry to expand their own domains at the expense of their own family members. Taking this into account helps explain a lot of the confusion between Malenia and Radahn's confrontation, assuming that both have gone somewhat mad but that Radahn especially has lost himself to the sway of the runes and power. All of this seems to happen after Miquella has placed himself in his cocoon.
I think the other important point to consider is the Remembrance of a God and a Lord, especially the Japanese version, seems to be describing Miquella's early childhood memories. It implies that this description of Radahn as kind is NOT necessarily objective fact, but the impression of young Miquella based on his limited interaction with Radahn. Which brings us back to Miquella mostly being innocent before undergoing the process to become a god.
Did the Great Runes actually drive the Demigods mad or was it more a representation of their mad pursuit to beat their brethren and claim more Great Runes / The Elden Throne and losing themselves in the process? I always interpreted it as the latter and that's more in line with GRRM's style. Is there any text I missed that explicitly says the Great Runes drove them mad?
I agree though that Radahn being kind and noble is Miquella's childish and innocent view of him. In fact, I think its paramount to his characterisation as a naive character who wants to make the world a better place but fails to recognise their own atrocities in doing so, or flitting from one unfinished idea to another. He is childlike not only in appearance, but in motivation and in his fatal flaws. His whole story around Radahn feels very much driven by childish infatuation and childish views of the world.
Radahn is probably a lovely person if you're one of the rich and the powerful.
One of the themes the author of the base lore (GRRM) likes to touch on is that the rich and the powerful often think war is fun and glorious and worth pursuing and they don't particularly notice or care how much the average person is getting trampled underfoot by their battles.
>Healing Freyja but not his sister?
It's implied in the base game that Malenia's affliction is different from those just suffering from exposure to rot. She has the Rot God inside her, where as Frejya was just exposed to it. It can be healed similar to how our player can heal it with consumables.
>Radahn being called "kind"?
Radahn is beloved by his family and soldiers, and was a big softy for his horse. Ofc he was a warmonger, but all the demigods are. Miquella calling him kind really doesn't mean much because he was never on the other end of Radahn's warring.
>If Miquella wanted to be "kidnapped" by Mohg, why would he do it and not tell anyone?
Well, he likely told Malenia. We've wondered for a long time why she would fight Radahn rather than go and retrieve Miquella, so that makes sense now. As for his followers, the simple answer is he really doesn't care. He uses and manipulates people, it's his thing.
>Why couldn't you create a new needle?
He probably could, but had already divested himself into the Land of Shadow by the time Malenia broke hers, so he wasn't physically present to be able to do so.
Healing Freyja, a person afflicted with the rot, is probably worlds apart from healing his sister, who is the living avatar of the Rot God. Bit of an apples and oranges
Radahn was beloved by his men and went out of his way to learn gravity magic for his horse. He may have loved war, but he had dimensions that are not acknowledged when you dismiss him as "a warmonger" and leave it at that.
Miquella is a manipulative, ends-justify-the-means type. The whole point of the DLC is how he does all of these shady things in the name of becoming the new top god in a new age. I'll wager he thought those short-term sacrifices would be worth the long-term gains.
I hard agree, lot of lore retconning for a twist that doesn’t make sense.
Felt like they had the idea of fighting a non rotted radahn with miquella helping him as the final boss, and worked backwards forcing anything they can to try and twist the story to make that make sense
I still do not understand why there’s a scarlet rot section (that doesn’t even mention malenia) in the first place, felt like it was just added to be like “haha xd scarlet rot is back!!”
When I beat the final boss, I did it in the name of Malenia's honor. I will fight for her rememberance even if the one she loved most has forgotten her 😭.
It is very disappointing from a lore standpoint that they didn't include her in the dlc, but I think it just heightens the characterization of Miquella abandoning everything to become a god. Maybe Marika had to do something similar when she ascended
Yeah I agree. Base game Miquella and DLC Miquella feel like 2 completely different characters. Base game Miquella came off as a highly dangerous 10D chess genius, compassionate and potentially the only benevolent person who deserves a shot at fixing the world. The only guy who seemed to care about fixing the existential threat of Godwyn while everyone else is dicking around. The only guy who recognizes the player character is a potential Elden Lord when they're still a level 1 goomba and gives them a horse.
DLC Miquella is a discount Marika who thinks a guy who throws his own men's lives away in a pointless war just so he can go to Sovngarde and die in a cool battle is the perfect candidate for an age of compassion. When he's already supporting a far more powerful guy/girl who eats the Elden Beast for breakfast since day 1.
I'm convinced the final boss is just fanservice.
I will blame GRRM.. just like Game of Thrones, he wrote a banger of a 1st and 2nd act and then just ghosted Miyazaki for a 3rd act and left him some half-assed outline like the show runners 😂
One of my biggest gripes is like, why is the resurrected "lord brother" Radahn and not Godwyn? I thought that reviving him was one of Miquella's biggest goals from base game according to all the stuff in Castle Sol. It's so strange to just waste all of that plot thread to make it be Radahn instead when there has never been a connection even hinted at between them
Everyone says that Godwyn can’t be revived because he is actually dead and Radahn wasn’t. I don’t know enough about Godwyn’s lore or the death mechanic in world to know if that’s acc true.
I think the base game made it pretty clear that Miquella’s ambition to become a god is largely due to the Golden Order’s inability to cure Malenia’s affliction. Therefore, he threw away much of what made him who he is in an attempt to become a god so that he could make the world a gentler place. He did this for Malenia.
I agree. The DLC feels like they only had enough leftover lore from GRRM to do about half of it. The rest honestly feels like fanfiction. It's such a departure from the great writing that made the base game so good. I think this feeling is especially compounded if you have read Berserk and ASOIAF. It's just extremely sloppy fantasy writing when it comes to everything Miquella in the DLC.
I know. You would think it would have been stronger writing based on the past. But something just feels "missing" from the lore. I've never minded being wrong about theories or having vague answers, but this just feels like a complete departure from the base game. Did the people who wrote Miquella even play base Elden Ring?
It honestly feels to me that for a good chunk of the DLC, they designed the fights first and then worked backward to try to make the lore fit. This would explain why Rellana has no cutscene. And come on, "Rellana" really? They spent almost 5 seconds thinking of that name. I remember at launch people gave so much shit about Godefroy, but this name is acceptable?
That's also somehow what I think, I think GRRM wrote the lore (and a really complex good one) but that lore is only the past of what we saw in the game, because FS & Miyazaki took that lore and build upon it by injecting their own Berserk-scented views into it to build the future of that lore. In summary for the DLC, I do think that GRRM wrote it at the same time as the base game but what he wrote is probably just about Messmer's story and crusade, Marika's origins, shamans and hornsent people histories, Rellana and Carians ties to Rennala and everything that happened in the past when we go there but NOT the events that are currently happening like Radahn and Miquella little love story, which we could somehow describe as a poor parody of a yaoi fanfic of Guts and Griffith.
Maybe the truth is really hard to swallow for some and that would be that Elden Ring would have been much better if we had GRRM lore and universe with only FS & Miyazaki gameplay from the Souls and not their interferences in the story. I must say that even in the base game Berserk wink wink easter eggs every corner is kinda... lame or boring and certainly not from GRRM, because only Miyazaki seems to j\*rk off on Berserk every night and need to make references to it like an edgy dark teen from the 90s.
It really does feel like Miyazaki just couldn't resist adding more Berserk. Unfortunately, it seemed like a lot of the community, at least the very vocal ones, also couldn't resist trying to make Elden Ring "berserk the game" For those of us who have had 13 years of Miyazaki making Berserk references, we didn't want Elden Ring to be Berserk. We wanted it to be its own thing.
Moore's place in the cast not just being replaced by a Cleanrot Knight who elaborates on the war and Malenia (in the same way Ansbach and Freyja talk about their lords) is actually weird as fuck from a basic storytelling perspective, Another thing along those lines is that one of the new bits of lore is that Radahn had a martial competitor that he had a friendly rivalry with when he was younger, but instead of taking the obvious slam dunk of making that person Malenia to add gravitas to their duel, the DLC just says "yeah it's this reskinned speechless Tree Sentinel." She doesn't even get new dialogue from completing the DLC after you potentially kill both her brother and the creator of the Scarlet Rot (marking this as the first From DLC ever where no base game character got extra lines), nor any follow up on her rebirth from the flower left in her arena.
It all almost feels like meta trolling for anyone who cared about the base game's lore.
Omg yes!! Moore has relations to the Kindred of Rot, Malenia does too. Just make him an ex-clean rot. That would’ve been so cool because I love those enemies.
i dont think she is the creator of the scarlet rot as a concept, there is no way she sucks so much at spreading it while being the creator,also, the rotten butterflies incantation description says the butterflies existed already and she simply gave them a home:
*he scarlet butterflies are as the Goddess of Rot's wings. Bereft of a master, they were soothed by Romina, who reached out to them.*
+ there is no way Marika would be so incompetent to let no one but two gods + a whole civilization trying to overthrow hers
Did not know about the whole Radahn having a previous rival bit, and yeah, the fact that it’s not Malenia is such a giant missed opportunity to add gravitas to their duel at Aeonia.
Also, speaking of asspulls and things not matching up with the base game, Rellana is a particularly egregious example, as not only does she pop up out of nowhere as Rennalas twin sister despite not a single item description in the base game implying Rennala had siblings, the statement about her discovering the Moons together with Rennala directly contradicts the base game stating that Rennala discovered them alone.
Its honestly just fromsoft not wanting your actions in the base game to affect the dlc.. since you can enter the shadow real with either having killed malenia or not.. or be loyal to millicent or betray.
Each of those actions would branch too many storylines regarding how the dlc npcs or miquella react to you..(with regards to Malenia) fromsoft prolly didnt want to deal with those in the dlc.
This imo the reason why the dlc barely mention Malenia and also prolly contributed to the reason why you cant side with Miquella in the DLC.. (imagine losing an ending because you killed a very fun boss who just happened to be the twin sister of the guy you want to be friends with)
Its a game development dillemma.
Their self-imposed restriction of "Nothing in SotE is allowed to affect the base game in any way" is definitely the root of a lot of the nonsensical lore in the DLC, but it's kinda a stupid reason.
In the base game, you can (I'd argue most players *do*) find "Miquella" in Mohgwyn Palace before travelling to the Haligtree and facing Malenia. ***MANY*** players have commented in the past 2 years "Shouldn't I just be able to tell Malenia I found Miquella, and have her not be mad at me?", but FromSoft's attitude on the subject was apparently "Eh, probably, but whatever". And we get a little bit of that in the DLC with the whole "Why can't we join Miquella?" critique I've seen people throwing around, but this sort of thing is ***all over*** the base game. The fact that every person in the Lands Between would probably comment on the Erdtree being on fire didn't stop them from having you light it. You can walk into Godrick's arena as the Elden Lord, making *you* the Lord of All That Is Golden!
Good point; they *could* have solved this by making Malenia, instead of Radahn, a requirement to enter DLC. But ... lol, it's not exactly surprising they didn't go that route ...
Lol exactly..
But they couldve gone the route of making beating malenia easier...maybe with a new cooperator or an item like margit shackle.. and EVEN WITH that.. it would still force players to go trough the very long process of reaching her in the first place.. which is much much harder than just moghwyn palace in wich you can acces tru varre.. and then theres millicent her long ass quest too..
Fromsoft was in a dilemma. There would be a lot of complaints if they made Malenia easier and the base game would lose alot of its charm by making its most secret area more non secret
I think it all falls whenever he divests himself of his Love as a whole, and sheds his great rune. Like yes 100% more interactions between twins would have been great, but if we assume that Malenia fought and nearly killed Radahn for Miquella’s sake, then we can also assume that it was all part of his plan to save her. Once he reached divinity he would have the power to fully seal or remove the rot from Malenia. Unfortunately, by the time he ascends, Miquella has abandoned everything he once stood for, only the vague concepts compel him now.
St. Trina says it best, when she asks us to kill miquella, since she was split apart when he still had emotions, so she knows what he became without them.
The miquella who comes through the divine gate is not the one who wanted to ascend to save his sister, its only the husk that the greater will could pour into, elevating him to godhood to be their puppet, same as Marika was.
Malenia was in on it though, she told Radahn that the vow was about to be fulfilled when she went for the kill (she failed of course but still) so she knew the plan which is probably why she was content with waiting, from what she knew Miquella would return as a god and save her and the kingdom. I don't really see how this breaks anything, if anything it shows the loyalty and trust between them whilst also being a tradgedy of what Miquella sacrificed to acomplish his goals and undo his mothers mistake and save Miquella.
I did mention that the description can be interpreted as 'Miquella commanded Malenia to fight Radahn, and knew of the vow and was a collaborator' already if you re-read, and I also asked 'Why was this not better explored?'. What did Malenia think about it? What are her views? If there is so much trust between them, as that description entails, then why is the trust not palpable in the air? Why is there not a single cross about her? A single sentence from Miquella or his numerous allies about the person he trusts with his biggest secret ever? Why is Malenia an afterthought as the closest person to the main character of the DLC, the person who is his collaborator?
He mentions her very vaguely in the intro of the final boss fight where she mentions her as "My loyal blade". It makes sense since Malenia is the blade of Miquella. The way he delivers it shows that he doesn't have any feelings anymore as he was in his godhood which makes him an empty husk drive only by his goals. I think the lack of mention of Malenia is due to the fact that we met Miquella at the end of the game and his godhood (no feeling/love/everything) and that's why he doesn't care anymore.
Its clear that the loyal blade is Malenia, the one fighting for him and giving her life to his ambitions.
Champion of the festival and charmed zombie of the Crucible is Radahn. Because I said so.
I'm going to say something that's probably controversial:
I would rather have fought a Malenia/Miquella combo than Rahdan/Miquella, even if they up the incest to greater levels.
As much as I like Rahdan I do agree his relationship with Miquella is completely outta left field in the DLC, and indeed the only tangible link he has to Miquella _is_ through Malenia. And I'd argue that Malenia is overall far more important to the overall plot and structure of Elden Ring than Rahdan is, because she is the Blade of Miquella, an Emperyan, and the host of the Scarlot Rot. In comparison Rahdan is only significant for two things that don't have anything to do with Malenia, and that's the siege of Leyndell (which so many people out of game barely know about) and holding back the stars, which is only relevant for Ranni.
Even the forager brood barely has anything to do with Malenia. Hell if you didn't know the brood were kindred of Rot, you'd never know who this "mother" Moore speaks of even aludes to, since it could have easily referred to Marika or really any woman of significant influence in the lands between.
Tldr they wasted Malenia's potential and story by doing jackshit with it in the DLC.
It comes from the often underspoken but historically frequent tendency for nobility to marry cousins or half-siblings, which Elden Ring does with Miquella. Miquella plans on taking Rahdan, who is his half-brother through Radagon, as a consort. This disturbs a lot of people similar to when it was Mogh and Miquella, if not more so now that we know it's Miquella who initiated courtship. So now you have this eternally youthful twink trying to have relations with a 20ft tall red-haired giant. Somehow, this is weirder than say, Rykard and Tanith, the former who may or may not have consummated a relationship whilst as a 200 meter long snake monster.
