Causality, in this context, might refer to the cycle of violence perpetuated throughout the world's history. The Hornsent inflict violence upon Marika. Marika ascends, and in turn, inflicts violence upon the Hornsent and others. Elden Ring is practically Generational Trauma: The Game. Miquella sheds his "golden flesh" and forsakes even a great rune of the Elden Ring, because those are things tied to the Golden Order Marika started. Miquella wanted an age of peace on his own terms, free of the barbarism that usually accompanied worldly change.
That also makes the most sense with the localization of "original sin" because the concepts are, actually, pretty similar. The negative/cursed karma of the many wrongdoings in the Lands Between echo repeatedly down the generations, causing more and more harm regardless of the actions or intentions of those born into it. Kinda like how one is considered guilty of original sin from birth/conception regardless of your own actions. Miquella wanting to break free from it all, both physically and metaphysically (making his tree its own new island, and eschewing the causal fate that binds the Golden Order) all tie together rather neatly. I don't think this is a mistranslation at all, in fact--I think this was the most correct way to communicate the same general intent in short form to western audiences with little notion of the cycle of rebirth and karma. Much like how the Shrine Maidens of the village--a concept foreign and with very few solid connotations to western audiences--were renamed to "Shamans" which isn't precisely accurate but conveys the same general senses of spiritual connectivity and ritualism.
This is an insanely important video for loreheads, the change from him trying to create an order that's not based on Marika's first sin to him trying to create an order that's not burdened by causality is gigantic And as another commenter said, his choice of consort in Radahn makes even more sense now, since Radahn has been able to literally interrupt the chain of causality that was related to Ranni's actions by stopping the stars themselves, and since the stars guide the fates of humans and gods alike, Miquella could basically create his world of "love and compassion" by stopping causality completely and by having everyone under his charm. A world of complete and utter stasis.
Interestingly similar to his mother's plan, as she plunged the world into a deathless fuge. It seems the continuing message of all souls like games is that accepting change and loss is the only way to live. Standing against these things stagnates the world and leads to rot and ruin. Miquellas eternal childhood makes sense here, since this is the ultimate divine version of refusing to accept the consequences of actions. The world is fucked, and we need to deal with it. We cannot undo the past and we cannot wipe the slate clean. All we can do is try to heal, slowly and painfully.
Ironically, Miquella might have been trying to depend on the stars' "fates" for his plans, based on the Amber Starlight found near a statue of him and Malenia on Altus Plateau. The map leading to this statue also depicts a meteor shower, perhaps indicating that Miquella was trying to seek help from the stars. Alternatively, the stars contacted Miquella so they could influence more Empyreans than just Ranni. Radahn freezing the stars might have been to prevent them from forcing him to be Miquella's lord. As a further irony, a close analysis of the "fates" of the stars implies they're not a natural thing, but instead oppressive. Starlight Shards seem to be the key ingredient for Seluvis' potions, draughts invented by the Nox that can annihilate free will and turn people into "puppets." The "fates" of the stars also outright prevent people from acquiring Nokron's secret treasure if not employed by Ranni, thereby preventing any natural flow of actions, and Ranni herself can't wield the weapon without a "fate", further binding her to the stars. Miquella might have looked to the stars for the opposite of natural causality, only to be thwarted by a stasis that leaves people free to decide things without outside influence on their free will.
I don't think this video changes much of anything, honestly. "Embracing the causality" can still be read in a million ways, especially with the interperstive nature of the Japanese language. He's embracing and trying to correct Marika's causality, which would be the horrible events of the hornsent, before and after her God hood. He wants a world devoid of hatred, violence, and corruption. It might not be a super realistic wish, but it's not an evil hope.
I’m surprised how the translators overlooked the Law of Causality and linked the rune with the original sin instead 😟 it makes so much more sense with your interpretation and real world context. great work, thank you for this video!
I have posted this in a commentary, but I thought I'd answer to you directly as well, because this is very puzzling indeed. Translators use databases to ensure key terms are translated the same so we don't have to rely 100% in our memories (and so different members of the team don't use different words for the same terms. It's a collective memory of sorts). If "inga" was used before in-game to mean "causality", it should've appeared in the database as such, warning the the team about of their previous. If "inga" wasn't used in Japanese to mean causality, then they would avoid using the same translation for two different terms since causality is already an important concept, but if "inga" was used before, then it's absolutely bizarre. It would mean that they made a concious choice to give "inga" two different translations. That being said, we don't know if they had internal knowledge that we aren't privy to. In normal working circumstances (which, let's be honest, may not have been the case for this project, since the lack of cutscentesfor important bosses seems to point to the devs running out of time), queries can be asked to the devs about word choices and they may have preferred "original sin" for whatever reason.
radahn being his choice suddenly begins to make even more sense, as he is a very literal incarnation of the push and pull via objects in gravity (which then manifested as him altering fate, which could be interpreted as disrupting the causal loop). Great video
The DLC does provide precedent with the descriptor of Minor Erdtree and then Unalloyed Gold which is still open to new "metals" to make something stronger. @@qaztim11
Since I haven't found any reference about the article that talked about this mistranslations first, here's the original article, whose name is "Shadow of the Erdtree - Lost in Translation". It doesn't only talks about Miquella, but about many other mistranslations.
The context matter. "Inga" here can also means 'karma' but in a negative way, as in you did something really wrong in the past that will come to bite you back in future. This is why 'sin' was used instead. Pay attention to what Miquella relinquished in his path of godhood, and you'll see that he's simply removing everything that he thought brought about the fall of golden order. Doubt - the shattering happened mainly because Marika started to have doubt in the golden order Love - the shattering partially happened because Marika loves her children Eye/ Great Rune - he wish to make an entirely new order that isn't based on elden ring and fingers, the latter of which are actually broken from who knows when Hesitation - Marika didn't shatter Elden Ring fully because she hesitated at the end, giving the opportunity for... Other half - ...her other half Radagon to partially mend the elden ring Basically, all of this implies that Marika perhaps *cheated* her way to godhood (or at least Miquella thought so). Thus her 'inga' came back to haunt her in various form and eventually brought about her downfall. Extra note: there are also beliefs that 'bad karma' can linger through generations. Thus perhaps why Miquella saw the need to 'exorcise' himself out of it.
While I disagree about Miquella relinquishing traits and Trina out of parallels to the Golden Order, the comment about what "inga" can mean is quite insightful!
well that part about why Miquella relinquished those parts of him is just my own interpretation. There must be something so profound that caused him to do all that. It just so happen that Marika seemingly still possesses all those traits Miquella left behind despite becoming a god through the same means. And to my own observation, as I have written on my original comment, all of those traits played a role in Marika's failure too. Not to mention Trina's seeming disagreement with Miquella wanting to be a god, which mirror Radagon's unwillingness to let the Elden ring fully shatter. There is also the grand dame bad mouthing Marika as a harlot, and Jolan's boss (the guy in manus metyr; his name eludes me at the moment) saying that the fault lies at the very beginning. All of which leads me to believe that Marika was able to rise to godhood through foul play, which in itself could be considered as a grave 'sin' (or an action that will incur 'inga'). Hence the use of 'original sin' to translate 'inga'.
I do agree with the context we could be missing here which translators may have access to or even perhaps notes from Miyazaki. Yes if you copy/paste this in google translate it will show that causality wording. However Japanese language do have nuance and it is not enough to translate it literally. The last line have 続く因果 (tsuzuku inga) which could mean 'continuous karma' if we are to equalize karma to 'inga'. So the translator could localize it to mean original sin since in the context of game that continuous karma may refer to that original sin. So I cannot say they mistranslated unless we have a full context of those texts. As far as I know, FrogNation is Fromsoftware's longtime partner for translating and localizing their games. so I am sure they asked approval from Fromsoftware for these sort of things especially since item descriptions are vital to the lore. Perhaps you may asked Ryan Morris from FrogNation, but for now I can say they stick to that translation based on the context they were given by FromSoftware. Source: Ryan Morris and Frog Nation: www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/mlmyvi/great_news_frognation_and_ryan_morris_are_back/ koeru meaning (read the best comment): www.reddit.com/r/translator/comments/r3k5xv/japanese_english_the_specifics_of_the_term_koeru/
Leaving how I think your idea about Miquella's remains mirroring Marika is nonsense aside, you're right. Context does matter. And the context is 因果 being used as the name for one of the fundamental laws of the Golden Order as described by the Golden Order fundamentalists, and it is described in such a way to evoke the idea of "causality". If nothing else, it is correct to translate the word the same as it has already been translated, in order to create the connection that is already there in Japanese, and any additional nuance should if possible be included some other way. That being said, I do think there is some merit to the idea of the "karmic justice" meaning of 因果 being relevant here, though not for any of the reasons you've laid out. Miquella does talk about sin. (罪) And in cut dialogue he says the following: 「[...]すべてよ、愛だけを思うがよい。何者も、何ごとも、排することなく、罪することなく 私がすべてを抱こう" 」In Marika's Golden Order, there exist cursed beings who are among other things not allowed to return to the Erdtree upon their death. This is one of the things separating the Golden Order from previous orders. If this so-called sin, or being charged with sin, is part of the 因果 of the Golden Order, and that is something Miquella was trying to remove from the order, then that lends credence to one of the older Japanese theories of 回帰(Regression) being return to the Erdtree, and 因果(Causality) being exclusion from the Erdtree or from grace due to something or other. And in this context I also think there is merit to the idea of Marika's "sin", whatever that would be, being passed down to her children. After all, every child of hers we know of suffered some terrible fate. And if Marika did create such a system, then it coming back to bite her in the ass would be very ironic. (And could serve as motivation for her shattering the Ring.) On the other hand, the Miquella's rune item description talks about a はじまりから続く因果, which to me implies the "causality" existed at least since before the Golden Order. Plus, Miquella appears to specifically be trying to create an order separate from the Elden Ring's order. If all he wanted was an order free of whatever his mother added to it, then he could have simply ascended to godhood as an empyrean the normal way, couldn't he? Miquella's order seems to be fundamentally different in some way.
@@Corvaillian I'm merely stating how 'inga' is most commonly used in other Japanese literature and media. It is used to warn about deeds that is improper/forbidden by tradition/existing beliefs because it will/may cause bad omen/unfortunate events/very bad things happened to the person doing the deeds and those who are connected to them. "hajimari kara tsudzuku inga" (はじまりから続く因果) normally translates to 'an 'inga' that has persisted since the beginning'. This is actually the passage that is translated to 'original sin' in the text of Miquella's great rune. Now, if we refer to what Count Ymir said, the mistake lies with the mother, as in the golden order is faulty from the very beginning. Meanwhile the hornsent grandam referred to Marika as 'wanton strumpet'. So either Ymir is implying the fault lies in Metyr being broken, or Marika doing some shady things to reach godhood, or both at the same time. Either way, the deeds have been done and incurred this 'inga' which retribution still lingered until now. Similar to how in christianity, men was banished from the heaven due to eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge--the retribution is still there up to this day. Under these contexts, it's actually make sense to translate that passage as 'original sin'. Using that as a base, it only make sense that Miquella decided to build his own divinity, as the Elden Ring is technically his mother Marika's divinity--which is already mired in 'inga'. Rising to godhood normally as empyrean under the golden order and the fingers' authority would only means that he'll become a new vessel for the existing Elden Ring. Not to mention that he has made the conclusion that the golden order has nothing that he wanted, and has been attempting to build his very own divinity (with the haligtree) even from the lores already existing in the base game. As for why such law of causality exists in golden order that Marika created when under this context it technically becomes what bring her down, it is part of the law upon which the world works. And Elden Ring is basically collection of these laws put into a more tangible form. But on the other hand, it is also *a justification to do revenge* , which I would like to believe that it is probably the real reason why it is not taken out of the Elden Ring. You should know the implication of that.
My own thought: The law of causality represents the branching out or emanation of beings from a state of primordial unity, just as regression represents the return to that primordial unity. This is analogous to emanation and return in neoplatonism. Traditionally, in Neoplatonism, emanations further down the chain are further and further from the perfection of the one/the good, forming what's called the great chain of being mirrored in the golden order by the hierarchy of grace. His desire to go "beyond causality" and "embrace everything" perhaps represents his desire to replace the great chain of being with something more equitable, showering every type of being with the light of his love in equal measure. The original sin in Messmer's soul's description, is a very specific instantiation of the law of causality: stripping the hornsent of the grace of gold, putting them at the bottom of the great chain of being, rather than forgiving them and embracing them in equal measure. The original sin in miquella's item descriptions refers to the entire system of causality as established by the golden order.
This explains why he shed his golden flesh, the mark of his empyrean lineage: it bears the mark of the law of causality and the process of emanation which puts him at the top of the order he fought against.
It also fits how "evolution" in the lands between (and in our world tbf) seems to lead from giants to "lesser" beings. Ancient dragons to Drakes, The ancient giant skeletons we see to fire giants to trolls. And gaining more power, more runes, seems to make you physically larger even!
Miquella's goals as you portrayed them remind me of what Paul the Apostle says about the Old Law. You could very much call the Mosaic Law a logic of retribution, of causality, so much that it is often explained through metaphors involving money and debt. Paul says that although he sees the Mosaic Law as holy and perfect, he admits it is absolutely powerless to redeem people condemned by it, which is why he advocates the necessity of a new law that's not based on retribution, the Law of Grace.
People don't exist without causality. Redemption is not necessary unless there is a causal reward or causal punishment...or a person to exist after the fact with a causal appreciation.
@@jeftecoutinho Those are all great points! Also reminds me of Nietzsche's insights into the connections between guilt and debt (Schuld and Schulden). One aspect that's underappreciated about lex talionis (“an eye for an eye”) is that it was intended as a limiting principle to prevent feuds from spiraling out of control. That is, you *only* take a person's eye as punishment, nothing more. But to quote Gandhi, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind...
St Trina makes it pretty explicit, as does Marika's whole predicament, that becoming a god will not help you escape causality. If anything, it ties you even closer to causality because as marika shows, you become an inherent part of the baseline structure of reality. Elder Scrolls has a concept called the Earth Bones, which are metaphorical descriptions of the laws of reality. They are called that because its believe the gods literally gave up their power and debatably even their sentience to become these laws, hence the comparison to bones. I think Marika containing the elden ring shows what godhood actually means in elden ring and I think its essentially the reverse of the Earth Bones: Instead of a god giving up their power to embody a concept in reality, its a god seizing hold of reality and forcing it into themself, being able to include and exclude parts they, or their patron deity, dont want.
Yes, she's pretty clear in calling divinity a "cage". The Divine Gate is used to use the Greater Will's power to become a god, provided one has fulfilled the conditions of its use. Miquella wants to use its power, presumably without donning the shackles that comes with it. Is unalloyed gold enough to repel the GW's influence? I think if Miq's story is meant to parallel Marika's, we are meant to conclude that no, it would not. Miquella's Age of Compassion would likely end prematurely as Marika's Age of Plenty had.
That is so interesting. I've learned a little about Thomistic metaphysics in the Catholic tradition. Simply put, there is the "Unmoved Mover" conception of God. One importance of this Unmoved Movered is that it provides an absolute standard for ethical truth claims and an ethical systematic framework. Without the one "essence," from which everything emanate out of, morality falls into a cycle of infinite regression, symbolized by the ouroboros or the snake eating its own tail. If infinite regression is symbolized as a "circle," the "Unmoved Mover" is symbolized by a "triangle." God is the capstone on top.
So, given what you have said about causality and what Miquella says about "sin" and "making the world a gentler place", is Miquella trying to rid the realm of the senseless conflict and violence that was put in motion by what the hornsent did to Marika's people and what she did to them in return. Is Miquella trying to end that "karmic cycle" of cause and effect by going beyond causality?
