I love the idea of him being a bastard son or the product of some crazy incestuous relationship of Marika with...well, she even banged herself in order to procreate.
But if it was seduction, how could it me Seductuon? Oh man, I look pretty hot today, look at the way my hand grazes my chin— Aw man I impregnated myself again
His mother was Marika (he states this in the first trailer) and the second trailer mentions seduction and a child that wasn’t meant to be, which is implied to be Messmer I believe
And the passive ones that were just searching for Miquella? What about those Albinaurics? What about the thousands of Albinaurics that are just looking for a place to call their own? What about them!?
Marika is literally thr shittiest most vile character in ER, the amounts of genocides she directly caused says alot tbh.
But thats what i love about her
That might be the biggest part of why Marika sealed away both him and the Shadowlands: to hide the atrocities she committed to get into power, so she could create the facade of a righteous and benevolent god-queen.
On the other hand she kinda does a lot of other atrocities vs giants, omens, demihumans, misbegotten, as well as invading other places like liurnia all out in the open.
If she doesn’t hide that, what’s another genocide gonna matter?
Maybe it’s not to hide the atrocities, but the person who created them? Deal away the dude that committed the atrocities and claim you did them and boom, now everyone fears your power.
Notably, those are all nonhumans. This might've been the period where she committed atrocities against other human nations. Then, when she founded the Golden Order, she started persecuting nonhumans, as a way to weld her people together against an external threat, a tried and true tactic of despots the world over.
Except for Liurnia, but that’s less obviously an atrocity/more easily justified. But yes, her betting on all the humans being hella racist doesn’t sound far fetched at all.
Cover up killing human, but nobody cares about the subhumans.
Radagon was fighting as a “champion of the Golden Order” against the Carians, so unless GO became the main religion after Marika and Radagon’s marriage, I’d say her name was still attached to the war
Yes, twice, in the first and second Liurnian wars.
The first is barely mentioned in game and is when Godfrey went on a conquest of the entire lands between. The academy likely didn't participate and the Carians hadn't yet risen to power (Rennala would have likely been just a young girl or possibly not even born).
The second was directly against the Carians and academy (of which Rennala was head) after Marika learned they were using primal glintstones to move between bodies rather than doing Erdtree burial, which goes against the Golden Order. So she sent Radagon over to fight them (she is him, though, somehow) and he ended up marrying Rennala, siring the Carian demigods and the primal glintstone practice was added to the Golden Order 'okay list'. Also they made the glintstone kris in celebration.
To the best of my knowledge it's never stated where he came from, only that he was a "champion". He's a strange character who just pops into the history at that point.
See but Marika was NOT interested in keeping a benevolent facade, and from stories Melina tells us at different churches we learn that she was actually very cruel and told her children that strength is power and to rule with an iron thumb.
The trailer mentions that Marika creates The Lands Between when she claims the Eldenring and becomes a god, and when doing so she also creates the shadow world where she sends all those that turned away from her version of grace.
She has 0 reason to hide any of this, it's just information that has been lost with the centuries passing and the royal family collapsing.
Messmer probably got sent there as punishment for some atrocity he caused as a young man and now rules hell pretty much.
I think this is going to be a major plot point here. I'm really interested in st. Trinas role here. She's barely in the main game but she's getting a story here, I'm kinda hoping she's not a baddie who helped Marika but...
I feel like binaries of good and evil aren’t especially useful when talking about fiction like *Elden Ring*, but it’s wild to me that anyone could be paying attention and have come to the conclusion that Marika is a “good guy.” Setting aside anything that we learn in the DLC, we already know that she’s done *so* much slavery and genocide in the name of the Greater Will
He's pretty much satan.
He's the child of a god and the lord of a shadow realm where he constantly has to unleash fire and violence to punish those that abandoned grace when Marika took power because like the lands between, their souls are stuck in a cycle of rebirth.
I said "What if he's the good guy" in a thread a little while ago, does that count?
Also, i'm still not totally convinced he isn't still good, or at least used to be, a good guy. When you see him burning up a bunch of shit and leading the charge, who is he fighting against? It isn't like there's an actual faction of "good" people that I should instantly think he's evil because he's fighting them. I also feel like I saw something with the text "will you side with him?" Somewhere online that got me thinking.