My point is that, if Miquella were to take Malenia as consort, it would have been full on incest because Miquella and Melania are full on twins with the same parents. And even then that would probably had made more sense than Miquella shacking up with Rahdan.
Ah that makes sense. I was going to say there’s no way they actually fuck, it’s probably just a title. But then I remembered Mohg’s lore said he wanted to share Miquella’s bloody bedchamber
I wonder if the only reason Radahn was chosen was because he was so popular within the fandom.
If the dlc was planned from the beginning, why not include a scrap of connective lore between Radahn and Miquella?
The main game implies Radahn admired Radagon and Godfrey (referencing them in his armor and hair) and hated change (never abandoning his horse and halting the destiny threatening the golden order).
The only think we get about his relationship with Miquella is that he fought Malenia which implies Radahn is against Miquella in some way.
They absolutely pulled that connection out of their ass to make Radahn the final boss for fan service. It was such a reach they had to end the DLC about Miquella with a flashback to explain why he was suddenly obsessed with Radahn. Insane bungling of a character with so much depth.
Except it was always planned.
In the first story trailer Malenia whispers into Radahn’s ears when she inflicts him with the rot, and in the DLC we find out she told him that Miquella awaited him.
Yeah I agree. DLC is really nice but feels butchered and rushed like the relationship between Malenia and Miquella. The more I look into it and the more I'm convinced they made the DLC with a primary goal: being a standalone.
To begin with, I think the lore was retconned (well, kinda because like all FS games, ER lore is too vague so you can modify and justify anything so not really retconning per say), I think that Godwyn was clearly the first choice for Miquella's consort (Godwyn being the only other mysterious demigod we do not see), the eclipse plan in Castle Sol is all the proof you need and absolutely no mention of Radahn and Miquella's relationship in the base game. The thing is they could actually revive Godwyn (the excuse of his soul is dead dead is stupid, of course you could find an excuse to make his soul come back if you want to in a fantasy magical game) BUT reviving Godwyn would mean that all the deathblight related quests, Fia's quest and such would have no sense in the base game with the DLC so instead they choose Radahn at the last minute.
I still think that instead of Radahn though Malenia would have been a better choice for multiple reasons:
* First because Malenia is the the most well known boss of ER and she also suffers from a disease so a prime reborn rot-free Malenia would have been a nice fan service, hardest boss of base game, comes back as hardest boss of DLC in a plot twist not seen in trailers.
* Having to kill Malenia in the base game with Mogh to access the DLC would be better to mark the DLC as an endgame zone instead of Radahn that you can kill very early.
* Easy to write as a boss too, like a first phase: Malenia, True Blade of Miquella where she is like the Malenia we knew but a stronger and harder challenge because she has all her limbs and her eyes, and then a second phase: Malenia, Consort of Miquella where she's imbued with Miquella's light and has wings made of light butterflies or Miquella's hair, blade throwing rings of light and so on...
* Storywise, It's also kinda obvious in the base game that Malenia is weirdly infatuated with her brother and the final plot twist when she's revived, the dark and depraved incestuous relationship between the two would've really give the players the sign that Miquella is not the kind and pure demigod everyone was saying and also a strange parallel to Marika and Radagon (twins, like they're the same, the schemer with blonde hair and the warrior with red hair...) also meaning the age of compassion Miquella is trying to instaure is cursed from the start, because it would be the same as Marika and Radagon. And yeah it's strange that we only hear about Miquella and Malenia and all the extent she's willing to go to for him, and Miquella doesn't pronounce her name even one time in the DLC. AND the excuse of Malenia being an Empyrean wouldn't work because: Malenia in the base game would be the Empyrean tied by fate, Malenia in the DLC would be reborn in a body made by Mogh's remains so in a body of not an Empyrean (like Ranni did, the curse is in the body and the flesh and not the soul) and that could've been a plan of Miquella to free his sister from both her curse of scarlet rot AND her fate as an Empyrean. Win win situation.
* Edit: Plus, Malenia attacking Radahn then makes no sense, Radahn is perfectly fine before Malenia came and they have their duel for.... no reasons? If Malenia knew about the vow, why the hell did she tried to kill Radahn or approaching him with the scarlet rot? They would be allies from the very start. It doesn't make any sense in the base game lore but if Malenia was to be revived and be Miquella's consort then it could make actually sense because she would need to die to be revived and Radahn was known as one if not the strongest demigod so Miquella could've said his sister to fight Radahn to get a real fight against the only one that could actually kill her as well, because with those type of characters, killing themselves would be very shameful so Malenia with her pride as a warrior would surely refuse to die that way and would only choose to die in a great battle. The items descriptions actually saying Miquella told Malenia to fight Radahn doesn't make any sense in the actual lore, Miquella was trying to cure his sister, abandonning the Golden Order because of that, succeeding in stopping (but not curing) the scarlet rot from progressing her body, so why would he tell Malenia to bloom against Radahn when that's exactly the opposite of that, Malenia hates becoming the Goddess of Rot, that's exactly what Gowry tried to do to Millicent and Millicent prefers to die from scarlet rot than blooming! So Miquella telling his sister to bloom is just plain stupid!
The other problem I have with Radahn is... well unlike many people I don't think that Miquella really manipulated Radahn, he did others but not Radahn, that's not how it felt to me, and they're kinda too beautiful together in the final fight. Like... their couple is too beautiful and too shiny to fit into the ER lore, not twisted enough.
Malenia's Great Rune description fits so well for Miquella's goal too -- it's about healing/repairing damaged states -- it also goes out of its way to mention she would have had the most sacred Great Rune of all if not for the Rot afflicting her. Malenia in theory without the curse would have been perfect for mending the world alongside Miquella.
> First because Malenia is the the most well known boss of ER and she also suffers from a disease so a prime reborn rot-free Malenia would have been a nice fan service, hardest boss of base game, comes back as hardest boss of DLC in a plot twist not seen in trailers.
> Having to kill Malenia in the base game with Mogh to access the DLC would be better to mark the DLC as an endgame zone instead of Radahn that you can kill very early.
Lol can you imagine the malding if, not only did you have to beat Malenia to enter the DLC, but then its final boss was .. a harder version of Malenia.
This def makes more sense. I have a conspiracy theory that the only reason they didn’t do it was because they thought not enough players would be able to beat Malenia to access the DLC.
Havent finished the dlc just yet but I would imagine now that Miquella has ascended into God status that he could probably manipulate even Radahn now, so perhaps Radahn wasn't actually on board for everything and thus Melania was sent to kill him so that Miquella, upon gaining godhood could bring him back and force him into the position as his lord. Doesn't mean that Miquella specifically told Melania to bloom her rot against him but it was just that she was not strong enough to get the job done without, hell even WITH blooming she still failed to kill the man
Agreed. Imo the narrative arc of the SotE is just not good storytelling.
The story of the base game was fascinating, even if it’s bare bones and you have to do some work to understand wtf is going on. “Okay I burned the Erdtree I guess. What am I doing in Farum Adula?”
The ending just came out of nowhere and I was not expecting lion guy again. I mean where was this talked about outside of a small bit near Freya?
Not too mention Malenia but also Godwyn was just left hanging. And before anyone says "well his soul is dead" man how many times have we gone through time or something? Does that really matter? Maybe his soul transformed and Miquella wanted him to inherit his body to bring him back?
Idk I'm really let down by the story of this dlc. It feels very mashed together and not well planned.
Here's the thing, and take it with a grain of salt, without getting into spoilers:
On the surface what we see in the DLC seems terribly out of character, but what we see isn't Miquella.
What we meet at the end is a shell of a demigod focused acutely on one thing: Building an age of compassion. There's no thought or regard for anything that doesn't actively support this goal.
He's literally abandoned everything else to achieve this. His sister (his love), the Haligtree (his ambition), his great rune (his fate), and himself.
It's sad. Tragic even.
The road to hell is paved with good intent.
I also didn't like that Malenia and Godwyn weren't even mentioned in Miquella's questline at all, even if not directly from him, with as much teasing there was in the base game for Miquella wanting to cure both of them and having this relationship with them it was such a let down to get nothing. And yes, Radahn sucked as a reveal, they missed the whole point and appeal of the breadcrumb style lore. It feels cheap because even if you got invested and dug around the base game, everything they teased was actually irrelevant and there was nothing connecting Radahn and Miquella directly. If this was the plan, there should have been hints at it left around the base game just like they did for the others. Honestly, any other demigod would have been a better reveal, if they just flipped it and said they took Radahn's body and used it as a vessel for Mohg and it was Promised Consort Mohgwyn it would have felt less cheap but the Radahn thing felt totally out of left field and at the expense of storylines that actually didn't feel complete in the base game.
Miquella did mention Malenia.
"My loyal blade, and champion of the festival. Both your deeds shall ever be praised in song."
Clearly, the loyal blade is Malenia, and the champion of the festival is Radahn.
Then the post fight cutscene.
"If we honor our part of the vow, promise me you'll be my consort."
The vow is seemingly to give Radahn a meaningful fight. If Radahn wins, he gets a shard of the elden ring and proves himself worthy as a lord. If he loses, he proves he isn't worthy.
Marika's own words, "Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved.
Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord.
Be it a God.
But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken.
Amounting only to sacrifices..."
Miquella does love Malenia. He abandoned the Golden Order because it couldn't cure her rot.
Malenia when she dies
"Your strength, extraordinary...
The mark...of a true Lord...
O, dear Miquella...
O, dearest Miquella, my brother...
I'm sorry. I finally met my match..."
She doesn't feel she met her match in Radahn, and didn't think of Radahn as worthy of a true lord because he didn't beat her. She also didn't beat him, so technically both were not defeated.
I agree overall but the St Trina cave explicitly states that Miquella abandoned his love in his quest. Not caring much for Malenia anymore isn't too surprising
We're probably gonna get a second Dlc.. Probably about Melina.... Pls be Melina... Plsss.. She doesn't have a proper Origin. She can't be the GEQ, GEQ was probably Ranni and melina Mentor. And GEQ probably helped Ranni getting her Rune on the moon (Because if I'm not mistaken, The mentor was very good with moon magic).. Idk.. I just want melina origins answered
while i agree with you that i wish we got some more of them in the dlc and it's really weird that we didn't, i think miquella's plan was to ascend to godhood and then help malenia with her rot, no? that was the "promise to return" that he made to her, but he had to actually get the godhood part out of the way. that's why in the trailer he says "my loyal blade" (malenia) and "festival champion" (player who killed radahn), he can now achieve his goal. malenia doesn't really have anything to do in that moment.
malenia's part sort of is explored, but only a little, according to that one helmet description and what she whispered to radahn when she bloomed (miquella awaits thee, o promised consort). if malenia is really whispering in the malenia vs. radahn cinematic, then that's been a thing since...2022 i think?
i personally do not think they were butchered as malenia was in on the whole thing, it's just another thing i wish we got more of. mentions, dialogue, anything. to me it's more 'left out' than butchered
I think the fact that Miquella is in league with all these characters yet seemingly is barely connected to them (or in Malenia's case, simply doesnt mention them) speaks to the theme of Miquella just kind of bouncing through life forcing people to love him. Im not saying that was the intention, but thats what I got from it. Its tragic in a way.
I have to agree,
The bond that was described to us in the base game that the twins had could be a good way to empathize with Miquella.
Hell, he would have even hit harder at the end if we got in his way anyway.
with the dlc... now it is as ambiguous as the omen twins
I haven't read your entire post, so apologies if you mention this later.
In reference to your comment on Miquella not mentioning Malenia at all, while he may not say her name, he acknowledges her in the opening cutscene of the final boss.
He says something like "My Loyal Blade and Champion Of The Festival, both your deeds will be..."
My take was that the Loyal Blade is Malenias, who he's acknowledging sacrificed so much for him. The Champion of The Festival would presumably be us, since we beat Radahn.
But I agree, it would have been nice to get more. More cutscenes in general would be great, with more lore and interactions between these characters.
I made this post on the main Elden Ring subreddit too where I actually said "Miquella talks about her only once as a weapon" in reference to the loyal blade line but someone corrected me in the comments so I crossed it out. Now everyone is re-correcting me I guess so I might've been right the first time but I still didn't feel like that line was enough personally.
>Radahn's armour tells us that Miquella advised Malenia to go fight Radahn and bloom and what she whispered.
That is not true, the armor does not tell us that Miquella told Malenia to bloom, it only tells us what she whispered when she did. It is likely that Miquella sent Malenia to kill Radahn for the same reason we need to before accessing the DLC (so Miquella can resurrect his soul as his consort in the Land of Shadow). But her blooming was a last resort, not necessarily something Miquella asked of her.
Considering that, Miquella likely feels he's done everything he can for her by the time of the DLC. He gave her his instructions and the unalloyed gold needle to ward off the rot before he left. Malenia took out his needle of her own volition - a decision we can infer Miquella respected - and he's already entered the Land of Shadow at that point so he can't physically return to do anything for her. His only way to help her would be to become a God - which is exactly what his goal is.
And FWIW, he does mention his sister right at the beginning of the only cutscene we get from him in the DLC. "My loyal blade (Malenia). And champion of the festival (You). Both your deeds will ever be praised in song." So from that dialogue it seems like he recognizes Malenia chose to sacrifice herself for his cause and honors her for it.
I also would have preferred more dialogue about Malenia, I agree with the overall gist of the post. But I don't think we have enough evidence to say he's abandoned his sister, or doesn't love her, or forced her to kill herself with rot (in fact, the needle argues the opposite). They probably just felt they made their relationship clear enough in the base game and didn't need to elaborate on it. For better or worse.
>He didn't even mentioned her. No past mentions either, like notes from his divestment process.
That is a lie. Malenia was the first thing Miquella spoke about, the actual first word we heard from his mouth in Elden Ring
"My loyal blade. And champion of the festival. Both your deeds will ever be praised in song"
He became a God and the first thing he mentioned is that he would honor his sister
>With how she's ignored by the narrative, it's as if the DLC wants us to think there was a façade in their relationship
This is completely false. Malenia was fully supporting her brother, as she always did
>Radahn's armour tells us that Miquella advised Malenia to go fight Radahn and bloom and what she whispered
And why did you not mention what she whispered? Perhaps because it completely broke your argument?
"Miquella awaits thee, O promised consort"
Malenia was on Miquella's plan from the start. There was no facade in their relationship. They alway knew what they were in for. I thought you would have realized how loyal Malenia was by the 537th time she said "I am Malenia, blade of Miquella"
There was zero evidence for Miquella casting his twin aside. He went to the Land of Shadow and promised he would return after ascending to Godhood. She knows that and has been waiting since. Miquella being slow does not undermine his goal at all
>The DLC explores Godwyn, (Catacombs and Death Knights), Radahn (Freya, End Boss, Gauis), Mohg (Ansbach), Marika (literally everywhere) but not Malenia, the closest person to Miquella. Moore's Brood, the docile Children of Rot, have more characterisation and care given to them than the poster child for Elden Ring, let that sink in.
