The fallen leaves tell the story of an arborescent world order decaying from the inside out. The Land Between is slowly cracking away at the seams as its twilight draws ever closer.
This is the world that FromSoftware shows the player, a world in which we are left to pick up fragments of a bygone past piece by piece as we fight against the forces that seek to uphold the ways of old.
This world we are shown is a not-so-subtle metaphor for our own world, a world that so desperately clings onto the ideas of old (capitalism) in the hopes their old world order won’t buckle to the pressure of history and the forces of progress itself, that force being you, the Tarnished.
Elden Ring is a game of stagnation, a game that challenges the very essence of the series it originates from, a game that seeks to take the Soulsborne formula to its logical end point and burn it all down in order to start anew. In some ways it succeeds at doing this, in other ways it doesn’t, and I think the ways it succeeds at this overshadow even its most glaring failures.
The gameplay here is refined to the best it can be; it feels as though every weapon was meticulously crafted to allow for some of the most varied and unique build variety I’ve seen in a Souls game. The open-world especially lends well to enhancing the variety of Elden Ring due to its non-linear nature, which allows for some of the most freedom in exploration and gameplay I’ve seen in a modern AAA title. I sometimes feel that the gameplay, however, was so streamlined and improved to such a degree it can sometimes feel sterile in a sense. I miss the roughness and edge to the older Souls games which I feel isn't present in From's newer games. There’s times, however, where this freedom can become overwhelming and lead to parts of the world feeling either bloated with meaningless content (excess copy-and-paste bosses and dungeons) or completely barren, a problem that could have been easily remedied if the map itself was slightly reworked to be a tad bit smaller. I feel as though a rework of the map that makes it more compact and tight would have greatly benefited Elden Ring and led to the game feeling less unbalanced in the way it presented its content. Even in spite of all that, there’s a genuine understated beauty to the world of Elden Ring that I cannot deny. This world is beautiful at times, and even in its rotting and decaying state, there are still shreds of beauty left that are worth holding on to.
Moving on from the gameplay, I feel that Elden Ring truly shines narratively and thematically the most. One may be quick to write Elden Ring off as a rehash of Souls, which to an extent is a take that isn’t without its merit. I, however, believe that it’s continuity with and rupture away from Soulsborne narrative similarities that this game truly gets interesting; it feels like a meta-self-examination and final nail in the coffin for these ideas. Elden Ring has many similarities to Dark Souls; often times, the main narrative similarity people point to is the concept of a dying world held in stasis that we are forced to decide the fate of, but what Elden Ring does with this concept is far more brilliant than people give it credit for.
Elden Ring is not just taking Souls narrative and gameplay concepts to their logical end points; it’s also burning them down. Elden Ring is Miyazaki’s pivotal turning point, where he realises that this formula is not going to be sustainable forever and that it’s necessary to accelerate these ideas to their end points and then burn it all down (symbolically done through the burning of the Erdtree).
To further understand the significance of the Erdtree, I must draw upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
In their follow-up book to Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guatarri describe two forms of organisation: rhizomatic (non-hierarchical) and arborescent (hierarchical). These two forms of organisation are obviously references to plants, with arborescence referring to trees with a central root system and trunk and rhizomes referring to potatoes and their decentralised, free-flowing root system, to put it simply. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze uses these plant metaphors as a way to explain and illuminate the flaws of certain organisational structures and forms, with arborescent structures having one key flaw: their dependency on each other. If one part of the structure dies, rots, breaks, etc., the rest will follow suit, as they are dependent on each other.
Now, with this understanding of arborescence, we can tie it to the Erdtree and its functionality within the narrative of Elden Ring. In Elden Ring, the Erdtree serves as a monument that represents and upholds the old world; it maintains order and allows the world to continue as it is, but if this order is threatened or destroyed, the very same old world order it once upheld will crumble soon thereafter. It is through the actions of The Tarnished that we are able to light this arborescent structure ablaze and accelerate history forward (I would use this as a jumping-off point to explain Mark Fisher’s idea of accelerationism (not to be confused with Landian accelerationism)and how it ties into the story of Elden Ring, but this review is already too long as is).
Elden Ring is a story of stagnation and rebirth.
I ultimately see Elden Ring and, more specifically, its Frenzied Flame ending as a rejection and rupture away from the ideas of the old and an embrace of more radical new forms and ideas, while also staying in continuity with the general style of Soulsborne. For all of its flaws, of which this game has many, I firmly believe it’s a bold new step in the right direction. I believe that Elden Ring is not only the end of an era, but a new beginning and continuation into a new, radical, and free era of expression and creativity from Miyazaki and his team.
This is the world that FromSoftware shows the player, a world in which we are left to pick up fragments of a bygone past piece by piece as we fight against the forces that seek to uphold the ways of old.