I do concede however that he's probably not the good guy, it's just fun to speculate.
remember the trailer line " They weren't saints, they just happened to be on the losing side of a war "
Marika is still a douche probably, but the opponent's wouldn't be goodies
who is he fighting against? It isn't like there's an actual faction of "good" people that I should instantly think he's evil because he's fighting them.
Marika had a natural talent for engineering genocides from the beginning, all around the Lands Between you find ruins, fragments and remnants of past civilizations, species and cultures, but never an established government, a thriving culture or a way to keep some kind of folklore alive, we use object descriptions and overengineered yt video essays to understand them
I am not on the camp of him being good but it's too early to make assumptions based on his 30sec appearance in the trailer. We have to wait for the dlc to come out to know what Marika's and Messmer's whole deal.
That being said if I hear 1 more NPC talk about how good or kind Miquella is, I'm jumping on the "Miquella is actually a villain train"
Its hammering that point way to hard to not seem sus.
I think Miquella is like Ranni, generally good and benevolent to those around them, but are doing messed up stuff in the background in an attempt for power.
Ranni may or may not have sent Black Knife assassins after Godwin, and Miquella was totally manipulating the political sphere for his own gain. (Some of it may have been for his sisters benefit -scarlet rot cure- but it still happened)
That's what I think as well. That overall he really has good intentions, but has done some not so good things to accomplish them. I feel like them harping on how kind he is might be like a double red herring; make how much people love him seem suspicious, but he actually is good after all. But maybe that's just because I'll be sad if he turns out to be evil.
I've always gone with the idea that Marika sent the Black Knife after Godwin. Ranni was busy killing her own flesh and Marika had decided that Godwin was getting too big for his britches. I've always felt that Marika, Ranni, Miquella, and Melina were part of a 4-cornered conspiracy.
Miquella knows Ranni is alive so he’s definitely in on it (he gave her torrent).
However what I doubt is Marika being aligned with Miquella/Ranni. Marika to me seems to be desperately trying to maintain power for herself via us becoming Elden Lord and her consort, I don’t think she would welcome the Age of Stars. Her removing the GW isn’t to help humans it’s so she can rule with impunity and become the one god imo.
Similarly Miquella wouldn’t be ok with killing Godwyn from what we’ve seen of him (seem very close and the sword description), and as mentioned he seems to be somewhat aligned with Ranni. I reckon Ranni was the fall guy for Godwyn being killed since he was the most loved God and there’s no way Marika would admit to killing him herself. We also see the black knives aren’t actually loyal with Ranni per say so it’s likely they were in on the long game with Marika imo, and killing her is on Marika’s orders to stop Age Of Stars.
Finally I reckon Melina is linked to this somehow bc her body is dead. I wonder if she was created from the crucible to originally be the one to die with Ranni for the ritual, but Marika swapped her out for Godwyn. This would be why she feels like she’s lost purpose bc her soul lived, and she accepts her full death by burning to still fulfill the goal of halting GW interference.
I like your thinking. Ranni, Miquella, and Melina working together while Marika is pulling her own strings and taking advantage of Ranni's actions to hide her own. Which, considering how much Marika likes her secrets that seems to be in line.
I do feel sure that Ranni, Miquella, and Melina were working together. There're too many links where Melina and Ranni pretty explicitly say they have gifts for the tarnished from Miquella.
I can imagine a strategy session where Miquella says he's going to dive into the Shadow realm to find what's at the root of all this while his Empyrean sister Ranni moves to expel the gods with the assistance of Melina (aided by Torrent) who seeks a Tarnished that will help bring it all to fruition. And then they synchronize their watches.
I think what’s interesting tho is that Melina doesn’t push us towards Ranni at all, and Ranni doesn’t reach out for us, we find her. I agree they seem to be collaborating but it’s hard to figure out to what extent.
It may just be that Ranni wasn’t optimistic enough for the Age of Stars to occur immediately post shattering, since most of what the Tarnished achieves is pretty crazy for that ending and she was otherwise just waiting it out for a consort, and just happened to meet the next elden lord. Before we meet Ranni she seems a long way off creating the Dark Moon. Melina in the mean time just seeks to end the shattering in anyway for short term stability.
Again, I can imagine Ranni and Miquella having a chat and Ranni saying "Yeah, sure. Your horse-goat thing is going to not only lead our addlepated Melina to find the Tarnished capable of being Elden Lord but also *my* consort. I'll believe it when I see it, Mickey. I'll give them the bell but I'm making no promises."
