You could technically argue that all of Gwyn's people are giants, but, given that humans descended from the Furtive Pygmy in the Souls backstory, they'd probably argue that we're small and they're the ones who are normal sized.
I wonder how large would Godwyn be, if the golden boys fish form was scaled up like the skeletons ... I dont think he would be that large, but he is in kinda weird position, so one cant get proper look at him :D ... also cool vid !
I’ve pretty much always assumed the DS player characters are basically the hobbits of the setting. After all, given Tolkien influences, and how all bosses are at least twice your size… and in DS 2, the Gyrm, who are a ‘dwarf’ coded race, are the same size as you…
The fact that the Erdtree looks like "just another tree" to the giants is really interesting. It makes me think about how trees are normal to us in real life, but to bugs and other small creatures it's a towering beacon.
Vendrick and his knights size always intrigued me. They are definitely human, so I've just always head-canoned that turning souls into levels warps your physical form to match your stats. This would also be why Knights are usually a head or two taller than us. The only reason we the player dont change is either that it takes a while for the change to happen or that our character just doesn't notice. (Although the real reason would be that it would make level design a nightmare, and thats assuming I'm anywhere near right about this idea.).
@@The_VanniAlso MMO rules. Even if the raid boss is just a really powerful dude, he'll be like 20 feet tall at minimum because otherwise he'd be impossible to target with 15-40 guys swarming around him.
I think the key to this is the fact that their streak of successful games began with Demon's Souls and that made them pass forward a lot of notions. In Demon's Souls, even though it doesn't mechanically affect the player, the absorption of different kinds of souls turn normal people into deformed demons. Demon then became a separate "race" in Dark Souls, but I don't think the notion that the power of the soul warps the body was gone. That notion is also heavily present in Bloodborne where they substituted souls for blood. It's the ingestion, administration and usage of blood that morphs the body into deformed nightmares even if the change is only noticiable through insight. On arrival, on Dark Souls 2, the only kingdom we know that isn't really fallen completely is Vendrick's, so it makes sense that the deeper into a kingdom we go, the "greater" the people are.
I’ve always wondered about the Elden Ring colossal skulls! I’ve questioned the same- “don’t these skulls look so big that even the continent would be small to them?”. I’ve seen a few theories on them, but they’re really just wild speculation. It’s logical to say that the red-haired giants might be related, but at the comparison in size, that’d be like saying “a squirrel must be related to humans because they’re so much bigger than ants!”. There’s such a colossal size difference! I think there’s something to appreciate about the lack of lore on these actually- by being both COLOSSAL and yet undocumented, it really adds an atmosphere to the world that makes you think, “this world is astonishingly old. These beings may have been around thousands or millions of years before modern, intelligent life came around to document them, or even have the slightest understanding what they are”. The history that we account for in all the lore of the game seems to only span back perhaps no more than a few thousand years, but these indicate an EVEN GREATER history to the world. Were they gods, demigods, or mortals? Did they ever make tools or structures? Who created them? Are they even specific to the Lands Between, or did they roam the whole earth? What could kill such colossal creatures, and how much time did it take the earth to swallow up their bodies, only to leave their heads unburied?
You guys are reaching That war and the destruction of the left side of the lands between happened a long time ago. The fire giant is runt and already very weak "birth" hasn't been through sex for a very long time as well. Those big ass giants couldn't avoid the rot, like greyoll. You see them in Caelid and the mountain top of the giants because they were driven out and up. This fire giant may have had nothing to do with that war and was "born" from the gaints flame like the residents of the lands between are "born" from the erdtree. The last remnant, like the dragons that were locked up in King's Landing(game of thrones) getting smaller and weaker.
Given that there has been a massive meteor impact on the lands between, it's more than possible the world used to look very different. There are also other landmasses we never see, which could possibly be more able to support these titans. Also fun fact: the giants forge seems to be modelled after a mobile-forge, notice how it has other chains that are un-used around the side facing out to see. Seems that the giants brought it with them to the island for some ancient unknown purpose.
What if the massive skulls have fallen from the sky? Similar to Astel (biotic meteorite), is it not safe to assume there may have been different types of falling star beasts in the past, that have fallen and fossilized on land? Astel has a human-like skull and came from the cosmos, so it has me thinking.
Theres not much information on them but if you look at the design of the forge of the giants, that one was clearly built by them. It was built to be moved around with the chains and the megagiants are the only things remotely big enough to actually move it around
I'm so used to giant people in Fromsoft games that, even knowing Radahn had the mark of the giants with his red hair, I never considered his height to be part of that until this video. Even though Ranni is right there, being **significantly** shorter than him. I wonder where Rykard fell in terms of height?
Either the same size of the devouring serpent (unlikely) or a bit bigger than the player. There's a painting of him holding the Blasphemous Blade, and technically Rykard wields a massive Blasphemous Blade in his fight. So you'd think Rykard could have wielded that before he was devoured. But I think that's just Fromsoftware doing their typical thing of just scaling swords up and down depending on who wields them. Ranni is bigger than the player too so it would make sense. Remember Ranni technically isn't "right there", as that's just a doll. Where you find the rune of death, you also find her corpse, and you can see she would have been bigger than you with her original body. Rykard was likely of similar size. So around 7-8ft.
I accepted Radahn's size the same way I accept anime characters having wildly varying sizes that often (but not always) reflect their relative strength. And Elden Ring is the most anime of fromsoft games so far, more than Sekiro.
Rykard has a throne (presumably his) right before the portal to his lair in the volcano Manor, judging by the size he would probably be closer to rannis og height than radahns
@@ColonelKebabShopyou see Rykard's head being eaten in the intro cutscene he was normal sized and the snake grew over time after eating him and countless others.
FromSoftware has messed around with the idea of large enemies being environmental hazards (most notably I'd say being the giants in the Cathedral of the Deep), I'd love to one day see them realize something on an absolutely gargantuan scale. Something along the lines of those giant skulls actually being living creatures that we'd have to navigate. From a technical standpoint though I can only imagine this posing a lot of complications
I mean they could pull a subnautica, and have "unreasonably large monster" as the map border. Like say you get to the edge of a beach and when you wade into the water you disturb the cut Umibozu and it "THWACKS!" The player into paste
A bit like scaling the Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus? That'd be amazing, and I think it would be a good fit for their style of worldbuilding, but I have a feeling it would require some seriously major alterations to their game engine
I mean, unless the mechanics support a "Shadow of the Colossus" style boss where you climb around its body, it will likely end up with you hacking away at its legs, which would be underwhelming to say the least. It's the same problem Fire Giant and most dragons (excluding Midir) has where they try to make it seem like a "David and Goliath" spectacle, but it devolves into the player staring at the boss' foot for 90% of the fight. I hear Monster Hunter is apparently better at framing giant creatures in a cinematic manner during the fight.
@somniloquous0 I mean the straw doll was a decent "climb the big guy" moment, they just need to design an enemy using that but has spots to stand at for attacking
With Caelid coincidently having this ginormous dead giant, monstrous dogs and crows, Radahn, Greyroll, The Great Jar, big dragonflies, big landsquirts, and some big scarabs, I thought at first on my 1st playthrough that one of the side effects of Scarlet Rot was making things extremely huge. Like a strange growth defect.
Problem is it doesn’t explain why some effected by the rot grow and others don’t. Also, Radahn, Greyoll, and the Great Jar were large before presumably.
Yeah, me too. I am unsure about the Great Jar though. Since the Jars are... well, manufactured beings, we don't know if they grow at all or if they are just created at different size at whim. Still, we do have proof they do indeed grow as we see existing Jar kids in Jarburg and the adults like Alexander. So maybe, just maybe, the Great Jar in Caelid might indeed be a result of the Scarlet Rot. Problem is... there are some outside of Caelid; the giant dogs and crows appear in the mountaintops of the giants as well, unless that's intentional for the devs part since... well, they are giants (size-wise anyways, not as a race). But then, there's no explanation for the giant bloody crows in Moghwyn Palace, unless their size is a result for feasting on too much blood and carrion there.
