Soldiers in Elden Ring behave like mindless insane undead

Not a "lore sage" but someone explained that it's a result of the Erdtree burial.
People keep getting reincarnated over and over again until their soul is spread thin.
I haven't found anything to support this yet as I've not beaten the game, but Agheel's Flame spell kind of implies that these pale "not hollows" want to be burned when they die rather than buried at the roots.

No they didn't.

I wish fromsoft would improve their enemy AI, a dozen games later and it's still braindead

You also forgot the servant at Stormveil, who hated Godrick. The soldiers were sentient enough to open the gates when he commanded them to.
Why there is no civilization in Elden Ring is beyond me.

You may have noticed that the player character is distinctively shorter compared to the rest of the humanoid enemies. This is because you are a manlet, and the enemies rightly kill you be you are a waste of space. Fucking manlet.

To clarify since most people get it wrong.

Elden Ring is basically the Matrix code to how the reality functions when under control of the Greater Will.
Marika REMOVED death from it as if removing a piece of code that defines that people can die.
That is the start of the Golden Order, her particular type of ruling through the Elden Ring (ending variants have you alter it to your own specs through Fia's rune etc..)
The way it worked is you would "die" but get resurrected through the Erdtree and given a new body. It's the Erdtree burial, which those pots used to be for. They would haul corpses to the tree, which would then be fed in.
That whole system collapsed with the Shattering since civilization pretty much ground to a halt.
So now people that would be revived through the Erdtree burial are prevented from that.
That makes them just linger around far exceeding their usual timespan and they go nuts.
Some of them seem to be more "with it" than others because they're stronger individuals with some purpose to their life... and others are "tarnished" which means Marika herself is rezzing them to fulfill her own goals. All of the tarnished are essentially Marika's ploy to fuck over the GW and the Elden Beast and free herself.

FROM just don't give a shit because gamers it it up anyway.
It's like the player character emitting light or bosses having fogwalls without reason other than DS did it.

there's no "matter" bro we're all just Grace drifting in the air "dude" so why don't you just "chill out" already and get some runes my "homie"

Yes. GRRM also did not write all the demigods to be enemies. The game poses absolutely zero reason to fight characters Malenia or Rennala since they do not want to become elden lord and don't care about great runes, and in fact directly oppose the golden order that the player likely also goes against. Miyazaki just can't write a story that isn't about a faceless non-character protagonist clearing out a big ruined kingdom full of formerly powerful enemies. Whoever made Sekiro needs to be put in charge.

>There's no civilization
You find villages, except they're all dead usually.

The Two Fingers declared all demigods dead without exception. The biggest issue is not having the All-knowing ending that would be the most justification.

Huh? The world is clearly on its last legs. It’s on the brink of collapse. There is no ending where the world is healed of the greater will’s influence meaning it only gets worse from there.

From Software is incapable of designing a living world, it's as simple as that. Every world has to be in some state of decay, or full on death. It's been this way for 15 years now, it's as simple as that.
I'll take it a step further, from is incapable of designing a game where you're not just a murderhobo. Even in Sekiro, you don't do any form of negotiation or reasoning on your own. You just get sent in a random location and murder everything on the way there.

I have 100+ hours in the game and I literally still can't tell if the soldiers are supposed to be undead or not.

>The game poses absolutely zero reason to fight characters Malenia or Rennala

They attack you when you approach them and you approach them because you're exploring.

So how come Irina dies? The daughter from Castle Morne. Also, a bunch of people die, and do not come back, when you kill them, like the merchants. What about the piles of corpses strewn around everywhere ?

You guys are fucking retarded. Look at the world of elden ring. It's not a functioning society, it's a shattered world, of course everyone is psychotic....

The only character who's "undead" is the playerl.