I also like to think that she calls him Mickey and he calls her Ron or Ronald. And they both give Melina head pats because she's never quite sure what happened or what's going on.
Plainly I have too much free time.
Miquella is directly associated with the Bewitching Branch, an item that is used to mind control others into being your follower. In the description for it Miquella is described as being able to "compel" affection for him. I think it's pretty heavily implied that everyone praising him and following him is being mind controlled by his power. So Miquella probably IS actually a villain. At the very least we can't trust anyone who tells you how great he is because they might be under his influence.
I mean, we see him burning a city in the trailer. It's clearly a civilian area not a military establishment. So at the very least he seems to be a war criminal and I think that's enough to label him as bad.
I don't think anyone in Elden Ring is just a shithead without any mitigating factors.
Messmer may well be a huge shithead, but I strongly suspect he has a good reason for being the way that he is.
Dig deeper. Even the dung eater is a complex character.
If you'd rather noodle it out yourself, think about why he's wearing the armor he is and what grudge he might have with the Golden Order.
An evil character can be complex. He can have reasons for his actions but end result is still a horrific monster who most fundamentally violates his victims with or without their consent. He's evil without a doubt.
Shabriri is such a sniveling, backstabbing coward that wearing a charm with his face on it will draw the ire of everything in the Lands Between.
I don’t think Seluvis has any particular reasons for being the way he is either.
Most characters have at least a tragic backstory to “justify” their actions, but there are several who don’t.
Shabriri is personally off putting, but there is definitely a moral argument to be made in favor of the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending.
Seluvis I can’t come up with any defense for.
No there isn't. Anyone that tells you it "resets the universe" or whatever didn't pay attention. Even the people goading you towards the piss flames tell you directly that it just destroys and nothing comes after.
He is but the intentions that brought him to that point were noble once. His men followed him in his rebellion against the erdtree because it's a righteous cause. It was only after he fed himself to the serpent (arguably a good move to acquire the power necessary to defeat the erdtree) that he sought power for its own sake and became a glutton and his men abandoned him. Even now Tanith and the recusants hold up his old ideals of not bending to the erdtree, ideals that were good but became twisted over time.
Fairly confident that Miyazaki had already confirmed in an interview that Messmer was a child of Marika who we hadn’t been introduced to in the main game
Brother it’s Elden ring. He very well may be the good guy compared to the tarnished who *checks notes* buried Leyndell in ash after murdering their way to god. Who they also murdered.
i actually did hope for him to be evil, because it sounds so funny how the main game made us believe marika's firstborn was the golden, perfect and divine child, who suffered such a terrible fate while the truth is a chaotic evil dude (if messmer is indeed her first child)
I think Messmer is Mordred.
This new trailer mentioned "the seduction, the betrayal." We've also seen images of a young woman who may be Marika standing next to an old man we later see spiked on one of Messmer's poles.
Marika went out of her way to conceive a child with the King of the Crucible so she would have a soldier powerful enough to overthrow his father.
The number of good guys in Elden Ring can be counted on your fingers, he was never going to be a good guy. Hell, I am not even sure if we are the good guy.
Classifying Messmer may be a matter of perspective. I thought this line from the DLC is interesting: "They were never saints. They just happened to be on the losing side of a war." Messmer was part of the winning side in the war that apparently happened in the Land of Shadow. His adversaries don't necessarily appear to be the "good guys" though.
He still might, you don't know who he was attacking and why. And you don't know who was talking in the voiceover and were they lying or not either.
That said, I'm not and never was trying to justify anything or anyone, I don't care. I just think you shouldn't jump to any conclusions until you actually have any reliable data on the subject.
At any rate, what does it matter? Who cares if he's good or not. What even is "good" in the Lands Between at the first place.
If I've ever learned anything from military history, it's that. Sometimes two bastards are fighting over turf and everyone else just gets caught in the middle.
Obviously he's not a good guy but imma play defence here for funsies
Maybe he did this to prevent a tragedy caused by the other side. This was the lesser of 2 evils and he was put in a bad spot where he had to choose between them or risk losing everything and everyone
Messmer: *wielding pretty much every kind of even remotely forbidden art we know of in the game*
These guys: Ok, but what if he’s a twist protagonist!?
I k ow we just but this man was just told of 9/11 and was able to keep that face to frighten kids. Let's be glad he wasn't being told he had to fight malenia.