@@gvd72 the fact that it doesn't explain 100% of every detail of the mechanics doesn't change the fact that there is absolutely an intentional correlation between caelid and unnaturally large examples of life from elsewhere in the continent, especially in the swamp which is the only place in the game where the giant mosquitoes, scarabs, and squirts appear if i had to hazard a guess, i'd say that the growth is associated with consuming large amounts of rot, whether through absorbing the tainted water/soil of the swamp, or feeding on large amounts of rot-infected bodies, like the giant crows and dogs - _and like radahn_ who is shown feasting on rotted corpses, and most certainly wasn't born at his current size or he'd never have started riding around a regular-sized horse. (that doesn't provide a complete explanation since his growth past leonard's carrying capability was the thing that prompted him to learn gravity magic before losing himself to the rot, but given how much the horse struggles under his weight now it's well possible he could've grown even further) and given that we have child and adult jars of different sizes in jarburg, and alexander's experiences show that adding new corpses and material, fixing cracks and broken pieces, re-firing oneself and so on are things a jar can all experience of their own volition, there's not necessarily any reason to discount the possibility of the great jar having grown by stuffing itself with absolutely massive quantities of rotted warriors and rebuilding itself over and over with time regardless of what the exact lore behind the growth is though, there is no doubting that there's absolutely an intentional correlation between caelid and overgrown fauna, it is a very deliberate impression that is delivered from the moment you crest over the first hill at the mouth of caelid and see a battlefield overrun with gigantic misproportioned dogs and crows feasting on bodies, and reinforced as you see them dotted across the landscape, and see even more huge creatures in the swamp. the fact that we don't have a complete picture spelled out about how it works, or that some of those enemies are reused elsewhere (in a game that necessarily does huge amounts of content reuse because it's just too damn big to fill otherwise) doesn't negate that obvious intent
@@shaktosh524 honestly i think you addressed your own concerns perfectly well here. giant dogs in the giant mountaintops makes sense enough, and it may or may not be anymore deep than that - they could have just needed an enemy that felt in some way thematically appropriate to fill an area with something different, or there could be a Deep Lore Reason we'll unearth a year from now, who knows. and given that the oversized animals we see in caelid are ones who would have fed off large amounts of rot-corrupted bodies, blood, water, etc, it hardly seems unreasonable that years of eating large amounts of bodies in gnarly pools of stagnant blood could achieve a similar result. that place has a weird nasty ecosystem all its own so it doesn't stretch the imagination too much to think that it would have unusual effects on its inhabitants regardless of the outliers, i still think "rot is correlated with unnatural growth" is not at all an unreasonable or incorrect conclusion to draw
Nice to see Elden Ring's giant skulls finally make an appearance. It's incredibly obvious how large they are even from just the heads alone, but the scaled up skeleton model really drives home how absolutely massive they truly are. It never occurred to me that they'd rival the Erdtree itself, let alone be large enough that they could traverse the entirety of The Lands Between in merely a handful of strides
@Nw-zh1uq interesting, but we see that the strongest being from space is the elden beast, and it isn't really that large. Something tells me that bug biology doesn't work quite the same in elden ring, especially considering that a "full-grown" fallingstar beast isn't even as large as astel. I feel as though Placidusax had something to do with the killing of the titans.
It really makes you wonder if these skulls are created by the Scarlet Rot or if (even stranger) the Lands Between is built upon the literal bones of titans rising out of an unnamed ocean.
Maybe big boys planted the Crucible, but to them, it was a normal tree. Maybe it was like a pre-first fire thing, where the tree could only become the source of life after the death of its previously immortal planters. Like the dragons, maybe they just turned to stone
The tarnished archaeologist did an interesting lore theory video about the giant skulls in Elden Ring if anyone is interested. Basically the theory is that the divine towers are the tips of an ancient, giant-sized temple that worshipped meteorites. Then the giants were wiped out by a meteor that caused that big sea in the middle of the lands between to form, and separated Caelid and the giant mountaintops (although the giants Marika waged war with were probably pygmies compared the giant skull giants).
@@Ketsuekisanif i remember correctly tarnished archaeologist claims it was the arrival of the fell god in the meteorite that caused the crater. Timelines and whatnot is far too in the past for it to be elden beast
One of the creation myths in nordic mythology is about the earth being made from the remains of a dead giant (his flesh became the ground, his teeth rocks, and so on), I wonder if the giant skulls could be FROM's take on that? Though in that case, there would probably have been non-infested skulls outside of Caelid (like in the network test version), them only existing in one area suggests there's some connection with it - there's two areas with plenty of Scarlet Rot outside of Caelid which both are missing the skulls, so it wouldn't be connected to the rot, but something specific to Caelid in particular...?
Could be that they get unearthed by severe weathering, such as the snowfall after the giants died out and maybe scarlet rot does more to the ground than first imagined?
Can you imagine how pants shittingly terrifying it would be if you climbed up your final divine to activate a great rune, and while it plays the animation a big skeleton just pears over the edge at you.
You may enjoy looking up the Rotten Vale map in Monster Hunter World, where it's largely made of the corpses of giant wyverns called Dalamudar, essentially giant serpents, and at least one of which is bigger than any that can be fought in the series. It's somewhat terrifying to look at an area from a distance and it just clicks that that area was all inside a skull's open mouth or a ribcage.
Summoner, a ps2 launch title, had something similar going on beneath the Iona Monastery. The story brings you there to get your 4th party member and a story item, but said item is beneath the monastery in a cave that turns out to be the skeleton of a terrifyingly large three-headed serpent. We never get a good look at the bones from a distance, but just seeing them from inside is a really cool experience.
Standing that last giant next to the Erdtree, making it look like a regular-sized tree gave me a loregasm. Reminds me of some sculptures and paintings in the lands between that depict the Erdtree with people around it. I love this.
something interesting about the lands between is that the entire continent is kind of falling apart, indicating that at one point the lands between may have been much larger to accommodate for the sheer size of the giants
Well it's taken at least one colossal meteorite strike and had people running around with absurd gravity powers. Not a bad bet to say it mirrors Lord of the Rings with parts of continents sinking in ancient wars due to the level of power.
@@DracoSafarius there is some truth there, places like numenor tho were sunk beneath the waves as a punishment tho, the numenoreans were tricked by sauron and started worshipping the first dark lord and when they were told by the gods to stop and didn't their home was sunk
It's crazy when you notice their bodies buried in the crack of the chasm before the Fire Giant and really get a sense of how ridiculously huge those skeletons are, but this video seeing one by the Erdtree puts it in a whole new perspective.
Wow, I knew the buried skeletons were monstrously huge based on your prior videos, but actually putting them to scale is insane! Given the relative density of their corpses along with their sheer size, I wonder if the Lands Between are remnants of some battlefield or maybe burial site for these titans. I doubt it happens but it would be awesome if their lore was expanded on in any way with the DLC, which I'm absolutely stoked for!
What if these massive skulls weren’t ever a part of anything living? They could be carvings or even weird growths of some kind. Notice that we never see any other giant bones other than the skulls.
Not to mention, they appear to be made of a calcified fungus, or some other sort of biological growth, in a land FULL of weird fungi and growths. We've seen before in the game that stuff likes growing in weird shapes sometimes. I totally buy the idea that either these are the remains of some super primordial species, (in which case, why are they not more weathered and buried), or they're just a type of weird fungus in the area.
@@raz802 tbh they loop pretty weathered. Im making some assumptions here, but they only appear in caelid and mountaintops, perhaps the rot nuke uncovered the ones in caelid and the ones in mountaintops could have been either covered by snow or simply preserved better by the cold temperature. Perhaps thier irreagular school shape is a form of weathering and in the past they were smoother and rounder. Even more headcanon: perhaps they're the ones who build the towers and golems and the pillars underground. The forge of the giants is only big enough for them to use, and its clearly made by the same civilization that build the pillars, as that's what's its resting on.
@@raz802id agree but it cant be fungus Look in the pit just before fire giant: theres two giant corpses like the ones in caelid ditched in the chasm like a shallow grave, and all along the mountaintops. These ones are missing fungi, it seems. Suggesting the Aeonia may have killed the ones in caelid and the ones at the mountaintops died by other means.
Dark Souls and Elden ring seem to work on OnePiece anatomy logic. Where a human can be the height of a tree, with a giant chest biceps, but a comically small head and nobody bats an eye
the great giant skeleton making the erdtree look normal sized brings a ton of questions for the world. Tibia Mariners can summon a seemingly smaller high lord wolnir type, with the skulls matching about the same structure as the ones in the walls in elden ring. i really hope the dlc explains a little bit about these gargantuan seemingly impossible mythical beings.
The designs of both Wolnir and the Tibia Mariners' giant skeletons are likely based on the Gashadokuro, a type of yokai. Gashadokuro are formed when masses of unburied corpses (e.g. death by drowning or on the battlefield) merge into one giant skeleton. Rather conveniently, all of the Tibia Mariners are found near water and/or corpses from burial sites uprooted by deathroot, so that's probably part of the puzzle.
I wonder if the skull monuments could be the remains of an "Umibozu" or if not I wonder what they are and how the actual Umibozu concept they had would match up in this lineup of giants.