Yeah but that was already made apparent by other sources. Hornsent says as much and his progression also relates to this, as once the charm is broken he becomes so consumed with revenge he rejects Miquella's desire to break that cycle
@@Rusty_Spy yeah this isnt really as much of a revelation as I'd hoped for. We get a bit more illumination on how miquella would enact his new order but it doesn't really change the big picture
I interpret his will as "if I can't make it good I will remove the distinction between good and evil" or "if I can't make it good karma I will remove karma"
Yeah so from what I understand, “original sin” still works as a translation? I read it as “to go beyond the cause and the effects that has endured since the beginning.” The cause being the hornsents’ violence against the shaman leading to Marika’s genocide attempt against them (effect), and so on and so forth. It makes it sound like Miquella wants to end the cycle of violence, which still lines up with everything we already know about him. If anything, knowing the exact translation leads to a deeper understanding of the narrative, which is always welcome. Nothing revolutionary like Ranni’s mistranslation tho
Wait this make so much sense -- by making "the world a gentler place", Miquella would essentially end samsara (or the ER equivalent thereof), and so end suffering inherent to that cycle: everyone would achieve nirvana, in a sense. I think the reason why it got translated as "the original sin" is because that's what caused (hehe) the cycles of violence Miquella wishes to be rid of. Like in the biblical story -- humans only live and die and suffer and birth because of the original sin. In a "western" view, Miquella wishes to return the world to paradise, where humans knew not good or evil. Awesome video, thanks a lot!
In a "modern english (internet) slang" it would even more fit to say "Karma" instead of "Causality", but causality sounds less ordinary for spells and other things. I mean incantation "Law of Causality" by the way of what it does, might as well be called "karmic retribution".
Gravity can undo actions by breaking Causuality, the biggest example is Farum Azula, where the relations between forces is topped and time is in constant altered state.
Honestly I might be being dense but while there's definitely nuance lost and the word causality definitely SHOULD have been in that item description since it's so important to lots of other lore details, I don't think it changes the meaning all that much if you read that item as meaning burying the past order, or burying the history of aggression and retribution.
Which from his actions the latter is something he definitely does as he obscures Ansbach's negative memories of him which I suppose you could interpret as him obscuring his Karma and removing the "Cause" of any animosity Ansbach could have for him in an incredibly simplified term "Erasing Sin" Calling it Causality would definitely be keeping in line with existing lore but might be a little too vague for a lot of western readers compared to how direct calling it the Original Sin is.
To transcend Causality, is essentially the goal of Buddhism and other Philosophies akin to it (Daoism the closest). Buddha means "The awakened one". In other words, the one who has seen and is now aware. To be fully aware in this sense, means, that one is no longer acting by reaction, but with full conscience. Acting in this way is known as non-action, acting in full awareness brings no longer the consequence of acting reactively and would generate no karma, but it won't cleanse you of previous karma. Thus transcending causality. Getting rid of Karma in a sense, would entail getting rid of every single thread of cause upon yourself, in this sense, this would mean absolute death of the self and joining with all. In the context of Miquella, I don't think this goes at all with what he wants to achieve, he achieves a very poor godhood. Having abandoned his love, breaking the pattern of causality seems impossible. Now, if we bring it in the context of Marika's Sin (whatever it is) seems more fitting, though at what context it's unclear.
Him failing doesn't mean that it wasn't his goal, though. I think it makes sense that this is his goal, but that his curse of eternal youth also affects his mental maturity regardless of how intellectually capable he is. His failure through his abandoned love and other emotions, makes sense from the perspective of his character flaws. The game also makes a big deal of Miquella abandoning his Eye on top of his love. Like you say, it's cheap godhood. He's just avoiding that awareness, acceptance, and comprehension.
I want to point out that the last part of the Light of Miquella incantation description is also (very) badly translated. I mentioned it in passing in the sole video of my channel, but some bigger lore hunters like you might be interested in discussing it in more detail.
This Is totally mind blowing. A world without causality may be somehow free from the shackles of fate. Its also important to note that miquella doesnt want to eliminate Regression from his world, maybe this could explain the idea of "embracing" past and future Hoping for a video on the original sin, Miquella tells us "if you've known sin and grieve for this world", so maybe at this point of the game we should know the sin of Queen Marika that he understood perfectly It seems. Its like he's telling us:" did you see what happened? There's no salvation"
While I think explicitly mentioning causality makes Miquella's plan (and his flaws) easier to grasp, I think mentioning the "original sin" is meant to emphasize his relationship with Marika rather than his views on the universe itself. The DLC is filled with characters who blame mother-figures for bringing them into a flawed world (Metyr in particular feels intended to parallel Miquella), and I think Miquella seeking to bury the original sin frames his plan as essentially trying to return to the garden of eden/to the womb (and thereby escaping suffering). As a result, I don't think the translation is mistaken as much as it is trying to say a similar thing about trying to escape suffering using a cultural context more familiar to English speakers. However, I think the causality translation ends up clearing up what Saint Trina means by godhood being a golden cage for Miquella-- he wants to essentially plunge the world into pure stasis and prevent all suffering forever, which would mean that he is going to be essentially alone forever. The fact that St. Trina is now against easing suffering through a (type of) eternal slumber explains why Thioller reacts so violently when we tell him what she says. As a result, I do think the original Japanese makes things clearer overall.
which is weird that were supposed to think original sin is violence when one of the few things sad in the game and not the menus exposition is that bruin the tree is the original sin... but this was said by finger reader who are about as stereotypical bad faith narrators and in if they been in anything where actually scurrility was used people would have called BS on these ladies after one conversation.
Thanks for clarifying! That's extremely helpful! And also big thanks for explaining the Buddhism analogies in Elden Ring! You revealed something to me that I never would have discovered on my own and it reaffirms part of my headcannon in a pretty huge way! Many thanks!
Man I reached this video by YT's recommendation and love the content! I'm following you and soon I'll dive into your content, I'm heading now to your video about Age of Stars because you got me very interested to know the mistranslations in English! Never heard any of that before!!! Thank you for your content and congrats for the good job!
Thank you so much! I actually didn't go into the mistranslations for my video on the Ranni because I assumed people were already familiar with it and I was making my argument based on the revised translation anyway. If you're curious, Frontline Gaming has a very in-depth breakdown of what went wrong: www.frontlinejp.net/2022/03/14/elden-ring-the-age-of-stars-ending-mistranslations-explained/
Phenomenal video. I've already heard theories that miquella is a failed bodhisattva, his failing being that he let go of love. The path to enlightenment requires shedding attachment to all things, and a question that inevitably arises is "what about attachment to those I love?" Or "what about attachment to morality?". These are difficult questions but the Buddha seemed pretty darn clear that compassion and friendship are essential aspects of the path. Miquella became a monster the second he forgot this.
From software seems to critique failed Buddhism often as seen with Sekiro. The conflict between a sort of Buddhist stasis and a Shinto "flow" is very interesting.
@@AngstUrnacht something that westerners often don't see with Buddhism is how often it has had weird failed offshoots. There have been many weird offshoots that have failed to live up to the ideals of compassion and renunciation. Buddhism has a wild amount of internal debate and conflict, and fromsoft seem very aware of it in the way they portray it.
"What does it mean going beyond causality?" Forgiveness? It's consistent with what St Trina tells us, and with the mistranslation of the great rune as well. He was seeking forgiveness for Marika's past sins so he could create a better world, beyond revenge.
I genuinely don't think the translation of Ranni's ending differs as much, moreso a lot of readers severely lack reading comprehension. She swears to every living being and soul to take fear, gods etc. and take them away from the mortal world, even if it means she will be afraid, alone and in the dark the whole time herself.
Not sure about that. I'm usually pretty decent about the details and it seemed she was talking about taking everyone on that journey. Made it sound like a cold version of the flame of frenzy ending. Like a universial heat death. Very strange dialog.
"Always" is too strong a word to use, Khalid, & by definition: the absolutist nature of your statement leaves no room for it to be anywhere near correct, while your lack of fluency makes it clear that you are certainly not an authority on the subject of reading comprehension. Ignoring the advice of academics rarely helps more than it harms. SPOILER WARNING! Touma, it was made clear that the voyage Ranni takes following the ending was one she intended to take alone-yet, the commitment, persistence, & grand gestures of the Tarnished won her over, which led to their engagement & the Tarnished summoning her after the final battle, where she does everything Gnaruto said she did, & she invites you to join her as her "one & only Lord." She vows to spare the world from the meddling of the outer gods. What she does involves everyone in the world & everyone tampering with it, but she only takes the Tarnished along with her. Prior to completion of the storyline, she tries to shoo the Tarnished away several times, even more than three or four times depending on how you progress the quests. Eventually, she considers the Tarnished to be "a fitting choice." & that ends her string of repeated attempts to deny the Tarnished yet she leaves them room to deny her, "Call upon me..." she says, giving the option to not do so at all.
@@Touma134 Ranni rarely ever speaks directly, only ever dropping this mannerism when directly adressing the tarnished after you get close to her in her miniature doll form. This is quite clear in her alternative ending dialogue, where her entire tone of voice changes between the oath adressing the world, and then addressing her "dear consort eternal"
@@khalidpatterson1422 "Could I have misunderstood this highly cryptic line of dialogue from a character that is notoriously cryptic and indirect? No, everyone else is stupid"
on the other hand, when working as a translator you can sometime gain access to further explanation from the dev about the intended meaning. While I really like the points you bring here Im not sure if we can just dismiss this as a simple error.
Sure, but in the base game 因果 had almost exclusively been translated as “causality” and in the context of it being a Law of Causality of Golden Order Fundamentalism.* And the only time it appears in the DLC is in Miquella's Great Rune. So for consistency alone it should have been translated as causality again. *Except for one line by Gostoc that "what goes around, comes around." But even that works well as an idiom. しかし、因果とは確かにあるものだな
Yeah, going by the interviews with the VAs (especially Igon's) we know that Miyazaki is directly involved with this process and that both him and the translators sometimes rewrite lines in the session itself if they feel it doesn't completely fit. I wouldn't dismiss these differences as simple translation errors
@@steeltarkus58this is a myth, the less dimwitted stepchild of "from games are originally written in english" which I think ultimately plays a hand at some people's hard reluctante to accept all fromsoft games have mistranslations. Miyazaki doesn't know english, he's not gonna come with a good word in english to translate an ambiguous or rare japanese word or turn of phrase. At best, they can send an email asking for the general meaning of what he means, I don't know if I would call that "working closely", but is what it is. As I say, all fromsoftware games have mistranslations and inconsistentcies (for example, shinpu in the original text, got translated in 5 or 6 different ways in bloodborne, most commonly eldritch or arcane), to me, this suggests frognation doesn't consult as much with Miyazaki as some want to believe, since they think they are doing it correctly. It is not a coincidence, however, that Sekiro, the game more textually rich and intrinsicaly japanese, got the sloppiest translation of all with several glaring errors. And the VA thing is not a good parallel, I think. Miyazaki picks them and "directs" (heavy quotes) them based on pure feeling and evocation: how they sound, how they intonate, etc. He doesn't know what they are saying, so I hardly doubt he personally changes dialogue after listening to them, because he simply doesn't know what he's supposed to change. Like you watching an anime, you may think this voice actor is very good and embodies the character, or that this one VA is better for this role than the other one, but you wouldn't know what word he may have said to sound more X or less Y. Frognation may do this, I guess, but if anything, it proves they sometimes work beyond the scope of Miyazaki's control and vision, and I understand why some, myself included, may take issue with that. In any case I doubt it happens often because it would make the recording process more tedious and messy than it slready is, that's why voice acting is one of the last things done in a game's production, and why it's only done after the script is set and won't undergo further revision. But the translators themselves have nothing to do with the casting and the recording itself.
Ah but causality IS related to the original sin. All of Marika's children suffer from afflictions related to the sins of the Marika and her order. Marika's ascension to Godhood was blasphemous and therefore Messmer is born cursed with the base serpent, a symbol of blasphemy. This displays the causality that Miquella is trying to transcend. If Miquella wants to overcome his curse of nascency, he must transcend the law of causality that caused him to be cursed in the first place because pf the sins of his mother.
What about Godwyn? He was, literally, the golden child. No curse or affliction, beloved by all, a respected fighter but also brought peace through resolution and forged alliances. The only tragedy that he suffered was that he was too perfect, leaving him the prime target for Ranni's assassination and condemning him to half-life. You're totally right about Marikas kin all being cursed by her blasphemy, but I wonder why Godwyn was the exception? Unless this "curse" also affected the destiny of her children. Then that would explain Godwyn, Radahn, Ranni, and Rykard; their fate was changed by circumstance, not a born affliction.
@@NarcissistMargarine I think Godwyn was cursed to never die a true death or with deathblight for the sin of removing the rune of death. Deathblight clearly exists independently of the rune of death and Godwyn, so he could've been cursed with it and simply hid it through the power of his golden thus his golden moniker. Or it's possible his curse was simply his ironic fate that in Marika's undying order, he died but in a twisted way befitting the punishment for removing destined death. Also worth noting that the children of Radagon and Renala have no affliction. Perhaps the sins didn't stain Radagon, or he bathed his sins away and achieved absolution.
I think the idea of original sin/causality was done as it was because in Elden Ring the 'curses' and cycle of violence seems to keep cycling back to some point. All future generations succumb to the curses reaped by their forebearers. Someone, sometime long ago(Marika, or maybe the Hornsent, or even someone we don't know) Transgressed, and all that come after suffer for it. If it was the Buddhist causality, then it implies ore of a single-person-reborn cycle of learning and repercussions. You reap what you sew as you said. Elden Ring is about others reaping what someone sewed, unto the Nth generation. Miquella was trying to break free from that generational curse, rather than escape some personal karma from his previous actions in this or another life.
Also, the Original Sin was a puzzle the DLC brought without any content beyond the items you've showed in this video. That's nuts! Seemed some new content, almost an new event, "The Original Sin", what in the heaven's Marika did before??? With this video is so much clear what is going on and this piece of lore finally makes sense. Thank you very much for that :)
normally a mistranslation wouldnt mean too much, but in a nuanced story like ER, they can do some damage to the intention of the writer. excellent job in covering this gem!
I always considered that Miquella's relationship with and interest in Causality as a way to deal with his own curse of eternal youth. Things grow and progress and change-not remain the same nascaent state they were. But this interpretation you've given does indeed match up with the dlc where he's literally throwing everything away to make that change a reality. In fact, I've kind of looked at Miquella's great scheme as a chance at Nirvana and breaking the cycle. Removing the very foundation of what he was built on to achieve his goals, to open a new path for those who've fallen into the land of shadows. And it works...until the Tarnish show up. Which, frankly, I consider a badge of honor at this point. Reality itself decided to put a hit on Miquella because his way gives a genuine out to the great game. All the endings are a variation of Casuality and a response to the Original Sin, whether they want to preserve the Golden Order in some state or destroy it to prop up their own version. Even Ranni's ending is the natural or at least intended conclusion of the event that triggered the shattering which opened the path to the other endings-in this way the Age of Stars it just the Golden Order but now the Original Sin is the night of Black Knives. Or, speaking in terms of Causality, Godwyn The Golden died for us (like jesus for our sins) and gave way to the new Age. The Age of Compassion doesn't require an original sin that cause all others, just throw away your own. Only difference is that the Outer Gods and possibly the Stars hate it more than Ranni's method.