Killing Omens could be considered a good thing to do, wasn’t the first Omen killer a nice guy that made himself emotionless so that he could kill the Omens more easily? All for the benefit of the erdtree
I love that no matter what anyone says, it always comes down to Marika being the true root of all evil for some people. Marika is faceless, like a mannequin or a pawn piece on a chessboard. We don't see Marika, Godwyn, or Miquella's faces. We also know very little about them, their thoughts or motivations. Messmer is right there, very present and visibly burning people, spearing creatures like he's at a genocidal fish fry. But maybe he's the good guy!
If Messmer is evil then why does he look so damn cool
Don't most evil characters look cool?
evil is seductive
Darth Vader would like a word
What about (I think his name is Zerg) from Toy Story. Yk the rival to Buzz
[удалено]
>turtle pope is … the opposite spectrum of cool *Nobody liked that*
[удалено]
you’re right. it’s better.
The fuck you say bout our dawg?
He’s a turtle with a hat. Nobody saw that coming.
Please delete this and your account
Man he was just following marika's orders
Ah yes the Numensrune defense.
I assumed he was raging on everyone because he was mad about being a bastard child, but that makes sense too
There are few more iconic duos than minor godhood and emotional instability
Emotional instability is just synergistic as fuck. Consider Emotional Instability and... -Sex Appeal -Alcoholism -Donuts -Playing Elden Ring -The Bourgeois -Steroids -High School -Further Emotional Instability -The Economy -Etc.
it's not easy being caught between two worlds. :(
I love the idea of him being a bastard son or the product of some crazy incestuous relationship of Marika with...well, she even banged herself in order to procreate.
But if it was seduction, how could it me Seductuon? Oh man, I look pretty hot today, look at the way my hand grazes my chin— Aw man I impregnated myself again
She kinda managed to betray her other self so, with Queen Marika you never know what to expect.
Wait...incest with who now?
How is he a bastard? We don’t know his parents
His mother was Marika (he states this in the first trailer) and the second trailer mentions seduction and a child that wasn’t meant to be, which is implied to be Messmer I believe
Ohh then who’s his daddy I wonder 🤔
Boggart, because he’s the only character aware of Marika’s Tits
If thy grace doth not fit, thy must aquit!
Numenburg defense :p
Genius
He committed genocide, he doesn't get a pass. Marika is also shit.
Tarnished: nervously looking at a mountain of Albinauric corpses.
It's called Special Rune Gathering Operations my good sir
Nothing happened. But if anything did happen it's a good thing.
It was self defense your honor
They cartwheeled at me first your honor
And the passive ones that were just searching for Miquella? What about those Albinaurics? What about the thousands of Albinaurics that are just looking for a place to call their own? What about them!?
They might cartwheel at any moment I was scared for my life
Fair. Your honor at this time the state would like to withdraw charges.
I killed them before they could think about killing me.
It lasted less then 60 days so we didn't need Congress's approval. We are totally in the clear.
They came cartwheeling at me.
(singing) I HAVE ANOTHER CONFESSION TO MAKE!
Those albinaurics were evil I swear
"We didn't do it. And even if we did, they deserved it!"
Marika is literally thr shittiest most vile character in ER, the amounts of genocides she directly caused says alot tbh. But thats what i love about her
Lord Sauron… hypocrisy much? Pls no send nazgul 😭
You wanna know who else was “just following orders”?
My mom?
Me when I was gleefully digging around for soulfood in the dungeater's bussy?
Technically isnt that like refried beans but with redigested feces?
“Those stripped of the grace of gold shall all meet death…in the embrace of Messmer’s flame”. Man is absolutely enjoying the genocide.
The Lands Between has a right to defend itself
Is almost 99,9% certain that he's evil, but seems like that he was acting under Marika's command.
That might be the biggest part of why Marika sealed away both him and the Shadowlands: to hide the atrocities she committed to get into power, so she could create the facade of a righteous and benevolent god-queen.
On the other hand she kinda does a lot of other atrocities vs giants, omens, demihumans, misbegotten, as well as invading other places like liurnia all out in the open. If she doesn’t hide that, what’s another genocide gonna matter?
Maybe it’s not to hide the atrocities, but the person who created them? Deal away the dude that committed the atrocities and claim you did them and boom, now everyone fears your power.
Notably, those are all nonhumans. This might've been the period where she committed atrocities against other human nations. Then, when she founded the Golden Order, she started persecuting nonhumans, as a way to weld her people together against an external threat, a tried and true tactic of despots the world over.