What'd be interesting is if the skull and some sort of water effect were the "design" of Umibozu (see Nioh for an example of this style of Umibozu), a massive tidal wave erupts and when it subsides/is attacked a glowing eyed skull is revealed
@@bruhmoment7543 greyoll couldn't escape the rot, only the smallest giants could Also at 3:03 you can clearly see the clavicle incating more skeleton.... There seems to obviously be the giants..... Why don't you assume that the fire giant is a lil runt? It fits with like every other boss, being weaked or crippled.
i saw a pretty convincing theory on "the tarnished archeologist" about those gigantic heads. supposedly they were an incredibly ancient/advanced race who built the divine towers and all the underground rock structures we see in caves etc. before it got all buried by the meteor(s)
I have a fear of overly gigantic humanoids and beasts, the giant jar and the hanging mermaid give me a sense of danger whenever I get too close, and when i do get close i find that its very hard for me to want to look up at them.
As someone who hasn't played any of these games, I'm still always fascinated at what you have to show about them. It's like a little show and tell moment for me. A good, imaginative breather
Considering how the descendants of giants (trolls) are smaller than the giants themselves,maybe the monumental skulls belong to an even more ancient ancestor of the giants
Seems to be the case, something similar seems to be going on with the dragons too, it's like each generation becomes a little more mundane. Meybe even normal animals have this going on, since the ancestral spirit seems to show an ancient deer that was huge with powerful magic.
The colossal skeleton head gave rise to the best note I've read in any souls game. On the hill opposing him past the wolf knight, you can get a clear view- it was simply "a head ahead"
some parts of the ground across the whole land are eroded away, and underneath them are these flat stone platforms, which makes it look like the entire land was made artificially. the architecture looks the same as the divine towers, and i think there's a theory that these giants were the ones who made it all
The Tarnished Archeologist made a pretty deep dive into them in their recent divine tower video, I'd highly recommend checking that one out if you're curious
There's nothing. An ancient race from way before the known history of the world, extinct and forgotten. Or Fromsoft just thought they're cool setpieces.
@@Tulip_bipOh yo that explains the area I was exploring today. The Highroad Cave in Limgrave is full of these hexagonal stone pillars, even though it seems like a natural cave
In the Elden Lord ending, the player character grows to completely fill the Elden Throne. This implies that size is used to denote power in the Souls series, like how Gwyn is massive in the intro cutscene and significantly smaller in his boss fight.
I like the idea that they just grow out of the ground like that. In warhammer fantasy skulls form in the landscape if there's enough warp magic for it.
One weird question: where did the giants come from? In the lore, it says the Fire Giants chased out the Ice Dragons who lived there before they did, so obviously they had to come from somewhere. Not to mention, we even find many of the even bigger giant skulls in Caelid, too, and, going on a stretch here, Nokron and Nokstella had the giant skeletons on the thrones. Were they just the predominant power, along with the dragons, or did they come from somewhere?
Well, they are called the "Lands Between", to me that implies there are lands "outside". Some of the lore regarding the tarnished and Godfrey reference us leaving the Lands Between, and then returning. Coupled with some of the crashed ships you can see off the shores, I'd assume there are other continents separated by vast oceans. Perhaps the Giants came to the Lands between from elsewhere and settled in the mountaintops?
@@Deneb626 But where specifically? Like, we know that there are many places aside from the Lands Between that different races and people come from. Yura from the Land of Reeds, Tanith was from a foreign land before meeting Rykard, the Numen (Marika included) came from somewhere beyond the Lands Between and settled there, different places clearly exist. One of the only recognizable humans who existed in the Lands Between before Marika's Age was Hoarah Loux (aka, Godfrey) and not many others (btw, I am kind of unsure about this, because Hoarah Loux was said to be a chieftain of the badlands, meaning he also could have come from somewhere rather than be native to the Lands Between, initially). And different races like Alabaster Lords and Astel and the Elden Beast all came to the Lands Between, too. There were already many races that existed there, but then we have these beings sort of "invade" there (cruel term, I know, but it's still accurate). It almost seems as though many saw the Lands Between as an opportunity just to colonize and grow, like they see it as some sort of land that belongs to them as it's "between lands," so they want to have ownership of it, but not for anyone else as well.
Upon inspection Caelid and the Siofra River are eerily similar to the sea of decay and the stone forest from the film Nausica Of The Valley Of The Wind respectively. Based on that assumption the skulls may have belonged to the beings that have created the lands between just as the giant warriors had created the setting of the film.
Maybe the Erd tree is just a regular tree. In Elden ring we simply are playing ants and from our perspective yeah everything seems massive. Which makes sense because the insects are often bigger than the tarnished. Dung beetles, crabs, lave breathing newts. All regular sized but we're just playing an ant sized character. All of Elden Ring likely takes place in someone's backyard.
would love to see a comparison of the three fingers merged with the two fingers. in the lore, they were part of a greater being that was dismembered. i believe the greater will was the soul of that being, and the fingers were an extension of it. then, after the nomadic merchants chanted for the frenzied flame (aka the first flame from the souls series), the three fingers were used as a vessel to imbue the tarnished to be the lord of chaos and return the land to its original state even before the giants and dragons, possibly as a vessel for the first flame.
I tried, and it was not really possible. If the camera is too far from an NPC, it stops rendering them, even if they're still loaded, so trying to get anywhere far enough away where I could actually see the skeleton and also still have it be rendered just wasn't working,
I may be wrong, but I believe you literally have to go into the Last Giant‘s memories (leading to an area aptly named „Memories of the Last Giant“) to fight the Giant Lord
That's why he goes so berserk in the Last Giant boss fight. From his perspective, you beat him and got him locked up down there, and now you've come back for more.
"Soul of the surviving giant, who was bound below the Forest of the Giants. The lord of the Giants, who had brought wrack and ruin to the entire kingdom, was said to have been felled by an unknown warrior. His beaten and broken remains were then dragged beneath the stronghold, where he was sealed away." -Soul of the Last Giant description Add the fact that they look pretty similar, and while technically not outright confirmed (I mean, what _is_ in these games) it's a pretty solid theory.
I didn't realize you're back, but I'm so glad you are. Your videos are like therapy to me to be honest, and I used to always try and binge watch your stuff for an hour or two before I sleep, back before the few month break. I hope you're doing better now, and I'll always look forward to seeing your videos!! Luv you Zullie :')) (I'm too stoked to sleep now and I'm going to be binge watching your videos again lol.)
Zullie i actually have a question. You haven't talked about demon souls, how tall is actually the old one? He might not be a humanoid giant but he's still enormous and if we consider the straw doll as a partecipant of this competition its only right to also include him
This is my personal theory about the giant skeletons: I like to think about them as the ancient warriors from Nausicaa of the valley of wind. Great video as always Zullie
Those giant skeletons are what i want answers to, personally. Are they remnant of the Giant War? Were they Giant Demi-Gods? Or are they akin to dinosaur bones? Fossils of a time far more ancient than the Erdtree and the Lands Between?
A lot of people say they are remains of the war being slowly buried but for how they are placed in the terrain it seems more like they are being uncovered by erosion more than being buried
@@davidalonsosariego2618 Yeah that's my guess. The lands being shaken and disturbed causing chunks of land to break off or erode away revealing ancient skeletons of a race long gone and predating even the giants sounds like a really neat concept.
There is a theory put out by Tarnished Archeologist who proposes the Divine Towers and all the "foundation" archetecture as seen in Caelid and Limgrave is the architecture built possibly by those giants. He notes how the divine towers have inlaid meteorites and those meteorites are surrounded by the same designs as the incantion icon for Fell God incantations and the the 8 circles around a center circle like the Fire Giant's Fell God Eye. Those impossibly huge giants are likely the ancestors of the Fire Giants and built the foundation of the Lands Between, the Divine Towers, and the Forge of the Giants since the forge is impossibly huge even for the Fire Giants. They're likely a super, super ancient race from even before Farum Azula and its Ancient Dragon kingdom that Placidusax was Elden Lord over.
While that theory sounds very authoritative, he never addresses how come the insides of the Divine Towers are relatively human sized. Even the Trolls wouldn't be able to fit in many of them that have interior geometry beyond just the elevator, like the Caelid Divine Tower. And we KNOW From think about that sort of stuff, remember the dual staircases in Anor Londo?
Speaking of giants. I think the Pumpkin heads maybe related to them. If you look closely you can see strands of red hair peeking out from under the helmet. It’s easiest to see this in the capital where the sun is very bright.
Yay! More megalophobia! Seriously though, the only way I can imagine those giants almost as big as the Erdtree living is just them walking across the ocean floor. That stuff is nightmarish to me.
In future dlc, it would be cool if we got a look into the class lore, or just anything for more backstories. I know shadow will be more focused on miquella (i have a head lore that there was demi human who was the inspiration for the halig, and the only one to not be wooed by his empyrean charm). If multiple dlc: battling the biggest badass in lore “the blind swordsman”.