I wish they'd kept the alternate, cut speech Miquella gives as he appears from the divine gate: "I hereby swear to every living being and every living soul: now comes the age of our eden, a thousand year voyage guided by compassion. Beginning here, love encompasses all. No living thing will be denied, no deed censured. I am ready, to embrace the whole of it". To me this elucidates what is meant by sin/causality much better. Miquella is rebelling against an order decided by lack of compassion, by hatred, denial, censure. He wants to embrace everything, "graceful or malign", in my opinion like a new crucible of infinite potential & variety, without the imperialistic unification of Marika (and others). The problem, of course, is that he begins his reign immediately by attacking someone: us. It's a tender vision, words of beauty, but already from the start, it embraces the logic of the world that exists. Tragic.
I was not a fan of the use of Original Sin either. It felt unusual to insert a term so linked to Judeo-Christianity in the west. For it to then actually refer to something steeped in Buddhism is equally unnerving and feels like poor judgment from the localization.
I think it’s a mistake that can also bring light to what Marika’s sin was. The more I play SOTE, the more I think it wasn’t exactly burning a tree. There are a few things that were done. Marika seems to have separated The Erdtree’s light from its shadow. She took out Destined Death as a means of ending death, and thus ending rebirth. And if Causality as you describe it, is about the cycle of rebirth, and that it is a spell of Miquella, it also stands to reason she attempted to, or even succeeded at removing Causality. I don’t think we have any clarity on why Marika was hated so - she was hated for having many children, she was hated for her Erdtree, she was hated for her conquest. It all stems from her original sin, and that mistranslation might give clues to what the sin was. I assume the translators had extra materials, and that the translation was approved by FromSoft, so when they saw that translation, they must have thought it was fine. For example with the Ranni mistranslation, the general meaning remains the same, the differences in the lore are relatively minor, and often up to interpretation. Which is why FromSoft probably allowed it. It’s important to stress how involved Miyazaki was, as we learned recently he attended the English VA recording sessions and directed the VA’s directly, even if he didn’t speak English. So these translations weren’t something done without FromSoft’s involvement.
I think it fits still that it's called original sin. Even if Miquella is trying to break a karmic cycle, the origin is still the violence of the Honrsent, into the violence of Marika, and so forth. It also adds to Miquella's naiveté and tragic failure through his curse and choices.
Exactly, both translations, in context, are referring to Miquella's relation to Marika and her original sin. Hornsent also talks about how this is Miquella's promise to his people, to cleanse the world of Marika's sin; I.e to sever the casual relation between himself and Marika. I believe both versions still convey the inherent hubris of attempting to transcend causality, though admittedly we wouldn't be able to make that interpretation without the JP translation specifically name dropping the word causality.
@@Rusty_Spy We don't really know what the precise "original sin" is though. Miquella's promise to redeem the hornsent clan might be just one of several promises he has made to people, rather than the direct matter of the "original sin" mentioned in Messmer's Remembrance. Marika might have betrayed her own people, usurped a god, burned the hornsent -- any of these possibilities may be that first sin.
@@nightscout9979the precise original sin doesn't matter either way because Miquella's intention is still to wipe away that sin for the purpose of creating a gentler world.
@@Rusty_Spy Knowing what the sin is could tell us a lot about what Miquella would have to do, what the scope of those actions would entail, and also give a lore answer as to just what deed Marika precisely did. What the "original sin" precisely is could also tell us a lot about Miquella in regard to what he's trying to figuratively bury, why he might want it buried, and so on. In contrast, by saying that Miquella is trying to transcend causality, we're told he's approaching every action by Marika, as well as actions from people long predating Marika. This also lets us have an idea of the scope that deed entails right away, and it ties into the feasibility of handling that while also trying to embrace everything as a new god.
This is all very Berserk. Guts can leap out of the stream of Causality like a fish. Surprising even the Godhand at his ability to tell fate to go fondle itself.
I suspect the localization team opted for original sin because the term has greater resonance in the English language. It still broadly applies to the original meaning, he's trying to transcend everything that followed in the wake of Marika's revenge against the hornsent, but causality is definitely more accurate to encompass the chain of events that came even before that.
you know how an Empyrean is described as "one chosen by the gods" and the hornsend consider having horns "being chosen by the gods" or divinity or something? I think the original translation for the Grandan served a purpose, which is to show how different cultures use the same words for different but similar things. Nothing new to Elden Ring
To me it's very clear what is meant by "embrace the whole of it" and "transcend causality". With every God born in the lands between, a sacrifice of life appears to be required, much like Berserk. With every God born, a mass death event occurs, if we are to garner anything from the bodies surrounding the Divine Gate and other spots where Gods may have been born (Farum Azula, Nokstella). With every mass extinction, a new prejudice is inflicted. With every new prejudice, pain and suffering take place, resulting with constant genocide followed by usurping followed by suffering, and the cycle of causality continues. Miquella has the power to steal the hearts of men, even after he abandons his Great Rune and everything that made him(them) themselves. It would appear that this secret rite he discovered seems to forego the mass sacrifice portion, and he would then rely on his powers of manipulation to keep all of his subjects from warring with one another through force. He would have the strongest Elden Lord, likely rearrange the Elden Ring configuration so that Intelligence or something gets nerfed to maintain his order, then voila - world saved. Causality conquored, and all is embraced.
I agree 100% on this video. This video helped me to respect the game wholly. I can now better respect the technical details of the game, the characters, and the lore. The technical side of the game requires you to see that the enemies' attack patterns can be discerned. One streamer mentioned that to easily fight bosses, a player should try to withhold their attacks just to understand what sort of attacks that will come out next. From there, the attack pattern can be discerned. Understanding the attack pattern lets you understand what action can be done as a reaction: punish, heal, rolling, jumping, backstep, ash of war, etc. This aligns with the causality you mentioned here, in which the player can go beyond the causality, albeit only in-game. Discerning attack patterns may parallel for the use law of regression in-game, an approach of deduction. Somehow this understanding made me find easier ways to play the game, not to the point of cheese, as I don't want to feel too distressed about a video game. There are real world concepts applied in-game, technical and lore-wise. In this sense, if the player respects the game, the game respects the player. In the lore and dialogues, Miquella's actions must have made sense to the world, and it is in contrast to the Tarnished. Your explanation that Miquella thinks he must achieve godhood to go beyond causality makes me respect his character wholly. He's trying to undo it all, while, at the same time, tried to move on -- those are both causality and regression in work. Miquella becoming a God has become an actual prison, in which the forces of causality and regression have more influence on him. Miquella must have thought that in order to go beyond causality, he must attain godhood. Miquella doesn't think that to go beyond causality, he first must realize that he has a choice that can be taken daily, not some grand project to become a God. The player, however, with some little technical understanding of the game, knows this, even if the player isn't fully conscious about it. As the representation of the player, the Tarnished can be assumed to possess some understanding of it as well. Now, in just the lore, you can have a choice whether to win against Miquella or let Miquella win. A world where Miquella wins is a world where the player doesn't have their conscience in the game, so the player ignores the world. If the player wants to win against Miquella, in the second part of the boss theme can be heard "matre 've Marika aeterna," which, in Miyazaki's partial understanding-fashion, can be understood as "hail, Mother Marika, Eternal." This also implies that the second part of the boss theme is the Tarnished's theme, not Miquella's. In a sense, it makes the Tarnished the final boss for Miquella before he can achieve godhood. Miquella's dialogue before also had respected the Tarnished by addressing them as "Aspiring lord of the old order." The whole Elden Ring -- its characters, its lore, and its gameplay -- respects the player. These are all the more reason to respect Elden Ring, and perhaps promote it among our friends. These days rarely video games respect its player. But I suppose that's also a reason to enjoy Elden Ring. P.s.: all the more reason to finish Elden Ring using the Mending Rune of Perfect Order \[T]/
This aligns with Miquella's ideal world, one without conflict. He intends to strip away the concept of causality to prevent anyone from acting in defiance to his order. Marika's worlld is actually one that flourishes from causality, a world of struggle. She gives the Tarnished a reason to fight, to brandish the elden ring. Hence why when you fight both Miquella and Radahn, he acknowledges you as an aspiring lord of the 'old order' and to cease the path forward to him. He wants his world to be one devoid of choice, one where no one can deny him.
@@RavenGamingOverLord Miquella has the ability to charm people into doing his bidding, robbing people of their "want". Any "choice" someone makes under his influence is not their own.
Misstralsations always ruin everything... like in the first dark soul, when I was playing it I read "Time at Lordran is twisted" ok fine years later with dark souls 3 my friend "This is all a time mess.." "what?!" "yes...remember when it says Time at Lordran is twisted? well in truth it says that Time is stagnant" " @#[@#é!!!!"
It might have been deliberately mistranslated to make more sense to people who aren't that familiar with Buddhist philosophy. We know from other sources that the Golden Order was flawed from the start and Miquella wanted to fix those flaws, and a big theme of the DLC is the vicious cycle that started with the massacre of the Shaman Village. Miquella wants to start a new order free from all baggage of the old, which would both mean rejecting the original sin (the war with the Hornsent) and causality, as he doesn't want people to suffer the negative consequences of the Golden Order's actions. There's also a few interesting points here: 1. In the English description, that Miquella wanted to go beyond the original sin, Miquella's plan is flawed from the start, because he doesn't know what it is; there are no Miquella's Crosses in the Shaman Village, and you can't really understand Marika's motives without knowing that part of the story, that she too was a victim who became a revenger. 2. The Tarnished could also be considered an attempt to go beyond causality, as for all intents and purposes they're an outside force breaking into a closed system. We show up, kill everyone with baggage, and then take over with something new. Goldmask is also the closest one to truly solving the system, and he too is a Tarnished. 3. The storyline of purging the Frenzied Flame could also be seen as an attempt to defy karma by becoming a messianic figure ourselves; we find and take on the despair felt by everyone who had ever been hurt by anything, and through kindness, sheer willpower (you're going to need a lot of it to finish Millicent's quest), and literally going beyond causality by finding a place outside time, we purge the flame and thus redeem both ourselves and those whose Frenzy we took on, which defies negative causality by saving Melina who'd otherwise have to sacrifice herself to fix the Shattering and removing our fate of becoming Lord of the Frenzied Flame.
I don't think it is so much of a mistranslation so much as it is poetic way of speaking. Most characters speak in a complicated and Shakespearean way that most people aren't used to In Ranni's case the coming age of loneliness and fear is not necessarily an villainous way, it is a reference to how in a world of independence, a world where we are free to choose our fate. We are also drifting alone in a sea of uncertainty, since we are unbound by great destinies or certainties. You could wake up tomorrow a god or a slave same for miquella's, to transcend causality, is also to transcend sin, the original sin. The sin that caused all of our disgrace-- this is how miquella will embrace the whole of it, rejecting the causality that would come after our sins, the punishment that SHOULD follow in the former Order.
"Go beyond the causality that has endured since the beginning..." Since burning it all down is just another link in the cycle of violence, it solves nothing. But, since you can't change the past, and the all cleansing flame of frenzy just kinda causes a longer stretch of time before the same cycle starts again... I think the best way to put what I'm saying is... Just because burning it all down/away isn't really a NEW choice and is just a more extreme version of what cane before - if we apply what we've learned... Doesn't mean we can't wipe the slate clean, and CHANGE things in a meaningful way. And the only way we mortals (or even personified Gods, whether self proclaimed or via declaration by some unknowable force impossibly far away) can change what came before is to recognize, then accept, and finally MOVE ON from any past "causality" that just served to amplify all the negative traits that came before, that can and SHOULD only be seen through the lens of memory. After all, when it comes to time, the furthest "distance" one can get from any given moment is experiencing the next - it is only in memory that the previous moment even exists to affect the new "now" or any possible future... And, even then... The existance of that memory can only HAVE an effect IF we choose to let it. In other words: "Yes - ALL that horrible, bad, evil, bad, and horrible shit happened - and unless we've completed construction on that time travelling machine, it is IMPOSSIBLE to "go back" and change ANY of it... So... What do we do NOW?" The good news being: this choice is presented to us in each and every moment that continues to tick. Shall we continue fighting and struggling for power - or proceed compassionately, and live/work to consciously eliminate that objectively shitty previous path of "causality", start a new one that actually WORKS in a way that accounts for the factors that were previously ignored, leaving those old, inadequate ways where they belong... Dead, in the unreachable past.
So Ranni again, but bigger? Miquella wanted a paradigm shift & to divest himself of his mother's current. Whereas Ranni wanted to depart Marika's stagnant paradise - her answer to causality, Miquella wanted to rewrite the question; how to defeat sin? Make it impossible in an age of compassion.
I don't really understand it, but it kind of seems like Miquella is a sort of Christ figure, trying to bring forgiveness and peace. Whether you call it causality, karma, original sin, or something else, it might all refer to the same essential concept, which is that we all in some way bear guilt for our misdeeds even if those misdeeds occurred before our lifetime.
I mean, I'm all for restoring a storyteller's vision to their work, but Miquella's actual plan in the DLC is retarded compared to the popular theory prior to its release, that the duel between Malenia and Radahn was about resurrecting Godwynn with an eclipse. It was thematically perfect, all the readables pointed to it, and, honestly? I think Fromsoft got insecure that the fans actually pieced it together, and changed the DLC'S entire story and final boss at the last minute for the sake of sheer bare-faced pretention; because God forbid Miyazaki let us have the satisfaction of solving a mystery beforehand. That's my single biggest gripe with him honestly. As a lore master, he's great; as a storyteller he's beyond awful: because he punishes you for trying to answer a question with more questions and deliberately sabotages his characters so you don't care about them.
Do we know if the spell has the term "inga" in the name too? I mean, is "inga" used to mean "causality" elsewhere in the game? If it isn't, that may be the reason. Translators use databases to ensure key terms are translated the same. If "inga" wasn't used before to mean "causality", and causality is already an important term that has been used for a different word, they would avoid repeating it for the newly introduced "inga". If "inga" was used before, then it's absolutely bizarre. That being said, we don't know if they had internal knowledge that we aren't privy to. In normal working circumstances (which, let's be honest, may not have been the case for this project, since the lack of cutscentesfor important bosses seems to point to the devs running out of time), queries can be asked to the devs about word choices and they may have preferred "original sin" for whatever reason. Source: me, a video game translator. PS: I've been told by some of my colleagues that worked in the game's translation that it was an excepcionally difficult project for how it was handled... I don't know anyone from the English team, but they could've faced similar problems, who knows. I hope we can get a patch with text fixes since the DLC has some text-related problems. Edit for clarity
In the base game 因果 had almost exclusively been translated as “causality” and in the context of it being a Law of Causality of Golden Order Fundamentalism.* And the only time it appears in the DLC is in Miquella's Great Rune. So yeah, it's just bizarre that it wasn't translated as causality again. *Except for one line by Gostoc that "what goes around, comes around." But even that works well as an idiom. I also don't envy anyone who had to translate Elden Ring! It's like the Dark Souls of localizations.
@@garrulousgoldmask Thanks for the info! 💜And, wow, that being the case I wonder what happened there. It's a big big change for such an important concept! Well caught! I hope it can be addressed in a future patch.
My interpretation of Causality(It seems Miyazaki was heavily influenced by Berserker) is what imprisons a minor god like Marika. What is a god that cannot break the logics and nature of mortal science(causality)? Maybe, Miquella was trying to ascend into true godhood, more like Greater Will, until ONE refused to get accepted. If you read light of Miquella in Japanese version, it does say "There was no way an ABSOLUTE god and his Lord standing together"(絶対の神も、その王も決して並び立つことはない).
i think religion is one of the most interesting lenses to look at Elden Ring through so very much appreciate your work and looking forward to the next one
This could also explain why Miquella abandoned his love; to achieve Nirvana (or Godhood in his case), you must abandon your passions as they attach you to the world and make your suffering possible.
