I'm sure a lot of people expected a Nightreign trailer video, but I haven't really enjoyed trying to fit a trailer analysis into my style of videos. With everyone else already covering pretty much everything that's been publicly shared, I don't think it would add much for me to make one as well.
I don't know what is more terrifying. God distancing himself from the people or finding out that even his messengers haven't heard from him for eons. And I really like how finding out about how blind the Two Fingers are isn't even the worst part of it. We get interpretations from the Greater Will, to the Two Fingers, to Finger Readers, which already is iffy. Then we find out that the Two Fingers are blind and aimless. And THEN we find out that they are not only not the sole existing messenger but actually considered children. It's basically a convoluted game of telephone in which almost every participant is playing god without the player, or even some of the oracles, realizing it.
What might be even more interesting is if the Greater Will is gone, it's influence faded as it splits further and further into individual forms of life-- echoes of a singularity-turned-mulitplicity.
Exactly! Even if for arguments sake the Greater Will is alive and well and sending out messages these are coming to the Two Fingers. They are children of his actual Messenger - Metyr. So the message they receive, they may not fully understand, and then it's being interpreted by the Finger Readers. It's like a grand game of Chinese Whispers so inevitably something is going to get lost in translation. It's Moses passing the tablets with the Ten Commandments on to somebody who can't speak his language, and they just have a wild stab at what have may have noted down from what God told him. The big question is - has the Greater Will abandoned the Lands Between, or is he being blocked from making contact/dead/held captive?
Personal theory/ head canon: I believe Goldmask is the only one the Greater Will has been in recent contact with. It is unique that Goldmask discovered his rune through a vision and only with his unique and incomprehensible way of thinking was he able to create it with your help. His ending was the only one where leaves do not fall from the erdtree.
I don't feel like the game gives us a good reason to believe in the Greater Will at all. It didn't before the DLC, and the DLC only multiplies the reasons for skepticism. All we have are power hungry lunatics who each want to justify their behavior by reference to a distant principle.
It’s interesting that you didn’t mention Varre. When you meet him at the Rose Church he tells you that he believes the guidance of the two fingers is skewed and is not representative of the Greater Will. At first, I thought this was just part of his scam to get the tarnished on board with joining the Bloody Fingers, but now I’m not so sure.
Either he was bullcrapping, and happened to be right by total accident, or the Formless Mother is aware of these things, and has been filling in her followers on the latest cosmic gossip.
1. It’s weird how her face is so close to the black flame godskin spell symbol 2. The way she “gives birth” and how she’s the first of two “impacts” makes me think of Lillith from Neon Genesis Evangelion
i think metyr is also wounded. there is a spot on her that resembles a stab wound. and the finger slayer blade you retrieve for ranni says that it has been used before and that nocron was wiped out for it. also the names of the only two cathedrals in the game are kind of telling. the cathedral of manus celes (maybe translated as celestial hand [manus = Hand, celes = celestial]) where rannis two fingers are hiding and the chathedral of manus metyr ( translated as mother of hands [ manus = hands, metyr = mother]) where metyr is residing.
Metyr being an "abandoned daughter" of the Greater Will is interesting, it made me think of Ebrietas and how she was abandoned by the cosmos and and left on a lower plane of existence.
On a similar note... Metyr's arena looks a lot like Rom's, and Rom was placed between the 'surface of the lake' and the terrible secret knowledge hidden deep below, forever obscuring the Great Ones for sight for as long as Rom lived. Can't help but wonder if it's a similar situation with Metyr, with her standing between the mortals of the lands between and the divinity of the Greater Will, providing a link between the two.
@@Axius27 It's stated in the quest to even fight her, that the greater will has long since abandoned the fingers and their mother. Metyr can't be a connection, because she no longer has connection to the greater will herself, being abandoned by it shortly after landing in the lands between. OP had it right when comparing Metyr with Ebrietas.
@@Axius27 There are indeed similarities, even if opposite. Both are broken creatures with too many appendices and a very strange head who summons cosmos powers and spider-like creature, hidden in a possible higher dimention that looks like under the surface of water. And the fact about the connection between Ebrietas and Rom makes the call even more clear. With big differences of course. While Rom was used by the Choir to hide Mergo and Mensis' ritual to Flora, as you said Metyr was supposed to be a connection between GW and the world, then something gone terribly wrong. I like the theory that those tubes let her speak with the Fingers, at least once.
The aquatic setting of Metyr's arena really reminded me of a womb, emphasizing Metyr's motherhood. If there's one thing the gods in Elden Ring are really good at, it's procreating. The DLC seems to emphasize this wild, procreative activity as the main drive of the gods, while their authority and insight turn out to be a sham- perhaps something they never had in the first place.
So the opposite of bloodborne? The Gods in BB being infertile and needing surrogates to carry their children, but tragically after even their offspring are birthed from surrogate mothers they perish or are abandoned.
I like how they respected the fact the base game establishes that the Finger-slayer blade is required to slay such beings, so Metyr is instead shown to teleport away rather than die like other bosses.
Metyr is injured and sick and the game says the fingerslayer blade was already used once, so it's possible Metyr was the target. And even if the fingerslayer blade couldn't finish the job, maybe it made her mortal or something? After all she can now only birth fingercreepers which definitely do not need special weapons.
So coming from a physics background. The polar jets attack felt absurdly cool. Just about the most energetic continuous events in the universe. If any attack should be undodgable, kinda has to be this one.
"Doesn't seem particularly aquatic..." *Looks like something from the Cambrian explosion* Which were all aquatic. And those beams remind me of pulsars and quasars, which fits the celestial body link.
Honestly i don't think she dies when we defeat her, i've always seen it as her just teleporting elsewhere to hide again and wait for a message from the Greater Will
I disagree, she has the same fade out animation other bosses have when killed and you get souls when you kill her. The animation for her orb "overloading" is pretty large but it doesnt look like she is teleporting.
I love how From and Miyazaki use "Deep sea" imagery to represent deep knowledge and dark secrets "deep within the world", like in Bloodborne. It's an amazing metaphor, and in actual good fantasy, metaphors and reality are one and the same.
The Two Finger's lack of true guidance was hinted at even in the base game. When you tell them about the thorns blocking the Erdtree the fingers are shaken and try to consult the greater will, with Enia saying that it might take centuries for their message to reach the Greater Will. In other words, the fingers have merely been following a script this whole time with no true communication.
Bloodborne and this game really made cosmic horror true justice. Eldritch bosses such as Astel and Metyr are the most elaborate lore-wise, complex and epic bosses in the series
That lore bomb drop telling you that everything was bs and that the greater will fucked off eons ago (or possibly never was there to begin with) was fr overwhelming. I Felt like some character going crazy after learning something they shouldn’t have.
@@iamMildlyUpsetWithMostOfYouTub To me it's just funny but also weird that Ranni did everything for the specific outer god to fuck off, but the truth was more twisted than anything else. The vassals that supposed to serve have been corrupted the moment they set their foot in Lands between.
@@trustmeits610pm2 ya I know, but before release there were theories suggesting it was a space station, it turned out to not be a space station, but there is a lot of sci fi elements and aliens in elden ring so it's funny how there straight up could've been some sort of spacecraft or thing that all these aliens come from
I genuinely thought it was gonna go fantasy into sci-fi from the first trailer. The voice over being all ‘the ring has shattered, don’t tell me you can’t see it?’. I’m not disappointed exactly, but I was hoping for less subtly in the alien aspect.
I think the funniest thing is that despite the greater will not having communicated with the elden best metyr or the the fingers other outer gods are definitely chatty and responsive like the god of rot and blood god. Maybe they saw the greater will not caring wbout that section and went it to swoop it?
Though this seems highly unusual to have the idea of an alien incursion into fantasy pulling all the strings in a lot of ways it's actually quite classical to fantasy. I wouldn't be surprised if this was part of designers nods to their inspirations from things beyond Berserk with the likes of Fighting Fantasy, D&D, Wizardry, Might & Magic, Ultima, and so on. For example in D&D one of the older campaigns from the late 1970s was a revelation that the fantasy worlds of D&D were long since manipulated by aliens with Expedition to the Barrier Peaks revealing an ancient alien ship buried beneath the Barrier Peaks.