I'm hoping we get some lore on these giants in particular. They're absolutely colossal and definitely meant to be something. I've been wandering about them since release tbh and I've been craving an explanation of them. Maybe in a DLC ;(
Man I was just today in the Mountaintops of the Giants looking at the huge skeleton in the wall thinking how massive that thing is and now there's a video about it, crazy
Zullie, I have a (maybe strange) request: that shot of the fire giant is great and the pose is very interesting for a fan art I have in mind. There's any chance that you can provide me with a clean full figure of the fire giant in this pose 0:06? The first high-quality printable file of the fan art will go to you
I think a lot about the Norse/Celtic connections in elden ring, like the original giants, whose war torn decaying bodies formed the land of men. It doesn’t use a “Viking” motif at all in the game but it absolutely pulls lore, structure hierarchies and heroic stories to shape the history of the lands between. It’s so rewarding to find out more connections in this game a whole year after finishing it.
Your videos are so interesting and informative and relaxing at the same time. Great presentation and perfect background music. Been binging for almost an hour, instantly subbed
I've always pictured that all giants with masks in DS1 and DS3 have the hole faces of DS2. There's not many things that connect all three games together, but the giants do. The enslavement, invading force, and then extinction of the giants is a cool story.
To be fair, I don't think the giants embedded in the Earth are actual, living beings. They're more likely the impressions and influence left behind by the different gods and elder powers residing in the Land's Between - either from the past or the current era. Kind of like how the One Eyed fire god of the Giants plastered his face on his followers.
I wonder if the gargantuan skulls in Caelid were put there as an stylistic choice, or if they were at some point written in on the lore. Not like actual enemies or game content, but if the lore timeline is detailed enough to describe that ancient race whose bones were unearthed in The Lands Between. Would be nice to know :)
New theory: The land Betweens are just some kid's abandoned sandbox, the skeletons are the remains of real people, and everyone else are just the toys left behind.
Re-reading Berserk a few days ago i realized how the Fire Giant (2nd phase at least) HAS to be inspired by Berserk like many other stuff ofc, but he's almost a 1 on 1 reference to Wyald, a guy that transforms into his Apostle form and you guessed it, he has a mouth on his chest/belly, also an eye and stuff, it has to be at least where they got inspiration from, i would be surprised if they didn't. Just a thing i failed to notice at the time of playing the game lol
Smoughtown has an excellent video on these collossal skeletons and who they may have been. These titans were probably the original inhabitants of the lands between, responsible for building the divine towers and the archways and columns you can see poking out of the landscape all over the lands between. The fell god descended on the lands between on a star, and they built the divine towers to honor it. Much, much later, the elden beast made a similar but much larger impact, killing the titans and burying them and their constructions in molten tektites. This is why there's a huge crater in the center of the lands between, and why the divine towers all have a side that is covered in formless rock.
Thank you for doing this topic!! Always was curious as to how big the giant skulls body would be but DAYUM! Never guessed they'd be so BIG! Excellent comparison putting em next to the erdree, really gives scope and scale to something we all know well! Another great vid and this viewer appreciates all the effort you put into your content, fwiw! Merci!
I've been saying this a lot in Vaati's videos and such, but I have a highly probably theory as to why Radahn is very large in consideration of his lore with gravity magic. Just as whales evolved to be massive due to evolution by being buoyant in water that supports their weight, Radahn's size may be due to his excessive practice in Gravity magic supporting his weight and such being a factor of his growth being larger than his peers. We know in descriptions that he grew up with his horse, and learned gravity magic to still ride his scrawny steed at its old age; and the introduction scene for elden ring he is presumed to battle with Margott in his younger years being smaller. His purpose with gravity magic greatly solidifies his commitment to protecting Sellia and in withholding the stars' movement from having more falling star beasts and astels from crashing down across the lands between. You may wonder then 'why do the Alabaster and Onyx lords are smaller in form when they have the powers of gravity magic', it would be a probable arguement that they are alien in nature and biologically not affected by their gravity magic. Still, Radahn remains one of my favorite boss fights in the game😁
I remember reading a discussion between some people on reddit that the various skull shaped things in the game are a manifestation of the death brought by deathroot or the rot.
These skulls always remind me of the remains of the Fire Warriors from Nausicaa, especially in Caelid where the scarlet rot fungus is suprisingly similar to the toxic jungle. Makes me wonder what their purpose was👀
If I recall, didnt Humanity in DS1 have a direct effect on the size of things in the lore? Like the giant rats who feed off of corpses, which made them bigger, and they can even drop humanity when they die.
My headcanon for the giant Caelid skulls are that they were mutated by the Scarlet Rot, much like the birds and dogs you find there, just on a colossal scale and probably posthumously.
I'm wondering if you didn't include Sekiro's Chained Ogre because it is classified as an Ogre, and some other rather oversized characters from Sekiro (Like Owl, Isshin and the Corrupted Monk) because they are technically not large enough to fit the "theme". I absolutely love your videos! So glad you are back at it, crossing my fingers for the Elden Ring DLC to come out soon mostly so we can get more of your content. 😁
"Not even Gransax is a match for them." That moment when all of us flashed back hard to the video Zullie did on Gransax, and kind of staggered in place.
You could technically argue that all of Gwyn's people are giants, but, given that humans descended from the Furtive Pygmy in the Souls backstory, they'd probably argue that we're small and they're the ones who are normal sized.
Nito can be considered a giant also
It makes sense, since Humanity as a whole are pieces of the Dark Soul. Not to mention that Gwyn's people were influenced by the Lord Souls.
I wonder how large would Godwyn be, if the golden boys fish form was scaled up like the skeletons ... I dont think he would be that large, but he is in kinda weird position, so one cant get proper look at him :D ... also cool vid !
Im pretty sure they all started out as pygmy/hollow looking beings, but the lord souls gave them distinct characteristics.
I’ve pretty much always assumed the DS player characters are basically the hobbits of the setting. After all, given Tolkien influences, and how all bosses are at least twice your size… and in DS 2, the Gyrm, who are a ‘dwarf’ coded race, are the same size as you…
The fact that the Erdtree looks like "just another tree" to the giants is really interesting. It makes me think about how trees are normal to us in real life, but to bugs and other small creatures it's a towering beacon.
Can't wait for Silksong to come out either.
@@PlatinumAltaria ah i see youre one of my people.
Except our trees don't glow, so instead of beacons bugs see trees as impossibly large, shadowy monstrosities
@@PerogiXW true
@@PerogiXWhave you tried lsd
I love when you do these type videos. Still baffled at the the sheer size of these models.
Thats really impressive !
Absolute units :0
Vendrick and his knights size always intrigued me. They are definitely human, so I've just always head-canoned that turning souls into levels warps your physical form to match your stats. This would also be why Knights are usually a head or two taller than us. The only reason we the player dont change is either that it takes a while for the change to happen or that our character just doesn't notice. (Although the real reason would be that it would make level design a nightmare, and thats assuming I'm anywhere near right about this idea.).
I’ve always assumed somewhat the same thing.
One piece rules: important people are tall
I figure the same thing, I think that's also why Sif becomes so huge, he has a large soul
@@The_VanniAlso MMO rules. Even if the raid boss is just a really powerful dude, he'll be like 20 feet tall at minimum because otherwise he'd be impossible to target with 15-40 guys swarming around him.
I think the key to this is the fact that their streak of successful games began with Demon's Souls and that made them pass forward a lot of notions. In Demon's Souls, even though it doesn't mechanically affect the player, the absorption of different kinds of souls turn normal people into deformed demons. Demon then became a separate "race" in Dark Souls, but I don't think the notion that the power of the soul warps the body was gone.
That notion is also heavily present in Bloodborne where they substituted souls for blood. It's the ingestion, administration and usage of blood that morphs the body into deformed nightmares even if the change is only noticiable through insight.
On arrival, on Dark Souls 2, the only kingdom we know that isn't really fallen completely is Vendrick's, so it makes sense that the deeper into a kingdom we go, the "greater" the people are.
I’ve always wondered about the Elden Ring colossal skulls! I’ve questioned the same- “don’t these skulls look so big that even the continent would be small to them?”. I’ve seen a few theories on them, but they’re really just wild speculation. It’s logical to say that the red-haired giants might be related, but at the comparison in size, that’d be like saying “a squirrel must be related to humans because they’re so much bigger than ants!”. There’s such a colossal size difference!
I think there’s something to appreciate about the lack of lore on these actually- by being both COLOSSAL and yet undocumented, it really adds an atmosphere to the world that makes you think, “this world is astonishingly old. These beings may have been around thousands or millions of years before modern, intelligent life came around to document them, or even have the slightest understanding what they are”. The history that we account for in all the lore of the game seems to only span back perhaps no more than a few thousand years, but these indicate an EVEN GREATER history to the world.
Were they gods, demigods, or mortals? Did they ever make tools or structures? Who created them? Are they even specific to the Lands Between, or did they roam the whole earth? What could kill such colossal creatures, and how much time did it take the earth to swallow up their bodies, only to leave their heads unburied?
