I finally sat down to defeat Promised Consort Radahn, after the boss was nerfed in a patch I think a few weeks ago. I hadn't played any Elden Ring since returning from my month of helping take care of my newborn nephew, and so there was something a little strange about coming back in and finally taking down this final final boss of Elden Ring.
Elden Ring is currently, and I suspect will continue to be, among my favorite video games ever made. It feels like a kind of apotheosis of the formula FromSoft has been working on since Demon's Souls back in 2009. The lore feels open-ended in a way that Dark Souls never did to me, and the gameplay feels like the perfect blend of punishing and challenging Soulsborne combat and the lifeline of always having some other place to go if you're hitting a wall.
Shadow of the Erdtree is the most enormous DLC I've ever seen, unless you count something like a World of Warcraft expansion. I'm pretty sure that The Land of Shadows dwarfs all previous Soulsborne games in terms of the size of its map and I think the number of bosses you can fight.
My experience on my first playthrough of the DLC was surprise at the seeming ease - my Strength/Faith dual-wielding greatsword build managed to one-shot most of its bosses, and other than Messmer and Radahn, I think no other boss took more than two attempts.
Taking characters with other builds in, on the other hand, I've found that I must have either had some beginner's luck, or that build was just super-powerful (it's also the one that I beat Radahn with today, after having tried to switch over to the Euporia - I imagine that with Miquella riding his back he's probably highly resistant to Holy damage, so the fire from Blasphemous Blade might have been more effective).
Despite being so impressed during my first playthrough of the DLC (though I'm sore at the fact that I accidentally killed one of the Forager Brood and thus screwed up a minor quest line) I don't know that I've felt the same immediate urge to run through the whole thing on other characters. I did take a number of them in and have gotten a few bosses into the DLC (indeed, my original Intelligence character at this stage I think has already taken down Metyr).
But I guess there's something also a little sad about getting to the end of it all.
I don't know if From intends to ever make a sequel to Elden Ring. The world has such enormous potential, sure, but I also got the impression from Dark Souls III that they might kind of dislike the very notion of sequels - they can, and I expect will, continue to make games of this general structure. But I also think they might prefer creating worlds with totally new history and characters.
Would an Elden Ring sequel take the Dark Souls route and place us in some far-flung future of the Lands Between that has cycled through a number of other gods? Even within this first game, there's a sense of an enormous amount of history (Tarnished Archaeologist, one of several YouTube channels focused on From games that I watch, identifies the various historical "strata" of its world, which is fascinating if you can handle the dry, academic tone it takes - which, as the son of a college professor, and who grew up watching a bunch of PBS documentaries, I'm fine with).
As with any of these games, we're left with some ambiguity: we get the "God Slain" post-boss toast, which we get after defeating the Elden Beast (not, I think, after defeating Malenia, despite her having theoretically achieved apotheosis in the middle of our fight). So, is Miquella actually fully gone?
He's a fascinating character - it seems that before he "divested himself" of everything that he carried with him, he might have genuinely been a good person. But I think the real damning act was shedding his St. Trina persona... or body co-habitant (man do I go back and forth on whether Marika and Radagon were originally separate people. Miquella and Trina certainly are by the time we get to the Land of Shadow, but did Trina "bud" off of him, or was she a lover grafted onto him that he later cut out?) Regardless, when you're a god of kindness and compassion, maybe removing your own love - whether that be in the sense of "the object of my love" or, as I take it, "my capacity for love" is... you know, not a great call?
And yet, perhaps there's some inevitability to all of this. Maybe this was, in fact, necessary for him to achieve godhood. And maybe apotheosis was the ultimate solution he felt he had no other choice but to pursue.
I'm reminded of Dune, in which, as we follow the story of Paul Atreides, reluctantly but still following through on becoming a messianic religious figure while he conquers the known universe, every step along the way, he seems convinced that it's the only possible path for him to take that doesn't lead to the extinction of the human race. But is it? Or is that the opinion of a megalomaniac that lusts for power.
Certainly in this day and age, we're living in an era in which giant egos wield immense power. And especially people who see themselves as iconoclasts and rebels despite the fact that they're among the richest, most powerful people in the world already, undertake grand projects to remake the world, claiming that they are shaking the foundations of society in order to save it.
Was Miquella ever really a good guy? Or was his "kindness" always just a strategy to achieve power?
Considering the state of Ephael, and the state of Castle Sol, does he just abandon the plans that don't work out? Does Kind Miquella still actually give a shit about bringing Godwyn back from his state of soulless undeath? Does he still give a shit about curing Malenia's Scarlet Rot? Maybe he thinks that once he is a god he will be able to fix all these problems that frustrated him as an Empyrean.
I guess we'll never know, though. He tells us, as a "would-be lord of a bygone age" (not sure if that's the exact quote, but it's the gist) to stand aside for his glorious future.
But I'm ushering in the Age of Stars, baby. Ranni and I are actually bringing about real change. A thousand-year voyage into fear, doubt, and loneliness. It ain't going to be easy, but it's going to be real.
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