Well, Miyazaki is a huge fan of Fighting Fantasy and MtG, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone else on the team either played a ton of Ultima/Wizardry/M&M back in the 1980s-1990s or was inspired by proxy due to the massive impact they've had on early JRPGs.
An interesting connection Metyr is the finger slayer blade. We know for a fact it was used at some point and it led to retaliation from the greater will. What if the Nox used the finger slayer blade on Metyr and their act led to the greater will retaliating against them. We know Astel came from a lightless void and the greater will himself has a lightless void according to Ymir headpiece. Also the greater will abandoned the lands between because of the shattering as stated at the opening cutscene the fingers weren’t faking it when they tried communing with it. Metyr shows that it was Marika controlling the grace and not the greater will.
When I finished this part of the dlc and started connecting the dots between Metyr and all the finger related lore, I was blown away. I wish we had more info on the finger ruins, though. Or, maybe I missed something. Thanks, Zullie, I love your videos! ❤
I think the way the Fingers are explained is pretty simple. You know all the Fingers and puppet stuff going on in the game? How Ranni turned herself into a literal puppet? It's super simple symbolism. Puppets and puppetmasters. The Fingers are the ones who wish to control the puppets (their chosen gods). It's all a play. All the world's a stage. Except something went wrong and the puppetmasters stopped receiving direction and financial support from the director and producer (the Greater Will), so the puppets began to rebel.
Given Metyr's model has a gaping wound on her front, and we know the Fingerslayer blade has been used before (the action resulting in the Nox being exiled to the underground) it seems like the game is hinting the Nox wounded Metyr, which interfered with her ability to communicate with the Greater Will.
I wonder how similar a space creature like Metyr that's used to flying through vacuum finds having to move through atmosphere to us having to swim underwater.
@@RainDaemonic If you think about it logically though, space and the deep ocean are kind of opposite of one another, in space everything is so expanded outward that you'd have to travel millions to BILLIONS of light years to maybe even get into visual distance of another planet like earth. While in the deep ocean everything is so condensed that if we don't have certain vehicles we would quite literally be crushed to death underneath the force of what we are currently underneath. One is so empty that it can rip you in half from it's vacuum like properties, while the other is so full of substance that we'll be crushed for trying to go deep into it.l What op is saying is, imagine what it must feel like to be an entity from outer space, literally NOTHING is pushing against you, only to land on a planet with an atmosphere full of gas molecules touching your skin, OP is saying that he imagines the feeling to be like us entering a body of water when we were originally just use to walking through air.
Imagine some hero on the Greater Will's homeworld doing the usual JRPG quest where they kill a god in the end. All is well there, but they have no idea how much they fked all the other worlds. The emissaries across space are desperately waiting for a call from home.
Goldmasks ending of “fixing” the Golden Order by removing any bit of free will for “gods” like Marika, thus removing the only avenue to free the Lands from being dominated by the Greater Will? That ending? The one that dooms the Lands to be trapped in the Golden Order for good by getting rid of the loophole Marika was using to set things up for a chance for Ranni to subvert the Greater Will’s intention of replacing Marika with an Empyrean puppet who never knew a world without the Greater Will and Golden Order? That ending? Wouldn’t call that based.
This is a reminder that Ymir is well, bonkers. For instance we know the Elden Ring existed in Placi's dragon era, and there is no association with fingers for dragons. The closest is the beast/fingers/int thing, which might suggest Metyr's group was ignored by the dragons so they tried to find someone to overthrow Placidusax's order. Not the Hornsent, they have a spiral motif from the crucible but not much for Fingers either. So Metyr likely existed for some time marginalized. So Ymir could be right in that Marika's order was flawed from inception but the existence of the Elden Beast a vassal of the GW, suggests that the GW did send emissaries with authority not failures like Metyr.
I always thougth that the frenzied flame used Bayle (since Bayle's flame ligthning is yellow, just like the frenzied flame unlike later golden ligthing, which was of the golden order) to attempt and seize the elden ring and bring the destruction of the world. Although he failed, this made the greater will leave (Placidusax was leaved by his god and the greater will was as a god that left, so the GW seems like the most likely culprit) and since the ancient dragons were so heavily wuonded that either the elden beast or Metyr used a young Marika to pretend to be an hornsent (Marika's Mischief and the statue in the specimen storehouse looks a lot like an hornsent Marika) so that se could overthrow them from the inside and create the erdtree (a safer place to keep the elden ring).
There’s something paradoxical in a really captivating way about a lovecraftian alien that was born in conditions completely and utterly removed from the human condition inexplicably taking the form of a hand, the oldest human symbol. Cosmic horror isn’t just the mere presence of something unfathomable and unknowable, it’s the inability of humanity to ever cease seeking to tame the infinite despite knowing fully the futility of their endeavours. Metyr strongly encourages that kind of thinking the same way the Orphan of Kos does; if they’re something totally alien to our existence, why do they look so much like us?
Another thing is the long cut along Metyr's stomach, pulling forth her insides. It seems to suggest that Metyr has fought someone before, and was seriously injured. I'd assume the blade used to form this opening is none other than the Finger Slayer Blade from Nokron.
The original sin was Metyr's. Stars belong in the sky and she fell to earth like a hand reaching out. The Gods can only influence indirectly. When Gods make direct action it leads to ruin. Reflected in Metyr, Marika, and Miquella. All would end broken and abandoned.
The reason why Metyr was ruined is because of the Nox who rebelled against Greater Will and decided to wound her. Severing all the connection and order of the world leading to ruin and stagnation while also being punished in the process.
Hey Zullie, great video! This is a little unrelated but I have a question for you about something I discovered with the scale armor(not to be confused with the scaled armor). The scale armor has a cape that I noticed disappears when hit by certain attacks. The scale armor cannot be altered like normal, so this is the only method to remove its cape. My curiosity as to what causes this has been killing me, so does anyone know what causes this? I think it suggests that there may have been some sort of scrapped battle damage mechanic at some point in Elden Ring’s development. I actually have videos of the cape disappearing from a black stormhawk fire breathing attack and Godrick’s stormcaller on my channel if anyone wants to see it for themselves.
I assumed that the other end of those tube coral things in the sky were the big fingers we see dotted all around the shadow realm and she uses them to communicate. Them being hollow is a symbol that the fingers seem important but inside, there's nothing there
i like to think metyr's arena, unlike the elden beast or the rennala's, is at the very bottom of the lands between, considering we can teleport there. like the deepest point of the planet. the "waters" serve to show that she is literally under the great lake and even under the waters of the eternal city. the corals are the tips of the roots of any of the great trees like the erdtree, scadutree, minor erdtrees, etc. she receives messages and energy from the surface from those, sends her children through those and communicate also through those.
Count Ymir seems to be the only one who even acknowledges the existence of Metyr, and given that Carian sorcery was only permitted under the Golden Order after the Liurnian Wars, it seems unlikely that Marika would have known before then. Although, her echoes at the Minor Erdtree Church indicate that at some point she did have a crisis of faith.
Think about something even more unnerving: What if something killed the Greater Will? What power could possibly be able to do that? If that is what lurks in the reaches of outer space, what if it ever comes to the lands between?
If a reclusive sorcerer knew about it, then Marika almost certainly did. Some people have theorized that Marika shattered the Elden Ring as an act of rebellion because the Greater Will was actually evil... but how exactly did Marika come to that conclusion? What if she really did it just to get the Greater Will's attention?
@@Sinhsseax Only thing that I can think of that could do that is another God. And we do know that there are certainly other Gods out there that have their own plans for the lands between. And we know that the world would probably be worse off for it were one of them were to claim the Elden Ring through a proxy.
Interesting that Fromsoft keeps its water = alien theme. The Elden Beast has a water arena and a body made of galaxies (it basically has an image of the cosmic web on its body) and Metyr has a water theme while being connected to the Greater Will and directing the fingers. The same thing happened in Bloodborne, where the city is under the water and Kos is birthed from an aquatic creature on the beach above. You also plunge into water to defeat Rom, who also hangs out in a water arena. The Great Ones are also pretty aquatic-themed in general. I wonder if "space" in ER is closer to water than an empty void.
i love metyr being celestial simply because of the fingerslayer blade. now, it makes a little bit more sense to know that it is belong to a society that is dedicated to the stars and cosmos
I have to say, as janky and frustrating as Metyr is from a gameplay perspective, from the POV of art design, the whole encounter is an outstanding achievement. Her model, the arena, the music, the lore implications. Encountering her for the first time was one of the best moments I've had in a FS game.
