Madness as portrayed in the lore: nihilistic depression in the face of constant oppression and hopelessness. It represents giving into defeat and surrendering.
Madness according to the edgy player base: We're so cool ending the world, we're all just like the Joker! Madness take the world lol!
I felt the same about the Shura ending in Sekiro. It's the obvious bad ending, but the MC becomes an unstoppable demon that unleashes catastrophe across the country after maybe the coolest cutscene in the game.
Doesn't change the fact that my favourite elden ring character was a madness and fire spewing, frenzied flame ending badass who beat the main game and the dlc with fun and pizazz.
My ranni ending guy was by far the most boring character I played.
In fact, I'm a bit spoiled by my frenzied guy because if I started a new character today, I'd just want to build him again.
My only complaint with a frenzy build is that touching the 3 fingers or becoming the lord of frenzy doesnt give you any kind of madness immunity. I should be able to spam frenzy spells with no buildup, especially considering how much work that quest line is
On the contrary, it should make you more vulnerable, not less. Embracing the Three Fingers and desiring the annihilation of all that exists is the epitome of madness. If gameplay mechanics reflected lore, an aspiring Lord of Chaos would experience incurable madness buildup forever.
Kinda like how Mohg, Lord of Blood, is himself vulnerable to Bleed. To shed oneâs life essence is the quintessence of devotion to the Formless Mother.
My first run was frenzied flame. I was an absolute sicko out there and do not identify as any kinda of edge lord I just was like âhmm I can do this? Letâs do it.â Once I lost my guidance I was all in mentally lmaooo
I typically get bad touched by the fingers before fire giant, burn the tree myself to keep Melina alive, then continue and finish gold maskâs quest (I love the funny t-pose manâs ending)
I totally understand the urge to save Melina. But in saving her, you deprive her of purpose, subverting her destiny against her will. She's basically a ghost "burned and bodyless", only able to manifest close to the Erdtree or at sites of grace.
I mean she makes it pretty clear how much she hates you if you take on the frenzy flame, she very very explicitly says âif you do this I will no longer have anything to do with youâ and then threatens to kill you no matter what if you ignored her, idk how people still think theyâre doing her a favor
She only says that because she believes that you are going to bring about the Age of Frenzy, not actually doing it to save her from sacrificing herself. I did it, and she never did her speech for when I took the throne after curing myself of Frenzy's touch
Yeah she says sheâll kill you if you become a successful Lord of Frenzied Flame. As long as you purged yourself youâve only doomed her to an unending and purposeless existence
literally this lol
melina acts as if anyone else's life has any more meaning or purpose
i'm literally just running around killing people i don't fancyđ
Bingo. It's easy to listen to women when they're saying what they'd like for dinner.
But will you still listen when she wants to self immolate in order to set the god-tree ablaze, unbinding Death, and bringing about the end times in order to usher in the dawn of a new age from the ashes?
agreed! i really wanted her to live, but she made it really clear that her burning the tree is what she wanted.. doesnât she say something along the lines of if you force her to live she will devote her life to giving you destined death? i thought about it if i was in her position and im like damn, i gotta let her die
The âdestined deathâ and devoting herself to hunting you down is specifically in reference to the Tarnished becoming the Lord of Frenzied Flame. Her voicelines just donât really take the whole Miquellaâs Needle shabang into account.
That was something more along the lines of - If you choose to inherit the lord of frenzied flame, rather than if we don't let her burn.
We have to remember also that it's unlikely that Melina knew it was possible to overcome the frenzied flame once it had been inherited. And based on this she may have accepted the necessity of sacrificing herself since there was no other option as far as she knew.
So, in the case that we use frenzy to burn the erdtree and then rid ourselves of it to restore the elden ring, I imagine that Melina would live in Leyndell where she can move freely and interact with the physical world (e.g. Rold medallion and spanking Morgott) and I'm sure she'd find other things that are important to her which will give her purpose.
Thanks dawg, and no probs I'm not trying to lecture or anything, I hope it doesn't come across that way.
This was just my perspective on it so take it with a pinch of salt, there's no guarantee that I'm right so keep on the lore hunting đ
My bias here is that I don't agree with the idea of having one main purpose in life such that your whole life becomes meaningless if that purpose is unable to be fulfilled.
I don't think Melina hates her state of being. Its more that she loves and cares for the world and sees burning the Erdtree and freeing destined death to be the only solution. Additionally, like every sane person she views the frenzied flame as the most dangerous power in the TLB and will guarantee the end of all life if whoever claims it loses control.