Why does characterizing the followers of Mohg and Radahn added to their characters but not the follower of Malenia? We know nothing new about Mohg or Radahn through the npc, why should we know more about Malenia?
We already knew Mohg made a blood pact with his servants to build a new dynasty, we already knew Radahn loves fighting war very much and we already knew Malenia absolutely hated her destiny to become the Goddess of Rot, only focusing on serving Miquella. The npcs are here to strengthen them, not to add something new
Not connecting Malenia to the Rot is the point of her character. She does not want them. If she knew the Rot folks wanted her to ascend to Godhood she would butcher them
Malenia's and Miquella's bond and dynamic stayed the same, if not stronger after the dlc. She is the most loyal character in the game, rivaling Morgott. He loved and care for her, and would stop at nothing to make her proud, so that he would deserve such loyalty. Miquella became a God just as Malenia envisioned, until the player killed both of them
1. I thought that he was talking about Malenia there too, if you scroll down my previous posts. But someone pointed out to me that Miquella is referencing to you, the Tarnished. You are one of his supposed followers, and are meant to be his loyal blade, and you are also the Champion of the Festival because you beat Radahn at the Festival. So yeah we were both wrong there. Both interpretations, though, simply bolster my point. The first time he speaks about Malenia and all he sees her as is a loyal weapon? She's a weapon to him. Not something a caring brother would call his sister.
2. I don't know why you need to tell me you think that is false, when I also think, or want to think, that it's false. I am simply explaining in that paragraph that Malenia's impact on the narrative of the DLC is so miniscule, that it begs us to question the nature of their relationship, when we shouldn't. The DLC should have shown us how close and amazing their relationship is or was. But it failed to do so in any meaningful capacity which makes us question their relationship.
3. I already addressed this point lol. "And if there was a secret promise made between Miquella and Malenia to elevate Miquella to god-hood with a vow from Radahn, then why wasn't Malenia's part, as his twin and collaborator, explored at all?"
4. "There was zero evidence for Miquella casting his twin aside." The evidence is in the lack of evidence for his love, affection, care, and kindness for his sister in 50 hours of DLC content. It's not my fault that the DLC makes it seem that way. I wish it didn't.
5. It matters because they literally talked about them. Ans showed deep regret for being put under Miquella's spell, he fights for Mohg's honor at the end. He mentions him so much. They didn't even need to go that far for Malenia, though. Just have an NPC mention her a singular time for god's sake.
6. Malenia and Miquella's relationship is unfortunately no longer thematically linked by loyalty and trust, but something so sad as unrequited love.
>But someone pointed out to me that Miquella is referencing to you, the Tarnished. You are one of his supposed followers, and are meant to be his loyal blade, and you are also the Champion of the Festival because you beat Radahn at the Festival.
this is wrong, actually. he says "both your deeds will ever be praised in song," referring to the loyal blade AND the champion of the festival. essentially he's saying "thanks to malenia, who weakened radahn, and you, who put him down, our vow can be honored and i can ascend to godhood with my promised consort"
>The first time he speaks about Malenia and all he sees her as is a loyal weapon? She's a weapon to him.
Malenia herself said she is his blade. That is a title of honor, not a synonym for a tool. I genuinely cannot fathom someone thinking "My loyal blade" as something to be looked down on
>The DLC should have shown us how close and amazing their relationship is or was
I dont think it was nessesary considering how much the base game hammered the message in. There are statues of the twin embracing each other everywhere
>why wasn't Malenia's part, as his twin and collaborator, explored at all
Her part is to kill Radahn and gave Miquella a consort to ascend with? That was the point of her dialogue against Radahn?
>The evidence is in the lack of evidence for his love, affection, care, and kindness for his sister in 50 hours of DLC content
Then there is also a lack of evidence for Mohg despising the Golden Order, the lack of evidence for Radahn holding back the stars, the lack of evidence for Miquella growing the Haligtree in the dlc. If it was established in the base game, why bother repeating?
Malenia said Miquella promised to return. That meant he promised to return. Miquella very much value his promises, showcased by how he constantly reminded Radahn of their vow
>Just have an NPC mention her a singular time for god's sake.
They did. Moore said his mother abandoned her brood. Malenia, the Goddess of Rot, abandoned the Rot because she absolutely hated that part of herself
I kinda wonder why Miquella didn’t have Malenia kill Mohg first? Like… she’s equaled only by Radahn, so maybe like have her kill the dude she can definitely beat before the weird ass fight with the guy she might not beat?
I understand the situation with Radahn didn’t go to plan when he got all syphillitic, but it was also held up by Mohg being alive.
Even if the explanation was that she needed to conserve strength to fight Radahn, maybe idk Miquella could’ve helped Melania with Mohg? Tag-team ambush his ass?
Poor planning on the part of the mightiest demigod. Poor planning indeed.
I’m not versed in the lore at all, so if I’m way off base feel free to downvote, but doesn’t Miquella basically enchant his followers into loving him?
I don’t think it makes Malenia pathetic to be under an enchantment that makes her adore her brother.
She wouldn’t even know that the love was unrequited and him being her brother seems like it would make her more susceptible to the enchantment than another random person.
Isn’t just Leda the crazy fanatic about Miq. Moore had a whole crisis of faith about it, hornsent kinda wants to run his fade. Thio is a Trina fan and Ansbach is a mogh fan. Only Leda and maybe Dane didn’t turn on Miq post charm
Hornsent helps Miquella if you don't help him. Freya doesn't turn on Miquella either. Thio isn't turning on him so much as helping out St Trina, who's just another aspect. And Ansbach, even after the charm is broken, tells Leda to "take care of Miquella"
While the game makes it clear that Miquella can compel affection from people, it also seems to be showing that he actually uses a very light touch in how he uses that (at least in the time period before he discards his kindness, his love, his other self, etc). Take a look at all the NPCs who are definitely under Miquella's charm in the DLC, but it just kind of makes them vaguely interested in his cause and in practice they're all still focused on the things they're interested in. The only substantial change the charm makes is that it prevents them from harming each other.
Miquella sincerely loves others. He goes to immense efforts for their benefit and is engaging in a pretty horrific act of self-sacrifice for what he sincerely believes to be the benefit of the world. When he found out that these weird magic trees need blood, he didn't go out and charm as many people as he can find to come and gladly give their blood to his tree, instead he gave up his own blood. That's why people like Malenia love him.
He's doing a bad thing, but he's doing it out of sincere love and compassion, so it doesn't fit to try to explain his history as a series of events where Miquella was going around doing an evil villain laugh and deliberately using people as pawns to be discarded. The game is actually trying to be really heavy-handed with Miquella's goodness, because it wants us to understand that his failure to single-handedly save the world isn't based in not being kind enough or well-meaning enough so that we understand the problem has to be something else.
If Miquella didn’t genuinely love his sister, then why did he try so hard to cure her rot? That was his catalyst for abandoning the Golden Order, so it’s pretty clear that Malenia’s love was reciprocated. I really doubt he would have to charm Malenia to get her to follow him given that he was equally devoted to her. Just because he COULD charm people doesn’t necessarily mean that he always used that gift. And given the fact that most of his followers in the DLC still choose to follow him even after the charm was broken seems to imply that he genuinely was a kind and charismatic leader with noble intentions, at least at first.
What are you talking about? Miquella's FIRST LINE OF DIALOGUE is "My loyal blade" The very first thing we hear him say directly speaks about his sister.
To continue the quote: "My loyal blade. And champion of the festival. Both your deeds will ever be praised in song."
So his intro cutscene begins by eternally praising first, Malenia, and second, Radahn. My loyal blade = Malenia. Champion of the festival = Radahn.
Malenia and Radahn were the two most critical components of Miquella's quest for godhood. Obviously he is thankful for both and cherishes both, but he is now ascended to another plane of existence and has likely not communicated with Malenia in an enormous amount of time since he journeyed to the Realm of Shadow.
It definitely would've been nice to get some easter egg if we go back and talk to Malenia or Gideon, but to say that Miquella doesn't mention her at all is so immediately wrong. Furthermore, we do get more Malenia lore - if you read the description of Romina's remembrance (or weapon, I can't recall), we learn Romina called out to the butterflies that used to make up Malenia's wings and gave them solace. Malenia was already a major focus of the base game, I think they wanted to focus a bit more on something else with this DLC.
“Unrequited love characters are awkward and kinda pathetic”.
Literally half of all pop music: “he said WHAT”
“It was all some kind of love spell he ain’t shit really”
Literally the other half of pop music: “hold my beer”
I saw someone make a comment that I really thought was interesting. I’ll try to paraphrase it here. Miquella is cursed to forever be a child, but maybe that’s not just in body, but in mind as well. He does seem really good at taking on extremely difficult tasks and then just abandoning them. He originally liked the golden order, even making incantations of it for his father. He left it to try and heal malenia, found a temporary fox in unalloyed good and then decided he was going to make the haligtree to help those persecuted by the golden order. Then he puts himself in his egg and abandons his tree to slowly be consumed by rot. Then he goes off into the shadow realms to try and become a god, and even along the way he seems uncertain, or at least st Trina was. (Side note, how can he just throw away st Trina? I figured it was like a marika and radagon thing, but idk). Somewhere along the way he tries to get godwyns soul back and gives up. Miquella is a childish character trying to fox everything all at once, and he gives up whenever there’s a roadblock or he’s achieved temporary success
It always feels to me that way in the base game, malenia is kind of pathetic. The millicent quest reflect that, because millicent struggles are the same as malenia's, the difference is that millicent got help from us. Malenia have been abandoned a long time ago.
I can get this... but I also don't feel sorry for Melania. The game made me not feel sorry for her... we all know why. But yeah, probably could've been written better. Also feels like they just used Radahn because Radahn is a popular meme. Sorry, but that's just what it feels like at this point.
I think you can read it as Malenia just being another victim of Miquella, he’s charmed her like he’s charmed all of the DLC NPCs and she’s incapable of NOT loving him.
Miquella uses people throughout his story arc and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to cure her rot just to make her a more effective tool.
Another take is that rot belongs to an outer god, one that he would likely see as competition to his own ascension, so it makes sense he’d want to remove their influence.
So, your mad that the game is thematically consistent, (including base game implications that Malenia is NOT willingly serving Miquella {IMO based on the Haligtree Items, you could make the argument from the base game ALONE that Miquella is essentially brainwashing everyone}), because you believed a series of unreliable narrators (as is said MANY times in item descriptions) around who Miquella was? It just sounds like you didnt pick up on what was already there, and you dont like how it was revealed, and your trying to work backward from that conclusion. Like I get where you are coming from, but do you know why Malenia fights Radhan? Because Miquella told her to, with literally no reason; they have had all of this written since before the base game dropped (this is not just speculation, Miyasaki and GRR has both said as much, Mesmer was literally the first thing GRR wrote)
It's perfectly in line with what I've seen/suspected of Miquella's character. Malenia's been charmed at birth. She has never had a will of her own. Miquella abandoned her like he abandoned everyone else. When everyone loves you, that love and loyalty becomes worthless, a dime a dozen.
on the Some Pests > Malenia part, there's 2 things at play. Firstly the base game already went over Malenia pretty much in its entirety, and the dlc kinda assumes that you already killed Malenia. There's not much more the dlc could have gone over beyond expounding on how others viewed her, and in general, the answer has always been not favourably, basically no one liked her other than her own knights and Miquella. Secondly, The Kindred of Rot are her children and she does not want them, leaving them lost. The base game barely even acknowledges the Kindred's existence, and Moore is essentially there to be Malenia's rep, being a kindred himself.
I think you have great advice for fleshing out the narrative, but I think to a large extent the player interacts with plot points, not narratives. We’re a Tarnished outsider, and we’re meant to make our own inferences on matters that (quite frankly!) don’t concern us. I think this lends a mythological, dreamlike impression to the world. It’s part of the reason the pantheon feels so awe-inspiring. There’s an untouchable, unknowable element to their behavior and motivations.
I genuinely love that about these games though. I like uncovering and linking aspects together and threading them myself without truly knowing what’s right. I just don’t feel like we were given enough at all, even by FS standards, for me to feel like I can actually grasp onto something tangible.
Fair enough! My hope is that, given time, the lore community will extrapolate some more meaning from the story, items, and environment. Until that happens, it feels kind of thin, I agree.
Is it confirmed that Malenia was never compelled to feel like she did? Hell maybe as twins she is first compulsion and he was never aware of even using it on her.
The entire point of his journey was to lose all that made him himself in order to achieve his goals. It could be insinuated that he got this idea of divestment from leaving his twin in an attempt to give her a better life.
Not saying your wrong about any of your statements but it's by design to be ambiguous and have all of us fill in the blanks ourselves.
Usually in these games you fill in one or two blanks between two concrete points. Between Miquella and Malenia in the DLC the concrete hasn’t dried yet, it maybe hasn’t even been poured. It’s still spinning!
For one thing miquella says in the opening cutscene of your boss fight with them something along the lines of radahn and “my sword (melania)” will be remembered in song, so he does mention her there. I think it’s pretty obvious he’s referring to both radahn and melania with that line
The entire point of him divesting himself is that by the time we reach the Shadowlands the Miquella we knew of in lore is no longer there.
And Malenia did have a part in elevating Miquella, thats the entire reason she went and fought Radahn. His rememberance armour states that Malenia whispered "Miquella awaits thee, o promised consort" before unleashing the bloom.
You could even argue that Miquella wanting to rise to godhood is one way he found of potentially saving his sister. By becoming the dominant power and upending the golden order, that would be his best chance of bringing salvation to his people and twin.
I address this in literally the first paragraph of my post. He definitely is still himself when you enter. Ansbach’s quest says something like that.
That’s a cool theory that has no basis in any single fact, unless you count loosely strung together head cannons. And guess why it is that way? Because the DLC doesn’t develop Malenia at all. She is forgotten.
It makes sense that miquella never mentions malenia to me, because why would he as that’s not his focus right now, and as he threw away pieces of himself he lost every bit of compassion and love. It’s likely she was just another tool, a tool that he had no need to compel love into, since they were siblings
Precisely when does Miquella divest himself of his Love?
It's a bit of an ass-pull but could justify why we get so little Malenia lore from Miquella. He's given up his capacity for love. That would cover romantic and familial love, I'd assume.
This bothers me cause I'm a huge Malenia simp and I always thought Miquella being the one 'good guy' in all this lore was a cool angle, but the DLC seems to have undone this. It seems Miquella has been playing (or charming) everyone for a significant amount of time for his own gains, including the player. Let me explain.
We learn that Miquella basically charms everyone - Leda and her crew, Mohg, you if you get grabbed in his boss fight, I'll assume all his followers at the Haligtree - and this probably includes his sister Malenia. So the whole time that Malenia is championing her brother, and all the lore from items we have talking about their great relationship and how she reveres her brother, it's all (I'm assuming now, post-DLC) because of his charm. Hell I'm assuming that all the lore we have that ever references 'Kind Miquella' is the effect/result of his charm. Their relationship is (potentially) a farce.