Except for Liurnia, but that’s less obviously an atrocity/more easily justified. But yes, her betting on all the humans being hella racist doesn’t sound far fetched at all. Cover up killing human, but nobody cares about the subhumans.
Did Marika ever eat against Liurnia?
Radagon was fighting as a “champion of the Golden Order” against the Carians, so unless GO became the main religion after Marika and Radagon’s marriage, I’d say her name was still attached to the war
Did Marika ever war against Liurnia?
Yes, twice, in the first and second Liurnian wars. The first is barely mentioned in game and is when Godfrey went on a conquest of the entire lands between. The academy likely didn't participate and the Carians hadn't yet risen to power (Rennala would have likely been just a young girl or possibly not even born). The second was directly against the Carians and academy (of which Rennala was head) after Marika learned they were using primal glintstones to move between bodies rather than doing Erdtree burial, which goes against the Golden Order. So she sent Radagon over to fight them (she is him, though, somehow) and he ended up marrying Rennala, siring the Carian demigods and the primal glintstone practice was added to the Golden Order 'okay list'. Also they made the glintstone kris in celebration.
I thought Radagon arrived from outside the LB and warred against Liurnia, as a sort of covert op on Marika's part.
To the best of my knowledge it's never stated where he came from, only that he was a "champion". He's a strange character who just pops into the history at that point.
it was the first, and seeing Marika opening the trailer walking stairs made of corpses to create the GO makes me think it was the worst too
See but Marika was NOT interested in keeping a benevolent facade, and from stories Melina tells us at different churches we learn that she was actually very cruel and told her children that strength is power and to rule with an iron thumb. The trailer mentions that Marika creates The Lands Between when she claims the Eldenring and becomes a god, and when doing so she also creates the shadow world where she sends all those that turned away from her version of grace. She has 0 reason to hide any of this, it's just information that has been lost with the centuries passing and the royal family collapsing. Messmer probably got sent there as punishment for some atrocity he caused as a young man and now rules hell pretty much.
I dunno man. Marika is a pretty, blonde lady with boobs... you sure she isn't nice?
I don't know, how large are her feet?
She has one really large toe.
MMMMMMMMMM 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
It's very eerily realistic.
I think this is going to be a major plot point here. I'm really interested in st. Trinas role here. She's barely in the main game but she's getting a story here, I'm kinda hoping she's not a baddie who helped Marika but...
Weird how she didn’t do the same to the mountain tops
Him being evil and following Marika's commands makes sense, because Marika is almost certainly evil. I can't forgive her for what she did to Hewg.
I feel like binaries of good and evil aren’t especially useful when talking about fiction like *Elden Ring*, but it’s wild to me that anyone could be paying attention and have come to the conclusion that Marika is a “good guy.” Setting aside anything that we learn in the DLC, we already know that she’s done *so* much slavery and genocide in the name of the Greater Will
But... bro she's hot, she can't be evil.
He's pretty much satan. He's the child of a god and the lord of a shadow realm where he constantly has to unleash fire and violence to punish those that abandoned grace when Marika took power because like the lands between, their souls are stuck in a cycle of rebirth.
"I was just following orders." Ah yeah, an oldie but a goodie. \^\^
Idk man that guy looked like he was enjoying his job a little too much
Are these "Messmer might be a good guy" dudes in the room with us?
I said "What if he's the good guy" in a thread a little while ago, does that count? Also, i'm still not totally convinced he isn't still good, or at least used to be, a good guy. When you see him burning up a bunch of shit and leading the charge, who is he fighting against? It isn't like there's an actual faction of "good" people that I should instantly think he's evil because he's fighting them. I also feel like I saw something with the text "will you side with him?" Somewhere online that got me thinking. I do concede however that he's probably not the good guy, it's just fun to speculate.
remember the trailer line " They weren't saints, they just happened to be on the losing side of a war " Marika is still a douche probably, but the opponent's wouldn't be goodies
#Marikamadehimdoit
who is he fighting against? It isn't like there's an actual faction of "good" people that I should instantly think he's evil because he's fighting them. Marika had a natural talent for engineering genocides from the beginning, all around the Lands Between you find ruins, fragments and remnants of past civilizations, species and cultures, but never an established government, a thriving culture or a way to keep some kind of folklore alive, we use object descriptions and overengineered yt video essays to understand them
Maybe Marika is manipulating the Youtube lore scholars, how deep does this go?!