You guys are reaching
That war and the destruction of the left side of the lands between happened a long time ago.
The fire giant is runt and already very weak
"birth" hasn't been through sex for a very long time as well.
Those big ass giants couldn't avoid the rot, like greyoll.
You see them in Caelid and the mountain top of the giants because they were driven out and up.
This fire giant may have had nothing to do with that war and was "born" from the gaints flame like the residents of the lands between are "born" from the erdtree. The last remnant, like the dragons that were locked up in King's Landing(game of thrones) getting smaller and weaker.
Given that there has been a massive meteor impact on the lands between, it's more than possible the world used to look very different.
There are also other landmasses we never see, which could possibly be more able to support these titans. Also fun fact: the giants forge seems to be modelled after a mobile-forge, notice how it has other chains that are un-used around the side facing out to see. Seems that the giants brought it with them to the island for some ancient unknown purpose.
What if the massive skulls have fallen from the sky? Similar to Astel (biotic meteorite), is it not safe to assume there may have been different types of falling star beasts in the past, that have fallen and fossilized on land? Astel has a human-like skull and came from the cosmos, so it has me thinking.
Theres not much information on them but if you look at the design of the forge of the giants, that one was clearly built by them. It was built to be moved around with the chains and the megagiants are the only things remotely big enough to actually move it around
I always thought they were growths as a result of the scarlet rot
I'm so used to giant people in Fromsoft games that, even knowing Radahn had the mark of the giants with his red hair, I never considered his height to be part of that until this video. Even though Ranni is right there, being **significantly** shorter than him. I wonder where Rykard fell in terms of height?
Either the same size of the devouring serpent (unlikely) or a bit bigger than the player.
There's a painting of him holding the Blasphemous Blade, and technically Rykard wields a massive Blasphemous Blade in his fight. So you'd think Rykard could have wielded that before he was devoured. But I think that's just Fromsoftware doing their typical thing of just scaling swords up and down depending on who wields them.
Ranni is bigger than the player too so it would make sense. Remember Ranni technically isn't "right there", as that's just a doll. Where you find the rune of death, you also find her corpse, and you can see she would have been bigger than you with her original body. Rykard was likely of similar size. So around 7-8ft.
I accepted Radahn's size the same way I accept anime characters having wildly varying sizes that often (but not always) reflect their relative strength. And Elden Ring is the most anime of fromsoft games so far, more than Sekiro.
@@Massenstein One Piece logic
Rykard has a throne (presumably his) right before the portal to his lair in the volcano Manor, judging by the size he would probably be closer to rannis og height than radahns
@@ColonelKebabShopyou see Rykard's head being eaten in the intro cutscene he was normal sized and the snake grew over time after eating him and countless others.
FromSoftware has messed around with the idea of large enemies being environmental hazards (most notably I'd say being the giants in the Cathedral of the Deep), I'd love to one day see them realize something on an absolutely gargantuan scale. Something along the lines of those giant skulls actually being living creatures that we'd have to navigate. From a technical standpoint though I can only imagine this posing a lot of complications
I mean they could pull a subnautica, and have "unreasonably large monster" as the map border.
Like say you get to the edge of a beach and when you wade into the water you disturb the cut Umibozu and it "THWACKS!" The player into paste
A bit like scaling the Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus? That'd be amazing, and I think it would be a good fit for their style of worldbuilding, but I have a feeling it would require some seriously major alterations to their game engine
I mean, unless the mechanics support a "Shadow of the Colossus" style boss where you climb around its body, it will likely end up with you hacking away at its legs, which would be underwhelming to say the least. It's the same problem Fire Giant and most dragons (excluding Midir) has where they try to make it seem like a "David and Goliath" spectacle, but it devolves into the player staring at the boss' foot for 90% of the fight. I hear Monster Hunter is apparently better at framing giant creatures in a cinematic manner during the fight.
@somniloquous0 I mean the straw doll was a decent "climb the big guy" moment, they just need to design an enemy using that but has spots to stand at for attacking
@@darkpuppetlordful oh fair enough, I never actually got that far in Sekiro 😅
With Caelid coincidently having this ginormous dead giant, monstrous dogs and crows, Radahn, Greyroll, The Great Jar, big dragonflies, big landsquirts, and some big scarabs, I thought at first on my 1st playthrough that one of the side effects of Scarlet Rot was making things extremely huge. Like a strange growth defect.
Problem is it doesn’t explain why some effected by the rot grow and others don’t. Also, Radahn, Greyoll, and the Great Jar were large before presumably.
Yeah, me too. I am unsure about the Great Jar though. Since the Jars are... well, manufactured beings, we don't know if they grow at all or if they are just created at different size at whim. Still, we do have proof they do indeed grow as we see existing Jar kids in Jarburg and the adults like Alexander. So maybe, just maybe, the Great Jar in Caelid might indeed be a result of the Scarlet Rot.
Problem is... there are some outside of Caelid; the giant dogs and crows appear in the mountaintops of the giants as well, unless that's intentional for the devs part since... well, they are giants (size-wise anyways, not as a race). But then, there's no explanation for the giant bloody crows in Moghwyn Palace, unless their size is a result for feasting on too much blood and carrion there.
@@gvd72 the fact that it doesn't explain 100% of every detail of the mechanics doesn't change the fact that there is absolutely an intentional correlation between caelid and unnaturally large examples of life from elsewhere in the continent, especially in the swamp which is the only place in the game where the giant mosquitoes, scarabs, and squirts appear
if i had to hazard a guess, i'd say that the growth is associated with consuming large amounts of rot, whether through absorbing the tainted water/soil of the swamp, or feeding on large amounts of rot-infected bodies, like the giant crows and dogs - _and like radahn_ who is shown feasting on rotted corpses, and most certainly wasn't born at his current size or he'd never have started riding around a regular-sized horse. (that doesn't provide a complete explanation since his growth past leonard's carrying capability was the thing that prompted him to learn gravity magic before losing himself to the rot, but given how much the horse struggles under his weight now it's well possible he could've grown even further)
and given that we have child and adult jars of different sizes in jarburg, and alexander's experiences show that adding new corpses and material, fixing cracks and broken pieces, re-firing oneself and so on are things a jar can all experience of their own volition, there's not necessarily any reason to discount the possibility of the great jar having grown by stuffing itself with absolutely massive quantities of rotted warriors and rebuilding itself over and over with time
regardless of what the exact lore behind the growth is though, there is no doubting that there's absolutely an intentional correlation between caelid and overgrown fauna, it is a very deliberate impression that is delivered from the moment you crest over the first hill at the mouth of caelid and see a battlefield overrun with gigantic misproportioned dogs and crows feasting on bodies, and reinforced as you see them dotted across the landscape, and see even more huge creatures in the swamp. the fact that we don't have a complete picture spelled out about how it works, or that some of those enemies are reused elsewhere (in a game that necessarily does huge amounts of content reuse because it's just too damn big to fill otherwise) doesn't negate that obvious intent
@@shaktosh524 honestly i think you addressed your own concerns perfectly well here. giant dogs in the giant mountaintops makes sense enough, and it may or may not be anymore deep than that - they could have just needed an enemy that felt in some way thematically appropriate to fill an area with something different, or there could be a Deep Lore Reason we'll unearth a year from now, who knows. and given that the oversized animals we see in caelid are ones who would have fed off large amounts of rot-corrupted bodies, blood, water, etc, it hardly seems unreasonable that years of eating large amounts of bodies in gnarly pools of stagnant blood could achieve a similar result. that place has a weird nasty ecosystem all its own so it doesn't stretch the imagination too much to think that it would have unusual effects on its inhabitants
regardless of the outliers, i still think "rot is correlated with unnatural growth" is not at all an unreasonable or incorrect conclusion to draw
One theoryi heard was that the land between used to be a ring and the mountaintop of the giants once connected to caelid.
Nice to see Elden Ring's giant skulls finally make an appearance. It's incredibly obvious how large they are even from just the heads alone, but the scaled up skeleton model really drives home how absolutely massive they truly are. It never occurred to me that they'd rival the Erdtree itself, let alone be large enough that they could traverse the entirety of The Lands Between in merely a handful of strides
Honestly, it's baffling how large they are. Makes you wonder what could kill such a being
@Nw-zh1uq interesting, but we see that the strongest being from space is the elden beast, and it isn't really that large. Something tells me that bug biology doesn't work quite the same in elden ring, especially considering that a "full-grown" fallingstar beast isn't even as large as astel. I feel as though Placidusax had something to do with the killing of the titans.
It really makes you wonder if these skulls are created by the Scarlet Rot or if (even stranger) the Lands Between is built upon the literal bones of titans rising out of an unnamed ocean.
@@ignisspiritustenebris7137maybe just an old age too
@@ignisspiritustenebris7137 time
Really loved the last representation of what the embedded giants might look like in game.