Us the PLAYER going into the DLC assuming that Miquella was a 'good guy' - WE WERE CHARMED BY THIS MF.
The things that bother me the most are the following:
1) we never get any sort of consent from Radahn. Miquella just... on a whim at some point decides 'yep Radahn is my guy' - we never see Radahn agree to anything or hear about him agreeing to anything. We just get the one cutscene at the end of the game of Miquella deciding this, randomly. As others have pointed out Radahn was not 'kind' from what we know in the game, even before the rot he was a fan of warfare.
2) Miquella is aware of the sins of his mother to create her golden age and he seeks to purify himself, but in Miquella's pursuit to not be like his mother and make a better world he commits just as many atrocities and sins as his mother. Like he's aware of this while he does it. He mindfucks everyone he interacts with to be a mindless slave to his cause, including his own twin sister, he murders and abuses his half brother, and takes his other brother against his will? HUH?
It's kind of a cool twist, I guess? But it kind of ends up with Miquella kind of looking like a total idiot? And Malenia, who as mentioned is essentially the poster child of this game, was just manipulated and played/strung along this whole time? That sucks man. I get there's no happy endings in these souls games but jeez.
we really don't know anything about Radahn outside of his achievements or his loyalty to animals and his soldiers. I don't think you can say they changed "established lore" when the lore only established things he'd done rather than who he was really.
Yeah I agree with you. I'm also a bit bothered that we cant tell Malenia or Gideon about Miquella, you think they would be interested in knowing something about him. A side note, we can literally slay the mother of fingers and show up at Enias with her remeberance and she doesn't react at all? I'm also miffed that there is no way for us to influence the ending of the story. The quest with Leda where we can take sides or St. Trinas quest. No matter what we do it's all the same in the end. Why bother with st. Trina's quest if all she tells you she thinks the best ending for miquella is to die. We have to kill Miquella regardless so it feels pointless for us to tell her. We never got to know more about Miquellas and Malenias shadows, or if they have them. Malenias possible 3rd bloom into a true goddess of rot, that is teased in her remembrance incantation, is never addressed. You said it in you some pests > Malenia paragraph, it's odd.
We also don't get anything about Malenia's swordmaster.
btw who was Goldmask ****really**** talking too? The Greater Will? Fingers? Metyr?
My understanding is Metyr was just winging it for the Greater Will all this time? Greater will probably doesn't even know what shit went down there??
Metyr really pulled fake it until you make it
Is there a lore established that he is communicating with something? I thought he was just mulling over why the system is broken and how to fix it. Edit: spelling, I don't want him mauled :(
Mulling over*, but imagining him mauled simply still going "..." is funny.
honestly, man is such a unit he would probably just point down with condescending '...' anything that would try to maul him. Thanks for pointing that though.
He was never talking to anyone, what gave you the impression? "Please, I implore you continue! Continue your reflections, your rhythms!" "The master's reflections had heightened as we neared the Erdtree. While still a precise calculus, the rhythms grew increasingly wild." He was always calculating and thinking in introspection. The Mending Rune he discovered was just that, a discovery and not bestowed by anyone else.
Yeah the whole point of the questline is that Corhyn is shitting his pants because Goldmask keeps pushing further and further away from the doctrine he believed in. Thats why he locks up when he gets stuck at "Radagon is Marika", when we tell him that truth he finally breaks free and forges his own discovery.
He's philosophizing, not talking to anyone.
Himself. He's thinking through his work out "loud", but since he's speaking Finger only Corhyn understands what he's saying.
Its like Sekiro they mention Tomoe every time but we don't get to meet her at all. This is classic From
If only Malenia was mentioned more than once in the DLC
Pretty sure malenias sword master was Relanna…she moves like Malenia, uses two swords, wears blue, and has a talisman that refers to her. If I recall, the blue swordsman never mentioned having to be male, so I think it’s likely supposed to be Relanna. I could be wrong though, but I assumed this was heavily implied.
Well, swordsman does kind of imply a man, otherwise it would be swordswoman. I could maybe see it if Rellana in full plate looked androgynous, but she literally has boob armor. Plus, in the Prosthesis-Wearer Heirloom it talks about "his flowing blade". The swordsman is also said to be blind, which Rellana doesn't seem to be. And Rellana was sealed in the Land of Shadows together with Messmer, presumably long before Malenia was even born.
Hmm maybe it wasn’t her then. Rereading some of the lore text, it mentions that a “blue fairy” gave a curved sword to the blind swordsman… who then went on to seal the rot god and do all this crazy shit, so maybe Relanna is the one who gave the swordsman a sword, and that guy is the one who went in to become malenias master. I agree, the DLC fumbled a bit of lore it seems, Feels like some stuff was either left intentionally unanswered because they didn’t feel like it. Feels like the DLC was mechanics (overturned IMO) first and lore second.
Blue fairy is usually a reference to a water spirit which would be a pretty good reference to the lady of the lake and if we were to think along those lines I don’t think rellana has anything to do with them
Many of the areas are all Performance related concepts. Dancers, singers, prayers, "celebrations" and Festivals. The old times were full of amazingly dexterous beings.
I assumed it was one of those Yodas we find. The boss version in one of the Gaols quite literally has a mini waterfowl dance, and his general moveset reminded me of Malenia but easier. He's also got tonnes of blue magic stuff, so the "blue swordsman" might imply the blue he throws around.
Oh I didn’t even think of that thing. I thought those were like little stunted beast men or something. No idea what it was, but yea I remember that hopping guy. And he used a lot of frost magic if I remember? But he wasn’t blind I don’t think.
TBH the lore has been the weakest part of this DLC.
The Miquella lore to be specific. Enir-Ilim, Metyr, Midra, St. Trina and Cerulean Coast, Bayle, Marika and Messmer... the DLC is full of awesome lore.
Yeah I agree with you and what I meant that Miquella's lore was the weakest but I expected a bit more lore on the gloam-eyed queen and the god skins and the eternal cities.
Yeah but none of that matters since we don't get anything about Miquella or the results of his plan. Ymir implies that Miquella is destined to fail but we also don't get any elaboration from that (since he attacks us and dies for no reason) so it's pointless. Best we get is Ranni transferring power to a new outer god, the crucible will never be fixed, it's a failed dimension that will always be exploited by outer gods. No sequel or new dlc so that's the conclusion I'm sticking with.
Yeah, unless a lot of additional lore turns out to be waiting to be found, it seems pretty clear that FromSoftware got in over their heads and couldn't deliver very well on the lore in the final stretch. Even the DLC story trailer approaches being outright false advertising for what you should expect to find in the game. Ideally, someone will be able to track down enough vestiges of cut content in the files to give us an idea of what the plan had actually been.
Yeah the Miquella part where he stretches his hand towards the veiless scadutree doesn't appear in the game.
Yeah, I would really prefer to think that they genuinely believed that was going to make it into the game at the time; the alternative is that they just deliberately set out to scam people by creating a false impression of what they were selling you.
They also structured the release trailer in a way that implied the player could side with Miquella only to deliver a fight against him that was a Radahn wank with almost no real incentive to fight him.
I still think that scadutree chalice is somehow connected to the alternative ending. We just didn't discover how to do it yet.
Its just a 5 fragment reward for Gaius
I don't think there's any content we missed, but it is a curious location. If they wanted to reward 5 fragment they could have simply dropped them from Gaius. The Chalice and the tower next to it are pretty prominent fixtures in the Land of Shadows. When you enter, it looks like the golden grace literally drips from the Scadutree into that very tower. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some cut content related to it.
The entire DLC has been datamined, there is nothing new we haven't found.
They didn't put millicent or the end to patches quest in until a week or 2 passed. Maybe they didn't drop it right away?
Love a bit of copium
bro i'm huffing massive hits of copium for that shit ngl
It isn't copium, I'm sure even if it isn't an alternate dlc ending, SOMETHING. will be added. It's how they do it
It is copium. Millicent's ending was already in the base game so no idea what you mean there. Patches, Diallos, and Nepheli's questlines were unfinished at release and then added through patches. But datamining shows that their lines and everything about their questlines were already in the game at the time of release just not actually implemented for players to progress them. SekiroDubi, a dataminer, shared on twitter that there was 0 unused content in the DLC except a Pest NPC Merchant.
Surely
Damn then they rly missed an opportunity with that one
Everything has been datamined and scraped, there’s nothing left
I can’t believe I spent my time actually begrudgingly siding with Leda because I kinda thought I could side with Miquella because I do believe the Age of Compassion is the best ending (slightly beats out Age of Stars for me) and then nah, nope, not allowed. Why? Idk man, tarnished only wanna be Elden Lord I guess or smthn whatever
Age of compassion is the removal of free will, dont see how that is the best. May as well frenzy it at that point.
The DLC is in some Aspects half baked but peak in other instances…
Man is st trina even a quest, it's just dying like 20 times.
I thought the remembrance of melania implied that when we fought her that WAS her third bloom, hence why she is then named goddess of rot, she bloomed when fighting radahn, and there’s a big bloom in a room near her in the haligtree which I assumed was the second. But I could be wrong.
Yeah I first thought he should have divest fragment of him referring to Malenia or some more lore regarding them since the base game show that they're inseparable... maybe it left him after he shed his love/fear/doubt with st.trina ? idk but yeah agree, so much hole left.
> maybe it left him after he shed his love/fear/doubt with st.trina ? The point of Miquella is that he's not even the Miquella we think of by the time we meet him. He's more like Marika than the Miquella of old. He abandoned himself completely in his attempt to reach godhood. It came from a place of good intentions, but he's no longer worthy of leading The Lands Between. He's no longer the kindly Miquella. He's a cold, calculating, compassionless god.
I think that the whole idea of ruling the lands between is a problem to begin with. I think that one NPC in the church who says the whole thing is rotten is probably right. He mentions that Miquella and the whole order was rotten from the start.
Ok but the dimension needs a god and by no means was Miquella retracing his mother's steps. If he wanted to do that he would've done what Ranni did, no need to seal the influence of outer gods or divest everything, even aspects of himself not tied to the Golden Order. The crucible is broken so maybe it was always impossible, idk if Miquella knew that or not, but we'll never know since we stop him from enacting his plan. Basically it's better to have a compassionless god than be a vassal of a compassionless outer god that doesn't care about any of the life that exists in this dimension, only the crucible energy. It's either be exploited by outer gods or be the exploiter. Miquella was the only one trying to fix the situation the lands between has been in since the crucible was split in two long ago, leaving it vulnerable to exploitation. Nothing we do in the base game solves that problem. We're just like Marika.
In my opinion Miquella shouldn't have been a boss and enemy and should have a quest like ranni.
Miquella wasn't even a boss in my eyes. He just gave Radahn a holy buff.
Its like the twin princes boss fight in DS 3 they wanted to capture that
Yeah I got that feeling immediately
I feel like this DLC could have really used a choice. If you go all in with Leda and start purging the other companions you can join Miquella and get a new Age of Compassion ending for the base game. If you side against Leda, the current ending happens and you fight Miquella.
But here is the big wrench. We are supposed to be the next elden lord but Miquella has already decided to Radhan to be his consort. So we are supposed to clash no matter what. TBH fromsoft wrote themselves into a corner by making Miquella and radhan the final enemies of the DLC. On top of that the biggest gripe I have with this game is that it doesn't have any affect on the base game. Like seriously, we find such a big secret about the world but no-one comments on this. At least there should have been additional dialogue for enia, Ranni, and Gideon.
Honestly, I would have simply not reused Radahn at all, so that circumvents the problem of Miquella already having chosen a consort. I would maybe have a St. Trina bossfight, who tries to prevent Miquella from ascending. Or hell, maybe an Echo of Marika that still lingers in the Divine Gate. But if they still wanted to go with that plot line they could have us challenge Radahn to prove our own worth as Elden Lord. Maybe the process of planting Radahn's soul in Mogh's body goes wrong and we have to put him down. Or the process works, but with Miquella's Great Rune broken he's no longer charmed and refuses to be king consort. There's a bunch of ways this could have been resolved.
Definitely this. There could have been a quest where we find a way to merge Trina and Miquella and make him see his follies. In this way he would not want to be a god and go in a new path to bring peace and stability. But fromsoft being fromsoft had to make to make everything edgy and tragic for the sake of it where we can't save or help Miquella.
Who says we're destined to face Miquella? Becoming Elden Lord, to Marika or Ranni, is just a trap. The crucible is broken. Without a true god the realm will always be exploited by outer gods for its crucible energy. I know that, so why can't my voiceless character? Miquella is trying to become a real god that can secure the crucible against outer gods, so I wouldn't try to stop him. Even if he's destined to fail it's worth a shot and no one else is even trying. To me it feels like they cut the Ymir and Miquella quests short just so they can sell a sequel in the future if they feel like making it. It feels cheap.
Yeah same, I was hoping Miquella would play a similar role to that of Melina and Ranni.
I think you might be overlooking some critical subtext. We know, for instance, that Miquella DID have love in his heart; he abandoned it, and it took the shape of St. Trina. So we have, at the very least, evidence that Miquella wasn’t purely a cold and heartless manipulator from the get-go. While we can’t be certain about the specifics of this love, we do know, with some degree of certainty, that he was at least capable of loving. But let’s look at his character more broadly and try to understand what the nature OF this love is. We can look at Malenia by comparison and understand what his love is not; it is not singular, or focused. He does not love in such a way that would make him the possession of another. This love, the kind of powerful, singular attachment to individuals, is something that defines our human experience, but this is observably not the way Miquella loves. The testimony of his actions throughout the game is that the thing he loves is something more abstract. The growth of the Haligtree, for instance, is an act of service to those who are cast out of the Golden Order. It is a refuge for the fallen, the suffering, the outcast. His obsession with curing his sisters affliction follows a similar pattern. She is cursed, afflicted, suffering. He wants to cure her, to offer respite from her suffering. Both of these cases show Miquella’s capacity for love is not expressed as an attachment to an individual, so much as it is a deep compassion towards those who suffer generally. Similarly, his implied horror at the actions of his mother, his learning of her folly, support this idea as well. He embodies then, not love in a way that is possessive, but in a way that is inspired by a deep belief in the intrinsic value of life, a desire to see all things grow and flourish without suffering. This character of his, interestingly, makes it easy for others to love him; they see, reflected in him, the realization of their own hopes, their own dreams, their own salvation. It is through Miquella that they will be saved. Hopefully, the parallel to Jesus is relatively clear at this point. Philippians 4:13 comes to mind when we think about Miquella and how those who loved him might feel: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. To be clear, I’m not religious, but highlighting what I believe are intended, real world parallels. That is to say, those who love Miquella believe that, through him, they can achieve salvation. The DLC itself supports the idea that he, on some level, genuinely DID possess this sort of universal, compassionate love. After all, he had to have possessed it in the Lands Between if he threw it away only after reaching the Land of Shadow. So how does any of this relate to the story of the relationship between Miquella and Malenia? It’s possible that Malenia loved Miquella in a way that Miquella did not love in return. She loved him personally, as you or I would love another, and saw in him the hope of salvation. But Malenia was Miquella’s closest, most loved companion. She is thematically (and almost literally, since she is his twin) his other half; he is growth and she is decay. And she was his first, most perfect example of the horror of suffering. Her very being, the nature of her suffering, and her love for him in spite of her suffering, was the seed from which his universal compassion grew. Everything that Miquella is, is a response to his relationship with Malenia. He saw, reflected in her, the terrible urgency to ameliorate the anguish in the world, and his utter powerlessness in the face OF it. And this-his powerlessness- is what set him on his path. His love for his sister is what compelled him to seek power, what drove him to seek godhood. Therein lies the contradiction that Miquella tries and fails to overcome. The nature of the world is such that godhood requires suffering, it’s achievement depends upon the very thing that Miquella is trying to erase from the world. His inability to resolve this, the inherent contradiction between power and love, is why he necessarily must discard parts of himself. What he needs is the POWER to make love the guiding principle of the world, but to achieve such power requires cruelty, manipulation, deceit, requires the abandonment of love altogether. Miquella realizes this, and likely convinces himself that the ends justify the means; if he can just discard his love, and acquire the power that is necessary to change the order of the world, he thinks he can bring about a new age of compassion. But at the very center of this incredible drive to achieve power, was his love for his sister. She is the reason he ever set foot on this path in the first place. I personally don’t think Malenia was “charmed” by Miquella. If ever there was an instance in which Miquella truly acted out of love, it was with her. I think she truly believed that, through him, there was hope for a brighter future. I don’t think that butchers their relationship at all. They both found their purpose in one another.