Because that user is retarded and people aren't immortal on their own, you need to be resurrected by the Erdtree.

well it's simple 99% of NPCs just want to kill you cause devs don't know better
There's your masterpiece 10/10 GOTY inovating inspiring game

>Rennala is a magical queen who has no history of aggression or hostility
>Player may even be helping her daughter achieve their family's destiny by the time they meet
>Rennala still attacks because she is retarded for some reason
>Malenia only cares about her brother Miquella, who the player reads about and learns is a surprisingly benevolent demigod who wants to help the cursed and downtrodden
>The player may even find Miquella before meeting Malenia
>Malenia just recites some poetry before attacking the player for absolutely no reason

Game obviously makes no sense and was never supposed to. It's an action/arcade/platformer where you explore find enemies and kill them. You guys are reading way too much into it.

The biggest bummer to me is how exactly similar the game is to souls games.
I wanted them to throw most mechanics they've been using previously and make something new.
But no they just came up with bullshit lore reasons to let them reuse the entire fucking cow.

Everyone's psychotic except for the random individuals who aren't psychotic, right.
Everyone wants to kill you even though they don't justify it at all. Godfrey and Malenia are 100% sentient and intelligent and yet they just want to kill you like every hollow in the game. Why?
Sorry there's no logic here, it's just from software being unable to create worlds that aren't fucked.

It's almost like ER is just DaS reskin and these are meant to be hollows

They're not. They're driven mad from centuries of immortality. Tarnished are undead technically because they were granted a second lease on life after their deaths, drawing them back to the Lands Between. Tarnished who lose the guidance of grace again become mortal once more. True undead are Those Who Live in Death, ie skeletons, zombies, and ghosts.

So just like soldiers irl?
Never met one who wasn’t a giant cunt.

they only have a couple of AI from Demons Souls and just reuse them. Red Eyed knight for black kngiths, silver knights, and now crucible knights. same undead/zombie for every game. same demon dogs for every game. same 'big hulking ogre/zombie/whatever'. same dragon ai. theyve rehashed the same game 10 times now. its not a lore issue. its lazy assed EA tier rehash. you like shit and they serve it to you over and over.

The random individuals who aren't psychotic are still psychotic. Characters still talk in cryptic speak like in dark souls. I'm not trying to say fromsoft are one trick ponies but people in this thread acting like the lands between are just Bakersfield California and everyone is completely normal but fights like psychos haven't even touched the game.

They're defending their lord from the tarnished

>>It's never actually explained why.
oohh nooooo someone didn't read

well you're a tarnished so that basically makes you jewish in their eyes

>So how come Irina dies
she doesnt, she got posessed by hyetta

Why they didn't include eavesdropping enemies to give them some sort of personality like in Sekiro is beyond me since they already took jumping and crouching from there

>Go to Rennala
>"Hey lady I need the great rune in your amber egg, the one your ex-husband gave you as keepsake that you cherish like your own child because you're mentally comatose from the despair and heart break of him leaving you, Gimme"

She's literally mentally broken, you don't even fight her second phase that was a spell failsafe placed by Ranni to protect her mom who could hardly protect her self.

You canonically go to Lucaria to obtain a great rune, that is your only reasoning. You don't kill Rennela either because Ranni wouldn't forgive you or because she's the only one who can use the egg and rebirth is useful for you.

you mean that shibhibab or whomever the fuck

>why is this game so shitty?
>there must be some lore that justifies this
I shiggy diggy

Elden Ring has a lot of Souls legacy elements that have no narrative justification unlike in the games they were originally developed for.

I was bummed out that all the soldiers attacked me when I got too close to them. There were so many instances when I saw soldiers sitting just chilling sides and me just wanting to sit down beside them, but then they all stood up and attacked me instead.

Missed opportunity of comfyness

shabiri is different character, also associated with three fingers

That's honestly an issue with every game.
If you're going to usher in the age of Dark in III why did you kill Prince Lothric?

Why did you even need to kill Gwyn to become Dark Lord in the first game?

I literally just noticed the same thing today OP. The commoners are elongated limb tree-like commoners and the redmane are typical hollow like zombies.

>Soldiers, wolves and bats gang up on you together

Fucking MMO tier open world

Commoners look like a different species all together.