To me, it seems the difference of nuance between original sin and karma/causality is that they serve to explain different things. The former is both an accounting for evil in a linear or finite timeline, but also a matter of establishing that there is a moral law, and that we are unable to fulfill it -- in St. Paul's terms, death; or as Kierkegaard terms it, despair. Man turns from enlightenment and cannot achieve it himself. Whereas karma accounts for evil in an unlimited or cyclical timeline, and serves to ground moral law according to the inevitability of retribution. In other words, with regard to moral law or ethical behavior, karma relates to the concept in Christianity of God as final and total judge. In either case, the assertion is that the universe operates according to an exacting and inescapable moral law. But both karma and original sin both explain in their respective systems how one can be born into suffering, unenlightenment, being-wrong, etc. (I think this is exactly what Plato is getting at with his account of reincarnation at the end of the Republic). How can a child be born into suffering when they did as yet no wrong? Either one posits a previous life or lives in which to have chosen poorly, or one posits the loss of grace at a definite point in history (a loss of a supernatural capacity allowing for being-in-relation to the absolute, that is to say, enlightenment -- to keep the terms somewhat and awkwardly parallel). With regard to this latter, karma and original sin are similarly positioned to Miquella's problem: he and all his siblings are born into a suffering and into an orientation away from enlightenment and moral rectitude. Marika stands here as both original sin and karmic cause: she has violated the moral law or order applicable to the universe, and this causes a deprivation of her supernatural capacity to raise into enlightenment, or an automatic response of harm to her and her kin.
I swear, I'm just gonna stop thinking about souls games lore. I spent hours and hours theorizing about what the "original sin" is and all items related to it, and now that's just thrown to the garbage can. I guess I'll wait for someone to create a spreadsheet like that one for Bloodborne with multiple translations, before trying to understand this story again.....
Heh, I know that feeling! I spent a ton of time theory crafting about the potential links between Miquella, Messmer, Marika, and original sin...only to check out the Japanese text.
9:16 Better yet, give us an option to switch to the original Japanese dub and let fan translators do the rest. Retranslation mods are practically mandatory at this point.
Causality could also refer to splitting, separation, shadow and gold. He wants to remove that seperation by embracing everything as gold. With that said, i think the original sin is, in abstract terms, the creation of shadow: the separation of death, the crucible, and the past, everything Marika represses away is ‘shadow’. So in that sense i think the ‘original sin’ and ‘casuality’ sort of tie back to the same idea, at least within my own understanding of things.
this honestly makes Miquella's choice even more important. if everything is created from one cause, it will eventually return to the cause, causality and regression. if the modern age is born from blood and violence, it will return to blood and violence. miquella abandoned his fate and body exactly to destroy the connection to the causal origin, to eliminate his past. unfortunately, his actions mimick marika herself, thus he is fated to create a similar order to marika.
the retaliation part of the in game description of causality, could be a reference to the original sin. Theres some god that the hornsent had that got may have been killed by Marika in a bad way, that the hornsent witnessed the remains of and started praying to it. I cant make out what the picture of the outer god talisman is though, but Marika getting pissed at the hornsent could be both causality and the original sin. It might be that they have to stick to certain wording they already made for that language, while having a similar meaning in the story anyway. Kind of like symbolism and literal meaning in this game, I look at both languages descriptions as accurate
Miquella is the best option for the Lands Between. Formsoft characters are never 100% moral, nor innocent, nor perfect. But Miquella is the closest thing to a good ruler that has ever been offered to the Lands Between. His methods are the most reasonable compared to the wrath, hatred, prejudice, and blood lust of all other rulers. Including us, the tarnished, we are the bad guys in this war too, our path would destroy the Lands' only hope for lasting compassionate peace. Miquella's great rune charm is an overall positive power. The charm helps people let go of the evil within; if someone wanted revenge they can now settle for forgiveness, if someone was prejudice they can now tolerate others, and if someone had lust for blood shed they can now seek love. Miquella brought out the best version of each person, gave them love, and gave them hope. During our fight we had the power to resist Miquella's charm and so do many other characters like Messmer. There still is a choice to reject Miquella but 99% of people will be more attracted to what he offers than what they currently have, most people will agree with Miquella, because what he offers is valuable to them. Haters try to simply this process to simple brainwashing but it is not that crude nor sinister. Mohg wanted Miquella to bring the mother of blood dynasty, Miquella offered him something better. To assume that Mohg is innocent of kidnapping Miquella is a not necessarily. Two things can be true, at the same time, with these complex characters. Mohg was all about blood sacrifices so it's possible that he is ok with helping Miquella in this way, to be the vessel of Radahn's spirit, this is not a tragic end. Radahn was a proud and powerful warrior. By his standards he could not simply die, he had to die in glorious battle. Miquella tried to satisfy this honor by asking Malenia to go to war with Radahn, they were both too powerful for each other, so stalemate persisted until the tarnished rose. Miquella then sent Melina to persuade a tarnished to help in his plans. Most of the work had been done my Malenia and we come to finish off Radahn in honorable battle. Long ago Radahn promised to be lord and consort to Miquella. The reign of Miquella has all the good aspects of the Golden Order but with out the shunning of the graceless. Miquella extends grace and blessing to all in the Lands. Radahn would find it easy to support Miquella's Order because it is just a better version of the Golden Order. His loyalty would remain. consistent. Haters of Miquella will see these events in a sinister filter, this is unreasonable because there is a more honorable way to except what Miquella planned. Each one of these characters have good reasons to give Miquella a chance, the Charm helps but it's a positive help, not sinister. When Miquella divulged his love, it was specifically his love of self that died. He is still clearly able to love Radahn and showing compassion to an entire kingdom clearly communicates love. Saint Trina seeks to protect Miquella from the bondage of being a deity, that is self-love. Miquella had to let go of what was good for himself to obtain the power to serve everyone in his kingdom. Clearly he has sacrificed just as much as his flowers sacrificed to obtain compassion, leading by example.
We can observe things similar to Miquella's charm in the base game, and they never go well. The Starlight Shards potions of the Nox and Seluvis annihilate free will and turn people into "puppets." The ants controlled by the Nox as cavalry will immediately beeline toward the Nox and try to kill them if the spell is ever broken. These are clearly cases where trying to force someone's will is an evil act. The Bewitching Branch notes that it *compels* affection, rather than trying to help calm things down and assist someone in being a mindful, persuasive communicator. This does not suggest that Miquella is bringing the best out of people, and we can see that Ansbach and Thiollier are actually at their best when opposing Miquella. Ansbach's dying words in the Radahn fight are even for the Tarnished to be a lord for men, not for gods, seemingly moving past even his affiliation with the murderous Mohg. Radahn loved combat, but he was also raised in a civilization that saw the benefits of allying with former foes and governing in the aftermath of warfare. Radahn was noted as caring dearly for his horse too, and willing to befriend, trust, and have great respect for even people on the margins of society. Examples of such people include Radahn's Alabaster Lord mentor, his fellow pupil Gaius, and wanderers like Jerren. With that in mind, Radahn probably wouldn't agree to all of Caelid being brought into a brutal war against Elphael to see if Miquella could give Radahn a warrior's death, especially in light of the Scarlet Aeonia. Furthermore, if Miquella had to research the Secret Rite in the Land of Shadow, then he might not have initially planned to kill Radahn, instead just asking for Radahn's hand and later trying to kidnap him. Based on the need for a war between Elphael and Caelid, Radahn never made a promise to Miquella. The desperate Miquella might have told people a promise was made to bolster his cause. Alternatively, Miquella, at his wits end, was trying to assert a joking promise to his even younger self as something serious so as to still hold some feeling of moral justification. Morgott began reforming the Golden Order and Radahn still went to war against it, so he wouldn't necessarily find Miquella's Order acceptable. Mending the Elden Ring with Marika imprisoned in the Erdtree would also potentially allow the Elden Lord to have more autonomy than normal, whereas the Elden Lord for Miquella would have to be distinctly secondary to him. Miquella was originally a caring, genuinely compassionate person who wanted to purge the Scarlet Rot from Malenia and make things right for the Misbegotten, the Albinaurics, and so on. However, as the Shattering proceeded, Miquella became pushed further and further, potentially even giving the okay for Albinaurics to be tortured in Castle Sol's rituals. By the time Miquella began removing his traits that allowed him to reflect on his actions and heed his conscience, he had become tragically warped. If any ending comes close to Miquella's original goals of genuine, reflective compassion, it might be the Age of Order. Goldmask is a Golden Order Fundamentalist who laments how other Fundamentalists have just sought an enemy to fight against rather than saving and protecting people, studies different beliefs to observe how they function in relation to one another, and ultimately creates a solution that removes the inherently flawed system of fickle people becoming gods (let alone through gruesome means), holds the parties accountable, and seemingly heals the Erdtree.
Well, if you look at the pose you strike while using 'Miquella's Light' incantation, it harkens to the pose you strike while casting law of regression.
I love the analysis here and the way you link the law of causality to Miquella’s own motivations. While I agree it works really well to explain his motivations, I feel like “original sin” may have been to link Miquella back to Marika and how closely their stories parallel one another. Both wanted to create a better world-Marika wanted a deathless world, most likely because she saw her entire village be tortured and killed, and Miquella wanted a kinder world, something better than what Marika built. But Marika tried to bring about this deathless world by killing and destroying all those who opposed her. Miquella tries to bring about a gentler world by manipulating two of his brothers to their deaths and taking away everyone’s free will. Miquella is no better than Marika in the end; he can’t move beyond that original sin-Marika’s sin-and instead falls into it and becomes consumed by it like she was. Both translations work for Miquella in my opinion.
It’s interesting speculation, but it’s just that till FromSoft addresses it. It’s the creator’s decision how they choose to translate something. It’s not an ancient text that can’t be fixed, it’s modern.
I get why they translated it as "Original Sin". Before eating the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve knew no evil or good, that can be interpreted as existing outside karmic causality.
I actually think Miquella would even drop this idea, since you know, Malenia and her rot, Godwyn and the eclipse, whose to say he wouldn't drop this also?
Also, a few notes on the Messmer remembrance: there's no consequentiality between Messmer being cursed by the serpent and her mother plucking his eye out. Marika's action seems less a consequence of the child being born accursed and more a deliberate choice made on what's convenient to her, just as many other times. Once again, the original sin seems to be a mistranslation, no idea where it came from but it's so confusing. Tho in the past few years we've learnt to keep an eye out on visible mistranslations, and once you're aware they tend to pop up much more easily...
Thank you for this, as when I saw that Original Sin part I thought it has something to do with Christianity of sort, with Marika being a Virgin Mary of sort conceived without Original Sin but yeaaahh... 😵💫😅
Great game, have played it for hundreds of hours already. But how you can invest so much time, energy and money into a game and have such short and disappointing cut scenes at the end is a mystery to me.
This makes sense! Marika wanted to remove the embodiment of the 'forbidden shadow' but left the concept of the urges of the shadow self intact: violence, bestial energy, untamed spirit, and so on. In doing so she broke the natural cycle (where the serpent represents life, death, rebirth) which was further complicated by the buildup of karma that was unable to be cycled. Miquella it sounds like wanted to eliminate even the concept of the shadow self by controlling people's hearts and minds (in the literal and political sense) to force peace in those that oppose him.
I wonder if by trying to escape causality, he’s trying to create a new order without the violence that the Golden Order was built on, and perpetuates itself on. But his efforts are in vain, as violence was necessary to gain the power to become a god
especially considering some of Ymir's lines, i feel like i can understand how the translators linked causality to Marika's original sin. even with this retranslation, it's not clear to me that the original sin or causality are entirely different concepts. Even Law of Causality is linked to the causality of the golden order, not a causality beyond the golden order. and the golden order/marika's sin is what he's trying to go beyond. Hence, the Marika's original sin that set off the entire chain of causality the lands between is living under now. there maybe some artistic leaps with Frognations translations, but i feel like quality of their prose is so far beyond most other games that I'm willing to extend some grace to them and at least try to understand why they made these decisions. That said I appreciate the video and bringing these things to light, good food for thought
Nice video. The "Causality" makes way more sense (beyond the Berserk Reference) from the Buddhist perspective. Basically Causality is the inherent order of the universe, the eternal cicle o birth agging, suffering, death and reincarnation, and "freeing one self" from causality is the way to avoid said suffering, or, in other words, "Achieving Nirvana". So, by breaking her own rune, Miquella is breaking her "Link" to the old order, allowing him to start anew... Unless we get to them first, IYKWIM 😂
I think we need to go a step farther and correct it to "to escape causality". Go beyond may be the correct translation, but poetically, escaping one's fate or generational trauma or original sin is a reoccurring theme that appears to be the insinuated meaning here. To escape samsara and behold the world as it is, the good, the bad, the whole of it
Causality, in this context, might refer to the cycle of violence perpetuated throughout the world's history. The Hornsent inflict violence upon Marika. Marika ascends, and in turn, inflicts violence upon the Hornsent and others. Elden Ring is practically Generational Trauma: The Game. Miquella sheds his "golden flesh" and forsakes even a great rune of the Elden Ring, because those are things tied to the Golden Order Marika started. Miquella wanted an age of peace on his own terms, free of the barbarism that usually accompanied worldly change.
That also makes the most sense with the localization of "original sin" because the concepts are, actually, pretty similar. The negative/cursed karma of the many wrongdoings in the Lands Between echo repeatedly down the generations, causing more and more harm regardless of the actions or intentions of those born into it. Kinda like how one is considered guilty of original sin from birth/conception regardless of your own actions.
Miquella wanting to break free from it all, both physically and metaphysically (making his tree its own new island, and eschewing the causal fate that binds the Golden Order) all tie together rather neatly. I don't think this is a mistranslation at all, in fact--I think this was the most correct way to communicate the same general intent in short form to western audiences with little notion of the cycle of rebirth and karma. Much like how the Shrine Maidens of the village--a concept foreign and with very few solid connotations to western audiences--were renamed to "Shamans" which isn't precisely accurate but conveys the same general senses of spiritual connectivity and ritualism.
This is an insanely important video for loreheads, the change from him trying to create an order that's not based on Marika's first sin to him trying to create an order that's not burdened by causality is gigantic
And as another commenter said, his choice of consort in Radahn makes even more sense now, since Radahn has been able to literally interrupt the chain of causality that was related to Ranni's actions by stopping the stars themselves, and since the stars guide the fates of humans and gods alike, Miquella could basically create his world of "love and compassion" by stopping causality completely and by having everyone under his charm. A world of complete and utter stasis.
Interestingly similar to his mother's plan, as she plunged the world into a deathless fuge.
It seems the continuing message of all souls like games is that accepting change and loss is the only way to live. Standing against these things stagnates the world and leads to rot and ruin.
Miquellas eternal childhood makes sense here, since this is the ultimate divine version of refusing to accept the consequences of actions.
The world is fucked, and we need to deal with it. We cannot undo the past and we cannot wipe the slate clean.
All we can do is try to heal, slowly and painfully.
Which also helps to paint him more as a villain which many people seem to not get, as he is the antithesis to the Shinto theme of flowing water.
Ironically, Miquella might have been trying to depend on the stars' "fates" for his plans, based on the Amber Starlight found near a statue of him and Malenia on Altus Plateau. The map leading to this statue also depicts a meteor shower, perhaps indicating that Miquella was trying to seek help from the stars. Alternatively, the stars contacted Miquella so they could influence more Empyreans than just Ranni. Radahn freezing the stars might have been to prevent them from forcing him to be Miquella's lord.