I kinda figured the fingers weren't getting through to the Greater Will when the one in Roundtable Hold starts "communing" for potentially decades. It just felt so much like a "signal not found" moment.
3:35 I have the impression that the fingers rely on information they have about the GW to guess what it's designs might be, which is hinted at by the "Fleeting Microcosm" description.
Metyr has me question the origin of the 3 fingers. Are the 3 fingers born from Metyr and simply corrupted by the Frenzied Flame? Or is there another Metyr like entity out there somewhere created by the Frenzied Flame that can birth the frenzied fingers?
An interesting question. Perhaps a mockery of the fingers made by the frenzied flame, or maybe a malformed offspring of Metyr that heard the call of something that wasn't the Greater Will...
The laser attack is quite reminiscent of the polar jets emanating from black holes and quasars (big, active black holes) - the rotating analogous to the rotation of the quasar. I believe there's actual animations you can find online if quasars doing exactly that. In my interpretation, the microcosm is a effectively a wormhole, allowing interaction over great distances - and though these likely do not really exist (and can never exist) is HAS been popularly theorized that such a thing MAY be possible within a black hole / quasar. Hence why the microcosm behaves like one. It IS one. Elden ring is inspired by true cosmology. It's no wonder there are such deep anti-religious themes within it. Metyr is simply a prophet (like Jesus or Muhammad), while the Fingers are their respective clergy. like irl, many innocents are scorned at the behest of those who claim to speak for the Greater Will, despite its obvious absence. Those born without grace or touched by the crucible - much like those born into the wrong religion, or with minority traits (sexuality, disability, etc) - are treated with contempt and denied salvation - erdtree burial/heaven/everlasting life. Like IRL, fundamentalism is claimed to be the solution to all of life's problems - and yet it's rigidity makes it completely useless in any non-standard situation - or worse, actively cruel. And like IRL, these tenets of false prophets CLAIM to be the original authority.. and yet, fragments of older rituals and beliefs still exist, scorned by the mainstream because they conflict with the narrative of "original authority". Many of the sufferings of the lands between stem directly from the false prophets, who claim to speak for the greater will, but have truly been abandoned. The religious influence in Elden ring is clear - many lore videos have pointed out the various connections to different mythologies and histories. Even the two/three fingers has an associated IRL inspiration. But not a lot of people will touch on the obvious message - that we WERE born of a rupture across the sky, that we ARE star stuff.. but that everything beyond that point is unknown, and everyone who claims to speak for the greater will - that is, god - is lying, and their instructions bring misery to the unlucky - those who happened to roll misbegotten, omen, gay, poor, or otherwise - in the lottery of life. I'm not sure it's some weird religious resurgence, or just the younger generations have lost the capacity for deep analysis (thanks tiktok and Twitter) - but the message is clear. Elden Ring is, among many things, an analogy for real world religion - the lies that sustain it, the cruelty it commits, and the one single truth - that no one really speaks for the greater will. What both Ranni and Miquella and sir blood-daddy want is a secular world.
"Ah-ha, your intuition serves you well. My doubts had been piling up, you see… The words of the Two Fingers cannot be trusted. Truly, naught but rambling, senile delusions. I believe, that when the Elden Ring was shattered, the Two Fingers were corrupted, their guidance; skewed. Even worse, the Fingers harbor no love for our kind. That's the part that irks the most." -White Mask Varre
Given how water has been associated with death in Elden Ring, I find it quite interesting that both emissaries of the Greater Will are aquatic in nature and theme.
In the base game, we can see the two fingers attempting to commune with the Greater Will, but Enia says it may take ages to get a response. Since we can't just wait for decades, we never find out if this is true or not. But in the DLC we find Metyr who has been attempting to contact the Greater Will for eons and has had no response, making it more likely that it simply can't be contacted at all anymore (or is intentionally ghosting them).
The existence of Metyr in the Realm of Shadows makes me wonder if Marika or any of the Empyreans ever knew about this. Radagon was fiercely loyal to the Greater Will, but was he even aware of what was going on behind them? For all intents and purposes, Metyr wasn't that well-hidden, seeing how a rather unremarkable man like Ymir not only found her, but came to understand what she was doing.
The way the two fingers stand at attention when they're supposedly communicating with the greater will makes a lot of sense now, because it's very similar to the way Metyr's fingers are positioned when they summon the microcosm. Perhaps in days past, the two fingers could actually summon their own small microcosms that would then display messages from the greater will, or even offered a glimpse into Metyr's as a sort of celestial communication channel, which would then be interpreted by the Finger Readers, but that over time became more ceremonial and less literal as the two fingers' connection to the greater will was severed. And with Metyr only appearing to be able to be summoned in the land of shadows, perhaps it was something to do with that split that ruined their ability to communicate in the first place? I also find it interesting that the entire concept serves only to make the three fingers more mysterious, as it seems to carry the implication that they were birthed from a creature similar to I also find it interesting that the entire concept serves only to make the three fingers more mysterious, as it seems to carry the implication that they were birthed from a creature similar to Metyr, But perhaps one that was created and sent by an opponent of the greater will....
Midra found other fingers in his mansion and all of them were two fingers. Maybe the reason why the fingers went mad is because of them learning connection to greater will was severed and so their madness pulled in another outer god who fed on despair. As some descriptions of items related to frenzy say that the frenzy feeds on despair of the beings and that's what basically makes the frenzy manifest and it can be anything living.
I think the Greater Will largely abandoned the the world after the Dragon war. It makes sense that Metyr and Placcideux probably lost their communication with the greater will at the same time. I think Marika and the Empyerons were the fingers attempt at re-establishing contact with the greater will.
I have seen many others speculate the symbolism of fingers in elden ring, and a common conclusion that is reached is their relation with divinity and higher intelligence, referencing the apposable thumbs of great apes and humans, which are considered some of the most intelligent creatures. With much of Elden Ring's design referencing nature and facades, it stands to reason that for whatever reason the Greater Will has for encroaching on the Lands Between, putting on the facade of fingers could be some ill-fated attempt at communication or self-insertion; camouflage of some kind. "An extra finger, tools, etc. made these creatures (humans) what they are. To show them our true magnificence as their superiors, we shall take on the image of LOTS of fingers. Surely this will convey our brilliance and nothing else!" Whatever their origin, be it divine or alien, these vassals of the greater will could have been hindered by their descent and adaptation into the 'petty' and 'faulty' lands between. Their aimlessness and seeming abandonment by the greater will, despite supposedly 'working for it', could be the consequences of entering the lands between in the first place. They may be at the behest of the natural laws that govern the lands between. Its as if the lands between have an immune system, or these creatures trigger the uncanny valley. Their facade isn't good enough.
Now that you talk about the sun in relation to metyr , it reminds me of the sun realm , the black moon and the eclipse . If full connection to the greater will looks like this (the black hole surrounded by gold) , perhaps a full eclipse could signify the full presence of the greater Will. We know that the black moon has been destroyed ... Yeah it kind of make sense , Imagine the sun realm as the ruling power of the lands between with dragons beastmen etc... in perpetual eclipse , marika and her nox People trying to make a "coup" to bring down the age of the sun realm by summoning some astel being and bring her own erdtree age... in our world stars were sometimes considered as gods , so if the sun is the greatest of them then his Will should be the greatest of them aka "greater will". Even the eclipse theme is like an alchemical rebis with male and female conjoined together to attain perfection ,completeness, something greater ... fleeing god mistery solved 👍👍👍
In Ancient Greece there was a theory on origin of life that is the origin to the word “spawning” to explain the mystery of their existence. That organism will just appear when set conditions is meet, have a rotting apple and there will flies there, we now know it’s because of things invincible to the naked eye. My point is that maybe the fingercreepers just spawn inside her and crawl their way out, like the fish with legs emerging from the primordial soup theory
It is hard for me not to feel some measure of sympathy for Metyr. Her loneliness is unimaginable, yet she retains a dim memory of an age before, and she pines for it just as hard as any of us would pine for our own childhoods. Her longing is the mother of all longing. Behind her are not merely her direct offspring, the fingers and the fingercreepers, but the teeming masses of the lands between. And ahead of her is a void which she watches unceasingly, hoping for some sign of the Greater Will again, the beam of a lighthouse shot across the airless spaces. She never blinks.