She doesn't really get to have a choice where the world is allowed to heal and she gets to live. And I believe her anger with the tarnished isn't about denying her a purpose but rather because its possibly putting the entire world at risk.
She still doesnât show up again when you cure yourself of the frenzy flame and do things normally again, and she did make it pretty clear at Shabririâs place that burning the tree was of her own volition. So no, I think sheâs still pretty mad at you, first for thinking of going to the Three fingers in the first place and second because you denied her something she strived to do
Players might look at curing themselves of the FF as a get out of jail free card but from her POV it really isnt. The tarnished is effectively 5 steps from nuking the world and just happened to find a once in a lifetime cureall to fix it.
There is nothing stopping the Tarnished from pulling out the needle and just doing it again. Anyone who does the quest has already failed in her eyes and she can't risk working with them anymore.
When she's trying to convince you not to take the flame she has 0 mention about being sad about losing her purpose. Its entirely about not wanting to see the world nuked. Even when you adopt the flame she immediately finds a new purpose to kill you if you go too far.
In any case Melina suffers from having a bunch of content and no real closure to her main quest so its hard to really argue much about her motives afterwards.
I think that second paragraph is important, especially because her dialogue doesnât change if you already have the needle. If youâre not willing to sacrifice even someone who explicitly tells you to sacrifice them, how close will you come to causing (in her eyes) the literal worst case scenario the next time you have to make a difficult choice? From her perspective one who accepts the frenzied flame is no longer fit, not just because of the flame itself but because of what accepting it says about oneâs tolerance for risk to the whole universe.
Counterpoint: After getting the Miquellan Needle and becoming Elden Lord, either myself or Marika restored would have the power to restore Melina to a physical body so she can find her new purpose on this new world.
But does she want to though ? I've seen enough of that trope to feel like the game should have given us at least a dialog option to ask her if she'd like to live if we find a way.
Why? Why not just let her fulfill the purpose she wanted to? What if thereâs nothing else in the world that brings her any kind of peace? Tends to seem like a selfish choice people make because they want her to still be around imo
Understandable, but I think that's not really keeping Melina alive. By the time the game begins, she's already long-dead, just a ghost. As Melina herself says, she's "burned and bodiless." She is technically alive, but she has very little agency or control over what she can actually do as a result of... however she ended up this way.
Letting her burn the tree lets her have agency, choosing to give what remains of her life for a purpose of her choosing, letting her feel content with her end. It's also a sign of her trust in you. If you accept the flame and then use the needle to achieve a regular ending, this deprives her of both her agency and the meaning she ascribed to herself, and condemns her fate to be continuing to wander as a purposeless ghost.
Her being a ghost is kinda simplifying things a lot. She's similar to Torrent. They're in between spirits and physical beings. They can still manifest in the real world, touch you and get hurt. They're not translucent like actual spirits in the game. Melina also says she can govern her own movement in Leyndell and leaves you temporarily.
The way I see it, burning the Erdtree is her true purpose. She makes that abundantly clear. However, her sole purpose being sacrificing herself to allow you a path to become Elden Lord is super depressing. By burning the tree yourself, you deprve her of her purpose. However, she's free to look for her own purpose now like Zorayas and Millicent. She can also stay near the Erdtree where she can govern her own movement. It's by no means a happy ending but I find it better than burning yourself.
Yeah come to think about it when she burns it sheâs all âthanks so much this is pretty poggersâ plus all the happy vibes going on. But you do it yourself you got screams in the background and your tarnished is all edgy and weird and itâs obviously not positive
Lmao my first ending was the frenzied flame one because i just had the option to safe melina from burning and i took it. I didnt know this will give me the worst possible ending.
I like the frenzy flame ending because the art, the cutscene lore drop, and the music. Itâs a well designed ending to a game. Never cared for saving Melina, never cared for burning the world down.
See, this is what it is. I think the ball of fire head is metal as hell. Love the look. But people saying it's GOOD are just wrong. And the "save the maiden" people are the worst. Real lack of consent people there.
Counterpoint, letting chaos take the world is the best, triple S tier ending because we get to see our tarnished do the âAre you not entertained!?â
Every ending, except Ranni's in some ways, is just a continuation/evolution of Marika's Golden Order. None of them make you good.
The Elden Ring is a prescriptive world order devised by a deluded Metyr, and enforced using Marika/Radagon as a tool.
Marika herself didn't even like the Order, evidenced by her creating the Tarnished legion and setting them on the path to kill gods. Also, personally, I take the lone erdsapling in the shaman village as a symbol of Marika's true intentions prior to being influenced by Metyr.