This world we are shown is a not-so-subtle metaphor for our own world, a world that so desperately clings onto the ideas of old (capitalism) in the hopes their old world order won’t buckle to the pressure of history and the forces of progress itself, that force being you, the Tarnished.
Elden Ring is a game of stagnation, a game that challenges the very essence of the series it originates from, a game that seeks to take the Soulsborne formula to its logical end point and burn it all down in order to start anew. In some ways it succeeds at doing this, in other ways it doesn’t, and I think the ways it succeeds at this overshadow even its most glaring failures.
The gameplay here is refined to the best it can be; it feels as though every weapon was meticulously crafted to allow for some of the most varied and unique build variety I’ve seen in a Souls game. The open-world especially lends well to enhancing the variety of Elden Ring due to its non-linear nature, which allows for some of the most freedom in exploration and gameplay I’ve seen in a modern AAA title. I sometimes feel that the gameplay, however, was so streamlined and improved to such a degree it can sometimes feel sterile in a sense. I miss the roughness and edge to the older Souls games which I feel isn't present in From's newer games. There’s times, however, where this freedom can become overwhelming and lead to parts of the world feeling either bloated with meaningless content (excess copy-and-paste bosses and dungeons) or completely barren, a problem that could have been easily remedied if the map itself was slightly reworked to be a tad bit smaller. I feel as though a rework of the map that makes it more compact and tight would have greatly benefited Elden Ring and led to the game feeling less unbalanced in the way it presented its content. Even in spite of all that, there’s a genuine understated beauty to the world of Elden Ring that I cannot deny. This world is beautiful at times, and even in its rotting and decaying state, there are still shreds of beauty left that are worth holding on to.
Moving on from the gameplay, I feel that Elden Ring truly shines narratively and thematically the most. One may be quick to write Elden Ring off as a rehash of Souls, which to an extent is a take that isn’t without its merit. I, however, believe that it’s continuity with and rupture away from Soulsborne narrative similarities that this game truly gets interesting; it feels like a meta-self-examination and final nail in the coffin for these ideas. Elden Ring has many similarities to Dark Souls; often times, the main narrative similarity people point to is the concept of a dying world held in stasis that we are forced to decide the fate of, but what Elden Ring does with this concept is far more brilliant than people give it credit for.
Elden Ring is not just taking Souls narrative and gameplay concepts to their logical end points; it’s also burning them down. Elden Ring is Miyazaki’s pivotal turning point, where he realises that this formula is not going to be sustainable forever and that it’s necessary to accelerate these ideas to their end points and then burn it all down (symbolically done through the burning of the Erdtree).
To further understand the significance of the Erdtree, I must draw upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
In their follow-up book to Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guatarri describe two forms of organisation: rhizomatic (non-hierarchical) and arborescent (hierarchical). These two forms of organisation are obviously references to plants, with arborescence referring to trees with a central root system and trunk and rhizomes referring to potatoes and their decentralised, free-flowing root system, to put it simply. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze uses these plant metaphors as a way to explain and illuminate the flaws of certain organisational structures and forms, with arborescent structures having one key flaw: their dependency on each other. If one part of the structure dies, rots, breaks, etc., the rest will follow suit, as they are dependent on each other.
Now, with this understanding of arborescence, we can tie it to the Erdtree and its functionality within the narrative of Elden Ring. In Elden Ring, the Erdtree serves as a monument that represents and upholds the old world; it maintains order and allows the world to continue as it is, but if this order is threatened or destroyed, the very same old world order it once upheld will crumble soon thereafter. It is through the actions of The Tarnished that we are able to light this arborescent structure ablaze and accelerate history forward (I would use this as a jumping-off point to explain Mark Fisher’s idea of accelerationism (not to be confused with Landian accelerationism)and how it ties into the story of Elden Ring, but this review is already too long as is).
Elden Ring is a story of stagnation and rebirth.
I ultimately see Elden Ring and, more specifically, its Frenzied Flame ending as a rejection and rupture away from the ideas of the old and an embrace of more radical new forms and ideas, while also staying in continuity with the general style of Soulsborne. For all of its flaws, of which this game has many, I firmly believe it’s a bold new step in the right direction. I believe that Elden Ring is not only the end of an era, but a new beginning and continuation into a new, radical, and free era of expression and creativity from Miyazaki and his team.
2 Comments
really well-written piece! the frenzied flame ending is probably my favorite for that exact reason. both it and the ranni ending have this vibe of deep uncertainty to their rejection of the status quo, but in ranni's it feels somewhat vague what it actually entails, maybe you're supposed to feel good about it? frenzied flame ending is unabashedly immoral, but likewise has undeniably led to societal upheaval that gives it this dark twinge of it maybe being the only real productive outcome for the lands between
Giap
2 months ago