I'm surprised you never mentioned a possible connection between Metyr's tail-fingers and the poses the Two Fingers and Placidusax make while trying to commune with the Greater Will and their god respectively; like, there's no way that's not a coincidence!
I firmly believe at least part of the reason they created this boss was a random developer seeing the 74th ‘Try Finger’ message in a row and saying ‘OKAY FINE’
I called it years ago, elden ring was something related to aliens, I knew from software likes his lore to the extreme, I knew since I saw the videos of the vampires of bloodborne
The Elden Beast, as the living incarnation of the Elden Ring, is older than even Metyr, as all life indigenous to the lands between is ultimately derived from the Elden Ring. Metyr was probably the second living thing on the planet, though obviously she is alien
further proves that ranni's ending to end all outside god's influence to be the best ending :P the fingers and all relatives deaf and blind, leading all those who follow to nothing but more strife.
When I hear about Metyr being the mother of all the two fingers, I can't help but picture them being like: "Mother, these small beings are watching me and won't go away." "Mother, I think they think I can talk to their god! Are they talking about grandpa?" "Mother! They're purging each other again! What do I do?" "MOTHER HELP!"
So I'm going to drop my weird theory here: When Irina tells us what she learned about the beginning of the universe she describes everything being One, that was divided by the greater will. I believe that the Greater Will WAS what divided to create all life, and that Grace are just particles of the Will's power. That's why when you look at Innard Meat you can see a thread of gold, because these fused people have all their Grace fused along with them. And these are the same threads we see Marika hold up at the Divine Gates in the trailer. The Divine Gates themselves are made of merged people, so imagine how much Grace must have been forced into Marika at that moment. In addition, whether they know it or not, many groups throughout the Lands Between have been replicating this ritual: the Grafted fused with the parts of others, Rykard seems to fuse with those he devours, Raya Lucaria has the School of Graven Mages, we even see bodies fused into the walls of Farum Azula. Even the Golden Order's highest honor is the Erdtree Burial, where bodies clump together at the roots of the Erdtree, and they merge with it. I think this is what gives the Erdtree it's power, and I think that without destined death, the bodies being reborn are doing so without Grace, which is why the Tarnished have come into being. The Elden Beast isn't a cosmic entity, but a creation of the deified Erdtree to protect itself. And it's due to the increasing lack of Grace in all things, that Metyr has lost her ability to speak with the Great Will: because the Will has been remade into something else.
Id like to think that when you meet the two fingers for the first time its not giving its message from the greater will for the first time its saying it from the last time it received a message from the greater will. That's why when you ask Enia about burning the erdtree the fingers have nothing to say because they have nothing answering them.
Thank you for the video Zulie! I had the theory already before the DLC that the Greater Will is not real and this only helps me cement it even further. These beings are simply entities from outer space with their own goals. A game of thrones on a cosmic level. The Astellian Creatures are prevented to drop down furhter as the two Fingers deem them a threat to their authority. Another cosmic being? No. Let Radhan prevent them from even daring to enter the planets athmosphere. There are enough here already. We need to get rid of them sooner or later, we dont need more problems. Then the Elden Beast? The fingers quite literally tell you that you are to seek out the Elden Throne. You cannot become the Elden Lord without killing Radagon. You cannot become the Elden Lord without killing the Elden Beast. The current de-facto Ruler of the world is Radagon and the Elden Beast. But then comes a problem. It has proceeded far enough for the situation to have become dire. You cannot enter the bloody tree anymore and what happens? The two fingers stop speaking. They dont know how to solve this issue. But Melina does. And soon you are set upon the path that they could not even fathom. Destroying the very thing that needed to be destroyed. But now you did it on your own. They can no longer control you. I hope we find out more. I truly believe the Elden Beast to be a Parasitic entity that came with the tree seed dropping onto the Lands between. Similar to the Astellian beings. Similar to even Metyr. All of them trying to claim ownership in some way, shape or form, of the world. As the true ruler. Even the Astellian Creatures show how this could be, considering how they seem to spread underground, similar to caterpillars forming cocoons after having roamed above for a while.
I'm sure a lot of people expected a Nightreign trailer video, but I haven't really enjoyed trying to fit a trailer analysis into my style of videos. With everyone else already covering pretty much everything that's been publicly shared, I don't think it would add much for me to make one as well.
It's ight bro
👍
I was wondering if Metyr's body has any resemblance to Rani's two fingers, given the apparent connection between the cathedrals?
Do you think it'll be any good?
All good G
Give it to the optional hidden boss to upend the entire lore of the game
fromsoftware moment
Satisfying enough, innit
@@XDarkGreyXnot really
@@KingLich451 Speak for yourself. Most of us actually love being rewarded with this kinda stuff after exploring and engaging with a game-world
She doesn't really upend much, but rather confirms a bunch of it tbh
I don't know what is more terrifying. God distancing himself from the people or finding out that even his messengers haven't heard from him for eons.
And I really like how finding out about how blind the Two Fingers are isn't even the worst part of it. We get interpretations from the Greater Will, to the Two Fingers, to Finger Readers, which already is iffy. Then we find out that the Two Fingers are blind and aimless. And THEN we find out that they are not only not the sole existing messenger but actually considered children.
It's basically a convoluted game of telephone in which almost every participant is playing god without the player, or even some of the oracles, realizing it.
What might be even more interesting is if the Greater Will is gone, it's influence faded as it splits further and further into individual forms of life-- echoes of a singularity-turned-mulitplicity.
Demiurge moment
Exactly! Even if for arguments sake the Greater Will is alive and well and sending out messages these are coming to the Two Fingers. They are children of his actual Messenger - Metyr. So the message they receive, they may not fully understand, and then it's being interpreted by the Finger Readers.
It's like a grand game of Chinese Whispers so inevitably something is going to get lost in translation. It's Moses passing the tablets with the Ten Commandments on to somebody who can't speak his language, and they just have a wild stab at what have may have noted down from what God told him.
The big question is - has the Greater Will abandoned the Lands Between, or is he being blocked from making contact/dead/held captive?
Personal theory/ head canon: I believe Goldmask is the only one the Greater Will has been in recent contact with. It is unique that Goldmask discovered his rune through a vision and only with his unique and incomprehensible way of thinking was he able to create it with your help. His ending was the only one where leaves do not fall from the erdtree.
I don't feel like the game gives us a good reason to believe in the Greater Will at all. It didn't before the DLC, and the DLC only multiplies the reasons for skepticism. All we have are power hungry lunatics who each want to justify their behavior by reference to a distant principle.
It’s interesting that you didn’t mention Varre. When you meet him at the Rose Church he tells you that he believes the guidance of the two fingers is skewed and is not representative of the Greater Will. At first, I thought this was just part of his scam to get the tarnished on board with joining the Bloody Fingers, but now I’m not so sure.
more evidence towards mohg and his followers being...
less horrible, i guess?
he couldn't know
Either he was bullcrapping, and happened to be right by total accident, or the Formless Mother is aware of these things, and has been filling in her followers on the latest cosmic gossip.
Just another faction that grasps some portion of the truth but then prescribes its own problematic solution as the true answer.
@@Umbra_Ursusi love the concept of the formless mother being a gossipy mom telling her kids that the other mothers are doing a shit job
1. It’s weird how her face is so close to the black flame godskin spell symbol
2. The way she “gives birth” and how she’s the first of two “impacts” makes me think of Lillith from Neon Genesis Evangelion
That's based on MUCH older Judaic legend about the first parents.