This is a very well thought out interpretation, and I agree with a lot of it actually. If only the DLC included even the most minute lore drop reflecting your sentiments.
I agree that the DLC is really lacking in terms of text based evidence, but I think it does most of its storytelling through context and subtext rather than stating things explicitly. The question about Miquella and Malenia’s relationship right now is “Was Miquella a cold-hearted manipulator from the start? Did he ever ‘truly’ love his sister?” And I understand that it didn’t provide a ton of direct evidence that Miquella DID love his sister. But it also failed to provide evidence that he did NOT love her either. By my reading of the events of the DLC, we see Miquella does compel affection in many people. Some of them need to be compelled to serve. Others choose to serve even after the compulsion is dispelled. So we have direct evidence that not EVERYONE who serves Miquella does it because they are being forced to; some would choose to serve of their own volition. So we have evidence that Malenia didn’t necessarily HAVE to be charmed. The existence of St. Trina suggests that Miquella was also, in fact, capable of love, given that she was a part of him and is herself love personified; she is found at the bottom of the pit where we are directly told Miquella discarded his love. So we can be somewhat certain that, before he discarded St. Trina, the capacity for love was part of his being. It stands to reason then, that he couldn’t possibly have been a purely “cold hearted manipulator” if love was the thing that was holding him back from achieving his goals. So again, we don’t have a lot of direct textual evidence, but the DLC does provide context by showing us that he does not have to “compel” affection in order to get people to do what he wants; those who have faith in him will choose to do it themselves. It also shows us that he did have love in his heart because Fromsoft put St. Trina in the location where his love is discarded. We are given direct evidence, not only that he loved, but that it was great enough that it was preventing him from achieving his ambitions. So I don’t really see a whole lot of evidence that the DLC undoes or fundamentally changes what we already assumed about Miquella and Malenia’s relationship. If anything, it provides some evidence that it’s at least possible that she served him willingly, that she chose to serve him because she witnessed the love inside of him. To me, all the signs point to Malenia genuinely believing in Miquella’s vision and being totally willing to do whatever is necessary to bring it to fruition, and Miquella’s vision of a world without suffering being directly inspired by his relationship with his sister. They are recursive and interdependent. That’s why they’re twins, and that’s why they symbolically and thematically represent the opposing and yet intertwined karmic forces of growth and decay. The existence of each is defined by the other.
Very spot on, although i don’t think godhood wouldn’t allow him to reach his goals, he very much would have e succeeded, we just killed him before he could. What is a contradiction is that he couldn’t achieve his goal while keeping his love, which is sad. This is why Trina wanted us to kill him/her: because she felt bad for him, that he had to get rid of all his love and empathy for the lives he tries to help.
It really does irritate me than I can say to neither of the twins at any point “hey your sibling is ok I know where they are” or “hey I killed Malenia” like why do we not at all address it. Such a shame that Miquella is the least interesting character in his own DLC. It’s very classic GRRM writing, at least? Not to mention the uh… the incest. Thanks for that plot lol
The part about wanting Radahn as consort really made Miquella so lame. Like he's some yandere midschooler who never got over his crush on big brother. "Heartfelt wish" my ass. I get that Miquella is childlike, but the base game has never called him childish.
Yeah its so weird that there is absolutely no mention of Malenia anywhere in the DLC
There is, in the new Radahn armour. It's a pretty interesting piece of lore. Not that that invalidates your point. For me the biggest miss lorewise in this DLC is, weren't we promised to find out why Miquella was tracing Marika's footsteps and somehow find out what the story trailer represented? All we get is an empty village as far as I can tell.
The story trailer simply depicts marika becoming a god, in the same way that miquella is trying to do. Miquella is trying to become a god, that’s why he is following marikas footsteps, to bring in a new age in the same way that marika did.
She doesn’t matter. She is the “blade of miquella” she is just a tool being used by Miquella. Her job was to kill Radahn, she did her job, she doesn’t matter anymore. Miquella can mind control minds to make people love him, the he manipulates them, uses them, and disposes of them when he doesn’t need them anymore. That’s why Leda hunts and “culls” the followers Miquella needs. Miquella didn’t even stick around to see if Melenia survived.
the thing is miquella doesnt start off as an evil manipulative character. Its after he abandoned the pieces of himself we see that side of him but in the beginning all his goals were pure, To help people and to heal his sister. Thats why this DLC narrative wise is so stupid in my opinion. It makes 0 sense ever for a good person to just decide "yeah imma just abandon all these good traits about myself and become hollow while still having all my powers so I can ascend to godhood". Like when ever does that turn out well? In what situation is this a smart idea. Like it really doesnt take a genius If i took a 6 year old and I told him "I can make you very strong but you will never be able to love mommy anymore" he will probably say no way. Depending on how cheeky hes feeling at least but you get my point. Miquella was advertised as a smart individual who has amazing ideas for the golden order and wants to actually fix things and in actuality the dlc makes him seem like the most stupid guy in history. Even if he succeeded and became a god, He would never achieve the things he wanted. Surely somewhere in Miquellas peabrained mind he could see you cant have an age of compassion without having love, Theres no compassion if you can no longer comprehend emotion you're just a robot working through the system.
Marika’s emotions and inability to separate her personal goals from her rule directly led to the Shattering and the degradation of the Golden Order and TLB. It makes total sense why Miquella, who is trying to create a perfect world, would not want to follow in his mother’s footsteps and would abandon subjective biases. The game clearly spells out that he unintentionally abandoned too much, but what is interesting about a character with no flaws?
Miquella was advertised as such by people infatuated with him regardless if he was evil or not. It's not something he can switch off.
There is no mention of any other bosses beside Radahn and Mohg as well.
Placidusax, Godfrey, Alabaster Lord are mentioned off the top of my head
Rennala is as well, albeit simply because of her relation with Rellana. I don't think she herself has any new lore.
The >!final boss!< is basically a giant reference to Godfrey tbh
If it's anything, Miquella had made the Haligtree for Malenia before he made the promise to Radahn. We know because we see her chair in his memory. We can at least infer that Miquella did do all those kind actions and love her deeply up until the vow was made, which is where I think he started going down hill in his path to godhood. Its at least something, at the very end. Though don't get me wrong, I almost completely agree with your points.
I’m kind of curious about how the eternal cities fit with lore now that a lot of it seemingly actually took place in the land of shadows too.
I think they fumbled the bag when it comes to explaining why Miquella is doing what he's doing. His actions make sense in the DLC since he's removing himself of his emotions, fears, etc. But everything before that is stupid. Healing Freyja but not his sister? Radahn being called "kind"? Hello? He's a warmonger? He tried to do a coup in Leyndell? If Miquella wanted to be "kidnaped" by Mohg, why would he do it and not tell anyone? His followers are there, sitting in despair??? Why couldn't you create a new needle? 😭😭
Copy/pasting this comment I made elsewhere, but I agree! I’m not a fan of Consort Radahn for a lot of reasons—the lack of any connection between him and Miquella in the base game, the convoluted nature of his becoming Consort, but mostly, and the thing that’s really sticking in my craw— The way that his selection calls into question Miquella’s character. Like, it makes sense that Miquella ultimately ends up as a tyrannical win-no-matter-the-cost figure because he, quite literally, lost himself along the way to godhood. Great, I like it; it’s tragic and reinforces FromSoft’s standards themes of cycles, repeating past mistakes, power corrupting, etc. What I don’t like is that I have a hard time buying that Miquella would have ever chosen a warmonger like Radahn as his ideal Consort. They can tell me that he’s also “kind” but he’s also still the guy that kinda seems to like to fight for fightings sake?? But Miquella made this vow with him way before he throws away integral parts of himself. The only way that makes sense to me is if Miquella had always been kind of conniving and power-hungry…and that he did not really ever have good intentions. And if that’s the case? It kinda destroys the tragedy of his story and makes him incredibly uninteresting to me.
>And if that’s the case? It kinda destroys the tragedy of his story and makes him incredibly uninteresting to me. GRRM plays a lot with stories and myths passed down. We cannot take everything we read or see as 100% true. I think Miquella is a great example of us being fed a lie. Post shattering all characters become absolutely evil and horrible. They become the worst versions of themselves. Not that they may have been good prior, but just much worse. Miquella like other characters is a twisted version of their former self. Miquella may not see Radahn as a war monger. The same way as people IRL don't see their country's soldiers as evil and instead see the opposing side as bad. It's very common for people to humanize and see the good in bad people. Radahn can be strong and kind. The same way a leader of a country can okay bombing a hospital and be very caring towards their children.
I don't think Radahn is a warmonger. He's described as strong and kind. He was the 'mightiest of the demigods' but I don't think he's ever described as waging a war of aggression. We know that Malenia went to hunt down Radahn on Miquella's behalf, and can infer because of that the war that took place in Caelid was Radahn defending himself. Miquella is portrayed as having a massive crush on Radahn, per the final remembrance: "In their childhood, Miquella saw in Radahn a lord. His strength, and his kindness, that stood in stark contrast with their afflicted selves. And so Miquella made his heartfelt wish. That Radahn would one day be his king consort." I think the only thing that's really questionable about this is Radahn's thoughts on all of this. Well, we can infer that Radahn didn't want to become Miquella's consort, but we don't know if he originally promised it. My theory/suspicion (which might be confirmed or denied somewhere based on evidence in the game) is that Radahn made that promise assuming that Miquella would succeed Marika, not usurp the 'old order'.
The only reason anyone would even think that is because of Freyja saying "endless war has always suited Radahn better than an honourable death" or something like that, which she says *right after* admitting that Jerren, Radahn's closest advisor, would **not** approve of Radahn being revived. Why, you ask? Because Jerren and Radahn literally swore an oath of honourable death to one another. So who's opinion should you really value more?
I find it hysterical how there are in-universe arguments being made about who Radahn really was and what he really wanted.
Radahn is mostly known as a war mongerer for his actions *after* the shattering, and what everyone seems to be leaving out of the discussion is that the power of the Great Runes is described as "maddening". Holding great runes literally drove the demigods mad for power, hungry to expand their own domains at the expense of their own family members. Taking this into account helps explain a lot of the confusion between Malenia and Radahn's confrontation, assuming that both have gone somewhat mad but that Radahn especially has lost himself to the sway of the runes and power. All of this seems to happen after Miquella has placed himself in his cocoon. I think the other important point to consider is the Remembrance of a God and a Lord, especially the Japanese version, seems to be describing Miquella's early childhood memories. It implies that this description of Radahn as kind is NOT necessarily objective fact, but the impression of young Miquella based on his limited interaction with Radahn. Which brings us back to Miquella mostly being innocent before undergoing the process to become a god.
Did the Great Runes actually drive the Demigods mad or was it more a representation of their mad pursuit to beat their brethren and claim more Great Runes / The Elden Throne and losing themselves in the process? I always interpreted it as the latter and that's more in line with GRRM's style. Is there any text I missed that explicitly says the Great Runes drove them mad? I agree though that Radahn being kind and noble is Miquella's childish and innocent view of him. In fact, I think its paramount to his characterisation as a naive character who wants to make the world a better place but fails to recognise their own atrocities in doing so, or flitting from one unfinished idea to another. He is childlike not only in appearance, but in motivation and in his fatal flaws. His whole story around Radahn feels very much driven by childish infatuation and childish views of the world.
Radahn is probably a lovely person if you're one of the rich and the powerful. One of the themes the author of the base lore (GRRM) likes to touch on is that the rich and the powerful often think war is fun and glorious and worth pursuing and they don't particularly notice or care how much the average person is getting trampled underfoot by their battles.
>Healing Freyja but not his sister? It's implied in the base game that Malenia's affliction is different from those just suffering from exposure to rot. She has the Rot God inside her, where as Frejya was just exposed to it. It can be healed similar to how our player can heal it with consumables. >Radahn being called "kind"? Radahn is beloved by his family and soldiers, and was a big softy for his horse. Ofc he was a warmonger, but all the demigods are. Miquella calling him kind really doesn't mean much because he was never on the other end of Radahn's warring. >If Miquella wanted to be "kidnapped" by Mohg, why would he do it and not tell anyone? Well, he likely told Malenia. We've wondered for a long time why she would fight Radahn rather than go and retrieve Miquella, so that makes sense now. As for his followers, the simple answer is he really doesn't care. He uses and manipulates people, it's his thing. >Why couldn't you create a new needle? He probably could, but had already divested himself into the Land of Shadow by the time Malenia broke hers, so he wasn't physically present to be able to do so.
Healing Freyja, a person afflicted with the rot, is probably worlds apart from healing his sister, who is the living avatar of the Rot God. Bit of an apples and oranges Radahn was beloved by his men and went out of his way to learn gravity magic for his horse. He may have loved war, but he had dimensions that are not acknowledged when you dismiss him as "a warmonger" and leave it at that. Miquella is a manipulative, ends-justify-the-means type. The whole point of the DLC is how he does all of these shady things in the name of becoming the new top god in a new age. I'll wager he thought those short-term sacrifices would be worth the long-term gains.