Godrick controls wolves, you learn this when the winds bring them in from the sky.

When will FromSoft stop making the same game over and over with slightly different lore and story?

You needed to kill Prince Lothric because you needed the power of the Lords of Cinder to open the way to the First Flame so you could allow it to burn out, despite Prince Lothric not being a Lord of Cinder, nor even an Unkindled.

Likewise Gwyn is keeping the First Flame alit in DS1. So you needed to kill him to either take his place as kindling and become the second Lord of Cinders, or allow it to burn out.

>In Castle Morne the soldiers try to kill you even when their commander is friendly to you, contributing to them seeming mindless and insane.
This bugged me in particular. I wanted to help them fight the disgusting Misbegotten, going to far as to spare the soldiers and only attack the monsters. Yet then the soldiers attack me too.
Fucking retarded game.

not really, the shattering was somewhat recent

Because most of the men you see are new recruits from bandits and rapists. All the good knights mostly died during the shattering. That's why there's a seperate group of bigger knights who fight like they know what they're doing.

>It kinda bothered me too since unlike every other game in the series this one isn't set during what is basically the apocalypse.

dude an entire country is a red cancer shithole, like almost a quarter of the continent

there are giant piles of scorched corpses everywhere

half of every location in the game is some kind of dilapidated ruin

there are literally no civilians anywhere aside from obviously "hollowed" nobles

the world is mad max if mad max was LoTR

Ok I can understand that the ritual had to happen in III so the fire keeper could snuff out the first flame. But it was going to fade out eventually.

>Gwyn was keeping the flame alight
This makes zero sense, you came there to restore the first flame, It was going to fade eventually. Killing Gwyn just made it easier for some other Undead mosey on in and restore the fire.

Lorefags are either NPCs, grifters, or both.
Imagine spending all that time and effort you put into making up hand-waving justifications for FromSoft's narrative laziness into reading real books.

Attached: vaati scammer.png (1136x640, 704.49K)

The land betweens isn't the entire world. We come back from "beyond the fog" and we know other regions exist, so presumably the Elden ring/Greater will/golden order's control/reach/influence stops at the fog.

that's why it's good, and not bad

NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME HERE!

>Why did you even need to kill Gwyn to become Dark Lord in the first game?
Well in Gwyn's case he's hollow. You can see it on his face, the dude burned his soul away as kindling for the first flame, so there's nothing there anymore.

There are a couple things that run contrary to the thing about them being mindless insano dudes.
>Patches specifically says they do not speak whatever language it is you speak, so you're clearly a foreign invader in their eyes
>Kenny mentions the Tarnished Hunt going on in Limgrave where they kill Tarnished on sight to graft onto Godrick
>Morgott is clearly in charge of everyone in the capital so I assume capital/Leyndell knights and soldiers are under strict orders to stop you from advancing
None of this explains why the cucks and redmanes are the way they are and they all still seem to be doing their jobs before they see you and sperg the fuck out, but this IS a Souls game so it's really just that all but a select few npcs are hostile for gameplay reasons and the reasoning is always flimsy at best.

This is made worse when you realize that there was an entire storyline regarding malenia and miquella and you can actually talk to Malenia as an npc like Sister Friede. She only becomes as boss after you try to get Miquella's great rune or whatever. But since they cut it, it made Malenia go hostile for no fucking reason.

They also never fucking make NPCs actually move or really do anything for some reason. Like sure you find them at different locations but unless a fight is part of their quest, they don't even walk around, they barely have an idle animation.

Damn, seriously? That explains a lot. It makes no fucking sense why Malenia would try to kill you, she stands to gain nothing for it and she isn't portrayed as a homicidal maniac in the lore.

Erdtree doesn't reincarnate, for the dead that's a one way trip

nope, the RoD was sealed away to stop the GEQ from using it to kill Marika

The Lands Between always struck me as a sort of Mt Olympus. It's a magical place of prosperity and grace and the closest thing to a real utopia cuz it's right at the base of the big gold god tree, and it's where this world's gods reside. Typically - in mythologies that include semi mortal, living gods that reside in a realm not entirely inaccessible to men - when shit goes south at 'Mt Olympus,' shit goes REALLY south everywhere else.