It's weird but considering the tie to the frenzied flame that the 3 fingers have, the connection is there.
i think metyr is also wounded. there is a spot on her that resembles a stab wound. and the finger slayer blade you retrieve for ranni says that it has been used before and that nocron was wiped out for it. also the names of the only two cathedrals in the game are kind of telling. the cathedral of manus celes (maybe translated as celestial hand [manus = Hand, celes = celestial]) where rannis two fingers are hiding and the chathedral of manus metyr ( translated as mother of hands [ manus = hands, metyr = mother]) where metyr is residing.
Metyr being an "abandoned daughter" of the Greater Will is interesting, it made me think of Ebrietas and how she was abandoned by the cosmos and and left on a lower plane of existence.
More Ebry was left behind, but yeah, cosmos and daughters again
On a similar note... Metyr's arena looks a lot like Rom's, and Rom was placed between the 'surface of the lake' and the terrible secret knowledge hidden deep below, forever obscuring the Great Ones for sight for as long as Rom lived.
Can't help but wonder if it's a similar situation with Metyr, with her standing between the mortals of the lands between and the divinity of the Greater Will, providing a link between the two.
@@Axius27 It's stated in the quest to even fight her, that the greater will has long since abandoned the fingers and their mother.
Metyr can't be a connection, because she no longer has connection to the greater will herself, being abandoned by it shortly after landing in the lands between.
OP had it right when comparing Metyr with Ebrietas.
@@citizenvulpes4562 I'm aware, don't worry. The thematic similarities remain, all the same.
@@Axius27 There are indeed similarities, even if opposite. Both are broken creatures with too many appendices and a very strange head who summons cosmos powers and spider-like creature, hidden in a possible higher dimention that looks like under the surface of water. And the fact about the connection between Ebrietas and Rom makes the call even more clear.
With big differences of course. While Rom was used by the Choir to hide Mergo and Mensis' ritual to Flora, as you said Metyr was supposed to be a connection between GW and the world, then something gone terribly wrong. I like the theory that those tubes let her speak with the Fingers, at least once.
Stare not long into the abyss, for the abyss may squirt out a maternal finger beast capable of firing ionized vaporization beams at you.
The aquatic setting of Metyr's arena really reminded me of a womb, emphasizing Metyr's motherhood. If there's one thing the gods in Elden Ring are really good at, it's procreating. The DLC seems to emphasize this wild, procreative activity as the main drive of the gods, while their authority and insight turn out to be a sham- perhaps something they never had in the first place.
Reminds me of a similair theme Bloodborne had going on with childbirth popping up in places and characters like Mergo’s Wet Nurse
"If there's one thing the gods in Elden Ring are really good at, it's procreating"
Oogh way to make the Bloodborne Great Ones feel worse
“Every child deserves a parent, but not every parent deserves a child.”
So the opposite of bloodborne?
The Gods in BB being infertile and needing surrogates to carry their children, but tragically after even their offspring are birthed from surrogate mothers they perish or are abandoned.
I like how they respected the fact the base game establishes that the Finger-slayer blade is required to slay such beings, so Metyr is instead shown to teleport away rather than die like other bosses.
I wonder where she teleported to
@@mezeportashe’s at my house rn. We are drinking tea.
Metyr is injured and sick and the game says the fingerslayer blade was already used once, so it's possible Metyr was the target. And even if the fingerslayer blade couldn't finish the job, maybe it made her mortal or something? After all she can now only birth fingercreepers which definitely do not need special weapons.
So coming from a physics background. The polar jets attack felt absurdly cool. Just about the most energetic continuous events in the universe. If any attack should be undodgable, kinda has to be this one.
I squee'd when I saw that attack. And....insta-died. Worth it.
Thanks physics pope. Ya dope
*deflects your cosmic radiation
Brings Pulsars and Quasars to mind, at least for me.
Raptor of mist on its way to defy physics 🚶➡️😭
"Doesn't seem particularly aquatic..." *Looks like something from the Cambrian explosion* Which were all aquatic. And those beams remind me of pulsars and quasars, which fits the celestial body link.
Just makes me think of a crab.
Honestly i don't think she dies when we defeat her, i've always seen it as her just teleporting elsewhere to hide again and wait for a message from the Greater Will
Exactly what I said, she just went back to wherever tf she came from.
it sure is something
I disagree, she has the same fade out animation other bosses have when killed and you get souls when you kill her. The animation for her orb "overloading" is pretty large but it doesnt look like she is teleporting.
@@shimmymodyeah I don't know why people insist that it didn't died. Like you said, she literally faded away BEFORE opening the black hole
@@user-zp8kj2cl9g and we get his head
I love how From and Miyazaki use "Deep sea" imagery to represent deep knowledge and dark secrets "deep within the world", like in Bloodborne. It's an amazing metaphor, and in actual good fantasy, metaphors and reality are one and the same.
So fantasy is not merely fiction?
Someone mentioned her arms look like they are each one 2 arms with only two fingers wrapped together.
Yeah, I took them as twisted tree trunks in arm form too. Not that easily missable, I think...
1:13 ironic and funny how this frame made me realise how isopod/anomalocaris-like she is..
Ew. Now all I can see is one of those fish tongue parasites....
The Two Finger's lack of true guidance was hinted at even in the base game. When you tell them about the thorns blocking the Erdtree the fingers are shaken and try to consult the greater will, with Enia saying that it might take centuries for their message to reach the Greater Will. In other words, the fingers have merely been following a script this whole time with no true communication.
Bloodborne and this game really made cosmic horror true justice. Eldritch bosses such as Astel and Metyr are the most elaborate lore-wise, complex and epic bosses in the series
And just like cosmic horror, we're going absolutely insane over whatever knowledge we can scrap together, only to get further into madness
Perhaps Fromsoft is the only game developer who understands and implements lovecraftian unknowability and indescribability right.
That lore bomb drop telling you that everything was bs and that the greater will fucked off eons ago (or possibly never was there to begin with) was fr overwhelming. I Felt like some character going crazy after learning something they shouldn’t have.
@@iamMildlyUpsetWithMostOfYouTub To me it's just funny but also weird that Ranni did everything for the specific outer god to fuck off, but the truth was more twisted than anything else.
The vassals that supposed to serve have been corrupted the moment they set their foot in Lands between.
The microcosm when smaller looks kinda like a cloudy, blinded eye.
My exact thought, that seems like a very literal way of saying they’re blind and without direction
almost as if thats intentional and is mentioned in video??????
If I knew how to mod, I would change the skybox in Metyr's arena to look like SpongeBob's.
...and now I'm remembering the scene where Spongebob eats popcorn bucketfuls of his own hands in Graveyard Shift episode.
Looks like the story of Demiurge. Lost without parents guide, but still tries to influence with its knowledge.
we were *_this_* close to the elden ring being a space station or a satellite
Xenoring Chronicles
The Elden Ring is a sephiroth tree. An important series of symbols in alchemy.
@@trustmeits610pm2 ya I know, but before release there were theories suggesting it was a space station, it turned out to not be a space station, but there is a lot of sci fi elements and aliens in elden ring so it's funny how there straight up could've been some sort of spacecraft or thing that all these aliens come from
I genuinely thought it was gonna go fantasy into sci-fi from the first trailer. The voice over being all ‘the ring has shattered, don’t tell me you can’t see it?’. I’m not disappointed exactly, but I was hoping for less subtly in the alien aspect.
As someone with Chirophobia, the fingercreepers were bad enough. Metyr's fight was basically a horror game for me.
BOO SCARY FINGERS AHHHHHHHH
You got the real "gazing into the horrors of a lovecraftian elder god" experience
I think the funniest thing is that despite the greater will not having communicated with the elden best metyr or the the fingers other outer gods are definitely chatty and responsive like the god of rot and blood god.
Maybe they saw the greater will not caring wbout that section and went it to swoop it?
Wasn't expecting to fight a very anatomical boss again; but the gaping dragon prepared me for this.
Although, the fingers were new. . .
Honestly I believe those coral structures are Metyr’s way of communicating with every single fingers she conceived into the world.🐱
Though this seems highly unusual to have the idea of an alien incursion into fantasy pulling all the strings in a lot of ways it's actually quite classical to fantasy. I wouldn't be surprised if this was part of designers nods to their inspirations from things beyond Berserk with the likes of Fighting Fantasy, D&D, Wizardry, Might & Magic, Ultima, and so on. For example in D&D one of the older campaigns from the late 1970s was a revelation that the fantasy worlds of D&D were long since manipulated by aliens with Expedition to the Barrier Peaks revealing an ancient alien ship buried beneath the Barrier Peaks.