As a further irony, a close analysis of the "fates" of the stars implies they're not a natural thing, but instead oppressive. Starlight Shards seem to be the key ingredient for Seluvis' potions, draughts invented by the Nox that can annihilate free will and turn people into "puppets." The "fates" of the stars also outright prevent people from acquiring Nokron's secret treasure if not employed by Ranni, thereby preventing any natural flow of actions, and Ranni herself can't wield the weapon without a "fate", further binding her to the stars.
Miquella might have looked to the stars for the opposite of natural causality, only to be thwarted by a stasis that leaves people free to decide things without outside influence on their free will.
Marika's first sin is trying to control causailty. I don't understand what the confusion is here.
I don't think this video changes much of anything, honestly. "Embracing the causality" can still be read in a million ways, especially with the interperstive nature of the Japanese language. He's embracing and trying to correct Marika's causality, which would be the horrible events of the hornsent, before and after her God hood. He wants a world devoid of hatred, violence, and corruption. It might not be a super realistic wish, but it's not an evil hope.
SkullKnight: "did someone mentioned CAUSALITY?"
I haven’t played that game yet
It's a Berserk reference, @@RavenGamingOverLord
Remember, Fembois who deal with causality are always homosexual, TILL WE MEET AGAIN
You Know whats crazy... Radhan looks like Gaiseric from the flashback panel we got some time ago in the Manga.
@@herrzyklon Yeah sure buddy
I’m surprised how the translators overlooked the Law of Causality and linked the rune with the original sin instead 😟 it makes so much more sense with your interpretation and real world context. great work, thank you for this video!
Do we know what the Law of Causality spell is called in japanese?
@@phillidaadamus4349
因果性原理
In Japanese, it is named 因果性原理, which can be translated into principle of causality.
I have posted this in a commentary, but I thought I'd answer to you directly as well, because this is very puzzling indeed. Translators use databases to ensure key terms are translated the same so we don't have to rely 100% in our memories (and so different members of the team don't use different words for the same terms. It's a collective memory of sorts). If "inga" was used before in-game to mean "causality", it should've appeared in the database as such, warning the the team about of their previous. If "inga" wasn't used in Japanese to mean causality, then they would avoid using the same translation for two different terms since causality is already an important concept, but if "inga" was used before, then it's absolutely bizarre. It would mean that they made a concious choice to give "inga" two different translations.
That being said, we don't know if they had internal knowledge that we aren't privy to. In normal working circumstances (which, let's be honest, may not have been the case for this project, since the lack of cutscentesfor important bosses seems to point to the devs running out of time), queries can be asked to the devs about word choices and they may have preferred "original sin" for whatever reason.
There goes the hidden Dark Souls 2 connection
radahn being his choice suddenly begins to make even more sense, as he is a very literal incarnation of the push and pull via objects in gravity (which then manifested as him altering fate, which could be interpreted as disrupting the causal loop). Great video
Is cool, what you said
Oh that is a phenomenal point!
So miquella is trying to be coconut that does not live in the context of all that came before it.
The DLC does provide precedent with the descriptor of Minor Erdtree and then Unalloyed Gold which is still open to new "metals" to make something stronger. @@qaztim11
@@qaztim11 You think you just fell out of a Haligtree?
Since I haven't found any reference about the article that talked about this mistranslations first, here's the original article, whose name is "Shadow of the Erdtree - Lost in Translation".
It doesn't only talks about Miquella, but about many other mistranslations.
it's so fucked up how goldmask beheaded a baby scadutree avatar and wears its head on his face. shame on you goldmask!
@@starchythepotato2877 ...
Chill bruhhh we also killed scadutree avatar and used it's head as bonk weapon
Don’t put shame on him, without him we have no chance of a perfect order for the lands between.
The context matter. "Inga" here can also means 'karma' but in a negative way, as in you did something really wrong in the past that will come to bite you back in future. This is why 'sin' was used instead.
Pay attention to what Miquella relinquished in his path of godhood, and you'll see that he's simply removing everything that he thought brought about the fall of golden order.
Doubt - the shattering happened mainly because Marika started to have doubt in the golden order
Love - the shattering partially happened because Marika loves her children
Eye/ Great Rune - he wish to make an entirely new order that isn't based on elden ring and fingers, the latter of which are actually broken from who knows when
Hesitation - Marika didn't shatter Elden Ring fully because she hesitated at the end, giving the opportunity for...
Other half - ...her other half Radagon to partially mend the elden ring
Basically, all of this implies that Marika perhaps *cheated* her way to godhood (or at least Miquella thought so). Thus her 'inga' came back to haunt her in various form and eventually brought about her downfall.
Extra note: there are also beliefs that 'bad karma' can linger through generations. Thus perhaps why Miquella saw the need to 'exorcise' himself out of it.
While I disagree about Miquella relinquishing traits and Trina out of parallels to the Golden Order, the comment about what "inga" can mean is quite insightful!
well that part about why Miquella relinquished those parts of him is just my own interpretation. There must be something so profound that caused him to do all that. It just so happen that Marika seemingly still possesses all those traits Miquella left behind despite becoming a god through the same means. And to my own observation, as I have written on my original comment, all of those traits played a role in Marika's failure too. Not to mention Trina's seeming disagreement with Miquella wanting to be a god, which mirror Radagon's unwillingness to let the Elden ring fully shatter.
There is also the grand dame bad mouthing Marika as a harlot, and Jolan's boss (the guy in manus metyr; his name eludes me at the moment) saying that the fault lies at the very beginning. All of which leads me to believe that Marika was able to rise to godhood through foul play, which in itself could be considered as a grave 'sin' (or an action that will incur 'inga'). Hence the use of 'original sin' to translate 'inga'.
I do agree with the context we could be missing here which translators may have access to or even perhaps notes from Miyazaki. Yes if you copy/paste this in google translate it will show that causality wording. However Japanese language do have nuance and it is not enough to translate it literally. The last line have 続く因果 (tsuzuku inga) which could mean 'continuous karma' if we are to equalize karma to 'inga'. So the translator could localize it to mean original sin since in the context of game that continuous karma may refer to that original sin. So I cannot say they mistranslated unless we have a full context of those texts. As far as I know, FrogNation is Fromsoftware's longtime partner for translating and localizing their games. so I am sure they asked approval from Fromsoftware for these sort of things especially since item descriptions are vital to the lore. Perhaps you may asked Ryan Morris from FrogNation, but for now I can say they stick to that translation based on the context they were given by FromSoftware.
Source:
Ryan Morris and Frog Nation: www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/mlmyvi/great_news_frognation_and_ryan_morris_are_back/
koeru meaning (read the best comment): www.reddit.com/r/translator/comments/r3k5xv/japanese_english_the_specifics_of_the_term_koeru/
Leaving how I think your idea about Miquella's remains mirroring Marika is nonsense aside, you're right. Context does matter. And the context is 因果 being used as the name for one of the fundamental laws of the Golden Order as described by the Golden Order fundamentalists, and it is described in such a way to evoke the idea of "causality". If nothing else, it is correct to translate the word the same as it has already been translated, in order to create the connection that is already there in Japanese, and any additional nuance should if possible be included some other way.
That being said, I do think there is some merit to the idea of the "karmic justice" meaning of 因果 being relevant here, though not for any of the reasons you've laid out. Miquella does talk about sin. (罪) And in cut dialogue he says the following: 「[...]すべてよ、愛だけを思うがよい。何者も、何ごとも、排することなく、罪することなく 私がすべてを抱こう" 」In Marika's Golden Order, there exist cursed beings who are among other things not allowed to return to the Erdtree upon their death. This is one of the things separating the Golden Order from previous orders. If this so-called sin, or being charged with sin, is part of the 因果 of the Golden Order, and that is something Miquella was trying to remove from the order, then that lends credence to one of the older Japanese theories of 回帰(Regression) being return to the Erdtree, and 因果(Causality) being exclusion from the Erdtree or from grace due to something or other. And in this context I also think there is merit to the idea of Marika's "sin", whatever that would be, being passed down to her children. After all, every child of hers we know of suffered some terrible fate. And if Marika did create such a system, then it coming back to bite her in the ass would be very ironic. (And could serve as motivation for her shattering the Ring.)
On the other hand, the Miquella's rune item description talks about a はじまりから続く因果, which to me implies the "causality" existed at least since before the Golden Order. Plus, Miquella appears to specifically be trying to create an order separate from the Elden Ring's order. If all he wanted was an order free of whatever his mother added to it, then he could have simply ascended to godhood as an empyrean the normal way, couldn't he? Miquella's order seems to be fundamentally different in some way.
@@Corvaillian I'm merely stating how 'inga' is most commonly used in other Japanese literature and media. It is used to warn about deeds that is improper/forbidden by tradition/existing beliefs because it will/may cause bad omen/unfortunate events/very bad things happened to the person doing the deeds and those who are connected to them.
"hajimari kara tsudzuku inga" (はじまりから続く因果) normally translates to 'an 'inga' that has persisted since the beginning'. This is actually the passage that is translated to 'original sin' in the text of Miquella's great rune.
Now, if we refer to what Count Ymir said, the mistake lies with the mother, as in the golden order is faulty from the very beginning. Meanwhile the hornsent grandam referred to Marika as 'wanton strumpet'. So either Ymir is implying the fault lies in Metyr being broken, or Marika doing some shady things to reach godhood, or both at the same time.
Either way, the deeds have been done and incurred this 'inga' which retribution still lingered until now. Similar to how in christianity, men was banished from the heaven due to eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge--the retribution is still there up to this day.
Under these contexts, it's actually make sense to translate that passage as 'original sin'.
Using that as a base, it only make sense that Miquella decided to build his own divinity, as the Elden Ring is technically his mother Marika's divinity--which is already mired in 'inga'. Rising to godhood normally as empyrean under the golden order and the fingers' authority would only means that he'll become a new vessel for the existing Elden Ring. Not to mention that he has made the conclusion that the golden order has nothing that he wanted, and has been attempting to build his very own divinity (with the haligtree) even from the lores already existing in the base game.
As for why such law of causality exists in golden order that Marika created when under this context it technically becomes what bring her down, it is part of the law upon which the world works. And Elden Ring is basically collection of these laws put into a more tangible form. But on the other hand, it is also *a justification to do revenge* , which I would like to believe that it is probably the real reason why it is not taken out of the Elden Ring. You should know the implication of that.
My own thought:
The law of causality represents the branching out or emanation of beings from a state of primordial unity, just as regression represents the return to that primordial unity. This is analogous to emanation and return in neoplatonism. Traditionally, in Neoplatonism, emanations further down the chain are further and further from the perfection of the one/the good, forming what's called the great chain of being mirrored in the golden order by the hierarchy of grace. His desire to go "beyond causality" and "embrace everything" perhaps represents his desire to replace the great chain of being with something more equitable, showering every type of being with the light of his love in equal measure.
The original sin in Messmer's soul's description, is a very specific instantiation of the law of causality: stripping the hornsent of the grace of gold, putting them at the bottom of the great chain of being, rather than forgiving them and embracing them in equal measure. The original sin in miquella's item descriptions refers to the entire system of causality as established by the golden order.
This explains why he shed his golden flesh, the mark of his empyrean lineage: it bears the mark of the law of causality and the process of emanation which puts him at the top of the order he fought against.
It also fits how "evolution" in the lands between (and in our world tbf) seems to lead from giants to "lesser" beings. Ancient dragons to Drakes, The ancient giant skeletons we see to fire giants to trolls. And gaining more power, more runes, seems to make you physically larger even!
Miquella's goals as you portrayed them remind me of what Paul the Apostle says about the Old Law.
You could very much call the Mosaic Law a logic of retribution, of causality, so much that it is often explained through metaphors involving money and debt.
Paul says that although he sees the Mosaic Law as holy and perfect, he admits it is absolutely powerless to redeem people condemned by it, which is why he advocates the necessity of a new law that's not based on retribution, the Law of Grace.
Nice way to think of it
People don't exist without causality. Redemption is not necessary unless there is a causal reward or causal punishment...or a person to exist after the fact with a causal appreciation.
@@jeftecoutinho Those are all great points! Also reminds me of Nietzsche's insights into the connections between guilt and debt (Schuld and Schulden).
One aspect that's underappreciated about lex talionis (“an eye for an eye”) is that it was intended as a limiting principle to prevent feuds from spiraling out of control. That is, you *only* take a person's eye as punishment, nothing more. But to quote Gandhi, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind...
Very interesting
St Trina makes it pretty explicit, as does Marika's whole predicament, that becoming a god will not help you escape causality. If anything, it ties you even closer to causality because as marika shows, you become an inherent part of the baseline structure of reality. Elder Scrolls has a concept called the Earth Bones, which are metaphorical descriptions of the laws of reality. They are called that because its believe the gods literally gave up their power and debatably even their sentience to become these laws, hence the comparison to bones. I think Marika containing the elden ring shows what godhood actually means in elden ring and I think its essentially the reverse of the Earth Bones: Instead of a god giving up their power to embody a concept in reality, its a god seizing hold of reality and forcing it into themself, being able to include and exclude parts they, or their patron deity, dont want.
Yes, she's pretty clear in calling divinity a "cage". The Divine Gate is used to use the Greater Will's power to become a god, provided one has fulfilled the conditions of its use. Miquella wants to use its power, presumably without donning the shackles that comes with it. Is unalloyed gold enough to repel the GW's influence? I think if Miq's story is meant to parallel Marika's, we are meant to conclude that no, it would not. Miquella's Age of Compassion would likely end prematurely as Marika's Age of Plenty had.
That is so interesting. I've learned a little about Thomistic metaphysics in the Catholic tradition. Simply put, there is the "Unmoved Mover" conception of God. One importance of this Unmoved Movered is that it provides an absolute standard for ethical truth claims and an ethical systematic framework. Without the one "essence," from which everything emanate out of, morality falls into a cycle of infinite regression, symbolized by the ouroboros or the snake eating its own tail. If infinite regression is symbolized as a "circle," the "Unmoved Mover" is symbolized by a "triangle." God is the capstone on top.
So, given what you have said about causality and what Miquella says about "sin" and "making the world a gentler place", is Miquella trying to rid the realm of the senseless conflict and violence that was put in motion by what the hornsent did to Marika's people and what she did to them in return. Is Miquella trying to end that "karmic cycle" of cause and effect by going beyond causality?
Yes, that is what I have been saying inside my mind for a while now.
Yeah but that was already made apparent by other sources. Hornsent says as much and his progression also relates to this, as once the charm is broken he becomes so consumed with revenge he rejects Miquella's desire to break that cycle
@@Rusty_Spy yeah this isnt really as much of a revelation as I'd hoped for. We get a bit more illumination on how miquella would enact his new order but it doesn't really change the big picture
I interpret his will as "if I can't make it good I will remove the distinction between good and evil" or "if I can't make it good karma I will remove karma"
Yeah so from what I understand, “original sin” still works as a translation?
I read it as “to go beyond the cause and the effects that has endured since the beginning.” The cause being the hornsents’ violence against the shaman leading to Marika’s genocide attempt against them (effect), and so on and so forth. It makes it sound like Miquella wants to end the cycle of violence, which still lines up with everything we already know about him.
If anything, knowing the exact translation leads to a deeper understanding of the narrative, which is always welcome. Nothing revolutionary like Ranni’s mistranslation tho
0:59 he did NOT abandon his blinding strength
He abandoned it for 10 seconds before running back and picking it back up.
I've seen a screenshot of the boss, with the whole screan covered by white light.