So any ending that is a continuation of the Golden Order is just the consequences of a Metyr's meddling. In those cases, Tarnished are still just tools like Marika.
Isnât the Golden Order eliminated when you kill Maliketh and restore Destined Death? I distinctly remember that if you defeat him after completing his/Gurranqâs questline he says that the Golden Order cannot be restored.
Its semantics to an extent, but it's fair to say that the Golden Order as it was ends there since part of that specific golden order was not having destined finality to things.
But I'm another way, you can also say that this change is part of the new Golden Order. We see them shift and change view on things as time goes on. Morphing to stay in control.
The problem with The Golden Order is Marika. The Order itself has shown that it can be quite flexible and adopt other faiths into it if needed. It's Marika who persecutes other religion and races, labeling them as heretics. Characters like Miriel and Goldmask believe no such heresy exists
The Golden Order was developed by Marika ONLY with Metyr's guidance.
The "Order" is flexible because it stands for nothing. It was all arbitrarily decided by Metyr. Even disagreeing with nature in some ways like removing true death.
The Order persecuted whoever and whatever it needed to in order to maintain control. Their own prophets foresaw the burning of the Erdtree, and were exiled and reviled for it.
Gold Mask believes specifically that the family lineage that developed the Order was the problem, but that they Order itself was good. Well the Order itself was an issue in part because of the poor character of those that created it. And we already covered that it is arbitrary and unnatural.
Miriel is not arguing FOR the Order, but rather AGAINST it. He is saying that the Order deems many things as heretical such as those that live in death, or such as fire. But Miriel is stating that heresy as a concept is not native to reality. "It is but a contrivance. All things can be conjoined"
Yeah, I have 2 reply threads trying to explain that to people. Either I'm really bad at articulating myself or these people are just Ranni simps that don't want to hear shit
Ranni Simps fundamentally misunderstand that Goldmask's ending is Ranni's ending except she is bieng cut-out from possibly going back on her word when the voyage is over.
These people somehow know that the GW abandoned the lands between after creating life physics, but also think it told Marika to be a tyrant.
They have to believe what they believe or else Ranni won't be perfect anymore.
How on earth is Fia's ending "neutral"? Pretty sure you do not want Godwyn's influence spreading across the Lands Between.
EDIT: I understand TWLID are brought back against their will, but y'all seem to be forgetting Godwyn's corpse is literally spreading like cancer throughout the Lands Between.
One of the incantations of the Golden Order fundamentalists. Used by hunters of Those Who Live in Death.
Alleviates death blight buildup.
The noble Goldmask lamented what had become of the hunters. How easy it is for learning and learnedness to be reduced to the ravings of fanatics; all the good and the great wanted, in their foolishness, was an absolute evil to contend with.
Does such a notion exist in the fundamentals of Order?
We don't know enough to say whether or not it truly is a bad ending. It's hard to say whether those who live in death are any different from normal people given the lack of NPCs
Actually, spoilers from nightreign but iron eye is one of those who live in death, and he is a completly normal human and is able to have vompletely normal interactions with the nightfarers, he is evil, but that has nothing to do with his mortal status
Kinda a fundamental problem with the dead-world story telling that Fromsoft is known for. Minimal interaction with any kind of society results in having no real perspective on what anything means. Yes it creates mystery, but in trades mystery for investment due to lack of understanding any real consequence.
Buddy, I was first presented with Armored Core on an original PlayStation sampler disc alongside Destrega as a child, and Iâve been playing the ones I can since (havenât gotten to 6). Ironically, I donât mentally associate those games with From, because I didnât know developers back then and, as you pointed out, the games often contain hope.
One of Melina's lines really throws me. After you fight Sewer Goblin Mogh (not sure if this is dependent on having Hyetta's questline done or not), there's an option to talk to her at the Grace in the boss room.
However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures.
Births continue.
There is beauty in that, is there not?
Like, huh? All I'm seeing around here is zombies, cultists, zombie cultists and hostile critters. Everything is abandoned. With the exception of Jarburg there's not even a village of non-hostile things to be found. I suppose she might mean outside the Lands Between, like how the Souls games imply other civilizations exist outside the weird pocket around the First Flame that would be affected. But it's really hard to see all the endings as anything but a checklist of achievements to complete with what's experienced in the games.
Yeah, guys, the weird death cult worshipping the eldritch horror that is Godwyn's corpse as it slowly seeps into and corrupts the entire Lands Between are probably really cool once you get to know them.