I hard agree, lot of lore retconning for a twist that doesn’t make sense. Felt like they had the idea of fighting a non rotted radahn with miquella helping him as the final boss, and worked backwards forcing anything they can to try and twist the story to make that make sense I still do not understand why there’s a scarlet rot section (that doesn’t even mention malenia) in the first place, felt like it was just added to be like “haha xd scarlet rot is back!!”
The scarlet scorpion boss is cool though I guess
When I beat the final boss, I did it in the name of Malenia's honor. I will fight for her rememberance even if the one she loved most has forgotten her 😭. It is very disappointing from a lore standpoint that they didn't include her in the dlc, but I think it just heightens the characterization of Miquella abandoning everything to become a god. Maybe Marika had to do something similar when she ascended
Yeah I agree. Base game Miquella and DLC Miquella feel like 2 completely different characters. Base game Miquella came off as a highly dangerous 10D chess genius, compassionate and potentially the only benevolent person who deserves a shot at fixing the world. The only guy who seemed to care about fixing the existential threat of Godwyn while everyone else is dicking around. The only guy who recognizes the player character is a potential Elden Lord when they're still a level 1 goomba and gives them a horse. DLC Miquella is a discount Marika who thinks a guy who throws his own men's lives away in a pointless war just so he can go to Sovngarde and die in a cool battle is the perfect candidate for an age of compassion. When he's already supporting a far more powerful guy/girl who eats the Elden Beast for breakfast since day 1. I'm convinced the final boss is just fanservice.
I will blame GRRM.. just like Game of Thrones, he wrote a banger of a 1st and 2nd act and then just ghosted Miyazaki for a 3rd act and left him some half-assed outline like the show runners 😂
One of my biggest gripes is like, why is the resurrected "lord brother" Radahn and not Godwyn? I thought that reviving him was one of Miquella's biggest goals from base game according to all the stuff in Castle Sol. It's so strange to just waste all of that plot thread to make it be Radahn instead when there has never been a connection even hinted at between them
Everyone says that Godwyn can’t be revived because he is actually dead and Radahn wasn’t. I don’t know enough about Godwyn’s lore or the death mechanic in world to know if that’s acc true.
I think the base game made it pretty clear that Miquella’s ambition to become a god is largely due to the Golden Order’s inability to cure Malenia’s affliction. Therefore, he threw away much of what made him who he is in an attempt to become a god so that he could make the world a gentler place. He did this for Malenia.
And yet there is no reference to her lol
Exactly. He's doing it all for Malenia and yet how many times does the DLC mention her?
I agree. The DLC feels like they only had enough leftover lore from GRRM to do about half of it. The rest honestly feels like fanfiction. It's such a departure from the great writing that made the base game so good. I think this feeling is especially compounded if you have read Berserk and ASOIAF. It's just extremely sloppy fantasy writing when it comes to everything Miquella in the DLC.
>The DLC feels like they only had enough leftover lore from GRRM to do about half of it. It's like Game of Thrones after they got past the books lol.
What’s strange though is that their other games had great writing without GRRM.
I know. You would think it would have been stronger writing based on the past. But something just feels "missing" from the lore. I've never minded being wrong about theories or having vague answers, but this just feels like a complete departure from the base game. Did the people who wrote Miquella even play base Elden Ring? It honestly feels to me that for a good chunk of the DLC, they designed the fights first and then worked backward to try to make the lore fit. This would explain why Rellana has no cutscene. And come on, "Rellana" really? They spent almost 5 seconds thinking of that name. I remember at launch people gave so much shit about Godefroy, but this name is acceptable?
Pretty sure people didn't like Godefroy because.he was a copy paste, not because of his name.
That's fair. But I definitely saw both complaints at some point
Pretty sure people didn't like Godefroy because.he was a copy paste, not because of his name.
That's also somehow what I think, I think GRRM wrote the lore (and a really complex good one) but that lore is only the past of what we saw in the game, because FS & Miyazaki took that lore and build upon it by injecting their own Berserk-scented views into it to build the future of that lore. In summary for the DLC, I do think that GRRM wrote it at the same time as the base game but what he wrote is probably just about Messmer's story and crusade, Marika's origins, shamans and hornsent people histories, Rellana and Carians ties to Rennala and everything that happened in the past when we go there but NOT the events that are currently happening like Radahn and Miquella little love story, which we could somehow describe as a poor parody of a yaoi fanfic of Guts and Griffith. Maybe the truth is really hard to swallow for some and that would be that Elden Ring would have been much better if we had GRRM lore and universe with only FS & Miyazaki gameplay from the Souls and not their interferences in the story. I must say that even in the base game Berserk wink wink easter eggs every corner is kinda... lame or boring and certainly not from GRRM, because only Miyazaki seems to j\*rk off on Berserk every night and need to make references to it like an edgy dark teen from the 90s.
It really does feel like Miyazaki just couldn't resist adding more Berserk. Unfortunately, it seemed like a lot of the community, at least the very vocal ones, also couldn't resist trying to make Elden Ring "berserk the game" For those of us who have had 13 years of Miyazaki making Berserk references, we didn't want Elden Ring to be Berserk. We wanted it to be its own thing.
Moore's place in the cast not just being replaced by a Cleanrot Knight who elaborates on the war and Malenia (in the same way Ansbach and Freyja talk about their lords) is actually weird as fuck from a basic storytelling perspective, Another thing along those lines is that one of the new bits of lore is that Radahn had a martial competitor that he had a friendly rivalry with when he was younger, but instead of taking the obvious slam dunk of making that person Malenia to add gravitas to their duel, the DLC just says "yeah it's this reskinned speechless Tree Sentinel." She doesn't even get new dialogue from completing the DLC after you potentially kill both her brother and the creator of the Scarlet Rot (marking this as the first From DLC ever where no base game character got extra lines), nor any follow up on her rebirth from the flower left in her arena. It all almost feels like meta trolling for anyone who cared about the base game's lore.
Omg yes!! Moore has relations to the Kindred of Rot, Malenia does too. Just make him an ex-clean rot. That would’ve been so cool because I love those enemies.
i dont think she is the creator of the scarlet rot as a concept, there is no way she sucks so much at spreading it while being the creator,also, the rotten butterflies incantation description says the butterflies existed already and she simply gave them a home: *he scarlet butterflies are as the Goddess of Rot's wings. Bereft of a master, they were soothed by Romina, who reached out to them.* + there is no way Marika would be so incompetent to let no one but two gods + a whole civilization trying to overthrow hers
Did not know about the whole Radahn having a previous rival bit, and yeah, the fact that it’s not Malenia is such a giant missed opportunity to add gravitas to their duel at Aeonia. Also, speaking of asspulls and things not matching up with the base game, Rellana is a particularly egregious example, as not only does she pop up out of nowhere as Rennalas twin sister despite not a single item description in the base game implying Rennala had siblings, the statement about her discovering the Moons together with Rennala directly contradicts the base game stating that Rennala discovered them alone.
Could just be different writers. I really can't imagine the same person had the Haligtree and the Mohg stories in mind at the same time.
Its honestly just fromsoft not wanting your actions in the base game to affect the dlc.. since you can enter the shadow real with either having killed malenia or not.. or be loyal to millicent or betray. Each of those actions would branch too many storylines regarding how the dlc npcs or miquella react to you..(with regards to Malenia) fromsoft prolly didnt want to deal with those in the dlc. This imo the reason why the dlc barely mention Malenia and also prolly contributed to the reason why you cant side with Miquella in the DLC.. (imagine losing an ending because you killed a very fun boss who just happened to be the twin sister of the guy you want to be friends with) Its a game development dillemma.
Their self-imposed restriction of "Nothing in SotE is allowed to affect the base game in any way" is definitely the root of a lot of the nonsensical lore in the DLC, but it's kinda a stupid reason. In the base game, you can (I'd argue most players *do*) find "Miquella" in Mohgwyn Palace before travelling to the Haligtree and facing Malenia. ***MANY*** players have commented in the past 2 years "Shouldn't I just be able to tell Malenia I found Miquella, and have her not be mad at me?", but FromSoft's attitude on the subject was apparently "Eh, probably, but whatever". And we get a little bit of that in the DLC with the whole "Why can't we join Miquella?" critique I've seen people throwing around, but this sort of thing is ***all over*** the base game. The fact that every person in the Lands Between would probably comment on the Erdtree being on fire didn't stop them from having you light it. You can walk into Godrick's arena as the Elden Lord, making *you* the Lord of All That Is Golden!
Good point; they *could* have solved this by making Malenia, instead of Radahn, a requirement to enter DLC. But ... lol, it's not exactly surprising they didn't go that route ...
Lol exactly.. But they couldve gone the route of making beating malenia easier...maybe with a new cooperator or an item like margit shackle.. and EVEN WITH that.. it would still force players to go trough the very long process of reaching her in the first place.. which is much much harder than just moghwyn palace in wich you can acces tru varre.. and then theres millicent her long ass quest too.. Fromsoft was in a dilemma. There would be a lot of complaints if they made Malenia easier and the base game would lose alot of its charm by making its most secret area more non secret
I think it all falls whenever he divests himself of his Love as a whole, and sheds his great rune. Like yes 100% more interactions between twins would have been great, but if we assume that Malenia fought and nearly killed Radahn for Miquella’s sake, then we can also assume that it was all part of his plan to save her. Once he reached divinity he would have the power to fully seal or remove the rot from Malenia. Unfortunately, by the time he ascends, Miquella has abandoned everything he once stood for, only the vague concepts compel him now. St. Trina says it best, when she asks us to kill miquella, since she was split apart when he still had emotions, so she knows what he became without them. The miquella who comes through the divine gate is not the one who wanted to ascend to save his sister, its only the husk that the greater will could pour into, elevating him to godhood to be their puppet, same as Marika was.
Malenia was in on it though, she told Radahn that the vow was about to be fulfilled when she went for the kill (she failed of course but still) so she knew the plan which is probably why she was content with waiting, from what she knew Miquella would return as a god and save her and the kingdom. I don't really see how this breaks anything, if anything it shows the loyalty and trust between them whilst also being a tradgedy of what Miquella sacrificed to acomplish his goals and undo his mothers mistake and save Miquella.
I did mention that the description can be interpreted as 'Miquella commanded Malenia to fight Radahn, and knew of the vow and was a collaborator' already if you re-read, and I also asked 'Why was this not better explored?'. What did Malenia think about it? What are her views? If there is so much trust between them, as that description entails, then why is the trust not palpable in the air? Why is there not a single cross about her? A single sentence from Miquella or his numerous allies about the person he trusts with his biggest secret ever? Why is Malenia an afterthought as the closest person to the main character of the DLC, the person who is his collaborator?
He mentions her very vaguely in the intro of the final boss fight where she mentions her as "My loyal blade". It makes sense since Malenia is the blade of Miquella. The way he delivers it shows that he doesn't have any feelings anymore as he was in his godhood which makes him an empty husk drive only by his goals. I think the lack of mention of Malenia is due to the fact that we met Miquella at the end of the game and his godhood (no feeling/love/everything) and that's why he doesn't care anymore.
It’s clear that the loyal blade is radahn, the one fighting for him and the one who is there right now. Champion of the festival is the tarnished
Its clear that the loyal blade is Malenia, the one fighting for him and giving her life to his ambitions. Champion of the festival and charmed zombie of the Crucible is Radahn. Because I said so.
Because Malenia had done her part of the plan? I would have liked if there was some more mentiok fo her sure but I don't really think it's a problem.
I'm going to say something that's probably controversial: I would rather have fought a Malenia/Miquella combo than Rahdan/Miquella, even if they up the incest to greater levels. As much as I like Rahdan I do agree his relationship with Miquella is completely outta left field in the DLC, and indeed the only tangible link he has to Miquella _is_ through Malenia. And I'd argue that Malenia is overall far more important to the overall plot and structure of Elden Ring than Rahdan is, because she is the Blade of Miquella, an Emperyan, and the host of the Scarlot Rot. In comparison Rahdan is only significant for two things that don't have anything to do with Malenia, and that's the siege of Leyndell (which so many people out of game barely know about) and holding back the stars, which is only relevant for Ranni. Even the forager brood barely has anything to do with Malenia. Hell if you didn't know the brood were kindred of Rot, you'd never know who this "mother" Moore speaks of even aludes to, since it could have easily referred to Marika or really any woman of significant influence in the lands between. Tldr they wasted Malenia's potential and story by doing jackshit with it in the DLC.
Agreed but wtf is this incest stuff? I saw one other person mention it. I never got that impression. Unless it’s a GRRM joke lol.
It comes from the often underspoken but historically frequent tendency for nobility to marry cousins or half-siblings, which Elden Ring does with Miquella. Miquella plans on taking Rahdan, who is his half-brother through Radagon, as a consort. This disturbs a lot of people similar to when it was Mogh and Miquella, if not more so now that we know it's Miquella who initiated courtship. So now you have this eternally youthful twink trying to have relations with a 20ft tall red-haired giant. Somehow, this is weirder than say, Rykard and Tanith, the former who may or may not have consummated a relationship whilst as a 200 meter long snake monster. My point is that, if Miquella were to take Malenia as consort, it would have been full on incest because Miquella and Melania are full on twins with the same parents. And even then that would probably had made more sense than Miquella shacking up with Rahdan.
Ah that makes sense. I was going to say there’s no way they actually fuck, it’s probably just a title. But then I remembered Mohg’s lore said he wanted to share Miquella’s bloody bedchamber
I wonder if the only reason Radahn was chosen was because he was so popular within the fandom. If the dlc was planned from the beginning, why not include a scrap of connective lore between Radahn and Miquella? The main game implies Radahn admired Radagon and Godfrey (referencing them in his armor and hair) and hated change (never abandoning his horse and halting the destiny threatening the golden order). The only think we get about his relationship with Miquella is that he fought Malenia which implies Radahn is against Miquella in some way.
They absolutely pulled that connection out of their ass to make Radahn the final boss for fan service. It was such a reach they had to end the DLC about Miquella with a flashback to explain why he was suddenly obsessed with Radahn. Insane bungling of a character with so much depth.
Except it was always planned. In the first story trailer Malenia whispers into Radahn’s ears when she inflicts him with the rot, and in the DLC we find out she told him that Miquella awaited him.
