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Bonfireside Chat 307: Shadow Keep
🕑 Added 2024-11-10 18:38:25 +0000 UTCFor this entire season we’ve been walking in the wake of Messmer’s works, a fiery genocide of the Hornsent people. But now it’s time to visit the home of Messmer himself and breach the Shadow Keep which looms large over landscape. We talk about the level’s intricate design, and advance some quests related to Needle Knight Leda and her treachery about treachery.
Comments
Joshua Manko
Have you checked out The Tarnished Archaeologist on YouTube? He breaks down all the Babylonian influences in Elden Ring. Vaati, Bonfireside Chat, and Tarnished Archaeologist are the holy trinity of ER lore
Matthew Sumption
Funnily enough on my first playthrough after beating the Golden Rhinopotomous, I just missed the door that opened on the left (I clearly only tried going right), so I ended up getting into the shadow keep through the elevator in the churchyard area. This however was extremely satisfying and felt like a good sneaky way in to this very well defended keep (you end up at Back of Specimen Storehouse). When i finally found my way down through the keep area on the way back it blew my mind and confirmed that this was my favourite dungeon in Elden Ring in terms of complexity and the different paths available to the player
Sage Beatty
To respond to Gary: no Gary, no mosquitoes are good
Micah Tillman
On the Miquella front, the whole thing about his Age of Compassion being misguided and based on mental manipulation is uncomfortably reminiscent -- to me -- of the sorts of claims I used to hear amongst American political conservatives regarding liberal policies. Then again, his self-mutilation is also reminiscent of what I was taught by the conservative Christian churches of my youth (as I noted at too great a length on a previous episode).
Micah Tillman
The burning boats in Shadow Keep also show up in non-burning form in Belurat Tower/Enir-Ilim right? (I think?) The boats strike me as Mesopotamian (Babylonian?), but that may just be because I'm convinced the Tower is an analogue for the Tower of Babel and I don't know my ancient ship types well enough.
James Lloyd-Jones
Main gauche is so fuckin' good, I say as a lifetime parry sicko and Sekiro-enjoyer. Falx is also really fun, imo, but like a lot of DLC weapons even fully upgraded it feels like it underperfoms.
wesley
i totally didn't realize the irony of leda criticizing you for siding with hornsent till you pointed it out (lol). i think leda is a great proxy voice for miquella throughout the dlc, because his campaign to godhood, although ostensibly about compassion and love, has really been him betraying and manipulating everyone around him
JackelZXA
I really love how much the shattering of Miquella’s influence recontextualizes everything regarding him. I even think it makes Malenia a more interesting character when we take into account what we know now about the Battle of Aeonia. We now know that she wasn’t so much a noble warrior as a petty assassin who sees herself as a *literal* extension of her brother. Because they’re twins, she knew his influence before she ever gained sentience, and he would have been in her head from birth, meaning that after he abandoned her to pursue his ends in the realm of shadow, she literally had nothing left because she’s never had individuality. Rather than seeing her as a typical noble warrior archtype, I now see her as a literal tool. She nuked a country because her brother wanted a new slave, Radahn. Rather than lose, she gave in to her god for the sake of her other half, who then discarded her like he discarded Trina, a lump of flesh, or an arm. She was ONLY a “blade” and never a “person”. The concept of free thought would be as foreign to her as the concept of mutual respect would be to her brother.
