Elden Ring: Goldmask's Revelation Can't Mend the Ending

Elden Ring:

Elden Ring: Exchanging Bonfires for Grace

Elden Ring: Exploring The Open World and Legacy Dungeons

Elden Ring: The Infamous Difficulty of Dark Souls Is Ashes

Elden Ring: PvP Lacks Grace, While Combat is Divine

Elden Ring: Goldmask's Revelation Can't Mend the Ending

The last element worth considering is the lore. At the beginning of this series I mentioned Elden Ring's introductory cinematic. It continues many Dark Souls traditions; an obscure, profound story told through occasional cinematics, but mostly by inference and item descriptions. For a deeper understanding of Elden Ring lore watch the videos of VaatiVidya on YouTube. His insightful videos untangle and then reweave the threads of plot and lore into a comprehensible tapestry. His videos were invaluable for shaping my understanding of the vast world, not only the Lands Between, but Lordran, Drangleic, and Lothric.

To reiterate, Elden Ring obliges the player, a tarnished of no renown, to reclaim the Elden Ring and become Elden Lord. The Lands Between hosts gods, demigods, monsters, and factions competing to rule the Lands Between. Order strives with chaos, good versus evil, life vs death. There is a vast quantity of names of people, events, magical items, and conflicts to remember. The forces of Order, of the Erdtree, of the Two Fingers, of The Golden Order, of the Roundtable Hold, seek to reestablish order and restore the Elden Ring. The Three Fingers, lords of chaos, hope to unleash the frenzied flame across the world, ravaging it in madness and fire. A third faction, led by Ranni, wants to end day, ushering forth an endless night illuminated by innumerable stars. These three factions don't encompass every perspective. Other lesser factions, dead factions, enslaved factions, or histories of factions influence the story with their own desires. Most NPCs align with a faction, while also seeking their own selfish desires, regardless of any greater goal. Elden Ring offers so many diverse opinions, thoughts, ideologies, and behaviors. There is a collection of ever shifting alliances, causing friends to become foes, leading to betrayals and double-double crosses. People appear to be one thing, but are another, to have one goal, but to seek another. In this maelstrom of confusion and opacity, the player must choose as best they can.

But Elden Ring is disappointing, because the player has few choices. The developer allows three reactions to the world. If I modify the world slightly and rule over it, everything will be fine. It is broken, and it can't be remade. I want an entirely different world that shares nothing in common with this previous one. Technically Elden Ring has six endings, but there are really only three. There is a major choice three quarters of the way through the game. The Erdtree rejects the player and must be made to see reason. At the Forge of the Giants, all but one of the endings require the player to say “yes”, when asked if they will commit a cardinal sin. Setting fire to an NPC, the player uses the flames' destructive force to overthrow the existing order, and its creative power to fashion a new one.

All but the basic ending requires the player to complete an NPC's quest. After defeating the final boss, the player chooses the ending they desire. The game lists the player's options, and the player selects the one they want. The endings are disappointingly brief. Combined, all six endings total fourteen minutes of cinematic. Four of the endings barely differ from each other, with only a minuscule change in text and tint. It is not enough resolution after a monumental game. Little is resolved. The epilogue is pathetically short, with similar results for the four of the six endings. Each spends two minutes showing the player fix Marika and sit upon a throne, ushering in the age of [your flavor here].

I'd unlocked three of the six endings. I choose to repair the world with the Mending Rune of Perfect Order. This assumed the gods had been wrong in thinking they were good. With the wisdom of the sage Goldmask I created a land free of conflict and ambition. Only, the cinematic didn't convince me that I'd accomplished anything. It didn't feel momentous. While not on the same level, this is vaguely reminiscent of the ending of Mass Effect 3. It's not nearly as bad, but I'll never recover from that debacle. The Dark Souls series has always had short endings. There are two reasons why the Elden Ring endings are worse. One, four of them are the same, with only the barest differentiation. Two, it's difficult to imagine what follows. Dark Souls endings have always been either; the player maintains the faltering status quo by linking the flame, or lets the flame die, allowing darkness to prevail. The endings of Elden Ring are unimaginable. What does it mean to usher in the Age of Stars? What comes after the Frenzied Flame scours the earth? And, in my case, how is the Age of Perfect Order, different from what already existed? The epilogue is deficient with information. One can only hope the DLC provides superior closure.

The overall lore is strongly reminiscent of Dark Souls. But because this game is larger the macro-lore is stretched thin, and the micro-lore is weirder, disjointed, and insufficient. Regions and sub-regions each contain their own divergent themes. Enemies are a weird collection of unconnected concepts, a kitchen sink of monsters. There are strange pot creatures, a variety of giants, bird monsters, possessed monkey foes, giant crabs and lobsters, vampire women who sing depressing songs in latin, different types of golems, bats, corpses, spirit jellyfish, lion men, stone imps, miners, soldiers, skeletons, undead nobles, giant bears, trolls, marionettes, claymen, wormfaces, magic snails dragons, beastmen, giant bugs, albinaurics, giant shrimp humanoids, mutants, sorcerers, cursed omens, zombies, envoys, giant hands, man-serpents, basilisks (they're back!) and crystal humanoids. I couldn't comprehend the reason for the existence of this vast host of disparate enemies. The developer doesn't properly explain how these creatures fit into the world. 

As the end nears, the player irrevocably alters the Lands Between. About two thirds of the way through the game, the player passes through Leyndell, the abandoned Royal Capital. Already it is a shadow of its former self, but despite the end of the age it is well preserved. Led by their quest to become Elden Lord, they pass onward. With their plan almost completed, the player returns to find the city in (further) ruins. The city's streets are buried in ash from the burning Erdtree. Nothing else is changed in the Lands Between except for this specific location, but it's a sufficient twist for the final confrontation.

In Conclusion,

Elden Ring deserves a review at least twice as long, but others have already written so much. There is no dearth of information to be found by a curious player. Elden Ring makes incremental improvements on the already excellent combat system of Dark Souls III. It continues FromSoftware's epic and darkly ambiguous style of storytelling. The visuals of the vast world expand on those of Sekiro and Dark Souls. They breathe grandeur, adding character to the Lands Between. On the other hand, I hate the open world. While every inch, corner, and crevasse contains something, most of those somethings are inconsequential and insignificant, one more something I can't use. The mere existence of these drags me away from the consequential gameplay,

The character customization is absurdly amazing. There are hundreds of weapons, spells, ashes, whetstones, rings, weapon abilities, and pieces of armor. Players can use the unlimited smithing stones to upgrade all their weapons, and larval tears to completely reset their character. They can craft hundreds of consumables, and use Great Runes to increase their power. There are dozens of Ashes to summon to battle. The number of character builds on Fextralife is astounding. 

The lore carries the classic Dark Souls feel of complexity and ambiguity. Mysteries, some answerable and others, unknowable, abound. There are so many questions of who is doing what and why, and what came before, and what will come after. Despite its variety and vastness, it feels connected. Only the wildly different genres of monsters feels disjointed.

Elden Ring continues the tradition of combat mechanics that are essential for its gameplay, while introducing new elements, tying them firmly into its exploring mechanics.

FromSoftware has announced an expansion to arrive by mid 2024. If it is anything like Ashes of Ariandel or The Ringed City, it will be a fantastic addition to a strong contender for game of the year.

Goldmask's revelation can't mend the ending, can the DLC?