Wait this make so much sense -- by making "the world a gentler place", Miquella would essentially end samsara (or the ER equivalent thereof), and so end suffering inherent to that cycle: everyone would achieve nirvana, in a sense.
I think the reason why it got translated as "the original sin" is because that's what caused (hehe) the cycles of violence Miquella wishes to be rid of. Like in the biblical story -- humans only live and die and suffer and birth because of the original sin. In a "western" view, Miquella wishes to return the world to paradise, where humans knew not good or evil. Awesome video, thanks a lot!
In a "modern english (internet) slang" it would even more fit to say "Karma" instead of "Causality", but causality sounds less ordinary for spells and other things. I mean incantation "Law of Causality" by the way of what it does, might as well be called "karmic retribution".
Which is a spell associated withe the blades of the dark moon and Gwendolyn. Huh, might be a connection there
Law of Causality spell is nearly identical to Karmic Justice from Dark Souls
@@riskybiscuits688except it's not related to the darkmoon but to Velka and her bishops, and she's the goddess of sin iirc.
Gravity can undo actions by breaking Causuality, the biggest example is Farum Azula, where the relations between forces is topped and time is in constant altered state.
Honestly I might be being dense but while there's definitely nuance lost and the word causality definitely SHOULD have been in that item description since it's so important to lots of other lore details, I don't think it changes the meaning all that much if you read that item as meaning burying the past order, or burying the history of aggression and retribution.
Which from his actions the latter is something he definitely does as he obscures Ansbach's negative memories of him which I suppose you could interpret as him obscuring his Karma and removing the "Cause" of any animosity Ansbach could have for him in an incredibly simplified term "Erasing Sin"
Calling it Causality would definitely be keeping in line with existing lore but might be a little too vague for a lot of western readers compared to how direct calling it the Original Sin is.
That make a lot of sense and I struggled with understanding "The Original Sin" here, so Kudos to you Sir! ^^
It make a ton of sense now, Fundamentalism holds to causality and Miquella is stated to have abandoned it
To transcend Causality, is essentially the goal of Buddhism and other Philosophies akin to it (Daoism the closest). Buddha means "The awakened one". In other words, the one who has seen and is now aware. To be fully aware in this sense, means, that one is no longer acting by reaction, but with full conscience. Acting in this way is known as non-action, acting in full awareness brings no longer the consequence of acting reactively and would generate no karma, but it won't cleanse you of previous karma. Thus transcending causality. Getting rid of Karma in a sense, would entail getting rid of every single thread of cause upon yourself, in this sense, this would mean absolute death of the self and joining with all.
In the context of Miquella, I don't think this goes at all with what he wants to achieve, he achieves a very poor godhood. Having abandoned his love, breaking the pattern of causality seems impossible.
Now, if we bring it in the context of Marika's Sin (whatever it is) seems more fitting, though at what context it's unclear.
Him failing doesn't mean that it wasn't his goal, though. I think it makes sense that this is his goal, but that his curse of eternal youth also affects his mental maturity regardless of how intellectually capable he is. His failure through his abandoned love and other emotions, makes sense from the perspective of his character flaws.
The game also makes a big deal of Miquella abandoning his Eye on top of his love. Like you say, it's cheap godhood. He's just avoiding that awareness, acceptance, and comprehension.
me: hears causality
lil version of Void in the back of my brain: "In this world..."
I want to point out that the last part of the Light of Miquella incantation description is also (very) badly translated. I mentioned it in passing in the sole video of my channel, but some bigger lore hunters like you might be interested in discussing it in more detail.
This Is totally mind blowing. A world without causality may be somehow free from the shackles of fate. Its also important to note that miquella doesnt want to eliminate Regression from his world, maybe this could explain the idea of "embracing" past and future
Hoping for a video on the original sin, Miquella tells us "if you've known sin and grieve for this world", so maybe at this point of the game we should know the sin of Queen Marika that he understood perfectly It seems. Its like he's telling us:" did you see what happened? There's no salvation"
While I think explicitly mentioning causality makes Miquella's plan (and his flaws) easier to grasp, I think mentioning the "original sin" is meant to emphasize his relationship with Marika rather than his views on the universe itself. The DLC is filled with characters who blame mother-figures for bringing them into a flawed world (Metyr in particular feels intended to parallel Miquella), and I think Miquella seeking to bury the original sin frames his plan as essentially trying to return to the garden of eden/to the womb (and thereby escaping suffering). As a result, I don't think the translation is mistaken as much as it is trying to say a similar thing about trying to escape suffering using a cultural context more familiar to English speakers.
However, I think the causality translation ends up clearing up what Saint Trina means by godhood being a golden cage for Miquella-- he wants to essentially plunge the world into pure stasis and prevent all suffering forever, which would mean that he is going to be essentially alone forever. The fact that St. Trina is now against easing suffering through a (type of) eternal slumber explains why Thioller reacts so violently when we tell him what she says. As a result, I do think the original Japanese makes things clearer overall.
which is weird that were supposed to think original sin is violence when one of the few things sad in the game and not the menus exposition is that bruin the tree is the original sin... but this was said by finger reader who are about as stereotypical bad faith narrators and in if they been in anything where actually scurrility was used people would have called BS on these ladies after one conversation.
Thanks for clarifying! That's extremely helpful!
And also big thanks for explaining the Buddhism analogies in Elden Ring! You revealed something to me that I never would have discovered on my own and it reaffirms part of my headcannon in a pretty huge way! Many thanks!
Man I reached this video by YT's recommendation and love the content! I'm following you and soon I'll dive into your content, I'm heading now to your video about Age of Stars because you got me very interested to know the mistranslations in English! Never heard any of that before!!! Thank you for your content and congrats for the good job!
Thank you so much! I actually didn't go into the mistranslations for my video on the Ranni because I assumed people were already familiar with it and I was making my argument based on the revised translation anyway. If you're curious, Frontline Gaming has a very in-depth breakdown of what went wrong: www.frontlinejp.net/2022/03/14/elden-ring-the-age-of-stars-ending-mistranslations-explained/
Phenomenal video.
I've already heard theories that miquella is a failed bodhisattva, his failing being that he let go of love.
The path to enlightenment requires shedding attachment to all things, and a question that inevitably arises is "what about attachment to those I love?" Or "what about attachment to morality?".
These are difficult questions but the Buddha seemed pretty darn clear that compassion and friendship are essential aspects of the path.
Miquella became a monster the second he forgot this.
Yes! I'm actually working on an entire video on Miquella as a wannabe Bodhisattva!
From software seems to critique failed Buddhism often as seen with Sekiro. The conflict between a sort of Buddhist stasis and a Shinto "flow" is very interesting.
@@AngstUrnacht Definitely! I really liked Noah Caldwell-Gervais's interpretation of the Senpou Monks thinking they found a shortcut to nirvana...
@@AngstUrnacht something that westerners often don't see with Buddhism is how often it has had weird failed offshoots.
There have been many weird offshoots that have failed to live up to the ideals of compassion and renunciation.
Buddhism has a wild amount of internal debate and conflict, and fromsoft seem very aware of it in the way they portray it.
The "failed bodhisattva" is probably why Miquella has the multi arm thing going on in his god form but is missing an arm
"What does it mean going beyond causality?"
Forgiveness? It's consistent with what St Trina tells us, and with the mistranslation of the great rune as well. He was seeking forgiveness for Marika's past sins so he could create a better world, beyond revenge.
I genuinely don't think the translation of Ranni's ending differs as much, moreso a lot of readers severely lack reading comprehension. She swears to every living being and soul to take fear, gods etc. and take them away from the mortal world, even if it means she will be afraid, alone and in the dark the whole time herself.
Not sure about that. I'm usually pretty decent about the details and it seemed she was talking about taking everyone on that journey. Made it sound like a cold version of the flame of frenzy ending. Like a universial heat death. Very strange dialog.
its always the ppl that say others lack reading comprehension who lack it themselves lol
"Always" is too strong a word to use, Khalid, & by definition: the absolutist nature of your statement leaves no room for it to be anywhere near correct, while your lack of fluency makes it clear that you are certainly not an authority on the subject of reading comprehension. Ignoring the advice of academics rarely helps more than it harms.
SPOILER WARNING!
Touma, it was made clear that the voyage Ranni takes following the ending was one she intended to take alone-yet, the commitment, persistence, & grand gestures of the Tarnished won her over, which led to their engagement & the Tarnished summoning her after the final battle, where she does everything Gnaruto said she did, & she invites you to join her as her "one & only Lord." She vows to spare the world from the meddling of the outer gods. What she does involves everyone in the world & everyone tampering with it, but she only takes the Tarnished along with her. Prior to completion of the storyline, she tries to shoo the Tarnished away several times, even more than three or four times depending on how you progress the quests. Eventually, she considers the Tarnished to be "a fitting choice." & that ends her string of repeated attempts to deny the Tarnished yet she leaves them room to deny her, "Call upon me..." she says, giving the option to not do so at all.
@@Touma134 Ranni rarely ever speaks directly, only ever dropping this mannerism when directly adressing the tarnished after you get close to her in her miniature doll form. This is quite clear in her alternative ending dialogue, where her entire tone of voice changes between the oath adressing the world, and then addressing her "dear consort eternal"
@@khalidpatterson1422 "Could I have misunderstood this highly cryptic line of dialogue from a character that is notoriously cryptic and indirect? No, everyone else is stupid"
still trapped in samsara, gonna have to watch a few more times
on the other hand, when working as a translator you can sometime gain access to further explanation from the dev about the intended meaning. While I really like the points you bring here Im not sure if we can just dismiss this as a simple error.
Miyazaki, in particular, works extensively and closely with FrogNation on the English translations.
Sure, but in the base game 因果 had almost exclusively been translated as “causality” and in the context of it being a Law of Causality of Golden Order Fundamentalism.* And the only time it appears in the DLC is in Miquella's Great Rune. So for consistency alone it should have been translated as causality again.
*Except for one line by Gostoc that "what goes around, comes around." But even that works well as an idiom.
しかし、因果とは確かにあるものだな
Yeah, going by the interviews with the VAs (especially Igon's) we know that Miyazaki is directly involved with this process and that both him and the translators sometimes rewrite lines in the session itself if they feel it doesn't completely fit. I wouldn't dismiss these differences as simple translation errors
@@steeltarkus58this is a myth, the less dimwitted stepchild of "from games are originally written in english" which I think ultimately plays a hand at some people's hard reluctante to accept all fromsoft games have mistranslations. Miyazaki doesn't know english, he's not gonna come with a good word in english to translate an ambiguous or rare japanese word or turn of phrase. At best, they can send an email asking for the general meaning of what he means, I don't know if I would call that "working closely", but is what it is. As I say, all fromsoftware games have mistranslations and inconsistentcies (for example, shinpu in the original text, got translated in 5 or 6 different ways in bloodborne, most commonly eldritch or arcane), to me, this suggests frognation doesn't consult as much with Miyazaki as some want to believe, since they think they are doing it correctly. It is not a coincidence, however, that Sekiro, the game more textually rich and intrinsicaly japanese, got the sloppiest translation of all with several glaring errors.
And the VA thing is not a good parallel, I think. Miyazaki picks them and "directs" (heavy quotes) them based on pure feeling and evocation: how they sound, how they intonate, etc. He doesn't know what they are saying, so I hardly doubt he personally changes dialogue after listening to them, because he simply doesn't know what he's supposed to change. Like you watching an anime, you may think this voice actor is very good and embodies the character, or that this one VA is better for this role than the other one, but you wouldn't know what word he may have said to sound more X or less Y. Frognation may do this, I guess, but if anything, it proves they sometimes work beyond the scope of Miyazaki's control and vision, and I understand why some, myself included, may take issue with that. In any case I doubt it happens often because it would make the recording process more tedious and messy than it slready is, that's why voice acting is one of the last things done in a game's production, and why it's only done after the script is set and won't undergo further revision. But the translators themselves have nothing to do with the casting and the recording itself.
Ah but causality IS related to the original sin. All of Marika's children suffer from afflictions related to the sins of the Marika and her order. Marika's ascension to Godhood was blasphemous and therefore Messmer is born cursed with the base serpent, a symbol of blasphemy. This displays the causality that Miquella is trying to transcend. If Miquella wants to overcome his curse of nascency, he must transcend the law of causality that caused him to be cursed in the first place because pf the sins of his mother.
What about Godwyn? He was, literally, the golden child. No curse or affliction, beloved by all, a respected fighter but also brought peace through resolution and forged alliances. The only tragedy that he suffered was that he was too perfect, leaving him the prime target for Ranni's assassination and condemning him to half-life.
You're totally right about Marikas kin all being cursed by her blasphemy, but I wonder why Godwyn was the exception? Unless this "curse" also affected the destiny of her children. Then that would explain Godwyn, Radahn, Ranni, and Rykard; their fate was changed by circumstance, not a born affliction.
@@NarcissistMargarine I think Godwyn was cursed to never die a true death or with deathblight for the sin of removing the rune of death. Deathblight clearly exists independently of the rune of death and Godwyn, so he could've been cursed with it and simply hid it through the power of his golden thus his golden moniker. Or it's possible his curse was simply his ironic fate that in Marika's undying order, he died but in a twisted way befitting the punishment for removing destined death. Also worth noting that the children of Radagon and Renala have no affliction. Perhaps the sins didn't stain Radagon, or he bathed his sins away and achieved absolution.
I think the idea of original sin/causality was done as it was because in Elden Ring the 'curses' and cycle of violence seems to keep cycling back to some point. All future generations succumb to the curses reaped by their forebearers. Someone, sometime long ago(Marika, or maybe the Hornsent, or even someone we don't know) Transgressed, and all that come after suffer for it.
If it was the Buddhist causality, then it implies ore of a single-person-reborn cycle of learning and repercussions. You reap what you sew as you said.
Elden Ring is about others reaping what someone sewed, unto the Nth generation.
Miquella was trying to break free from that generational curse, rather than escape some personal karma from his previous actions in this or another life.
Also, the Original Sin was a puzzle the DLC brought without any content beyond the items you've showed in this video. That's nuts! Seemed some new content, almost an new event, "The Original Sin", what in the heaven's Marika did before??? With this video is so much clear what is going on and this piece of lore finally makes sense. Thank you very much for that :)
Yes absolutely this video helped me escape sorrow, if only for a moment! Thank you!
normally a mistranslation wouldnt mean too much, but in a nuanced story like ER, they can do some damage to the intention of the writer. excellent job in covering this gem!
so thats why the miquella fight creates glitched afterimages...
I always considered that Miquella's relationship with and interest in Causality as a way to deal with his own curse of eternal youth. Things grow and progress and change-not remain the same nascaent state they were.
But this interpretation you've given does indeed match up with the dlc where he's literally throwing everything away to make that change a reality. In fact, I've kind of looked at Miquella's great scheme as a chance at Nirvana and breaking the cycle. Removing the very foundation of what he was built on to achieve his goals, to open a new path for those who've fallen into the land of shadows.
And it works...until the Tarnish show up. Which, frankly, I consider a badge of honor at this point. Reality itself decided to put a hit on Miquella because his way gives a genuine out to the great game. All the endings are a variation of Casuality and a response to the Original Sin, whether they want to preserve the Golden Order in some state or destroy it to prop up their own version. Even Ranni's ending is the natural or at least intended conclusion of the event that triggered the shattering which opened the path to the other endings-in this way the Age of Stars it just the Golden Order but now the Original Sin is the night of Black Knives. Or, speaking in terms of Causality, Godwyn The Golden died for us (like jesus for our sins) and gave way to the new Age.