Holi joseju
Joseju pa cuando el video de Armored Core 6
joseju vuelve a las minas de videos
Los niños te extrañan 😢
Maybe big boys planted the Crucible, but to them, it was a normal tree. Maybe it was like a pre-first fire thing, where the tree could only become the source of life after the death of its previously immortal planters. Like the dragons, maybe they just turned to stone
It's amazing to think that all of these gigantic beings, across all Souls games, are still absolutely dwarfed by the size of your mother.
-_-
GOD DAMN IT.
@@eldenlord_13
Everywhere I go
He follows me
I think there is an argument to be made, that you would.
Damn bro 😢
The tarnished archaeologist did an interesting lore theory video about the giant skulls in Elden Ring if anyone is interested. Basically the theory is that the divine towers are the tips of an ancient, giant-sized temple that worshipped meteorites. Then the giants were wiped out by a meteor that caused that big sea in the middle of the lands between to form, and separated Caelid and the giant mountaintops (although the giants Marika waged war with were probably pygmies compared the giant skull giants).
J.R. Scorn also has a video on these massive skulls, he says something along the lines that they are titans, ancestors of the fire giants.
Ooooo that’s actually a really interesting theory - would be awesome to go into a giant underwater cavern in the middle of the spires
i was going to mention that
I wonder if the Elden Beast could have been that meteor, since it was described as having arrived upon a golden star.
@@Ketsuekisanif i remember correctly tarnished archaeologist claims it was the arrival of the fell god in the meteorite that caused the crater. Timelines and whatnot is far too in the past for it to be elden beast
One of the creation myths in nordic mythology is about the earth being made from the remains of a dead giant (his flesh became the ground, his teeth rocks, and so on), I wonder if the giant skulls could be FROM's take on that? Though in that case, there would probably have been non-infested skulls outside of Caelid (like in the network test version), them only existing in one area suggests there's some connection with it - there's two areas with plenty of Scarlet Rot outside of Caelid which both are missing the skulls, so it wouldn't be connected to the rot, but something specific to Caelid in particular...?
They don't just exist in Caelid, but the Mountaintops of the Giants too.
Could be that they get unearthed by severe weathering, such as the snowfall after the giants died out and maybe scarlet rot does more to the ground than first imagined?
I find it funny how Elden Ring giants have double the faces while DS2 giants have none.
There's one giant in ds2 that has a face it's a dead one in the area you fight the giant lord in.
@@Yellow_Mage_Logan That's meant to be the OG design for the Giants. You saw it during one of the in-game trailers.
Ah so that was the problem people had with DS2, the giants didn't have enough faces.
@@BE-fw1lr understandable
Can you imagine how pants shittingly terrifying it would be if you climbed up your final divine to activate a great rune, and while it plays the animation a big skeleton just pears over the edge at you.
You may enjoy looking up the Rotten Vale map in Monster Hunter World, where it's largely made of the corpses of giant wyverns called Dalamudar, essentially giant serpents, and at least one of which is bigger than any that can be fought in the series. It's somewhat terrifying to look at an area from a distance and it just clicks that that area was all inside a skull's open mouth or a ribcage.
Summoner, a ps2 launch title, had something similar going on beneath the Iona Monastery. The story brings you there to get your 4th party member and a story item, but said item is beneath the monastery in a cave that turns out to be the skeleton of a terrifyingly large three-headed serpent. We never get a good look at the bones from a distance, but just seeing them from inside is a really cool experience.
Standing that last giant next to the Erdtree, making it look like a regular-sized tree gave me a loregasm.
Reminds me of some sculptures and paintings in the lands between that depict the Erdtree with people around it. I love this.
What if there are no giants and Eldenring is just a really weird Borrowers spinoff
something interesting about the lands between is that the entire continent is kind of falling apart, indicating that at one point the lands between may have been much larger to accommodate for the sheer size of the giants
Well it's taken at least one colossal meteorite strike and had people running around with absurd gravity powers. Not a bad bet to say it mirrors Lord of the Rings with parts of continents sinking in ancient wars due to the level of power.
@@DracoSafarius there is some truth there, places like numenor tho were sunk beneath the waves as a punishment tho, the numenoreans were tricked by sauron and started worshipping the first dark lord and when they were told by the gods to stop and didn't their home was sunk
True maybe we will get a Underwater DLC one Day where we will track down a Outer God, maybe the Rot God, to kill him after he escapes the lake of Rot.
It's crazy when you notice their bodies buried in the crack of the chasm before the Fire Giant and really get a sense of how ridiculously huge those skeletons are, but this video seeing one by the Erdtree puts it in a whole new perspective.
Wow, I knew the buried skeletons were monstrously huge based on your prior videos, but actually putting them to scale is insane! Given the relative density of their corpses along with their sheer size, I wonder if the Lands Between are remnants of some battlefield or maybe burial site for these titans. I doubt it happens but it would be awesome if their lore was expanded on in any way with the DLC, which I'm absolutely stoked for!
What if these massive skulls weren’t ever a part of anything living? They could be carvings or even weird growths of some kind. Notice that we never see any other giant bones other than the skulls.
You can see the ribs connected to the skull in giants grave post.
Not to mention, they appear to be made of a calcified fungus, or some other sort of biological growth, in a land FULL of weird fungi and growths.
We've seen before in the game that stuff likes growing in weird shapes sometimes. I totally buy the idea that either these are the remains of some super primordial species, (in which case, why are they not more weathered and buried), or they're just a type of weird fungus in the area.
@@raz802 tbh they loop pretty weathered. Im making some assumptions here, but they only appear in caelid and mountaintops, perhaps the rot nuke uncovered the ones in caelid and the ones in mountaintops could have been either covered by snow or simply preserved better by the cold temperature. Perhaps thier irreagular school shape is a form of weathering and in the past they were smoother and rounder. Even more headcanon: perhaps they're the ones who build the towers and golems and the pillars underground. The forge of the giants is only big enough for them to use, and its clearly made by the same civilization that build the pillars, as that's what's its resting on.
@@raz802id agree but it cant be fungus
Look in the pit just before fire giant: theres two giant corpses like the ones in caelid ditched in the chasm like a shallow grave, and all along the mountaintops. These ones are missing fungi, it seems. Suggesting the Aeonia may have killed the ones in caelid and the ones at the mountaintops died by other means.
@@MrHydra12 aeonia was recent. the scarlet rot just ate away at the earth revealing the skeletons. The bodies probably predate Placidusax.
OMG I love this! I was wondering if you'd ever do a size comparison on the giant skulls in Elden Ring and here it is! Love your content Zullie!
Dark Souls and Elden ring seem to work on OnePiece anatomy logic. Where a human can be the height of a tree, with a giant chest biceps, but a comically small head and nobody bats an eye
the great giant skeleton making the erdtree look normal sized brings a ton of questions for the world. Tibia Mariners can summon a seemingly smaller high lord wolnir type, with the skulls matching about the same structure as the ones in the walls in elden ring. i really hope the dlc explains a little bit about these gargantuan seemingly impossible mythical beings.
The designs of both Wolnir and the Tibia Mariners' giant skeletons are likely based on the Gashadokuro, a type of yokai. Gashadokuro are formed when masses of unburied corpses (e.g. death by drowning or on the battlefield) merge into one giant skeleton.
Rather conveniently, all of the Tibia Mariners are found near water and/or corpses from burial sites uprooted by deathroot, so that's probably part of the puzzle.
The ghost skeleton is actually the same size as the fire giant.
The erdtreee is much bigger relax
It's just how it looks in the game
@@venerablewu8744 Giant skeleton: ~1/2 km
Erdtree: ~5km
Yeah
"to them, the Erd Tree would just be a regular tree"
Hmmm, that seems quite interesting...
I wonder if the skull monuments could be the remains of an "Umibozu" or if not I wonder what they are and how the actual Umibozu concept they had would match up in this lineup of giants.
What'd be interesting is if the skull and some sort of water effect were the "design" of Umibozu (see Nioh for an example of this style of Umibozu), a massive tidal wave erupts and when it subsides/is attacked a glowing eyed skull is revealed
no.
@@BastosFC2you wanna elaborate?
@@bruhmoment7543 greyoll couldn't escape the rot, only the smallest giants could
Also at 3:03 you can clearly see the clavicle incating more skeleton....
There seems to obviously be the giants.....
Why don't you assume that the fire giant is a lil runt?