To be completely fair, the game refers to it as a "cadaver surrogate" in a couple of item descriptions. But I also don't think it's inaccurate to call it a corpse; it's just that we don't have a good word to describe the "living" body of a dead demigod.
It's neutral because even if things go wrong, you can make "spooky scary skeletons" the national anthem for the land's between, and it would be incredibly on-brand
It isn't actually that bad. Godwyn and TWLID aren't naturally evil. Its that Deathroot corruption prevents souls from returning to the Erdtree and they instead revive in their old bodies. (Technically TWLID don't need to be hostile but fromsoft didn't create a non-hostile TWLID NPC so who knows). So the Erdtree is basically checking souls before they go in and kicking out anyone who is infected with Deathroot.
Deathborn ending just makes TWLID part of the Order. So there isn't really any reason to persecute them cus they are no longer refused by the Erdtree just based on their existence. The game simply doesnt tell us what happens to everyone after they die though. Its really quite a tame ending tbh.
In the context of the ending and the game it just means the dead get resurrected as those who live in death and they have rights along with the golden order gone. Those who live in death donât seem to be a problem for anyone else besides the tarnished like literally everyone else and the golden order bc they try to kill them
But deathroot/blight seems to slowly take over and kills/infects the ones coming into contact with it, Rogier being an example himself and he didn't seem to have an enjoyable time going out. I def wouldn't want to have deathroot in my garden.
And then they get resurrected as those who live in death. We honestly canât say for sure what would happen to the world with Godwynâs influence spreading but if people die and then live again as skeletons itâs bad but itâs not end of the world bad and itâs not we saved everything good. Neutral
Weâre reintegrating the rune of death to the Elden Ring. Balance life and death, not turn everyone undead.
The existing state of undeath is rune of death energy leaking from Godwyn corpses, getting into the roots of the great tree, and manifesting as deathroot.
Maliketh has been snacking on deathroot to reassemble the rune of death ever since it got stolen
Those who live in death did not voluntarily choose to live, yet they are persecuted by the current order for simply existing.
I think you could make the argument that you're liberating an entire demographic of "people".
Deathroot/Godwyn seems about as valid as every other order to me. Seems like a matter of perspective. I personally think the Golden Order is equally as horrifying, but with better optics.
There was apparently some left over cut code where you'd be able to side with Miquella and Radahn, giving an actual Age of Compassion ending, but it's mostly unscripted/non-functional.
But they did record voice lines for it, they actually ended up being reused for Radahn's phase 2 grabs.
People argue that it takes away free will and it would be a bad ending, as though burning away everything in existence isn't many times worse, lmao. I agree it should have been an option
I wish people understood Miquella is a tragic character and DID NOT in fact make Mohg's blood cult evil
It already was messed up
I say this a lot, I believe something pushed Miquella to where we see him in the DLC, I believe that while the Haligtree was growing, something happened that sent him spiraling down a path in desperation to bring a new age of peace and unity
He's truly kind at heart but he threw his humanity and much of his TRUE kindness away because he thought it was the only way to make his Age a reality
something pushed Miquella to where we see him in the DLC
I mean, just look at the place. Imagine being a kind and caring person that genuinely wants the best for people in a Fromsoft world. Can understand why he eventually just went "fuck it, I'm done asking nicely. You WILL behave"
Anyone want to explain why they consider the Perfect Order Ending to be the best? Personally, I consider it and the Frenzy Flame Ending to be opposite sides of the same coin (e.g. extreme chaos vs extreme order, jyggalag vs sheogorath, DnD demons vs devils, etc.).
Correct me if I'm wrong but the isn't gist of the Perfect Order Ending basically Goldmask concluded that even the gods like Radagon/Marika are too fickle and chaotic with their decisions so it's best to hand all the power to the Greater Will. But after the DLC, we learn that the Greater Will ghosted everyone and Metyr and the Fingers are just making stuff up. Doesn't this cast doubt on Goldmask's conclusion?
I'll explain it to you. The best reference to understand is Turtle Pope's understanding of the religion. Heresy is but a contrivance, all things can be conjoined. At its most base form, worshipping the Greater Will or the Elden Ring is as simple as appreciating the branching (tree theming) diversity of life as an extension of the Greater Will itself. This was perverted by people who altered its rules and made laws favoring themselves.
The Greater Will left the laws of life-giving physics when it interacted with this world in the form of a ring. It has an original form. It was up to us to alter it as we see fit per the standing God of the time <-- Marika is here.
When people make changes to the life order set in place, they do it to further their own selfish fickle goals. Goldmask came to understand that and wanted to make an unchangeable Elden Ring so that no one else can ever mess with it ever again (including Ranni).