The Age of Compassion doesn't require an original sin that cause all others, just throw away your own. Only difference is that the Outer Gods and possibly the Stars hate it more than Ranni's method.
I wish they'd kept the alternate, cut speech Miquella gives as he appears from the divine gate:
"I hereby swear to every living being and every living soul: now comes the age of our eden, a thousand year voyage guided by compassion. Beginning here, love encompasses all. No living thing will be denied, no deed censured. I am ready, to embrace the whole of it".
To me this elucidates what is meant by sin/causality much better. Miquella is rebelling against an order decided by lack of compassion, by hatred, denial, censure. He wants to embrace everything, "graceful or malign", in my opinion like a new crucible of infinite potential & variety, without the imperialistic unification of Marika (and others). The problem, of course, is that he begins his reign immediately by attacking someone: us. It's a tender vision, words of beauty, but already from the start, it embraces the logic of the world that exists. Tragic.
3:56 The moment i go 🤯
This is too much for my brain to handle. I wish we go back to how cool Godfrey is.
brother you lost me at "fursona" i'm too high for all this
Lol
I was not a fan of the use of Original Sin either. It felt unusual to insert a term so linked to Judeo-Christianity in the west. For it to then actually refer to something steeped in Buddhism is equally unnerving and feels like poor judgment from the localization.
I think it’s a mistake that can also bring light to what Marika’s sin was. The more I play SOTE, the more I think it wasn’t exactly burning a tree. There are a few things that were done. Marika seems to have separated The Erdtree’s light from its shadow. She took out Destined Death as a means of ending death, and thus ending rebirth. And if Causality as you describe it, is about the cycle of rebirth, and that it is a spell of Miquella, it also stands to reason she attempted to, or even succeeded at removing Causality. I don’t think we have any clarity on why Marika was hated so - she was hated for having many children, she was hated for her Erdtree, she was hated for her conquest. It all stems from her original sin, and that mistranslation might give clues to what the sin was.
I assume the translators had extra materials, and that the translation was approved by FromSoft, so when they saw that translation, they must have thought it was fine.
For example with the Ranni mistranslation, the general meaning remains the same, the differences in the lore are relatively minor, and often up to interpretation. Which is why FromSoft probably allowed it. It’s important to stress how involved Miyazaki was, as we learned recently he attended the English VA recording sessions and directed the VA’s directly, even if he didn’t speak English. So these translations weren’t something done without FromSoft’s involvement.
I think it fits still that it's called original sin. Even if Miquella is trying to break a karmic cycle, the origin is still the violence of the Honrsent, into the violence of Marika, and so forth.
It also adds to Miquella's naiveté and tragic failure through his curse and choices.
Same as Gwyn linking the first flame...
Exactly, both translations, in context, are referring to Miquella's relation to Marika and her original sin. Hornsent also talks about how this is Miquella's promise to his people, to cleanse the world of Marika's sin; I.e to sever the casual relation between himself and Marika. I believe both versions still convey the inherent hubris of attempting to transcend causality, though admittedly we wouldn't be able to make that interpretation without the JP translation specifically name dropping the word causality.
@@Rusty_Spy We don't really know what the precise "original sin" is though. Miquella's promise to redeem the hornsent clan might be just one of several promises he has made to people, rather than the direct matter of the "original sin" mentioned in Messmer's Remembrance. Marika might have betrayed her own people, usurped a god, burned the hornsent -- any of these possibilities may be that first sin.
@@nightscout9979the precise original sin doesn't matter either way because Miquella's intention is still to wipe away that sin for the purpose of creating a gentler world.
@@Rusty_Spy Knowing what the sin is could tell us a lot about what Miquella would have to do, what the scope of those actions would entail, and also give a lore answer as to just what deed Marika precisely did. What the "original sin" precisely is could also tell us a lot about Miquella in regard to what he's trying to figuratively bury, why he might want it buried, and so on.
In contrast, by saying that Miquella is trying to transcend causality, we're told he's approaching every action by Marika, as well as actions from people long predating Marika. This also lets us have an idea of the scope that deed entails right away, and it ties into the feasibility of handling that while also trying to embrace everything as a new god.
This is all very Berserk. Guts can leap out of the stream of Causality like a fish. Surprising even the Godhand at his ability to tell fate to go fondle itself.
I suspect the localization team opted for original sin because the term has greater resonance in the English language. It still broadly applies to the original meaning, he's trying to transcend everything that followed in the wake of Marika's revenge against the hornsent, but causality is definitely more accurate to encompass the chain of events that came even before that.
I've been saying "Miquella is Buddha" for ages now, it's good to see it basically confirmed.
Miquella is fucking Griffith. That's what he is.
True
@@ianluzdub Wrong, he’s not Griffith at all
@@RavenGamingOverLord right. I am.
"Miquella is Buddha.... for people that know nothing what so ever about Buddhism"
Waiiiiit. Am I seeing that right at 8:16? Radahn's remembrance gets traded for ONE of his swords? So you have to beat him twice to get the set? DAMN.
*cough* mausoleums *cough*
If it's any consolation, they're both mid af.
you know how an Empyrean is described as "one chosen by the gods" and the hornsend consider having horns "being chosen by the gods" or divinity or something?
I think the original translation for the Grandan served a purpose, which is to show how different cultures use the same words for different but similar things. Nothing new to Elden Ring
Wow, this is such a great catch! 😮 excellent work as always! 👏🏼
Thank you so much!
To me it's very clear what is meant by "embrace the whole of it" and "transcend causality".
With every God born in the lands between, a sacrifice of life appears to be required, much like Berserk. With every God born, a mass death event occurs, if we are to garner anything from the bodies surrounding the Divine Gate and other spots where Gods may have been born (Farum Azula, Nokstella).
With every mass extinction, a new prejudice is inflicted. With every new prejudice, pain and suffering take place, resulting with constant genocide followed by usurping followed by suffering, and the cycle of causality continues.
Miquella has the power to steal the hearts of men, even after he abandons his Great Rune and everything that made him(them) themselves. It would appear that this secret rite he discovered seems to forego the mass sacrifice portion, and he would then rely on his powers of manipulation to keep all of his subjects from warring with one another through force.
He would have the strongest Elden Lord, likely rearrange the Elden Ring configuration so that Intelligence or something gets nerfed to maintain his order, then voila - world saved. Causality conquored, and all is embraced.
I agree 100% on this video. This video helped me to respect the game wholly. I can now better respect the technical details of the game, the characters, and the lore.
The technical side of the game requires you to see that the enemies' attack patterns can be discerned. One streamer mentioned that to easily fight bosses, a player should try to withhold their attacks just to understand what sort of attacks that will come out next. From there, the attack pattern can be discerned. Understanding the attack pattern lets you understand what action can be done as a reaction: punish, heal, rolling, jumping, backstep, ash of war, etc. This aligns with the causality you mentioned here, in which the player can go beyond the causality, albeit only in-game. Discerning attack patterns may parallel for the use law of regression in-game, an approach of deduction. Somehow this understanding made me find easier ways to play the game, not to the point of cheese, as I don't want to feel too distressed about a video game. There are real world concepts applied in-game, technical and lore-wise. In this sense, if the player respects the game, the game respects the player.
In the lore and dialogues, Miquella's actions must have made sense to the world, and it is in contrast to the Tarnished. Your explanation that Miquella thinks he must achieve godhood to go beyond causality makes me respect his character wholly. He's trying to undo it all, while, at the same time, tried to move on -- those are both causality and regression in work. Miquella becoming a God has become an actual prison, in which the forces of causality and regression have more influence on him. Miquella must have thought that in order to go beyond causality, he must attain godhood. Miquella doesn't think that to go beyond causality, he first must realize that he has a choice that can be taken daily, not some grand project to become a God. The player, however, with some little technical understanding of the game, knows this, even if the player isn't fully conscious about it. As the representation of the player, the Tarnished can be assumed to possess some understanding of it as well.
Now, in just the lore, you can have a choice whether to win against Miquella or let Miquella win. A world where Miquella wins is a world where the player doesn't have their conscience in the game, so the player ignores the world. If the player wants to win against Miquella, in the second part of the boss theme can be heard "matre 've Marika aeterna," which, in Miyazaki's partial understanding-fashion, can be understood as "hail, Mother Marika, Eternal." This also implies that the second part of the boss theme is the Tarnished's theme, not Miquella's. In a sense, it makes the Tarnished the final boss for Miquella before he can achieve godhood. Miquella's dialogue before also had respected the Tarnished by addressing them as "Aspiring lord of the old order." The whole Elden Ring -- its characters, its lore, and its gameplay -- respects the player.
These are all the more reason to respect Elden Ring, and perhaps promote it among our friends. These days rarely video games respect its player. But I suppose that's also a reason to enjoy Elden Ring.
P.s.: all the more reason to finish Elden Ring using the Mending Rune of Perfect Order \[T]/
the fox tale came from the 《Biyan Lu 碧岩录》of Song dynasty monk 雪竇。Am surprised you dig that deep.
Part of me figured that translators change the original context of the dlc because of what happened to Ranni ending speech.
This aligns with Miquella's ideal world, one without conflict. He intends to strip away the concept of causality to prevent anyone from acting in defiance to his order. Marika's worlld is actually one that flourishes from causality, a world of struggle. She gives the Tarnished a reason to fight, to brandish the elden ring. Hence why when you fight both Miquella and Radahn, he acknowledges you as an aspiring lord of the 'old order' and to cease the path forward to him.
He wants his world to be one devoid of choice, one where no one can deny him.
I’m pretty sure you would still have the ability to choose
@@RavenGamingOverLord Miquella has the ability to charm people into doing his bidding, robbing people of their "want". Any "choice" someone makes under his influence is not their own.
Misstralsations always ruin everything...
like in the first dark soul, when I was playing it I read "Time at Lordran is twisted" ok fine
years later with dark souls 3 my friend "This is all a time mess.." "what?!" "yes...remember when it says Time at Lordran is twisted? well in truth it says that Time is stagnant" " @#[@#é!!!!"
It might have been deliberately mistranslated to make more sense to people who aren't that familiar with Buddhist philosophy. We know from other sources that the Golden Order was flawed from the start and Miquella wanted to fix those flaws, and a big theme of the DLC is the vicious cycle that started with the massacre of the Shaman Village. Miquella wants to start a new order free from all baggage of the old, which would both mean rejecting the original sin (the war with the Hornsent) and causality, as he doesn't want people to suffer the negative consequences of the Golden Order's actions.
There's also a few interesting points here:
1. In the English description, that Miquella wanted to go beyond the original sin, Miquella's plan is flawed from the start, because he doesn't know what it is; there are no Miquella's Crosses in the Shaman Village, and you can't really understand Marika's motives without knowing that part of the story, that she too was a victim who became a revenger.
2. The Tarnished could also be considered an attempt to go beyond causality, as for all intents and purposes they're an outside force breaking into a closed system. We show up, kill everyone with baggage, and then take over with something new. Goldmask is also the closest one to truly solving the system, and he too is a Tarnished.
3. The storyline of purging the Frenzied Flame could also be seen as an attempt to defy karma by becoming a messianic figure ourselves; we find and take on the despair felt by everyone who had ever been hurt by anything, and through kindness, sheer willpower (you're going to need a lot of it to finish Millicent's quest), and literally going beyond causality by finding a place outside time, we purge the flame and thus redeem both ourselves and those whose Frenzy we took on, which defies negative causality by saving Melina who'd otherwise have to sacrifice herself to fix the Shattering and removing our fate of becoming Lord of the Frenzied Flame.
I don't think it is so much of a mistranslation so much as it is poetic way of speaking. Most characters speak in a complicated and Shakespearean way that most people aren't used to
In Ranni's case the coming age of loneliness and fear is not necessarily an villainous way, it is a reference to how in a world of independence, a world where we are free to choose our fate. We are also drifting alone in a sea of uncertainty, since we are unbound by great destinies or certainties. You could wake up tomorrow a god or a slave
same for miquella's, to transcend causality, is also to transcend sin, the original sin. The sin that caused all of our disgrace-- this is how miquella will embrace the whole of it, rejecting the causality that would come after our sins, the punishment that SHOULD follow in the former Order.
As you say, it'd be a quick and easy fix to a small amount of text, hopefully they make the change
"Go beyond the causality that has endured since the beginning..."
Since burning it all down is just another link in the cycle of violence, it solves nothing. But, since you can't change the past, and the all cleansing flame of frenzy just kinda causes a longer stretch of time before the same cycle starts again... I think the best way to put what I'm saying is...
Just because burning it all down/away isn't really a NEW choice and is just a more extreme version of what cane before - if we apply what we've learned...
Doesn't mean we can't wipe the slate clean, and CHANGE things in a meaningful way.
And the only way we mortals (or even personified Gods, whether self proclaimed or via declaration by some unknowable force impossibly far away) can change what came before is to recognize, then accept, and finally MOVE ON from any past "causality" that just served to amplify all the negative traits that came before, that can and SHOULD only be seen through the lens of memory.
After all, when it comes to time, the furthest "distance" one can get from any given moment is experiencing the next - it is only in memory that the previous moment even exists to affect the new "now" or any possible future... And, even then... The existance of that memory can only HAVE an effect IF we choose to let it.
In other words: "Yes - ALL that horrible, bad, evil, bad, and horrible shit happened - and unless we've completed construction on that time travelling machine, it is IMPOSSIBLE to "go back" and change ANY of it... So... What do we do NOW?"
The good news being: this choice is presented to us in each and every moment that continues to tick. Shall we continue fighting and struggling for power - or proceed compassionately, and live/work to consciously eliminate that objectively shitty previous path of "causality", start a new one that actually WORKS in a way that accounts for the factors that were previously ignored, leaving those old, inadequate ways where they belong...
Dead, in the unreachable past.
All I cna think about is the "yinz" and how I only heard about this being a Pittsburg thing this last month lol
Praise the sun!
\[T]/
So basically Miquella wanted to Madoka the shit out of the greater Will, got it
So Ranni again, but bigger? Miquella wanted a paradigm shift & to divest himself of his mother's current. Whereas Ranni wanted to depart Marika's stagnant paradise - her answer to causality, Miquella wanted to rewrite the question; how to defeat sin? Make it impossible in an age of compassion.
I don't really understand it, but it kind of seems like Miquella is a sort of Christ figure, trying to bring forgiveness and peace. Whether you call it causality, karma, original sin, or something else, it might all refer to the same essential concept, which is that we all in some way bear guilt for our misdeeds even if those misdeeds occurred before our lifetime.
I mean, I'm all for restoring a storyteller's vision to their work, but Miquella's actual plan in the DLC is retarded compared to the popular theory prior to its release, that the duel between Malenia and Radahn was about resurrecting Godwynn with an eclipse. It was thematically perfect, all the readables pointed to it, and, honestly? I think Fromsoft got insecure that the fans actually pieced it together, and changed the DLC'S entire story and final boss at the last minute for the sake of sheer bare-faced pretention; because God forbid Miyazaki let us have the satisfaction of solving a mystery beforehand.
That's my single biggest gripe with him honestly. As a lore master, he's great; as a storyteller he's beyond awful: because he punishes you for trying to answer a question with more questions and deliberately sabotages his characters so you don't care about them.
Do we know if the spell has the term "inga" in the name too? I mean, is "inga" used to mean "causality" elsewhere in the game? If it isn't, that may be the reason. Translators use databases to ensure key terms are translated the same. If "inga" wasn't used before to mean "causality", and causality is already an important term that has been used for a different word, they would avoid repeating it for the newly introduced "inga". If "inga" was used before, then it's absolutely bizarre.