Well, Miyazaki is a huge fan of Fighting Fantasy and MtG, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone else on the team either played a ton of Ultima/Wizardry/M&M back in the 1980s-1990s or was inspired by proxy due to the massive impact they've had on early JRPGs.
An interesting connection Metyr is the finger slayer blade. We know for a fact it was used at some point and it led to retaliation from the greater will. What if the Nox used the finger slayer blade on Metyr and their act led to the greater will retaliating against them. We know Astel came from a lightless void and the greater will himself has a lightless void according to Ymir headpiece. Also the greater will abandoned the lands between because of the shattering as stated at the opening cutscene the fingers weren’t faking it when they tried communing with it. Metyr shows that it was Marika controlling the grace and not the greater will.
When I finished this part of the dlc and started connecting the dots between Metyr and all the finger related lore, I was blown away. I wish we had more info on the finger ruins, though. Or, maybe I missed something.
Thanks, Zullie, I love your videos! ❤
I think the way the Fingers are explained is pretty simple. You know all the Fingers and puppet stuff going on in the game? How Ranni turned herself into a literal puppet? It's super simple symbolism. Puppets and puppetmasters. The Fingers are the ones who wish to control the puppets (their chosen gods). It's all a play. All the world's a stage. Except something went wrong and the puppetmasters stopped receiving direction and financial support from the director and producer (the Greater Will), so the puppets began to rebel.
Given Metyr's model has a gaping wound on her front, and we know the Fingerslayer blade has been used before (the action resulting in the Nox being exiled to the underground) it seems like the game is hinting the Nox wounded Metyr, which interfered with her ability to communicate with the Greater Will.
I wonder how similar a space creature like Metyr that's used to flying through vacuum finds having to move through atmosphere to us having to swim underwater.
I think it's kinda the opposite. Bloodborne also likened space and the ocean constantly.
@@RainDaemonic If you think about it logically though, space and the deep ocean are kind of opposite of one another, in space everything is so expanded outward that you'd have to travel millions to BILLIONS of light years to maybe even get into visual distance of another planet like earth.
While in the deep ocean everything is so condensed that if we don't have certain vehicles we would quite literally be crushed to death underneath the force of what we are currently underneath.
One is so empty that it can rip you in half from it's vacuum like properties, while the other is so full of substance that we'll be crushed for trying to go deep into it.l
What op is saying is, imagine what it must feel like to be an entity from outer space, literally NOTHING is pushing against you, only to land on a planet with an atmosphere full of gas molecules touching your skin, OP is saying that he imagines the feeling to be like us entering a body of water when we were originally just use to walking through air.
2:39 I hadn’t noticed it before, but this attack definitely looks like a gamma ray burst
Zullie back and we eating good!!
Are we, though? Every video from Zullie just leaves me feeling like... "K?" 🤨
A blind hand of a divinity might be useful for a shaman trying to avoid some desires of godhood
wasn't as blind as they thought, though, judging by the whole crucifix situation we find them in.
Imagine some hero on the Greater Will's homeworld doing the usual JRPG quest where they kill a god in the end. All is well there, but they have no idea how much they fked all the other worlds. The emissaries across space are desperately waiting for a call from home.
At this point I almost associate the Palace of Twilight song with your videos instead of the original game. Thanks for the great video!
Love these videos so much. Quick, simple, always super interesting. Could watch for hours
2:38 Love the detail of the jets indicating rotation, much like in a neutron star.
Goldmask's ending just keeps getting more based with every new piece of information we get about the greater wills.
Goldmasks ending of “fixing” the Golden Order by removing any bit of free will for “gods” like Marika, thus removing the only avenue to free the Lands from being dominated by the Greater Will? That ending? The one that dooms the Lands to be trapped in the Golden Order for good by getting rid of the loophole Marika was using to set things up for a chance for Ranni to subvert the Greater Will’s intention of replacing Marika with an Empyrean puppet who never knew a world without the Greater Will and Golden Order?
That ending? Wouldn’t call that based.
This is a reminder that Ymir is well, bonkers.
For instance we know the Elden Ring existed in Placi's dragon era, and there is no association with fingers for dragons. The closest is the beast/fingers/int thing, which might suggest Metyr's group was ignored by the dragons so they tried to find someone to overthrow Placidusax's order. Not the Hornsent, they have a spiral motif from the crucible but not much for Fingers either.
So Metyr likely existed for some time marginalized. So Ymir could be right in that Marika's order was flawed from inception but the existence of the Elden Beast a vassal of the GW, suggests that the GW did send emissaries with authority not failures like Metyr.
I always thougth that the frenzied flame used Bayle (since Bayle's flame ligthning is yellow, just like the frenzied flame unlike later golden ligthing, which was of the golden order) to attempt and seize the elden ring and bring the destruction of the world. Although he failed, this made the greater will leave (Placidusax was leaved by his god and the greater will was as a god that left, so the GW seems like the most likely culprit) and since the ancient dragons were so heavily wuonded that either the elden beast or Metyr used a young Marika to pretend to be an hornsent (Marika's Mischief and the statue in the specimen storehouse looks a lot like an hornsent Marika) so that se could overthrow them from the inside and create the erdtree (a safer place to keep the elden ring).
There’s something paradoxical in a really captivating way about a lovecraftian alien that was born in conditions completely and utterly removed from the human condition inexplicably taking the form of a hand, the oldest human symbol.
Cosmic horror isn’t just the mere presence of something unfathomable and unknowable, it’s the inability of humanity to ever cease seeking to tame the infinite despite knowing fully the futility of their endeavours.
Metyr strongly encourages that kind of thinking the same way the Orphan of Kos does; if they’re something totally alien to our existence, why do they look so much like us?
Another thing is the long cut along Metyr's stomach, pulling forth her insides. It seems to suggest that Metyr has fought someone before, and was seriously injured. I'd assume the blade used to form this opening is none other than the Finger Slayer Blade from Nokron.
As. Head Canon and theory in my thoughts is that she went back to her father wherever it was .
The original sin was Metyr's. Stars belong in the sky and she fell to earth like a hand reaching out. The Gods can only influence indirectly. When Gods make direct action it leads to ruin. Reflected in Metyr, Marika, and Miquella. All would end broken and abandoned.
The reason why Metyr was ruined is because of the Nox who rebelled against Greater Will and decided to wound her.
Severing all the connection and order of the world leading to ruin and stagnation while also being punished in the process.
Hey Zullie, great video! This is a little unrelated but I have a question for you about something I discovered with the scale armor(not to be confused with the scaled armor). The scale armor has a cape that I noticed disappears when hit by certain attacks. The scale armor cannot be altered like normal, so this is the only method to remove its cape. My curiosity as to what causes this has been killing me, so does anyone know what causes this? I think it suggests that there may have been some sort of scrapped battle damage mechanic at some point in Elden Ring’s development. I actually have videos of the cape disappearing from a black stormhawk fire breathing attack and Godrick’s stormcaller on my channel if anyone wants to see it for themselves.
I assumed that the other end of those tube coral things in the sky were the big fingers we see dotted all around the shadow realm and she uses them to communicate. Them being hollow is a symbol that the fingers seem important but inside, there's nothing there
Seeing as Metyr and the two fingers were just blind leading the blind, it just makes Ranni's ending that much better.
Makes me wonder how much Radahn halting the stars messed with everything...
This makes the Fingers going, "Uhh, see you in a thousand years" hilarious
You make our sundays special, thanks
If i remember correctly in bloodborne the great bodies of water contained/were hiding the knowledge of the Great Ones. Reminds me of Ebrietas.
This is true
i like to think metyr's arena, unlike the elden beast or the rennala's, is at the very bottom of the lands between, considering we can teleport there. like the deepest point of the planet. the "waters" serve to show that she is literally under the great lake and even under the waters of the eternal city. the corals are the tips of the roots of any of the great trees like the erdtree, scadutree, minor erdtrees, etc.
she receives messages and energy from the surface from those, sends her children through those and communicate also through those.
