26 april 2025
finally finished shadows of the erdtree. it was very good. i thought the fights were interesting & intense, but once i "got" how to approach them ( i'd say this was the rellana fight, for me ) everything opened up to me & felt great to play. worldbuilding was really great too, of course ... but obviously i want to use this thing to talk about the ending!!
as i wrote a few days ago, i was unclear why exactly we were forced to be pitted against miquella. i understood that he was manipulative & disrespectful of others who stood in his way, and that the narrative was gunning on us seeing that as reason enough to not side with him ... but ... i was just never convinced. like the dungeater or frenzied flame endings are fine, but miquella's is too much? ranni also killed a fellow demigod in an unprecedentedly cruel fashion. so like ... what gives?
after beating the boss, and getting that subtle little ending scene, i was left like ... feeling really empty. it felt so inconclusive; i wanted to see just a little more. i went to the finger reader & read over the descriptions for all the prizes you get for beating that fight. and after thinking about it for a while ... i am of two minds.
on one hand ... it's remarkably punctual & beautiful. both phases of the final boss were VERY reminiscent of fighting radahn from the base game; this essentially meant that the culmination of the dlc was just a boss you had already seen before, but kind of remixed. as well, as soon as you start the npc fight prior to the radahnquella one, you don't learn anything you don't already know past that point -- none of their equipments or dialogues reveal anything that you couldn't figure out from the rest of the dlc thus far. this is all meaningful, because an interpretation you can take on the dlc is this: if you want miquella to succeed in his quest, don't fight him. don't stop him. it's similar to moon rpg's story, where if you want the good ending, you need to put the game down -- because your role in the game, by design, is one of violence. and in this light, i felt like the ending was ... satisfying. it was unbelievably sad feeling, but if i think about it this way, i feel like, there was something being said & i was affected by it. it felt good. in a bad way.
on another hand ... that doesn't justify why the player wasn't given the option to pick an ending with miquella / why we were forced to oppose him. so as interesting as it is, i don't think that's the "correct" way to read the end. i think what was actually going on, is that miquella is just a character fated for tragedy, and that's all it is. like, he's so wrapped up in his vision of the future that he becomes blind to the people he once wanted to protect. he studied magic & science so he could cure malenia, now he's left her for dead after using her to get a message to radahn; he purged disease & promised hope to people born into oppression, then turns & uses these vulnerable people as meat shields for his ascension; there's so many textual examples of him both caring deeply for people, and also manipulating people to do his bidding, and i sincerely don't believe he is acting nefariously -- or rather, i believe that he doesn't see what he's doing as cruel ( ansbach even says as much when speaking about mohg's corpse ) -- he's just so focused on reaching his goal that "some" casualties in the wake of it won't matter.
his vision was good, but his methods were not. and in the same vein as him being too absorbed to listen, i don't think he would be willing to accept the tarnished as his lord -- he decided early on that he wanted radahn, because HE decided radahn was kind ( and i don't think anything in the game implies that radahn agreed to this or even KNEW miquella wanted to do this!!! ). in the end, he was just like marika, using coercion & violence to get to his goal -- even his choice in consort mirrors hers, what with radahn admiring godfrey to the point of trying to act like him; miquella even drapes himself onto radahn like serosh on godfrey, it's insane. it feels clearly like he's supposed to be continuing the cycle of suffering started by marika, just under a different paint of coat.
but more than micky's methods being wicked, it's the end goal that i think was null. he "became a god", whatever that means, and he was just steps away from "enacting" his vision of the future, whatever THAT means. i think the different between him and ranni, despite both tossing their great runes & going to great lengths to severe themselves from the greater will, is that ranni's place in the universe is to be a "distant" one -- she wanted to keep divinity & mortality separate. and i suppose an interpretation of this vision, is that she is to exude little if any influence on the nature of mankind, whereas miquella wanted to force everyone into complacency as a means of avoiding suffering. in that sense, you can read him as almost ... naive? like the siren song of pacifism in real life is that you can't be non-violent when your oppressors won't meet you on the same footing; you can't just choose peace when the system is rigged against you.
and i suppose miquella functionally removing choice from the equation is inherently evil. idk. he's like repping the coexit bumper stickers, but instead of sincerely coexisting, everyone just needs to Believe In Miquella Forever. again, i think his heart was in the right place, but logistically, he like, forgot what makes people, people, and so his order was doomed from the start.
i will say ... i didn't finish two quest lines -- st trina / thollier, and the hornsent. i messed both of them up, and either could honestly reveal more info to recontextualize the end. soooooooo ... i'm deciding whether or not to just read shit online or if i'm going to pony up & do a whole nother fuckin playthrough just to learn ... lol ... but in any case, i kind of want to comb over the lore & make sure i see everything. because even now, i still feel like my interpretation of the end isn't right gsgdfgsfgsd
anyway, all this musing just to try & justify why i, as an art enjoyer, thought the ending was apt & thematic & appropriate, but i, as a player, feel disappointed that i couldn't at least decide for myself if i wanted to help miquella establish a new order. i suppose that's inline with his vision of No Choice, on a meta level?
... as kind of a tangential sidenote, i found the final boss to be adequately challenging, but not nearly as oppressive & evil as i had been told it would be. i was apparently even underleveld, both in basic level as well as dlc level; i'm saying this less to brag, and more to express my annoyance at how unwilling people are to stop & think & engage with these games on their terms. the entirety of elden ring has been subverting souls players' expectations on how to read bosses ... why wouldn't the dlc also be about that ... just relax & try 2 see what your goal is bro ........ i'm like so irritated by the player base's obsession with both bitching about how poorly balanced the fights are, and also completely shaming anyone who chooses to go about them in "cheap" ways or otherwise play in a way they don't see as "correct" ( read: there are no cheap ways to play a game if the game has been both designed with these mechanics in mind & also you're playing to have fun -_- ) but then not bothering to try & play the game, like, as it is. you know what i mean. like it pigs me off because these games are soooooo vast & fun, but you just like. can't talk to anyone about them without busting a blood vessel lol. i'm probably also an insufferable fan, but like idk. where are all the homies that don't scream & yell & get mad & like to approach these like they're fun puzzles instead of dick measuring contests ... idk ... kicks my pretentious little pebble & wallows
mood: contemplative 💭