>Gwyn hollows
>fade flames
>age of dark kicks in
>Gods get eaten by dark
You don't even need to do anything for this to happen, except kill the next CU who tries to stop it.

She's just as possessed by the flame of ambition as everyone else. She wants to be Elden Lord just like you and all the other demigods. They all warred for control. But yeah. Still flimsy as shit reasoning for a fight.

>This game just has shitty worldbuilding.
But I thought GRRM did the worldbuilding?!

I can understand why they don't want to make friendly NPCs move as a limitation of the engine or whatever, but they don't even shift characters around in the roundtable hold. Like D just parks his ass on a chair in the central hall for his entire stay until he gets ROOT'd. Why? Gideon could be sitting by the fireplace and reading a book, or maybe perusing the finger maidens store. Even Hewg could be working on a different weapon every time you warp in instead of just hammering away at the same FUCKING SWORD for the entire game.
They learned this lesson in Demon's Souls, then unlearned it in Dark Souls, then relearned it in Dark Souls 2, then forgot about it.

Cut them some slack.
It took them until Sekiro to have all of their characters being able to move their mouths when talking.

pretty much all the lore inconsistencies and wtf moments in these games are a result of time constraints and cut content. Because of this I think it's annoying when people shit on the entire story and all lore as a whole, due to some silly plot holes or nonsensical character motivations that are just because a quarter of the game had to be cut.

Giving the series sentient beings as bosses/enemies was a terrible decision. It made sense in DaS for the most part since you were literally trying to end the world, but the more recent titles' boss motivations were pretty blah. Not including Sekiro.
DeS's only sentient bosses being a harmless slug who crawls around trying to avoid death and someone commiting suicide once you approach them is great.

>j-j-just cut them some slack
Ok Fromdrone.

Yes there were leaks of cut dialog here posted around. Malenia calls you "brave tarnished, dearest companion. Why hast thou greed know no bounds? Why taketh the last that remain of him? I shall not let you, for I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella." Something along those lines.

Well presumably Gwyn still has it in him to kindle the flame a few more times, which is why he still drops a soul when he dies. The idea is that the chosen undead is gonna pick up his soul and all the other great souls (which weren't use for kindling the first time around) and light the flame. Or walk away and ensure it fades faster. It's not like when you choose the lord of dark ending the fire just fades that instant.

Malenia very specifically does not want to be Elden Lord. She even allowed her defeated enemies in the shattering to survive and keep their runes. She wants to help her brother do his whole tree business to remove the outer gods' influence, curing their curses and fixing all the problems of the golden order.

why are you even in these fucking threads if you don't like the lore or the game you stupid bastard

Kenneth Haight is no tarnished. He wouldn't have been given a title if he was.

>Tarnished are ye dead who yet live
>A completely different category from Those Who Live in Death
Anyone who tells you this lore makes any fucking sense is on dangerous amounts of copium.

Lorelet. Malenia is an empyrean of another god entirely, she's got no interest in Marika or the Erdtree, which is why the Haligtree is (was) a thing.

when the elden ring shattered it was as though life itself ended, the golden seed description tells you this.
"ye dead who yet live"

its like you all look up lore on vaati video.

So what happens to them when the player kills them?

Then in that case it's that there is specifically no ending available to the player with this same goal. So you're destined to be at odds with it. If this is true I'm even more pissed that there isn't a "completely purge the lands between of outer god influence" ending which I wanted from the beginning

It's pretty simple, actually. First off, they're just two different types of undead. Like zombies vs. vampires. After a Tarnished dies, you reappear elsewhere, alive and well again. Those Who Live in Death are in an entirely different state, like a zombie.

Those Who Live In Death are basically people who want Destined Death to return to the world. Tarnished are people who were resurrected by the Erdtree, it's very different and not that hard to understand imo.

What IS a Tarnished, and why do we need maidens?