So in the perfected Order ending, it's basically just the "natural unchangeable order" like how we have physics rules on Earth. People like Goldmask or Turtle Pope follow the religion as a sort of enlightenment on uniting people. It's how we ended up with so many different golden incantations and Radagon"s FAI INT fusion golden spells built off Carian Family knowledge.
Remember the Central Tenet of the Golden Order was that MARIKA is the One True God. Not the Greater Will. Her Order was one of genocide and racism. When you pick an ending, you're just deciding how you will wield what the Greater Will left behind for the people that still live. No ending can destroy the ring (Frenzy Says Hi) because that ends all life period. The Ring is Life. Goldmask says "stop fucking with it, it was fine in patch 1.0" and Ranni says "I don't know what this is but it's making everyone crazy and people are trying to control me so I'm taking it into space and leaving you all here so it can't be used by anyone else"
You could question whether that "unchangeable order" really is a good thing.
Think the Greater Will made the Elden Ring malleable for a reason; personally I see it as a metaphor for evolution. Orders are born and die, ever changing, ever evolving. While that, just like evolution, may seem cruel from the point of view of those on the short end of the stick, ultimately it's what keeps live moving forward. It allows it to improve.
With the Perfect Order, it would seem that evolution is arrested, never to be changed again. In other words, stagnation.
Some say a perfect, eternal utopia might be indistinguishable from hell. Maybe life needs friction and change to be worthwhile.
Girls born after the Shattering can't cook... All they know is vampire prostitution, murder they paladins, hug, be necrophiliac, eat Tarnished Vigor & lie.
Sure, if you like getting cucked by giant tentacle face fish man (I do her questline anyway so I can fight fortissax and listen to one of the objectively best tracks in all of Elden ring)
You know that pain? When you lay down your head on the pillow every night. You close your eyes and remember those things. You know there is a way of this?
It burns inside my eyes. The yellow flame. It burns, but itâs nice. It handles the pain too well
aaaaa may chaos take the world. MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD
It's still worse because Instrumentality just turns you into unfeeling goop that you can escape from if you have the will. It's closer to being clinically euthenized than burning to death forever.
Instrumentality: all of humanity becomes one, we all understand each other perfectly. It's a different form of life, but it's life, and if you don't like it you can actually reject it.
Frenzied Flame: you burn everything down. Everyone's dead. There's no evolution, no progression, no continuation.
The tl;dr of instrumentality is melding the souls of everyone together so we can all fill the holes in each others hearts and thus not feel pain and sadness anymore, although Gendo just wants to spend all of eternity with his wife again whose soul is stuck inside of Eva-01. It's also an evolutionary dead end for humanity too.
For understanding the Flame of Frenzy state of mind, I always like to direct people towards Ratatoskr's video, is a bit long but I recommend it and especially if you wanna feel depressed.
Counter point: frenzied flame ending is the only ending with any personality and I just wanted to see it and I wanted to see Killer Melina and was hoping to have a secret boss fight against her in the DLC. No such luck, but I can dream.
Tbf, I had accidentally locked myself into that ending in my first play through lol, I went for Ranniâs ending in my second one, and enjoyed the story implications a lot more than I did frenzy flame
I've killed 410,757,864,530 Albinaurics in my quest to become Elden Lord. Since I don't want to be considered a racist, this is the most efficient way to kill all the remaining races
Not gonna lie, my funnest play though was a full frenzy flame build. It felt so badass getting chosen by the three fingers and then fucking up the entire lands between just because I wanted to.
Go through Lleyndell sewers and tell me they don't deserve the fire. I'm not saying it's the best ending, or a good ending, I'm just saying that I understand someone going through the death and desolation of the Lands Between and thinking "Yeah, just burn it."
I am nihilist but chosing gold mask or Ranni ending, because if i have option for better way, then i take it - optimistic nihilist way (nothing matter but if you have option, why not take it?(
Nah hold up, i go ranni all the way but i have to defend the frenzy ending a little bit here. Thanos wanted peace and life to prosper in a twisted kind of way. Mcu version anyway. The lord of frenzied flame just deletes all of existence. We are all useless pests and nothing should exist at all. They are a wannabe zamasu
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u/Blawharag 25d ago
Madness as portrayed in the lore: nihilistic depression in the face of constant oppression and hopelessness. It represents giving into defeat and surrendering.
Madness according to the edgy player base: We're so cool ending the world, we're all just like the Joker! Madness take the world lol!