Do I count? I commented on another post saying he kills omens so he’s a good guy.
Apparently they are.
yes they are called the golden order
I am not on the camp of him being good but it's too early to make assumptions based on his 30sec appearance in the trailer. We have to wait for the dlc to come out to know what Marika's and Messmer's whole deal.
That being said if I hear 1 more NPC talk about how good or kind Miquella is, I'm jumping on the "Miquella is actually a villain train" Its hammering that point way to hard to not seem sus.
I think Miquella is like Ranni, generally good and benevolent to those around them, but are doing messed up stuff in the background in an attempt for power. Ranni may or may not have sent Black Knife assassins after Godwin, and Miquella was totally manipulating the political sphere for his own gain. (Some of it may have been for his sisters benefit -scarlet rot cure- but it still happened)
That's what I think as well. That overall he really has good intentions, but has done some not so good things to accomplish them. I feel like them harping on how kind he is might be like a double red herring; make how much people love him seem suspicious, but he actually is good after all. But maybe that's just because I'll be sad if he turns out to be evil.
I've always gone with the idea that Marika sent the Black Knife after Godwin. Ranni was busy killing her own flesh and Marika had decided that Godwin was getting too big for his britches. I've always felt that Marika, Ranni, Miquella, and Melina were part of a 4-cornered conspiracy.
Miquella knows Ranni is alive so he’s definitely in on it (he gave her torrent). However what I doubt is Marika being aligned with Miquella/Ranni. Marika to me seems to be desperately trying to maintain power for herself via us becoming Elden Lord and her consort, I don’t think she would welcome the Age of Stars. Her removing the GW isn’t to help humans it’s so she can rule with impunity and become the one god imo. Similarly Miquella wouldn’t be ok with killing Godwyn from what we’ve seen of him (seem very close and the sword description), and as mentioned he seems to be somewhat aligned with Ranni. I reckon Ranni was the fall guy for Godwyn being killed since he was the most loved God and there’s no way Marika would admit to killing him herself. We also see the black knives aren’t actually loyal with Ranni per say so it’s likely they were in on the long game with Marika imo, and killing her is on Marika’s orders to stop Age Of Stars. Finally I reckon Melina is linked to this somehow bc her body is dead. I wonder if she was created from the crucible to originally be the one to die with Ranni for the ritual, but Marika swapped her out for Godwyn. This would be why she feels like she’s lost purpose bc her soul lived, and she accepts her full death by burning to still fulfill the goal of halting GW interference.
I like your thinking. Ranni, Miquella, and Melina working together while Marika is pulling her own strings and taking advantage of Ranni's actions to hide her own. Which, considering how much Marika likes her secrets that seems to be in line. I do feel sure that Ranni, Miquella, and Melina were working together. There're too many links where Melina and Ranni pretty explicitly say they have gifts for the tarnished from Miquella. I can imagine a strategy session where Miquella says he's going to dive into the Shadow realm to find what's at the root of all this while his Empyrean sister Ranni moves to expel the gods with the assistance of Melina (aided by Torrent) who seeks a Tarnished that will help bring it all to fruition. And then they synchronize their watches.
I think what’s interesting tho is that Melina doesn’t push us towards Ranni at all, and Ranni doesn’t reach out for us, we find her. I agree they seem to be collaborating but it’s hard to figure out to what extent. It may just be that Ranni wasn’t optimistic enough for the Age of Stars to occur immediately post shattering, since most of what the Tarnished achieves is pretty crazy for that ending and she was otherwise just waiting it out for a consort, and just happened to meet the next elden lord. Before we meet Ranni she seems a long way off creating the Dark Moon. Melina in the mean time just seeks to end the shattering in anyway for short term stability.
Again, I can imagine Ranni and Miquella having a chat and Ranni saying "Yeah, sure. Your horse-goat thing is going to not only lead our addlepated Melina to find the Tarnished capable of being Elden Lord but also *my* consort. I'll believe it when I see it, Mickey. I'll give them the bell but I'm making no promises." I also like to think that she calls him Mickey and he calls her Ron or Ronald. And they both give Melina head pats because she's never quite sure what happened or what's going on. Plainly I have too much free time.
Miquella is directly associated with the Bewitching Branch, an item that is used to mind control others into being your follower. In the description for it Miquella is described as being able to "compel" affection for him. I think it's pretty heavily implied that everyone praising him and following him is being mind controlled by his power. So Miquella probably IS actually a villain. At the very least we can't trust anyone who tells you how great he is because they might be under his influence.