The idea that the Greater Will completely abandoned the Lands Between is a bit unnerving...I wonder if Marika is aware of this to an extent
Count Ymir seems to be the only one who even acknowledges the existence of Metyr, and given that Carian sorcery was only permitted under the Golden Order after the Liurnian Wars, it seems unlikely that Marika would have known before then. Although, her echoes at the Minor Erdtree Church indicate that at some point she did have a crisis of faith.
Think about something even more unnerving: What if something killed the Greater Will?
What power could possibly be able to do that? If that is what lurks in the reaches of outer space, what if it ever comes to the lands between?
If a reclusive sorcerer knew about it, then Marika almost certainly did. Some people have theorized that Marika shattered the Elden Ring as an act of rebellion because the Greater Will was actually evil... but how exactly did Marika come to that conclusion? What if she really did it just to get the Greater Will's attention?
@@Sinhsseax Only thing that I can think of that could do that is another God. And we do know that there are certainly other Gods out there that have their own plans for the lands between. And we know that the world would probably be worse off for it were one of them were to claim the Elden Ring through a proxy.
Interesting that Fromsoft keeps its water = alien theme. The Elden Beast has a water arena and a body made of galaxies (it basically has an image of the cosmic web on its body) and Metyr has a water theme while being connected to the Greater Will and directing the fingers. The same thing happened in Bloodborne, where the city is under the water and Kos is birthed from an aquatic creature on the beach above. You also plunge into water to defeat Rom, who also hangs out in a water arena. The Great Ones are also pretty aquatic-themed in general. I wonder if "space" in ER is closer to water than an empty void.
It makes me wonder if soulborne in general uses water/oceans as a metaphor for space/the unknown
I love Metyr and the cosmic horror of Elden Ring so SO MUCH
The microcos, or some say microcosm, has some neat tricks tied to it for sure. Not often you see weaponised black holes.
i love metyr being celestial simply because of the fingerslayer blade. now, it makes a little bit more sense to know that it is belong to a society that is dedicated to the stars and cosmos
INSANE OPENING SHOT
I have to say, as janky and frustrating as Metyr is from a gameplay perspective, from the POV of art design, the whole encounter is an outstanding achievement. Her model, the arena, the music, the lore implications. Encountering her for the first time was one of the best moments I've had in a FS game.
1:23 Wow, that sure looks like... uhhmmm...
motherly features... you know.
Looks like the entrance of a cervix, if you look up "Cervix Entrance Medical" you'll definitely concur.
Yeh but... may I point you at that front area where all the children are coming out from.
@@XDarkGreyX good point, good point.
It was more the shape, less the functionality, that sparked the comparisson.
I kinda figured the fingers weren't getting through to the Greater Will when the one in Roundtable Hold starts "communing" for potentially decades. It just felt so much like a "signal not found" moment.
3:35 I have the impression that the fingers rely on information they have about the GW to guess what it's designs might be, which is hinted at by the "Fleeting Microcosm" description.
Metyr being the mother of fingers is so fitting. There’s no better way to convey that the fingers are the hands of god
"Much strife in the lands between is rooted in presumption of divine intent, which often seems to be faulty in origin."
Aint that the story of man!
I LOVE how every time we get a revelation to one of the mysteries in the game, we just end up with more questions than answers
Interesting. Let's see the Frenzied Flame's fingers.
Metyr has me question the origin of the 3 fingers.
Are the 3 fingers born from Metyr and simply corrupted by the Frenzied Flame?
Or is there another Metyr like entity out there somewhere created by the Frenzied Flame that can birth the frenzied fingers?
An interesting question. Perhaps a mockery of the fingers made by the frenzied flame, or maybe a malformed offspring of Metyr that heard the call of something that wasn't the Greater Will...
Get-a ready to move your pingers! - some floating Italian head
The laser attack is quite reminiscent of the polar jets emanating from black holes and quasars (big, active black holes) - the rotating analogous to the rotation of the quasar. I believe there's actual animations you can find online if quasars doing exactly that. In my interpretation, the microcosm is a effectively a wormhole, allowing interaction over great distances - and though these likely do not really exist (and can never exist) is HAS been popularly theorized that such a thing MAY be possible within a black hole / quasar. Hence why the microcosm behaves like one. It IS one.
Elden ring is inspired by true cosmology. It's no wonder there are such deep anti-religious themes within it. Metyr is simply a prophet (like Jesus or Muhammad), while the Fingers are their respective clergy. like irl, many innocents are scorned at the behest of those who claim to speak for the Greater Will, despite its obvious absence. Those born without grace or touched by the crucible - much like those born into the wrong religion, or with minority traits (sexuality, disability, etc) - are treated with contempt and denied salvation - erdtree burial/heaven/everlasting life. Like IRL, fundamentalism is claimed to be the solution to all of life's problems - and yet it's rigidity makes it completely useless in any non-standard situation - or worse, actively cruel. And like IRL, these tenets of false prophets CLAIM to be the original authority.. and yet, fragments of older rituals and beliefs still exist, scorned by the mainstream because they conflict with the narrative of "original authority".
Many of the sufferings of the lands between stem directly from the false prophets, who claim to speak for the greater will, but have truly been abandoned.
The religious influence in Elden ring is clear - many lore videos have pointed out the various connections to different mythologies and histories. Even the two/three fingers has an associated IRL inspiration. But not a lot of people will touch on the obvious message - that we WERE born of a rupture across the sky, that we ARE star stuff.. but that everything beyond that point is unknown, and everyone who claims to speak for the greater will - that is, god - is lying, and their instructions bring misery to the unlucky - those who happened to roll misbegotten, omen, gay, poor, or otherwise - in the lottery of life. I'm not sure it's some weird religious resurgence, or just the younger generations have lost the capacity for deep analysis (thanks tiktok and Twitter) - but the message is clear.
Elden Ring is, among many things, an analogy for real world religion - the lies that sustain it, the cruelty it commits, and the one single truth - that no one really speaks for the greater will. What both Ranni and Miquella and sir blood-daddy want is a secular world.
Nice analysis. You are correct about the real-life parallel
"Ah-ha, your intuition serves you well. My doubts had been piling up, you see… The words of the Two Fingers cannot be trusted. Truly, naught but rambling, senile delusions. I believe, that when the Elden Ring was shattered, the Two Fingers were corrupted, their guidance; skewed. Even worse, the Fingers harbor no love for our kind. That's the part that irks the most."
-White Mask Varre
My favorite question in all of Sci-fi/fantasy personified in two bosses; Elden Beast, and Metyr: “Angel or Alien?”
Given how water has been associated with death in Elden Ring, I find it quite interesting that both emissaries of the Greater Will are aquatic in nature and theme.
Damn aliens. We should build a thops barrier around the lands between and make the outer gods conjure it!
In the base game, we can see the two fingers attempting to commune with the Greater Will, but Enia says it may take ages to get a response. Since we can't just wait for decades, we never find out if this is true or not. But in the DLC we find Metyr who has been attempting to contact the Greater Will for eons and has had no response, making it more likely that it simply can't be contacted at all anymore (or is intentionally ghosting them).
The existence of Metyr in the Realm of Shadows makes me wonder if Marika or any of the Empyreans ever knew about this. Radagon was fiercely loyal to the Greater Will, but was he even aware of what was going on behind them? For all intents and purposes, Metyr wasn't that well-hidden, seeing how a rather unremarkable man like Ymir not only found her, but came to understand what she was doing.
The way the two fingers stand at attention when they're supposedly communicating with the greater will makes a lot of sense now, because it's very similar to the way Metyr's fingers are positioned when they summon the microcosm. Perhaps in days past, the two fingers could actually summon their own small microcosms that would then display messages from the greater will, or even offered a glimpse into Metyr's as a sort of celestial communication channel, which would then be interpreted by the Finger Readers, but that over time became more ceremonial and less literal as the two fingers' connection to the greater will was severed. And with Metyr only appearing to be able to be summoned in the land of shadows, perhaps it was something to do with that split that ruined their ability to communicate in the first place?
