Elden Ring's Encore Bosses

 So, Elden Ring is enormous. But, like many games that are so big, it does sometimes reuse things.

One of the first JRPGs I played was Secret of Mana. Squaresoft's big RPGs of the mid 90s were generally epic in length and scope, and you'd often see "palette swaps." You might see grey wolves early in the game, and then see blue wolves in an icy area that were tougher, and then maybe green wolves in some later area.

FYI, there are Elden Ring spoilers here.

In Elden Ring, there have been some repeats of bosses - it's not terribly hard to imagine why. In such a massive world, giving every single mini-dungeon its own distinct boss would probably be too taxing on the game's asset designers. I've fought three (at least) Magma Wyrms, not to mention more conventional dragons than I could probably count.

But what I think I'm more interested in is where these repetitions are not simply presenting the bosses as those sharing a species, but instances where we either fight a character multiple times or fight different versions or aspects of the same creature.

In fact, setting aside bosses, consider this: The Two Fingers reside within Roundtable Hold, theoretically guiding us on our path. But we also find dead incarnations of them at the top of each Divine Tower (where we activate the Great Runes we find). I actually thought originally that these were the legs of a collapsed giant, but no, upon my most recent visit to a divine tower, I realized that they must be the Two Fingers.

We fight Margitt the Fell Omen three times (though I literally just rode past him the second time without realizing he was there. Margitt is the first "official" boss, barring the entrance to Stormveil Castle. When we defeat him, he sort of keeps ranting at us after we've slain him - hinting that we were really fighting some kind of projection of him. The second time, outside of Leyndell in the battlefields north of the city (but inside the outer wall,) we get to fight him on horseback. Finally, he serves as the final boss of Leydell, Royal Capital, revealing himself to be Morgott, the Omen King.

The logic of these appearances is relatively straightforward. Morgott has been following our progress and trying to douse our "flame of ambition" from the word go. He's not Elden Lord, but he has served as King of Leyndell, despite being a pariah for his "omen" status (the weird horns growing on his face and body). Clearly, his appearance at Stormveil Castle and on the battlefields was some kind of astral projection, and we only face him truly "in the flesh" just outside the Erdtree chamber.

But then there's Mohg.

So, Mohg is the Lord of Blood. I kind of raced into his region without getting a ton of lore around him, and then I blew him away with Comet Azur after a few attempts at fighting him more conventionally. Backtracking and trying to finish the Dung Eater's quests, I went into the sewers of Leydell, and found myself facing off against Mohg, The Omen.

Now, the sewers are actually pretty tough, so I don't know if you're meant to do them at the same time as the rest of Leyndell, or if they're considered an endgame area. On the other hand, the Mohgwyn Dynasty Palace is certainly a late-game area, given that you have to get to the Consecrated Snowfield to reach him. (I think the Lord of Blood encounter gives more runes, which I'd take to mean it's intended to be fought later).

What, then, are we meant to think of these encounters? Mohg, like his brother Morgott, is an Omen. Does he thus also have the ability to project himself? And is the encounter beneath the capital a projection?