It fits with like every other boss, being weaked or crippled.
i saw a pretty convincing theory on "the tarnished archeologist" about those gigantic heads. supposedly they were an incredibly ancient/advanced race who built the divine towers and all the underground rock structures we see in caves etc. before it got all buried by the meteor(s)
Giants are my absolute favourite fantasy creatures, they're so great for conveying a sense of awe to players/viewers
I have a fear of overly gigantic humanoids and beasts, the giant jar and the hanging mermaid give me a sense of danger whenever I get too close, and when i do get close i find that its very hard for me to want to look up at them.
idunno man... a giantess is pretty hot..
yeah no i think the giant void man in the ocean staring at me would’ve pushed me over
@@korstmahler Where's the giant chair on the surface?
@@texpendableit's in the town of sellia in caelid
@@texpendable It's in Sellia, Town of Sorcery. Where you fight the Nox Swordstress and Priest.
Wolnir standing there like:
"Hey bro chill... the Carthus Catacombs? Yeah i remember uuuhhh.... i didn´t mean that bro... relax."
Thanks as always for the amazing content and insight into this amazing world @Zulie!
The comparison of all time
As someone who hasn't played any of these games, I'm still always fascinated at what you have to show about them. It's like a little show and tell moment for me. A good, imaginative breather
Considering how the descendants of giants (trolls) are smaller than the giants themselves,maybe the monumental skulls belong to an even more ancient ancestor of the giants
Seems to be the case, something similar seems to be going on with the dragons too, it's like each generation becomes a little more mundane.
Meybe even normal animals have this going on, since the ancestral spirit seems to show an ancient deer that was huge with powerful magic.
@@DisgruntledPeasantthat would fit with the Golden Order's philosophy with things regressing towards the mean.
Honestly I think having one Undead Giant with those proportions would have made everyone unanimously shit their pants it would have been amazing
The erdtree being normal sized next to those ancient giants is so cool. The people that came after them are just insects infesting a rocky island
The colossal skeleton head gave rise to the best note I've read in any souls game. On the hill opposing him past the wolf knight, you can get a clear view- it was simply
"a head ahead"
Is there much in the game relating to Elden ring’s giant skulls? I remember being mesmerized by them when I first noticed what they actually were
I think there is nothing regarding them or the giants in the thrones in the Eternal Cities
some parts of the ground across the whole land are eroded away, and underneath them are these flat stone platforms, which makes it look like the entire land was made artificially. the architecture looks the same as the divine towers, and i think there's a theory that these giants were the ones who made it all
The Tarnished Archeologist made a pretty deep dive into them in their recent divine tower video, I'd highly recommend checking that one out if you're curious
There's nothing. An ancient race from way before the known history of the world, extinct and forgotten. Or Fromsoft just thought they're cool setpieces.
@@Tulip_bipOh yo that explains the area I was exploring today. The Highroad Cave in Limgrave is full of these hexagonal stone pillars, even though it seems like a natural cave
Impeccable choice in music as usual. Faron woods is one of my favorite pieces in all of gaming
In the Elden Lord ending, the player character grows to completely fill the Elden Throne. This implies that size is used to denote power in the Souls series, like how Gwyn is massive in the intro cutscene and significantly smaller in his boss fight.
I don’t think that was literal. The player size was probably grown to fit in the seat and not the player actually growing.
I like the idea that they just grow out of the ground like that. In warhammer fantasy skulls form in the landscape if there's enough warp magic for it.
One weird question: where did the giants come from?
In the lore, it says the Fire Giants chased out the Ice Dragons who lived there before they did, so obviously they had to come from somewhere. Not to mention, we even find many of the even bigger giant skulls in Caelid, too, and, going on a stretch here, Nokron and Nokstella had the giant skeletons on the thrones.
Were they just the predominant power, along with the dragons, or did they come from somewhere?
Well, they are called the "Lands Between", to me that implies there are lands "outside". Some of the lore regarding the tarnished and Godfrey reference us leaving the Lands Between, and then returning. Coupled with some of the crashed ships you can see off the shores, I'd assume there are other continents separated by vast oceans.
Perhaps the Giants came to the Lands between from elsewhere and settled in the mountaintops?
@@Deneb626 But where specifically? Like, we know that there are many places aside from the Lands Between that different races and people come from. Yura from the Land of Reeds, Tanith was from a foreign land before meeting Rykard, the Numen (Marika included) came from somewhere beyond the Lands Between and settled there, different places clearly exist. One of the only recognizable humans who existed in the Lands Between before Marika's Age was Hoarah Loux (aka, Godfrey) and not many others (btw, I am kind of unsure about this, because Hoarah Loux was said to be a chieftain of the badlands, meaning he also could have come from somewhere rather than be native to the Lands Between, initially).
And different races like Alabaster Lords and Astel and the Elden Beast all came to the Lands Between, too. There were already many races that existed there, but then we have these beings sort of "invade" there (cruel term, I know, but it's still accurate).
It almost seems as though many saw the Lands Between as an opportunity just to colonize and grow, like they see it as some sort of land that belongs to them as it's "between lands," so they want to have ownership of it, but not for anyone else as well.
Upon inspection Caelid and the Siofra River are eerily similar to the sea of decay and the stone forest from the film Nausica Of The Valley Of The Wind respectively. Based on that assumption the skulls may have belonged to the beings that have created the lands between just as the giant warriors had created the setting of the film.
I was hoping Ludleth would at least get an honorable mention.
He may have been small, but he died a colossus.
Heh...
This makes me wonder if the black humanoid sea guy is what the big skulls would have been when alive
always glad to see a zullie video in my timeline, welcome back!
Your timing, as always, is impecable - just sat down with a cup of tea after work and up pops the notificstion.
Maybe the Erd tree is just a regular tree. In Elden ring we simply are playing ants and from our perspective yeah everything seems massive. Which makes sense because the insects are often bigger than the tarnished. Dung beetles, crabs, lave breathing newts. All regular sized but we're just playing an ant sized character. All of Elden Ring likely takes place in someone's backyard.
would love to see a comparison of the three fingers merged with the two fingers. in the lore, they were part of a greater being that was dismembered. i believe the greater will was the soul of that being, and the fingers were an extension of it. then, after the nomadic merchants chanted for the frenzied flame (aka the first flame from the souls series), the three fingers were used as a vessel to imbue the tarnished to be the lord of chaos and return the land to its original state even before the giants and dragons, possibly as a vessel for the first flame.
Man, I wish there was a shot as the PC from the ground with that skeleton standing up.
I tried, and it was not really possible. If the camera is too far from an NPC, it stops rendering them, even if they're still loaded, so trying to get anywhere far enough away where I could actually see the skeleton and also still have it be rendered just wasn't working,
*Zullie casually reality hopping to tell people they are big AF:*
wait the giant lord was the last giant all along ?
I missed something
I may be wrong, but I believe you literally have to go into the Last Giant‘s memories (leading to an area aptly named „Memories of the Last Giant“) to fight the Giant Lord
@@KeDe1606 alright thanks for the lore, I completly missed that fact tbh
They literally look the same bruh
That's why he goes so berserk in the Last Giant boss fight. From his perspective, you beat him and got him locked up down there, and now you've come back for more.
"Soul of the surviving giant, who was bound below the Forest of the Giants.
The lord of the Giants, who had brought wrack and ruin to the entire kingdom, was said to have been felled by an unknown warrior.
His beaten and broken remains were then dragged beneath the stronghold, where he was sealed away."
-Soul of the Last Giant description
Add the fact that they look pretty similar, and while technically not outright confirmed (I mean, what _is_ in these games) it's a pretty solid theory.
I didn't realize you're back, but I'm so glad you are. Your videos are like therapy to me to be honest, and I used to always try and binge watch your stuff for an hour or two before I sleep, back before the few month break. I hope you're doing better now, and I'll always look forward to seeing your videos!! Luv you Zullie :'))
(I'm too stoked to sleep now and I'm going to be binge watching your videos again lol.)
Zullie i actually have a question.
You haven't talked about demon souls, how tall is actually the old one? He might not be a humanoid giant but he's still enormous and if we consider the straw doll as a partecipant of this competition its only right to also include him
Well that's kinda hard since it was only released on the PS5 and there's almost no way to really check because of that.
@@Yellow_Mage_LoganHave people *really* forgotten already that the original PS3 version of Demon's Souls is a thing that exists?
@@dukeofhmph6348 nah hes probably just new to demons souls or dark souls. we all know it came out on the ps3
@@Yellow_Mage_Logan There's an emulated version of the game so the files are publically available for whoever wants to explore them.
This is my personal theory about the giant skeletons: I like to think about them as the ancient warriors from Nausicaa of the valley of wind. Great video as always Zullie
Those giant skeletons are what i want answers to, personally. Are they remnant of the Giant War? Were they Giant Demi-Gods? Or are they akin to dinosaur bones? Fossils of a time far more ancient than the Erdtree and the Lands Between?
A lot of people say they are remains of the war being slowly buried but for how they are placed in the terrain it seems more like they are being uncovered by erosion more than being buried
@@davidalonsosariego2618 Yeah that's my guess. The lands being shaken and disturbed causing chunks of land to break off or erode away revealing ancient skeletons of a race long gone and predating even the giants sounds like a really neat concept.