I also find it interesting that the entire concept serves only to make the three fingers more mysterious, as it seems to carry the implication that they were birthed from a creature similar to I also find it interesting that the entire concept serves only to make the three fingers more mysterious, as it seems to carry the implication that they were birthed from a creature similar to Metyr, But perhaps one that was created and sent by an opponent of the greater will....
Midra found other fingers in his mansion and all of them were two fingers.
Maybe the reason why the fingers went mad is because of them learning connection to greater will was severed and so their madness pulled in another outer god who fed on despair.
As some descriptions of items related to frenzy say that the frenzy feeds on despair of the beings and that's what basically makes the frenzy manifest and it can be anything living.
I think the Greater Will largely abandoned the the world after the Dragon war. It makes sense that Metyr and Placcideux probably lost their communication with the greater will at the same time. I think Marika and the Empyerons were the fingers attempt at re-establishing contact with the greater will.
I have seen many others speculate the symbolism of fingers in elden ring, and a common conclusion that is reached is their relation with divinity and higher intelligence, referencing the apposable thumbs of great apes and humans, which are considered some of the most intelligent creatures. With much of Elden Ring's design referencing nature and facades, it stands to reason that for whatever reason the Greater Will has for encroaching on the Lands Between, putting on the facade of fingers could be some ill-fated attempt at communication or self-insertion; camouflage of some kind. "An extra finger, tools, etc. made these creatures (humans) what they are. To show them our true magnificence as their superiors, we shall take on the image of LOTS of fingers. Surely this will convey our brilliance and nothing else!" Whatever their origin, be it divine or alien, these vassals of the greater will could have been hindered by their descent and adaptation into the 'petty' and 'faulty' lands between. Their aimlessness and seeming abandonment by the greater will, despite supposedly 'working for it', could be the consequences of entering the lands between in the first place. They may be at the behest of the natural laws that govern the lands between. Its as if the lands between have an immune system, or these creatures trigger the uncanny valley. Their facade isn't good enough.
Now that you talk about the sun in relation to metyr , it reminds me of the sun realm , the black moon and the eclipse . If full connection to the greater will looks like this (the black hole surrounded by gold) , perhaps a full eclipse could signify the full presence of the greater Will. We know that the black moon has been destroyed ...
Yeah it kind of make sense ,
Imagine the sun realm as the ruling power of the lands between with dragons beastmen etc... in perpetual eclipse , marika and her nox People trying to make a "coup" to bring down the age of the sun realm by summoning some astel being and bring her own erdtree age... in our world stars were sometimes considered as gods , so if the sun is the greatest of them then his Will should be the greatest of them aka "greater will". Even the eclipse theme is like an alchemical rebis with male and female conjoined together to attain perfection ,completeness, something greater ... fleeing god mistery solved 👍👍👍
Thank you Zullie, very cool!
In Ancient Greece there was a theory on origin of life that is the origin to the word “spawning” to explain the mystery of their existence. That organism will just appear when set conditions is meet, have a rotting apple and there will flies there, we now know it’s because of things invincible to the naked eye.
My point is that maybe the fingercreepers just spawn inside her and crawl their way out, like the fish with legs emerging from the primordial soup theory
It is hard for me not to feel some measure of sympathy for Metyr. Her loneliness is unimaginable, yet she retains a dim memory of an age before, and she pines for it just as hard as any of us would pine for our own childhoods. Her longing is the mother of all longing. Behind her are not merely her direct offspring, the fingers and the fingercreepers, but the teeming masses of the lands between. And ahead of her is a void which she watches unceasingly, hoping for some sign of the Greater Will again, the beam of a lighthouse shot across the airless spaces. She never blinks.
I'm surprised you never mentioned a possible connection between Metyr's tail-fingers and the poses the Two Fingers and Placidusax make while trying to commune with the Greater Will and their god respectively; like, there's no way that's not a coincidence!
What really doesn't make sense, is the fact that Metyr is in the land of shadows... Why wouldn't she be somewhere closer to the erdtree?
cosmic being and an aquatic theme... the connections to bloodborne are getting stronger and stronger
Metyr just using a new Dojutsu, nbd.
I always thought Metyr looked like a centipede + Tardigrade but with fingers
I firmly believe at least part of the reason they created this boss was a random developer seeing the 74th ‘Try Finger’ message in a row and saying ‘OKAY FINE’
I called it years ago, elden ring was something related to aliens, I knew from software likes his lore to the extreme, I knew since I saw the videos of the vampires of bloodborne
The horns in metyrs arena, almost makes youmwomder if the hornsent, were sent up those tubes...
The Elden Beast, as the living incarnation of the Elden Ring, is older than even Metyr, as all life indigenous to the lands between is ultimately derived from the Elden Ring. Metyr was probably the second living thing on the planet, though obviously she is alien
further proves that ranni's ending to end all outside god's influence to be the best ending :P the fingers and all relatives deaf and blind, leading all those who follow to nothing but more strife.
When I hear about Metyr being the mother of all the two fingers, I can't help but picture them being like: "Mother, these small beings are watching me and won't go away."
"Mother, I think they think I can talk to their god! Are they talking about grandpa?"
"Mother! They're purging each other again! What do I do?"
"MOTHER HELP!"
So I'm going to drop my weird theory here:
When Irina tells us what she learned about the beginning of the universe she describes everything being One, that was divided by the greater will.
I believe that the Greater Will WAS what divided to create all life, and that Grace are just particles of the Will's power. That's why when you look at Innard Meat you can see a thread of gold, because these fused people have all their Grace fused along with them. And these are the same threads we see Marika hold up at the Divine Gates in the trailer. The Divine Gates themselves are made of merged people, so imagine how much Grace must have been forced into Marika at that moment.
In addition, whether they know it or not, many groups throughout the Lands Between have been replicating this ritual: the Grafted fused with the parts of others, Rykard seems to fuse with those he devours, Raya Lucaria has the School of Graven Mages, we even see bodies fused into the walls of Farum Azula.
Even the Golden Order's highest honor is the Erdtree Burial, where bodies clump together at the roots of the Erdtree, and they merge with it. I think this is what gives the Erdtree it's power, and I think that without destined death, the bodies being reborn are doing so without Grace, which is why the Tarnished have come into being.
The Elden Beast isn't a cosmic entity, but a creation of the deified Erdtree to protect itself. And it's due to the increasing lack of Grace in all things, that Metyr has lost her ability to speak with the Great Will: because the Will has been remade into something else.
Id like to think that when you meet the two fingers for the first time its not giving its message from the greater will for the first time its saying it from the last time it received a message from the greater will. That's why when you ask Enia about burning the erdtree the fingers have nothing to say because they have nothing answering them.
Thank you for the video Zulie! I had the theory already before the DLC that the Greater Will is not real and this only helps me cement it even further. These beings are simply entities from outer space with their own goals. A game of thrones on a cosmic level.
The Astellian Creatures are prevented to drop down furhter as the two Fingers deem them a threat to their authority. Another cosmic being? No. Let Radhan prevent them from even daring to enter the planets athmosphere. There are enough here already. We need to get rid of them sooner or later, we dont need more problems.
Then the Elden Beast? The fingers quite literally tell you that you are to seek out the Elden Throne. You cannot become the Elden Lord without killing Radagon. You cannot become the Elden Lord without killing the Elden Beast. The current de-facto Ruler of the world is Radagon and the Elden Beast.
But then comes a problem. It has proceeded far enough for the situation to have become dire. You cannot enter the bloody tree anymore and what happens? The two fingers stop speaking. They dont know how to solve this issue. But Melina does. And soon you are set upon the path that they could not even fathom. Destroying the very thing that needed to be destroyed. But now you did it on your own. They can no longer control you.
I hope we find out more.
I truly believe the Elden Beast to be a Parasitic entity that came with the tree seed dropping onto the Lands between. Similar to the Astellian beings. Similar to even Metyr. All of them trying to claim ownership in some way, shape or form, of the world. As the true ruler. Even the Astellian Creatures show how this could be, considering how they seem to spread underground, similar to caterpillars forming cocoons after having roamed above for a while.
That beam attack looks a lot like those images of black holes or whatever
And you'd think something that looks like that is totally reliable...
Honestly at this point we can kind of safely assume the greater will is actually dead
Arriving at Zullie’s videos early sure comes in handy 🥁.