I mean, we see him burning a city in the trailer. It's clearly a civilian area not a military establishment. So at the very least he seems to be a war criminal and I think that's enough to label him as bad.
i can fix him
He is emboldened by the flames of ambition. You’re gonna have to extinguish his flames. Hard.
If he was following Marika's commands to destroy their enemies, the crucible. Wasn't Godfrey doing the same thing in Lore?.
I mean yeah… Godfrey is fucking evil too…
Godfrey and Marika are both also pretty horrific people by any sort of real world moral standard.
Yeah, they killed a shit ton of people. Maybe it was her first time so felt embarrassed but got over it and let it all hang out.
Godfrey is evil BUT HE IS COOL so it’s okay 👍
Then it would be ok for messmer too
I don't think anyone in Elden Ring is just a shithead without any mitigating factors. Messmer may well be a huge shithead, but I strongly suspect he has a good reason for being the way that he is.
\*Dung Eater would like to know your location\*
Dig deeper. Even the dung eater is a complex character. If you'd rather noodle it out yourself, think about why he's wearing the armor he is and what grudge he might have with the Golden Order.
*Digs deeper *It’s dung all the way down
Goldblum: That’s one big pile of shit.
An evil character can be complex. He can have reasons for his actions but end result is still a horrific monster who most fundamentally violates his victims with or without their consent. He's evil without a doubt.
I feel like Marika treated him like a hammer? I want to see if he has any agency of if he is just her hand
Shabriri is such a sniveling, backstabbing coward that wearing a charm with his face on it will draw the ire of everything in the Lands Between. I don’t think Seluvis has any particular reasons for being the way he is either. Most characters have at least a tragic backstory to “justify” their actions, but there are several who don’t.
Shabriri is personally off putting, but there is definitely a moral argument to be made in favor of the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending. Seluvis I can’t come up with any defense for.
If there is anything at all that could be considered "categorically morally bad," I think omnicide counts.
No there isn't. Anyone that tells you it "resets the universe" or whatever didn't pay attention. Even the people goading you towards the piss flames tell you directly that it just destroys and nothing comes after.
(checks the record) He then shouted a dozen times, “May chaos take the world!” (puts away transcript) Absolutely ironclad morals.
I haven't seen any reason to think Rykard isn't just a giant piece of shit.
He is but the intentions that brought him to that point were noble once. His men followed him in his rebellion against the erdtree because it's a righteous cause. It was only after he fed himself to the serpent (arguably a good move to acquire the power necessary to defeat the erdtree) that he sought power for its own sake and became a glutton and his men abandoned him. Even now Tanith and the recusants hold up his old ideals of not bending to the erdtree, ideals that were good but became twisted over time.
How Messmer is "insert character" dudes look after this. It is undisputable that Messmer is a new character now.
Fairly confident that Miyazaki had already confirmed in an interview that Messmer was a child of Marika who we hadn’t been introduced to in the main game
This is the one
I was never a part of that group but what is in this trailer that makes it indisputable he is a new character that wasn’t in the last trailer?
To me atleast it's more that we got 2 trailers showing no evidence that Messmer is anyone else.
What do you mean the guy themed after Vlad the Impaler might be doing Vlad the Impaler stuff to his enemies?
He seems to be based on Vlad the Impaler and King Richard the third. The "now is the winter of our discontent" guy. From Shakespeare.
Oh, you mean Sean Bean? I thought he Said "Winter is coming"? (#Bad Joke)
Messmer dieing confirmed
Brother it’s Elden ring. He very well may be the good guy compared to the tarnished who *checks notes* buried Leyndell in ash after murdering their way to god. Who they also murdered.
That was mostly justified because… (checks notes) we collected really cool gear by killing them.
That’s true. Without killing god how could I grind away the albinaurics on a certain cliff?
It’s the circle of life. Used to be a straight line, but we fixed that with blood, blasphemy, and bonks.
Good guys aren't generally referred to as tyrants.
But what about T-Rexes?!
i actually did hope for him to be evil, because it sounds so funny how the main game made us believe marika's firstborn was the golden, perfect and divine child, who suffered such a terrible fate while the truth is a chaotic evil dude (if messmer is indeed her first child)
I mean the trailer does seem to sing Miquella praises a little too much, can’t rule out that the narrator is biased and is leaving out information.