That being said, we don't know if they had internal knowledge that we aren't privy to. In normal working circumstances (which, let's be honest, may not have been the case for this project, since the lack of cutscentesfor important bosses seems to point to the devs running out of time), queries can be asked to the devs about word choices and they may have preferred "original sin" for whatever reason.
Source: me, a video game translator.
PS: I've been told by some of my colleagues that worked in the game's translation that it was an excepcionally difficult project for how it was handled... I don't know anyone from the English team, but they could've faced similar problems, who knows. I hope we can get a patch with text fixes since the DLC has some text-related problems.
Edit for clarity
In the base game 因果 had almost exclusively been translated as “causality” and in the context of it being a Law of Causality of Golden Order Fundamentalism.* And the only time it appears in the DLC is in Miquella's Great Rune. So yeah, it's just bizarre that it wasn't translated as causality again.
*Except for one line by Gostoc that "what goes around, comes around." But even that works well as an idiom.
I also don't envy anyone who had to translate Elden Ring! It's like the Dark Souls of localizations.
@@garrulousgoldmask Thanks for the info! 💜And, wow, that being the case I wonder what happened there. It's a big big change for such an important concept! Well caught! I hope it can be addressed in a future patch.
@@BigBadWolframio Happy to help! Btw, how long have you been working as a video game translator? And which languages?
@@garrulousgoldmask In a couple of months it'll be 8 years! My language pairs are EN>ES_es (Spanish from Spain) 👍
My interpretation of Causality(It seems Miyazaki was heavily influenced by Berserker) is what imprisons a minor god like Marika. What is a god that cannot break the logics and nature of mortal science(causality)? Maybe, Miquella was trying to ascend into true godhood, more like Greater Will, until ONE refused to get accepted. If you read light of Miquella in Japanese version, it does say "There was no way an ABSOLUTE god and his Lord standing together"(絶対の神も、その王も決して並び立つことはない).
Does this new information change your views on Radahn's and Miquella's vow being non-consensual?
A very-impactful distinction, needless to say
me personally i love a little chaos but i wonder if Ranni’s ending is better than Miquella’s
You got to start a petition to change the translation. Developer might not realise it.
i think religion is one of the most interesting lenses to look at Elden Ring through so very much appreciate your work and looking forward to the next one
This could also explain why Miquella abandoned his love; to achieve Nirvana (or Godhood in his case), you must abandon your passions as they attach you to the world and make your suffering possible.
To me, it seems the difference of nuance between original sin and karma/causality is that they serve to explain different things. The former is both an accounting for evil in a linear or finite timeline, but also a matter of establishing that there is a moral law, and that we are unable to fulfill it -- in St. Paul's terms, death; or as Kierkegaard terms it, despair. Man turns from enlightenment and cannot achieve it himself. Whereas karma accounts for evil in an unlimited or cyclical timeline, and serves to ground moral law according to the inevitability of retribution. In other words, with regard to moral law or ethical behavior, karma relates to the concept in Christianity of God as final and total judge. In either case, the assertion is that the universe operates according to an exacting and inescapable moral law. But both karma and original sin both explain in their respective systems how one can be born into suffering, unenlightenment, being-wrong, etc. (I think this is exactly what Plato is getting at with his account of reincarnation at the end of the Republic). How can a child be born into suffering when they did as yet no wrong? Either one posits a previous life or lives in which to have chosen poorly, or one posits the loss of grace at a definite point in history (a loss of a supernatural capacity allowing for being-in-relation to the absolute, that is to say, enlightenment -- to keep the terms somewhat and awkwardly parallel).
With regard to this latter, karma and original sin are similarly positioned to Miquella's problem: he and all his siblings are born into a suffering and into an orientation away from enlightenment and moral rectitude. Marika stands here as both original sin and karmic cause: she has violated the moral law or order applicable to the universe, and this causes a deprivation of her supernatural capacity to raise into enlightenment, or an automatic response of harm to her and her kin.
yes this video did indeed help me escape a sorrow
Was Miquella trying to become Paracausal?
I swear, I'm just gonna stop thinking about souls games lore. I spent hours and hours theorizing about what the "original sin" is and all items related to it, and now that's just thrown to the garbage can. I guess I'll wait for someone to create a spreadsheet like that one for Bloodborne with multiple translations, before trying to understand this story again.....
Heh, I know that feeling! I spent a ton of time theory crafting about the potential links between Miquella, Messmer, Marika, and original sin...only to check out the Japanese text.
Uff that is such a bummer that they make such mistakes so often. Makes way more Sense now. Thank you!
TL;DR the translators played too much DS2
Quella, God of the First Sin.
@@garrulousgoldmaskspirittree shield mentioned 😳
9:16 Better yet, give us an option to switch to the original Japanese dub and let fan translators do the rest. Retranslation mods are practically mandatory at this point.
Causality could also refer to splitting, separation, shadow and gold. He wants to remove that seperation by embracing everything as gold.
With that said, i think the original sin is, in abstract terms, the creation of shadow: the separation of death, the crucible, and the past, everything Marika represses away is ‘shadow’.
So in that sense i think the ‘original sin’ and ‘casuality’ sort of tie back to the same idea, at least within my own understanding of things.
this honestly makes Miquella's choice even more important. if everything is created from one cause, it will eventually return to the cause, causality and regression. if the modern age is born from blood and violence, it will return to blood and violence. miquella abandoned his fate and body exactly to destroy the connection to the causal origin, to eliminate his past. unfortunately, his actions mimick marika herself, thus he is fated to create a similar order to marika.
the retaliation part of the in game description of causality, could be a reference to the original sin. Theres some god that the hornsent had that got may have been killed by Marika in a bad way, that the hornsent witnessed the remains of and started praying to it. I cant make out what the picture of the outer god talisman is though, but Marika getting pissed at the hornsent could be both causality and the original sin. It might be that they have to stick to certain wording they already made for that language, while having a similar meaning in the story anyway. Kind of like symbolism and literal meaning in this game, I look at both languages descriptions as accurate
Miquella is the best option for the Lands Between. Formsoft characters are never 100% moral, nor innocent, nor perfect. But Miquella is the closest thing to a good ruler that has ever been offered to the Lands Between. His methods are the most reasonable compared to the wrath, hatred, prejudice, and blood lust of all other rulers. Including us, the tarnished, we are the bad guys in this war too, our path would destroy the Lands' only hope for lasting compassionate peace.
Miquella's great rune charm is an overall positive power. The charm helps people let go of the evil within; if someone wanted revenge they can now settle for forgiveness, if someone was prejudice they can now tolerate others, and if someone had lust for blood shed they can now seek love. Miquella brought out the best version of each person, gave them love, and gave them hope.
During our fight we had the power to resist Miquella's charm and so do many other characters like Messmer. There still is a choice to reject Miquella but 99% of people will be more attracted to what he offers than what they currently have, most people will agree with Miquella, because what he offers is valuable to them. Haters try to simply this process to simple brainwashing but it is not that crude nor sinister.
Mohg wanted Miquella to bring the mother of blood dynasty, Miquella offered him something better. To assume that Mohg is innocent of kidnapping Miquella is a not necessarily. Two things can be true, at the same time, with these complex characters. Mohg was all about blood sacrifices so it's possible that he is ok with helping Miquella in this way, to be the vessel of Radahn's spirit, this is not a tragic end.
Radahn was a proud and powerful warrior. By his standards he could not simply die, he had to die in glorious battle. Miquella tried to satisfy this honor by asking Malenia to go to war with Radahn, they were both too powerful for each other, so stalemate persisted until the tarnished rose.
Miquella then sent Melina to persuade a tarnished to help in his plans. Most of the work had been done my Malenia and we come to finish off Radahn in honorable battle.
Long ago Radahn promised to be lord and consort to Miquella. The reign of Miquella has all the good aspects of the Golden Order but with out the shunning of the graceless. Miquella extends grace and blessing to all in the Lands. Radahn would find it easy to support Miquella's Order because it is just a better version of the Golden Order. His loyalty would remain. consistent.
Haters of Miquella will see these events in a sinister filter, this is unreasonable because there is a more honorable way to except what Miquella planned. Each one of these characters have good reasons to give Miquella a chance, the Charm helps but it's a positive help, not sinister.
When Miquella divulged his love, it was specifically his love of self that died. He is still clearly able to love Radahn and showing compassion to an entire kingdom clearly communicates love. Saint Trina seeks to protect Miquella from the bondage of being a deity, that is self-love. Miquella had to let go of what was good for himself to obtain the power to serve everyone in his kingdom. Clearly he has sacrificed just as much as his flowers sacrificed to obtain compassion, leading by example.
This is a cool theory and all except Ansbach read what Miquellas plan was and said "uh oh"
I agree, he is probably the best option for the Lands Between
@@OceanicManiac He’s just a old guy who didn’t like what he saw young Empyrean doing to his lord body
We can observe things similar to Miquella's charm in the base game, and they never go well. The Starlight Shards potions of the Nox and Seluvis annihilate free will and turn people into "puppets." The ants controlled by the Nox as cavalry will immediately beeline toward the Nox and try to kill them if the spell is ever broken. These are clearly cases where trying to force someone's will is an evil act.
The Bewitching Branch notes that it *compels* affection, rather than trying to help calm things down and assist someone in being a mindful, persuasive communicator. This does not suggest that Miquella is bringing the best out of people, and we can see that Ansbach and Thiollier are actually at their best when opposing Miquella. Ansbach's dying words in the Radahn fight are even for the Tarnished to be a lord for men, not for gods, seemingly moving past even his affiliation with the murderous Mohg.
Radahn loved combat, but he was also raised in a civilization that saw the benefits of allying with former foes and governing in the aftermath of warfare. Radahn was noted as caring dearly for his horse too, and willing to befriend, trust, and have great respect for even people on the margins of society. Examples of such people include Radahn's Alabaster Lord mentor, his fellow pupil Gaius, and wanderers like Jerren.
With that in mind, Radahn probably wouldn't agree to all of Caelid being brought into a brutal war against Elphael to see if Miquella could give Radahn a warrior's death, especially in light of the Scarlet Aeonia. Furthermore, if Miquella had to research the Secret Rite in the Land of Shadow, then he might not have initially planned to kill Radahn, instead just asking for Radahn's hand and later trying to kidnap him.
Based on the need for a war between Elphael and Caelid, Radahn never made a promise to Miquella. The desperate Miquella might have told people a promise was made to bolster his cause. Alternatively, Miquella, at his wits end, was trying to assert a joking promise to his even younger self as something serious so as to still hold some feeling of moral justification.
Morgott began reforming the Golden Order and Radahn still went to war against it, so he wouldn't necessarily find Miquella's Order acceptable. Mending the Elden Ring with Marika imprisoned in the Erdtree would also potentially allow the Elden Lord to have more autonomy than normal, whereas the Elden Lord for Miquella would have to be distinctly secondary to him.
Miquella was originally a caring, genuinely compassionate person who wanted to purge the Scarlet Rot from Malenia and make things right for the Misbegotten, the Albinaurics, and so on. However, as the Shattering proceeded, Miquella became pushed further and further, potentially even giving the okay for Albinaurics to be tortured in Castle Sol's rituals. By the time Miquella began removing his traits that allowed him to reflect on his actions and heed his conscience, he had become tragically warped.
If any ending comes close to Miquella's original goals of genuine, reflective compassion, it might be the Age of Order. Goldmask is a Golden Order Fundamentalist who laments how other Fundamentalists have just sought an enemy to fight against rather than saving and protecting people, studies different beliefs to observe how they function in relation to one another, and ultimately creates a solution that removes the inherently flawed system of fickle people becoming gods (let alone through gruesome means), holds the parties accountable, and seemingly heals the Erdtree.
Well, if you look at the pose you strike while using 'Miquella's Light' incantation, it harkens to the pose you strike while casting law of regression.
I love the analysis here and the way you link the law of causality to Miquella’s own motivations. While I agree it works really well to explain his motivations, I feel like “original sin” may have been to link Miquella back to Marika and how closely their stories parallel one another. Both wanted to create a better world-Marika wanted a deathless world, most likely because she saw her entire village be tortured and killed, and Miquella wanted a kinder world, something better than what Marika built. But Marika tried to bring about this deathless world by killing and destroying all those who opposed her. Miquella tries to bring about a gentler world by manipulating two of his brothers to their deaths and taking away everyone’s free will. Miquella is no better than Marika in the end; he can’t move beyond that original sin-Marika’s sin-and instead falls into it and becomes consumed by it like she was. Both translations work for Miquella in my opinion.
It’s interesting speculation, but it’s just that till FromSoft addresses it. It’s the creator’s decision how they choose to translate something. It’s not an ancient text that can’t be fixed, it’s modern.
I get why they translated it as "Original Sin". Before eating the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve knew no evil or good, that can be interpreted as existing outside karmic causality.
I actually think Miquella would even drop this idea, since you know, Malenia and her rot, Godwyn and the eclipse, whose to say he wouldn't drop this also?
Also, a few notes on the Messmer remembrance: there's no consequentiality between Messmer being cursed by the serpent and her mother plucking his eye out. Marika's action seems less a consequence of the child being born accursed and more a deliberate choice made on what's convenient to her, just as many other times.
Once again, the original sin seems to be a mistranslation, no idea where it came from but it's so confusing. Tho in the past few years we've learnt to keep an eye out on visible mistranslations, and once you're aware they tend to pop up much more easily...
Thank you for this, as when I saw that Original Sin part I thought it has something to do with Christianity of sort, with Marika being a Virgin Mary of sort conceived without Original Sin but yeaaahh... 😵💫😅
Great game, have played it for hundreds of hours already. But how you can invest so much time, energy and money into a game and have such short and disappointing cut scenes at the end is a mystery to me.
This makes sense! Marika wanted to remove the embodiment of the 'forbidden shadow' but left the concept of the urges of the shadow self intact: violence, bestial energy, untamed spirit, and so on. In doing so she broke the natural cycle (where the serpent represents life, death, rebirth) which was further complicated by the buildup of karma that was unable to be cycled. Miquella it sounds like wanted to eliminate even the concept of the shadow self by controlling people's hearts and minds (in the literal and political sense) to force peace in those that oppose him.
I wonder if by trying to escape causality, he’s trying to create a new order without the violence that the Golden Order was built on, and perpetuates itself on. But his efforts are in vain, as violence was necessary to gain the power to become a god
especially considering some of Ymir's lines, i feel like i can understand how the translators linked causality to Marika's original sin. even with this retranslation, it's not clear to me that the original sin or causality are entirely different concepts. Even Law of Causality is linked to the causality of the golden order, not a causality beyond the golden order. and the golden order/marika's sin is what he's trying to go beyond. Hence, the Marika's original sin that set off the entire chain of causality the lands between is living under now.
there maybe some artistic leaps with Frognations translations, but i feel like quality of their prose is so far beyond most other games that I'm willing to extend some grace to them and at least try to understand why they made these decisions.
That said I appreciate the video and bringing these things to light, good food for thought
Nice video. The "Causality" makes way more sense (beyond the Berserk Reference) from the Buddhist perspective. Basically Causality is the inherent order of the universe, the eternal cicle o birth agging, suffering, death and reincarnation, and "freeing one self" from causality is the way to avoid said suffering, or, in other words, "Achieving Nirvana". So, by breaking her own rune, Miquella is breaking her "Link" to the old order, allowing him to start anew... Unless we get to them first, IYKWIM 😂
I think we need to go a step farther and correct it to "to escape causality". Go beyond may be the correct translation, but poetically, escaping one's fate or generational trauma or original sin is a reoccurring theme that appears to be the insinuated meaning here. To escape samsara and behold the world as it is, the good, the bad, the whole of it