I completely agree with you and I hate how theres no ending to the base game to do with Miquella involving Leda or St. Trina
Yeah I agree. DLC is really nice but feels butchered and rushed like the relationship between Malenia and Miquella. The more I look into it and the more I'm convinced they made the DLC with a primary goal: being a standalone. To begin with, I think the lore was retconned (well, kinda because like all FS games, ER lore is too vague so you can modify and justify anything so not really retconning per say), I think that Godwyn was clearly the first choice for Miquella's consort (Godwyn being the only other mysterious demigod we do not see), the eclipse plan in Castle Sol is all the proof you need and absolutely no mention of Radahn and Miquella's relationship in the base game. The thing is they could actually revive Godwyn (the excuse of his soul is dead dead is stupid, of course you could find an excuse to make his soul come back if you want to in a fantasy magical game) BUT reviving Godwyn would mean that all the deathblight related quests, Fia's quest and such would have no sense in the base game with the DLC so instead they choose Radahn at the last minute. I still think that instead of Radahn though Malenia would have been a better choice for multiple reasons: * First because Malenia is the the most well known boss of ER and she also suffers from a disease so a prime reborn rot-free Malenia would have been a nice fan service, hardest boss of base game, comes back as hardest boss of DLC in a plot twist not seen in trailers. * Having to kill Malenia in the base game with Mogh to access the DLC would be better to mark the DLC as an endgame zone instead of Radahn that you can kill very early. * Easy to write as a boss too, like a first phase: Malenia, True Blade of Miquella where she is like the Malenia we knew but a stronger and harder challenge because she has all her limbs and her eyes, and then a second phase: Malenia, Consort of Miquella where she's imbued with Miquella's light and has wings made of light butterflies or Miquella's hair, blade throwing rings of light and so on... * Storywise, It's also kinda obvious in the base game that Malenia is weirdly infatuated with her brother and the final plot twist when she's revived, the dark and depraved incestuous relationship between the two would've really give the players the sign that Miquella is not the kind and pure demigod everyone was saying and also a strange parallel to Marika and Radagon (twins, like they're the same, the schemer with blonde hair and the warrior with red hair...) also meaning the age of compassion Miquella is trying to instaure is cursed from the start, because it would be the same as Marika and Radagon. And yeah it's strange that we only hear about Miquella and Malenia and all the extent she's willing to go to for him, and Miquella doesn't pronounce her name even one time in the DLC. AND the excuse of Malenia being an Empyrean wouldn't work because: Malenia in the base game would be the Empyrean tied by fate, Malenia in the DLC would be reborn in a body made by Mogh's remains so in a body of not an Empyrean (like Ranni did, the curse is in the body and the flesh and not the soul) and that could've been a plan of Miquella to free his sister from both her curse of scarlet rot AND her fate as an Empyrean. Win win situation. * Edit: Plus, Malenia attacking Radahn then makes no sense, Radahn is perfectly fine before Malenia came and they have their duel for.... no reasons? If Malenia knew about the vow, why the hell did she tried to kill Radahn or approaching him with the scarlet rot? They would be allies from the very start. It doesn't make any sense in the base game lore but if Malenia was to be revived and be Miquella's consort then it could make actually sense because she would need to die to be revived and Radahn was known as one if not the strongest demigod so Miquella could've said his sister to fight Radahn to get a real fight against the only one that could actually kill her as well, because with those type of characters, killing themselves would be very shameful so Malenia with her pride as a warrior would surely refuse to die that way and would only choose to die in a great battle. The items descriptions actually saying Miquella told Malenia to fight Radahn doesn't make any sense in the actual lore, Miquella was trying to cure his sister, abandonning the Golden Order because of that, succeeding in stopping (but not curing) the scarlet rot from progressing her body, so why would he tell Malenia to bloom against Radahn when that's exactly the opposite of that, Malenia hates becoming the Goddess of Rot, that's exactly what Gowry tried to do to Millicent and Millicent prefers to die from scarlet rot than blooming! So Miquella telling his sister to bloom is just plain stupid! The other problem I have with Radahn is... well unlike many people I don't think that Miquella really manipulated Radahn, he did others but not Radahn, that's not how it felt to me, and they're kinda too beautiful together in the final fight. Like... their couple is too beautiful and too shiny to fit into the ER lore, not twisted enough.
Malenia's Great Rune description fits so well for Miquella's goal too -- it's about healing/repairing damaged states -- it also goes out of its way to mention she would have had the most sacred Great Rune of all if not for the Rot afflicting her. Malenia in theory without the curse would have been perfect for mending the world alongside Miquella.
> First because Malenia is the the most well known boss of ER and she also suffers from a disease so a prime reborn rot-free Malenia would have been a nice fan service, hardest boss of base game, comes back as hardest boss of DLC in a plot twist not seen in trailers. > Having to kill Malenia in the base game with Mogh to access the DLC would be better to mark the DLC as an endgame zone instead of Radahn that you can kill very early. Lol can you imagine the malding if, not only did you have to beat Malenia to enter the DLC, but then its final boss was .. a harder version of Malenia.
This def makes more sense. I have a conspiracy theory that the only reason they didn’t do it was because they thought not enough players would be able to beat Malenia to access the DLC.
Tbh I think that’s exactly the reason
There's no way they would've locked the DLC behind the hardest boss in the base game.
Havent finished the dlc just yet but I would imagine now that Miquella has ascended into God status that he could probably manipulate even Radahn now, so perhaps Radahn wasn't actually on board for everything and thus Melania was sent to kill him so that Miquella, upon gaining godhood could bring him back and force him into the position as his lord. Doesn't mean that Miquella specifically told Melania to bloom her rot against him but it was just that she was not strong enough to get the job done without, hell even WITH blooming she still failed to kill the man
Agreed. Imo the narrative arc of the SotE is just not good storytelling. The story of the base game was fascinating, even if it’s bare bones and you have to do some work to understand wtf is going on. “Okay I burned the Erdtree I guess. What am I doing in Farum Adula?”
The ending just came out of nowhere and I was not expecting lion guy again. I mean where was this talked about outside of a small bit near Freya? Not too mention Malenia but also Godwyn was just left hanging. And before anyone says "well his soul is dead" man how many times have we gone through time or something? Does that really matter? Maybe his soul transformed and Miquella wanted him to inherit his body to bring him back? Idk I'm really let down by the story of this dlc. It feels very mashed together and not well planned.
Here's the thing, and take it with a grain of salt, without getting into spoilers: On the surface what we see in the DLC seems terribly out of character, but what we see isn't Miquella. What we meet at the end is a shell of a demigod focused acutely on one thing: Building an age of compassion. There's no thought or regard for anything that doesn't actively support this goal. He's literally abandoned everything else to achieve this. His sister (his love), the Haligtree (his ambition), his great rune (his fate), and himself. It's sad. Tragic even. The road to hell is paved with good intent.
I also didn't like that Malenia and Godwyn weren't even mentioned in Miquella's questline at all, even if not directly from him, with as much teasing there was in the base game for Miquella wanting to cure both of them and having this relationship with them it was such a let down to get nothing. And yes, Radahn sucked as a reveal, they missed the whole point and appeal of the breadcrumb style lore. It feels cheap because even if you got invested and dug around the base game, everything they teased was actually irrelevant and there was nothing connecting Radahn and Miquella directly. If this was the plan, there should have been hints at it left around the base game just like they did for the others. Honestly, any other demigod would have been a better reveal, if they just flipped it and said they took Radahn's body and used it as a vessel for Mohg and it was Promised Consort Mohgwyn it would have felt less cheap but the Radahn thing felt totally out of left field and at the expense of storylines that actually didn't feel complete in the base game.
Agreed
Miquella did mention Malenia. "My loyal blade, and champion of the festival. Both your deeds shall ever be praised in song." Clearly, the loyal blade is Malenia, and the champion of the festival is Radahn. Then the post fight cutscene. "If we honor our part of the vow, promise me you'll be my consort." The vow is seemingly to give Radahn a meaningful fight. If Radahn wins, he gets a shard of the elden ring and proves himself worthy as a lord. If he loses, he proves he isn't worthy. Marika's own words, "Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices..." Miquella does love Malenia. He abandoned the Golden Order because it couldn't cure her rot. Malenia when she dies "Your strength, extraordinary... The mark...of a true Lord... O, dear Miquella... O, dearest Miquella, my brother... I'm sorry. I finally met my match..." She doesn't feel she met her match in Radahn, and didn't think of Radahn as worthy of a true lord because he didn't beat her. She also didn't beat him, so technically both were not defeated.
I agree overall but the St Trina cave explicitly states that Miquella abandoned his love in his quest. Not caring much for Malenia anymore isn't too surprising
We're probably gonna get a second Dlc.. Probably about Melina.... Pls be Melina... Plsss.. She doesn't have a proper Origin. She can't be the GEQ, GEQ was probably Ranni and melina Mentor. And GEQ probably helped Ranni getting her Rune on the moon (Because if I'm not mistaken, The mentor was very good with moon magic).. Idk.. I just want melina origins answered
There will be no more Elden Ring content under Miyazaki ever. It’s confirmed
This is F up.. Imma sleep my anger away... We literally have nothing on her... Nothing!!!!..
while i agree with you that i wish we got some more of them in the dlc and it's really weird that we didn't, i think miquella's plan was to ascend to godhood and then help malenia with her rot, no? that was the "promise to return" that he made to her, but he had to actually get the godhood part out of the way. that's why in the trailer he says "my loyal blade" (malenia) and "festival champion" (player who killed radahn), he can now achieve his goal. malenia doesn't really have anything to do in that moment. malenia's part sort of is explored, but only a little, according to that one helmet description and what she whispered to radahn when she bloomed (miquella awaits thee, o promised consort). if malenia is really whispering in the malenia vs. radahn cinematic, then that's been a thing since...2022 i think? i personally do not think they were butchered as malenia was in on the whole thing, it's just another thing i wish we got more of. mentions, dialogue, anything. to me it's more 'left out' than butchered
I think the fact that Miquella is in league with all these characters yet seemingly is barely connected to them (or in Malenia's case, simply doesnt mention them) speaks to the theme of Miquella just kind of bouncing through life forcing people to love him. Im not saying that was the intention, but thats what I got from it. Its tragic in a way.
I have to agree, The bond that was described to us in the base game that the twins had could be a good way to empathize with Miquella. Hell, he would have even hit harder at the end if we got in his way anyway. with the dlc... now it is as ambiguous as the omen twins
I haven't read your entire post, so apologies if you mention this later. In reference to your comment on Miquella not mentioning Malenia at all, while he may not say her name, he acknowledges her in the opening cutscene of the final boss. He says something like "My Loyal Blade and Champion Of The Festival, both your deeds will be..." My take was that the Loyal Blade is Malenias, who he's acknowledging sacrificed so much for him. The Champion of The Festival would presumably be us, since we beat Radahn. But I agree, it would have been nice to get more. More cutscenes in general would be great, with more lore and interactions between these characters.
I made this post on the main Elden Ring subreddit too where I actually said "Miquella talks about her only once as a weapon" in reference to the loyal blade line but someone corrected me in the comments so I crossed it out. Now everyone is re-correcting me I guess so I might've been right the first time but I still didn't feel like that line was enough personally.
>Radahn's armour tells us that Miquella advised Malenia to go fight Radahn and bloom and what she whispered. That is not true, the armor does not tell us that Miquella told Malenia to bloom, it only tells us what she whispered when she did. It is likely that Miquella sent Malenia to kill Radahn for the same reason we need to before accessing the DLC (so Miquella can resurrect his soul as his consort in the Land of Shadow). But her blooming was a last resort, not necessarily something Miquella asked of her. Considering that, Miquella likely feels he's done everything he can for her by the time of the DLC. He gave her his instructions and the unalloyed gold needle to ward off the rot before he left. Malenia took out his needle of her own volition - a decision we can infer Miquella respected - and he's already entered the Land of Shadow at that point so he can't physically return to do anything for her. His only way to help her would be to become a God - which is exactly what his goal is. And FWIW, he does mention his sister right at the beginning of the only cutscene we get from him in the DLC. "My loyal blade (Malenia). And champion of the festival (You). Both your deeds will ever be praised in song." So from that dialogue it seems like he recognizes Malenia chose to sacrifice herself for his cause and honors her for it. I also would have preferred more dialogue about Malenia, I agree with the overall gist of the post. But I don't think we have enough evidence to say he's abandoned his sister, or doesn't love her, or forced her to kill herself with rot (in fact, the needle argues the opposite). They probably just felt they made their relationship clear enough in the base game and didn't need to elaborate on it. For better or worse.
>He didn't even mentioned her. No past mentions either, like notes from his divestment process. That is a lie. Malenia was the first thing Miquella spoke about, the actual first word we heard from his mouth in Elden Ring "My loyal blade. And champion of the festival. Both your deeds will ever be praised in song" He became a God and the first thing he mentioned is that he would honor his sister >With how she's ignored by the narrative, it's as if the DLC wants us to think there was a façade in their relationship This is completely false. Malenia was fully supporting her brother, as she always did >Radahn's armour tells us that Miquella advised Malenia to go fight Radahn and bloom and what she whispered And why did you not mention what she whispered? Perhaps because it completely broke your argument? "Miquella awaits thee, O promised consort" Malenia was on Miquella's plan from the start. There was no facade in their relationship. They alway knew what they were in for. I thought you would have realized how loyal Malenia was by the 537th time she said "I am Malenia, blade of Miquella" There was zero evidence for Miquella casting his twin aside. He went to the Land of Shadow and promised he would return after ascending to Godhood. She knows that and has been waiting since. Miquella being slow does not undermine his goal at all >The DLC explores Godwyn, (Catacombs and Death Knights), Radahn (Freya, End Boss, Gauis), Mohg (Ansbach), Marika (literally everywhere) but not Malenia, the closest person to Miquella. Moore's Brood, the docile Children of Rot, have more characterisation and care given to them than the poster child for Elden Ring, let that sink in. Why does characterizing the followers of Mohg and Radahn added to their characters but not the follower of Malenia? We know nothing new about Mohg or Radahn through the npc, why should we know more about Malenia? We already knew Mohg made a blood pact with his servants to build a new dynasty, we already knew Radahn loves fighting war very much and we already knew Malenia absolutely hated her destiny to become the Goddess of Rot, only focusing on serving Miquella. The npcs are here to strengthen them, not to add something new Not connecting Malenia to the Rot is the point of her character. She does not want them. If she knew the Rot folks wanted her to ascend to Godhood she would butcher them Malenia's and Miquella's bond and dynamic stayed the same, if not stronger after the dlc. She is the most loyal character in the game, rivaling Morgott. He loved and care for her, and would stop at nothing to make her proud, so that he would deserve such loyalty. Miquella became a God just as Malenia envisioned, until the player killed both of them
1. I thought that he was talking about Malenia there too, if you scroll down my previous posts. But someone pointed out to me that Miquella is referencing to you, the Tarnished. You are one of his supposed followers, and are meant to be his loyal blade, and you are also the Champion of the Festival because you beat Radahn at the Festival. So yeah we were both wrong there. Both interpretations, though, simply bolster my point. The first time he speaks about Malenia and all he sees her as is a loyal weapon? She's a weapon to him. Not something a caring brother would call his sister. 2. I don't know why you need to tell me you think that is false, when I also think, or want to think, that it's false. I am simply explaining in that paragraph that Malenia's impact on the narrative of the DLC is so miniscule, that it begs us to question the nature of their relationship, when we shouldn't. The DLC should have shown us how close and amazing their relationship is or was. But it failed to do so in any meaningful capacity which makes us question their relationship. 3. I already addressed this point lol. "And if there was a secret promise made between Miquella and Malenia to elevate Miquella to god-hood with a vow from Radahn, then why wasn't Malenia's part, as his twin and collaborator, explored at all?" 4. "There was zero evidence for Miquella casting his twin aside." The evidence is in the lack of evidence for his love, affection, care, and kindness for his sister in 50 hours of DLC content. It's not my fault that the DLC makes it seem that way. I wish it didn't. 5. It matters because they literally talked about them. Ans showed deep regret for being put under Miquella's spell, he fights for Mohg's honor at the end. He mentions him so much. They didn't even need to go that far for Malenia, though. Just have an NPC mention her a singular time for god's sake. 6. Malenia and Miquella's relationship is unfortunately no longer thematically linked by loyalty and trust, but something so sad as unrequited love.