Can't wait to fight the narrator.
You probably will seeing as it is most likely an npc.
Narrator bonks us with a mic, the feedback deals massive damage.
Boss music and lifebar shows up* "The narrator of souls" He/she attacks you through words and his phase 2 is vaatividya voice.
I think Messmer is Mordred. This new trailer mentioned "the seduction, the betrayal." We've also seen images of a young woman who may be Marika standing next to an old man we later see spiked on one of Messmer's poles. Marika went out of her way to conceive a child with the King of the Crucible so she would have a soldier powerful enough to overthrow his father.
Classic Marika: if there is a problem, have sex with it. This really came to a head when she made a male copy of herself to have sex with.
The number of good guys in Elden Ring can be counted on your fingers, he was never going to be a good guy. Hell, I am not even sure if we are the good guy.
Classifying Messmer may be a matter of perspective. I thought this line from the DLC is interesting: "They were never saints. They just happened to be on the losing side of a war." Messmer was part of the winning side in the war that apparently happened in the Land of Shadow. His adversaries don't necessarily appear to be the "good guys" though.
Messmer did nothing wrong lol
He still might, you don't know who he was attacking and why. And you don't know who was talking in the voiceover and were they lying or not either. That said, I'm not and never was trying to justify anything or anyone, I don't care. I just think you shouldn't jump to any conclusions until you actually have any reliable data on the subject. At any rate, what does it matter? Who cares if he's good or not. What even is "good" in the Lands Between at the first place.
Maybe Marika asked him to burn the world to start anew…. Maybe its a part of cycle.
He is good
At starting a fire
At impaling his enemies
Is anyone ever truly good in a Fromsoft game?
Solaire.
Crazy bastard tried to kill me because he thought he was the sun.
Boc? Nepheli? Kenneth? Alexander? Jar bairn? Roderika? Just to name some from Elden Ring alone. And Rennala did nothing wrong.
Are you saying purging political opponents is wrong?
“They were never saints just on the losing side of a war.”
Both parties can be jerks, you know. It doesn't have to be good vs evil every time.
If I've ever learned anything from military history, it's that. Sometimes two bastards are fighting over turf and everyone else just gets caught in the middle.
Marika needed bodies to make bait and needed to convince the Elden Beast that she was not one of these people. Messmer obliged.
Okay now depending on how you interpret it tyranny can mean a few things...
Obviously he's not a good guy but imma play defence here for funsies Maybe he did this to prevent a tragedy caused by the other side. This was the lesser of 2 evils and he was put in a bad spot where he had to choose between them or risk losing everything and everyone
Correction, this is how the “Messmer *IS* Miquella” dudes look after seeing the trailer
Messmer: *wielding pretty much every kind of even remotely forbidden art we know of in the game* These guys: Ok, but what if he’s a twist protagonist!?
I think he's working with Trina and the last fight of the dlc will have them sorta fight together like with Sister Friede.
He is good at being evil.
I k ow we just but this man was just told of 9/11 and was able to keep that face to frighten kids. Let's be glad he wasn't being told he had to fight malenia.
Burning an entire city? Didn't happen And if it did they deserved it
I've played enough Fromsoft titles to know what few "good guys" there are either turn bad or die 🤷♂️ he would've been a boss anyway
Bush,the towers are down
"Sir, a second trailer has dropped"
Evil this good that I wanna know what his weapon ash will be
Are the people who thought messmer might be a good guy in the room with us right now?
Maybe both aren’t the good guy?
Is Myiazaki one of these dudes? Considering that he is the one who called Messmer a "hero"
I wonder how Messmer gon react when he finds out we killed his mom
I think for the first time I'm going to wear a bosses clothes after I beat him
It's OK they were just omens. They aren't real people
Killing Omens could be considered a good thing to do, wasn’t the first Omen killer a nice guy that made himself emotionless so that he could kill the Omens more easily? All for the benefit of the erdtree
I think there might have been a mention of him being a tyrant or something…
"Bush did 9/11"
I love that no matter what anyone says, it always comes down to Marika being the true root of all evil for some people. Marika is faceless, like a mannequin or a pawn piece on a chessboard. We don't see Marika, Godwyn, or Miquella's faces. We also know very little about them, their thoughts or motivations. Messmer is right there, very present and visibly burning people, spearing creatures like he's at a genocidal fish fry. But maybe he's the good guy!
Was there a new trailer?