The amount of Twilight Princess music you use fills me with validation of it being my favorite Zelda game
There is a theory put out by Tarnished Archeologist who proposes the Divine Towers and all the "foundation" archetecture as seen in Caelid and Limgrave is the architecture built possibly by those giants. He notes how the divine towers have inlaid meteorites and those meteorites are surrounded by the same designs as the incantion icon for Fell God incantations and the the 8 circles around a center circle like the Fire Giant's Fell God Eye. Those impossibly huge giants are likely the ancestors of the Fire Giants and built the foundation of the Lands Between, the Divine Towers, and the Forge of the Giants since the forge is impossibly huge even for the Fire Giants. They're likely a super, super ancient race from even before Farum Azula and its Ancient Dragon kingdom that Placidusax was Elden Lord over.
While that theory sounds very authoritative, he never addresses how come the insides of the Divine Towers are relatively human sized. Even the Trolls wouldn't be able to fit in many of them that have interior geometry beyond just the elevator, like the Caelid Divine Tower. And we KNOW From think about that sort of stuff, remember the dual staircases in Anor Londo?
Speaking of giants. I think the Pumpkin heads maybe related to them. If you look closely you can see strands of red hair peeking out from under the helmet. It’s easiest to see this in the capital where the sun is very bright.
Yay! More megalophobia! Seriously though, the only way I can imagine those giants almost as big as the Erdtree living is just them walking across the ocean floor. That stuff is nightmarish to me.
Your channel has singlehandedly made me interested in this series ive never played beyond the intro of DS1
In future dlc, it would be cool if we got a look into the class lore, or just anything for more backstories. I know shadow will be more focused on miquella (i have a head lore that there was demi human who was the inspiration for the halig, and the only one to not be wooed by his empyrean charm).
If multiple dlc: battling the biggest badass in lore “the blind swordsman”.
Malenias is a swordswoman....
@@trollfarmergoestowashington Maleia was trained by the blind swordsman
The Samurai class really made me think Ashina, and by extension Sekiro, was connected to Elden Ring.
Love that almost every time I'm on one of your videos, it's accompanied by Zelda music. Such a nice combination.
I'm hoping we get some lore on these giants in particular. They're absolutely colossal and definitely meant to be something. I've been wandering about them since release tbh and I've been craving an explanation of them. Maybe in a DLC ;(
Man I was just today in the Mountaintops of the Giants looking at the huge skeleton in the wall thinking how massive that thing is and now there's a video about it, crazy
I SIMPLE MAN
I SEE ZULLIE UPLOAD
I CLICK
I HAPPY 👍🏻
Zullie, I have a (maybe strange) request: that shot of the fire giant is great and the pose is very interesting for a fan art I have in mind. There's any chance that you can provide me with a clean full figure of the fire giant in this pose 0:06? The first high-quality printable file of the fan art will go to you
Great content as always Zullie! Loved seeing the progression through the series, and I can't wait for the next topic you'll cover.
I think a lot about the Norse/Celtic connections in elden ring, like the original giants, whose war torn decaying bodies formed the land of men. It doesn’t use a “Viking” motif at all in the game but it absolutely pulls lore, structure hierarchies and heroic stories to shape the history of the lands between.
It’s so rewarding to find out more connections in this game a whole year after finishing it.
God I love your content
Your videos are so interesting and informative and relaxing at the same time. Great presentation and perfect background music. Been binging for almost an hour, instantly subbed
I've always pictured that all giants with masks in DS1 and DS3 have the hole faces of DS2. There's not many things that connect all three games together, but the giants do. The enslavement, invading force, and then extinction of the giants is a cool story.
To be fair, I don't think the giants embedded in the Earth are actual, living beings. They're more likely the impressions and influence left behind by the different gods and elder powers residing in the Land's Between - either from the past or the current era. Kind of like how the One Eyed fire god of the Giants plastered his face on his followers.
I wonder if the gargantuan skulls in Caelid were put there as an stylistic choice, or if they were at some point written in on the lore. Not like actual enemies or game content, but if the lore timeline is detailed enough to describe that ancient race whose bones were unearthed in The Lands Between. Would be nice to know :)
New theory: The land Betweens are just some kid's abandoned sandbox, the skeletons are the remains of real people, and everyone else are just the toys left behind.
I feel like the DLC can easily throw us a Giant riding on a huge dragon boss fight. Nameless king on steroids.
That 632m tall giant at the end would make an amazing cinematic bossfight if done right.
Re-reading Berserk a few days ago i realized how the Fire Giant (2nd phase at least) HAS to be inspired by Berserk like many other stuff ofc, but he's almost a 1 on 1 reference to Wyald, a guy that transforms into his Apostle form and you guessed it, he has a mouth on his chest/belly, also an eye and stuff, it has to be at least where they got inspiration from, i would be surprised if they didn't. Just a thing i failed to notice at the time of playing the game lol
I don't care at what pace these videos come out. I'm just happy you make them
Smoughtown has an excellent video on these collossal skeletons and who they may have been. These titans were probably the original inhabitants of the lands between, responsible for building the divine towers and the archways and columns you can see poking out of the landscape all over the lands between. The fell god descended on the lands between on a star, and they built the divine towers to honor it. Much, much later, the elden beast made a similar but much larger impact, killing the titans and burying them and their constructions in molten tektites. This is why there's a huge crater in the center of the lands between, and why the divine towers all have a side that is covered in formless rock.
name of that video?
Thank you for doing this topic!! Always was curious as to how big the giant skulls body would be but DAYUM! Never guessed they'd be so BIG! Excellent comparison putting em next to the erdree, really gives scope and scale to something we all know well!
Another great vid and this viewer appreciates all the effort you put into your content, fwiw!
Merci!
I've been saying this a lot in Vaati's videos and such, but I have a highly probably theory as to why Radahn is very large in consideration of his lore with gravity magic. Just as whales evolved to be massive due to evolution by being buoyant in water that supports their weight, Radahn's size may be due to his excessive practice in Gravity magic supporting his weight and such being a factor of his growth being larger than his peers. We know in descriptions that he grew up with his horse, and learned gravity magic to still ride his scrawny steed at its old age; and the introduction scene for elden ring he is presumed to battle with Margott in his younger years being smaller. His purpose with gravity magic greatly solidifies his commitment to protecting Sellia and in withholding the stars' movement from having more falling star beasts and astels from crashing down across the lands between. You may wonder then 'why do the Alabaster and Onyx lords are smaller in form when they have the powers of gravity magic', it would be a probable arguement that they are alien in nature and biologically not affected by their gravity magic.
Still, Radahn remains one of my favorite boss fights in the game😁
That's a great theory! Deep sea gigantism is a real thing, after all.
It's me. I am the biggest giant. You don't see me in-game because I'm shy.
I remember reading a discussion between some people on reddit that the various skull shaped things in the game are a manifestation of the death brought by deathroot or the rot.
These skulls always remind me of the remains of the Fire Warriors from Nausicaa, especially in Caelid where the scarlet rot fungus is suprisingly similar to the toxic jungle. Makes me wonder what their purpose was👀
idk if the caelid giant heads are actual heads, as they look more like growths with humanoid features, similar to Godwyns deathroots.
I like how Vendrick and Nashandra are almost holding hands while t-posing, as if they were an unhappy couple bitterly posing for a photo or something.
💀 x250
If I recall, didnt Humanity in DS1 have a direct effect on the size of things in the lore? Like the giant rats who feed off of corpses, which made them bigger, and they can even drop humanity when they die.
My headcanon for the giant Caelid skulls are that they were mutated by the Scarlet Rot, much like the birds and dogs you find there, just on a colossal scale and probably posthumously.
I love this videos showing the size of different entities in these games. Really helps when making scale models
i know it's been a while since your break, but it's good to have you back Zullie. thanks for all the killer content.
I love these videos where you show off the models, those giant heads in Caelid are really interesting.
Very cool. Thanks for coming back and continued amazing content!
I'm wondering if you didn't include Sekiro's Chained Ogre because it is classified as an Ogre, and some other rather oversized characters from Sekiro (Like Owl, Isshin and the Corrupted Monk) because they are technically not large enough to fit the "theme". I absolutely love your videos! So glad you are back at it, crossing my fingers for the Elden Ring DLC to come out soon mostly so we can get more of your content. 😁
I always love your choice of music for your videos, Loz tp the GOAT!
Elden Ring definitely broke a lot of records in the size category
"Not even Gransax is a match for them."
That moment when all of us flashed back hard to the video Zullie did on Gransax, and kind of staggered in place.
that giant at the end: "To me, the Erdtree is just a normal tree."
As someone who havent played ER, I found these videos very enjoyable, thanks