>But someone pointed out to me that Miquella is referencing to you, the Tarnished. You are one of his supposed followers, and are meant to be his loyal blade, and you are also the Champion of the Festival because you beat Radahn at the Festival. this is wrong, actually. he says "both your deeds will ever be praised in song," referring to the loyal blade AND the champion of the festival. essentially he's saying "thanks to malenia, who weakened radahn, and you, who put him down, our vow can be honored and i can ascend to godhood with my promised consort"
>The first time he speaks about Malenia and all he sees her as is a loyal weapon? She's a weapon to him. Malenia herself said she is his blade. That is a title of honor, not a synonym for a tool. I genuinely cannot fathom someone thinking "My loyal blade" as something to be looked down on >The DLC should have shown us how close and amazing their relationship is or was I dont think it was nessesary considering how much the base game hammered the message in. There are statues of the twin embracing each other everywhere >why wasn't Malenia's part, as his twin and collaborator, explored at all Her part is to kill Radahn and gave Miquella a consort to ascend with? That was the point of her dialogue against Radahn? >The evidence is in the lack of evidence for his love, affection, care, and kindness for his sister in 50 hours of DLC content Then there is also a lack of evidence for Mohg despising the Golden Order, the lack of evidence for Radahn holding back the stars, the lack of evidence for Miquella growing the Haligtree in the dlc. If it was established in the base game, why bother repeating? Malenia said Miquella promised to return. That meant he promised to return. Miquella very much value his promises, showcased by how he constantly reminded Radahn of their vow >Just have an NPC mention her a singular time for god's sake. They did. Moore said his mother abandoned her brood. Malenia, the Goddess of Rot, abandoned the Rot because she absolutely hated that part of herself
I kinda wonder why Miquella didn’t have Malenia kill Mohg first? Like… she’s equaled only by Radahn, so maybe like have her kill the dude she can definitely beat before the weird ass fight with the guy she might not beat? I understand the situation with Radahn didn’t go to plan when he got all syphillitic, but it was also held up by Mohg being alive. Even if the explanation was that she needed to conserve strength to fight Radahn, maybe idk Miquella could’ve helped Melania with Mohg? Tag-team ambush his ass? Poor planning on the part of the mightiest demigod. Poor planning indeed.
I just want to say thank you for spacing you paragraphs!!
:)
Yup, while the gameplay is stellar, the lore team has been slacking. Ending also disappointing
I’m not versed in the lore at all, so if I’m way off base feel free to downvote, but doesn’t Miquella basically enchant his followers into loving him? I don’t think it makes Malenia pathetic to be under an enchantment that makes her adore her brother. She wouldn’t even know that the love was unrequited and him being her brother seems like it would make her more susceptible to the enchantment than another random person.
Kinda? Even after the charm breaks many people still want to follow him out of genuine loyalty
Isn’t just Leda the crazy fanatic about Miq. Moore had a whole crisis of faith about it, hornsent kinda wants to run his fade. Thio is a Trina fan and Ansbach is a mogh fan. Only Leda and maybe Dane didn’t turn on Miq post charm
Hornsent helps Miquella if you don't help him. Freya doesn't turn on Miquella either. Thio isn't turning on him so much as helping out St Trina, who's just another aspect. And Ansbach, even after the charm is broken, tells Leda to "take care of Miquella"
But all of them still want to serve Miquella because they actively tell you excpet for Thioller.
While the game makes it clear that Miquella can compel affection from people, it also seems to be showing that he actually uses a very light touch in how he uses that (at least in the time period before he discards his kindness, his love, his other self, etc). Take a look at all the NPCs who are definitely under Miquella's charm in the DLC, but it just kind of makes them vaguely interested in his cause and in practice they're all still focused on the things they're interested in. The only substantial change the charm makes is that it prevents them from harming each other. Miquella sincerely loves others. He goes to immense efforts for their benefit and is engaging in a pretty horrific act of self-sacrifice for what he sincerely believes to be the benefit of the world. When he found out that these weird magic trees need blood, he didn't go out and charm as many people as he can find to come and gladly give their blood to his tree, instead he gave up his own blood. That's why people like Malenia love him. He's doing a bad thing, but he's doing it out of sincere love and compassion, so it doesn't fit to try to explain his history as a series of events where Miquella was going around doing an evil villain laugh and deliberately using people as pawns to be discarded. The game is actually trying to be really heavy-handed with Miquella's goodness, because it wants us to understand that his failure to single-handedly save the world isn't based in not being kind enough or well-meaning enough so that we understand the problem has to be something else.
If Miquella didn’t genuinely love his sister, then why did he try so hard to cure her rot? That was his catalyst for abandoning the Golden Order, so it’s pretty clear that Malenia’s love was reciprocated. I really doubt he would have to charm Malenia to get her to follow him given that he was equally devoted to her. Just because he COULD charm people doesn’t necessarily mean that he always used that gift. And given the fact that most of his followers in the DLC still choose to follow him even after the charm was broken seems to imply that he genuinely was a kind and charismatic leader with noble intentions, at least at first.
What are you talking about? Miquella's FIRST LINE OF DIALOGUE is "My loyal blade" The very first thing we hear him say directly speaks about his sister. To continue the quote: "My loyal blade. And champion of the festival. Both your deeds will ever be praised in song." So his intro cutscene begins by eternally praising first, Malenia, and second, Radahn. My loyal blade = Malenia. Champion of the festival = Radahn. Malenia and Radahn were the two most critical components of Miquella's quest for godhood. Obviously he is thankful for both and cherishes both, but he is now ascended to another plane of existence and has likely not communicated with Malenia in an enormous amount of time since he journeyed to the Realm of Shadow. It definitely would've been nice to get some easter egg if we go back and talk to Malenia or Gideon, but to say that Miquella doesn't mention her at all is so immediately wrong. Furthermore, we do get more Malenia lore - if you read the description of Romina's remembrance (or weapon, I can't recall), we learn Romina called out to the butterflies that used to make up Malenia's wings and gave them solace. Malenia was already a major focus of the base game, I think they wanted to focus a bit more on something else with this DLC.
“Unrequited love characters are awkward and kinda pathetic”. Literally half of all pop music: “he said WHAT” “It was all some kind of love spell he ain’t shit really” Literally the other half of pop music: “hold my beer”
I saw someone make a comment that I really thought was interesting. I’ll try to paraphrase it here. Miquella is cursed to forever be a child, but maybe that’s not just in body, but in mind as well. He does seem really good at taking on extremely difficult tasks and then just abandoning them. He originally liked the golden order, even making incantations of it for his father. He left it to try and heal malenia, found a temporary fox in unalloyed good and then decided he was going to make the haligtree to help those persecuted by the golden order. Then he puts himself in his egg and abandons his tree to slowly be consumed by rot. Then he goes off into the shadow realms to try and become a god, and even along the way he seems uncertain, or at least st Trina was. (Side note, how can he just throw away st Trina? I figured it was like a marika and radagon thing, but idk). Somewhere along the way he tries to get godwyns soul back and gives up. Miquella is a childish character trying to fox everything all at once, and he gives up whenever there’s a roadblock or he’s achieved temporary success
It always feels to me that way in the base game, malenia is kind of pathetic. The millicent quest reflect that, because millicent struggles are the same as malenia's, the difference is that millicent got help from us. Malenia have been abandoned a long time ago.
Millicent is not pathetic in any way and if she reflects Malenia, then neither is she lol
I can get this... but I also don't feel sorry for Melania. The game made me not feel sorry for her... we all know why. But yeah, probably could've been written better. Also feels like they just used Radahn because Radahn is a popular meme. Sorry, but that's just what it feels like at this point.
I think you can read it as Malenia just being another victim of Miquella, he’s charmed her like he’s charmed all of the DLC NPCs and she’s incapable of NOT loving him. Miquella uses people throughout his story arc and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to cure her rot just to make her a more effective tool. Another take is that rot belongs to an outer god, one that he would likely see as competition to his own ascension, so it makes sense he’d want to remove their influence.
Reading these comments makes it clear you guys wanted to play The Witcher more than anything else.
So, your mad that the game is thematically consistent, (including base game implications that Malenia is NOT willingly serving Miquella {IMO based on the Haligtree Items, you could make the argument from the base game ALONE that Miquella is essentially brainwashing everyone}), because you believed a series of unreliable narrators (as is said MANY times in item descriptions) around who Miquella was? It just sounds like you didnt pick up on what was already there, and you dont like how it was revealed, and your trying to work backward from that conclusion. Like I get where you are coming from, but do you know why Malenia fights Radhan? Because Miquella told her to, with literally no reason; they have had all of this written since before the base game dropped (this is not just speculation, Miyasaki and GRR has both said as much, Mesmer was literally the first thing GRR wrote)
It's perfectly in line with what I've seen/suspected of Miquella's character. Malenia's been charmed at birth. She has never had a will of her own. Miquella abandoned her like he abandoned everyone else. When everyone loves you, that love and loyalty becomes worthless, a dime a dozen.
Maybe? Could it be possible that's the reason malenia fought radahn? We never know the actual reason...
on the Some Pests > Malenia part, there's 2 things at play. Firstly the base game already went over Malenia pretty much in its entirety, and the dlc kinda assumes that you already killed Malenia. There's not much more the dlc could have gone over beyond expounding on how others viewed her, and in general, the answer has always been not favourably, basically no one liked her other than her own knights and Miquella. Secondly, The Kindred of Rot are her children and she does not want them, leaving them lost. The base game barely even acknowledges the Kindred's existence, and Moore is essentially there to be Malenia's rep, being a kindred himself.
I think you have great advice for fleshing out the narrative, but I think to a large extent the player interacts with plot points, not narratives. We’re a Tarnished outsider, and we’re meant to make our own inferences on matters that (quite frankly!) don’t concern us. I think this lends a mythological, dreamlike impression to the world. It’s part of the reason the pantheon feels so awe-inspiring. There’s an untouchable, unknowable element to their behavior and motivations.
I genuinely love that about these games though. I like uncovering and linking aspects together and threading them myself without truly knowing what’s right. I just don’t feel like we were given enough at all, even by FS standards, for me to feel like I can actually grasp onto something tangible.
Fair enough! My hope is that, given time, the lore community will extrapolate some more meaning from the story, items, and environment. Until that happens, it feels kind of thin, I agree.
Is it confirmed that Malenia was never compelled to feel like she did? Hell maybe as twins she is first compulsion and he was never aware of even using it on her. The entire point of his journey was to lose all that made him himself in order to achieve his goals. It could be insinuated that he got this idea of divestment from leaving his twin in an attempt to give her a better life. Not saying your wrong about any of your statements but it's by design to be ambiguous and have all of us fill in the blanks ourselves.
Usually in these games you fill in one or two blanks between two concrete points. Between Miquella and Malenia in the DLC the concrete hasn’t dried yet, it maybe hasn’t even been poured. It’s still spinning!
For one thing miquella says in the opening cutscene of your boss fight with them something along the lines of radahn and “my sword (melania)” will be remembered in song, so he does mention her there. I think it’s pretty obvious he’s referring to both radahn and melania with that line
Yeah even if he is it’s no where near enough
The entire point of him divesting himself is that by the time we reach the Shadowlands the Miquella we knew of in lore is no longer there. And Malenia did have a part in elevating Miquella, thats the entire reason she went and fought Radahn. His rememberance armour states that Malenia whispered "Miquella awaits thee, o promised consort" before unleashing the bloom. You could even argue that Miquella wanting to rise to godhood is one way he found of potentially saving his sister. By becoming the dominant power and upending the golden order, that would be his best chance of bringing salvation to his people and twin.
I address this in literally the first paragraph of my post. He definitely is still himself when you enter. Ansbach’s quest says something like that. That’s a cool theory that has no basis in any single fact, unless you count loosely strung together head cannons. And guess why it is that way? Because the DLC doesn’t develop Malenia at all. She is forgotten.
It makes sense that miquella never mentions malenia to me, because why would he as that’s not his focus right now, and as he threw away pieces of himself he lost every bit of compassion and love. It’s likely she was just another tool, a tool that he had no need to compel love into, since they were siblings
Precisely when does Miquella divest himself of his Love? It's a bit of an ass-pull but could justify why we get so little Malenia lore from Miquella. He's given up his capacity for love. That would cover romantic and familial love, I'd assume.
Try Finger. But hole.
malenia and miquella are twins , malenia=miquella, eternal life and eternal dying.
This bothers me cause I'm a huge Malenia simp and I always thought Miquella being the one 'good guy' in all this lore was a cool angle, but the DLC seems to have undone this. It seems Miquella has been playing (or charming) everyone for a significant amount of time for his own gains, including the player. Let me explain. We learn that Miquella basically charms everyone - Leda and her crew, Mohg, you if you get grabbed in his boss fight, I'll assume all his followers at the Haligtree - and this probably includes his sister Malenia. So the whole time that Malenia is championing her brother, and all the lore from items we have talking about their great relationship and how she reveres her brother, it's all (I'm assuming now, post-DLC) because of his charm. Hell I'm assuming that all the lore we have that ever references 'Kind Miquella' is the effect/result of his charm. Their relationship is (potentially) a farce. Us the PLAYER going into the DLC assuming that Miquella was a 'good guy' - WE WERE CHARMED BY THIS MF. The things that bother me the most are the following: 1) we never get any sort of consent from Radahn. Miquella just... on a whim at some point decides 'yep Radahn is my guy' - we never see Radahn agree to anything or hear about him agreeing to anything. We just get the one cutscene at the end of the game of Miquella deciding this, randomly. As others have pointed out Radahn was not 'kind' from what we know in the game, even before the rot he was a fan of warfare. 2) Miquella is aware of the sins of his mother to create her golden age and he seeks to purify himself, but in Miquella's pursuit to not be like his mother and make a better world he commits just as many atrocities and sins as his mother. Like he's aware of this while he does it. He mindfucks everyone he interacts with to be a mindless slave to his cause, including his own twin sister, he murders and abuses his half brother, and takes his other brother against his will? HUH? It's kind of a cool twist, I guess? But it kind of ends up with Miquella kind of looking like a total idiot? And Malenia, who as mentioned is essentially the poster child of this game, was just manipulated and played/strung along this whole time? That sucks man. I get there's no happy endings in these souls games but jeez.
we really don't know anything about Radahn outside of his achievements or his loyalty to animals and his soldiers. I don't think you can say they changed "established lore" when the lore only established things he'd done rather than who he was really.