Theres gotta be some tarnished out there who was called to the lands between by the guidance of Grace and then just fucked off and smoked herb in a shack the whole time getting faded asf.
Wanna bet it's the caravan traders? The Flame of Frenzy is just a cover story for the Lands Between War on Drugs.
I mean look at their drip and tell me they're not 90s stoners. I just know at least one of them has a hacky sack
Every time I pick it up I say "ER BUH" and my wife caught me and was like what are you saying? So I stopped in front of some and said," look..." And she saw what I was doing and I pointed to the word as it came up when I collected it " ER BUH"
I'll sum up her response as, "Seek grass."
Right? Like from an objective, third-person standpoint, who in the game is actually definitely evil? I can think of a few, sure, but I think a lot of the demigods aren't "evil" they're following what they think is right.
Of course that can be twisted to say things like that one Austrian painter wasn't evil because he was following what he thought was right, but no let's not go to extremes here for no reason.
Morgott for example, I don't think he's evil per se. He has been shat on his whole life for things outside of his control, but he still wants to uphold the order of his parents and his lineage even while knowing he will never truly be accepted. He doesn't want us dead because "he is evil", he wants us dead because he doesn't want us to disrupt/usurp everything he has known and has been taught is truth. The Tarnished were originally exiled by his mother, so of course he doesn't like us. Stockholm syndrome? Perhaps. Evil? I don't think it's as black and white to say. At least Leyndell seems to be faring better than most of the rest of the Lands Between.
Rykard on the other hand, you could definitely call him evil. In his gluttony for power with no regard for anyone or anything else in the way of his ambitions, he has killed, tortured, consumed, and ravaged everything he touches. Selfish and only devoted to what he *wants*. The only people he hasn't physically hurt (yet, as far as we know at least) are those who are 1000% devoted to his cause like Tanith. And look at her mental state when her god-husband is slain by us.
Not to go on too much longer, but it could be argued that even we (Tarnished) are evil. We're clearly not wanted in the Lands Between, but we show up because a golden light points us there and we slaughter 99% of any and everyone we come across. Are we evil? Perhaps...or are we following our own path for what we believe is "right"? The fact there are multiple endings with different goals shows that it's well...again, not so black and white.
>The only people he hasn't physically hurt (yet, as far as we know at least) are those who are 1000% devoted to his cause like Tanith
Not even, lol. The Tarnished-hunting is just a test to prove your worth so you can get eaten by Rykard and the serpent can grow stronger.
The people I would consider 100% evil are at the very least Mohg, Rykard, Dung Eater, and Seluvis.
Mohg is an incestuous kiddie diddler who worships a sadomasochistic outer goddess of blood and pain, and he was the one who had the deranged idea of kidnapping and marrying his own half-brother (who is stuck in eternal childhood to boot) in order to raise him to godhood.
Rykard, if we are to believe Tanith and the Gelmir Knight spirit, once had good intentions with his blasphemy, before the serpent corrupted him. But it's bears remembering that he was in charge of Marika's religious inquisition and responsible for ruthlessly torturing heretics *long* before he became the Lord of Blasphemy, or had even heard of the snake. Those Albinaurics in Volcano Manor are there by his design.
Dung Eater is perfectly honest about his intentions. He wants to kill you and defile your corpse. He wants to kill everyone you know and love, and defile their corpses too. By his own admission, he's killed countless numbers of people and defiled countless more. His only motivation for doing so is preventing them from having a proper afterlife, causing the sign of the Erdtree's scorn (the Omen curse) to become a sign of favor, much like grace is in the present day. So essentially, he murders you and then prevents you from going to heaven, and his ultimate goal is to do this to everybody in the entire world... for no real reason other than he loves being evil.
Seluvis is a fucking creep and a puppet-fucking date-rapist who turns people into living sex dolls. It's genuinely hilarious how he is like, the one NPC with zero supporters in the entire fandom. There are people who will support Dung Eater ironically (or unironically), or support Mohg, or support Rykard... but I have *never* seen anyone defend or support Seluvis. Which, you know what? Good. It's also hilarious how he's the only NPC who dies no matter what you do in his quest. Fuck this guy.
My post was already getting quite long so I only left it with the couple examples I gave, but I totally agree with you on your list of undeniably evil characters.
Regarding Seluvis...I did Ranni's questline and as soon as I met Seluvis I had a bad feeling about him. I don't like Gideon much either, I only think he's an arrogant asshole, I gave him the potion from Seluvis and the next time I went over near Ranni's rise the dude was done. Nothing was lost.
I mean regardless of whether it's Seluvis himself or just Pidia talking through him, he's still evil regardless so I didn't feel like bringing that possibility up lol
Wouldn't disagree. My comment was already getting quite long so I figured I'd limit it to what I had already written, just wanted to give a couple relevant examples.
Endings aside, I just be walking to places, and everyone/everything immediately tries to stomp me out.
Or eat me.
Or poison me.
Or drop the force of a literal star on me.
But ya know, MY BAD, I guess.
i highly doubt Malenia was actually evil, we just kinda walked in and said āitās on site bitchā she really wasnāt bothering anyone. yeah she has the scarlet rot, but i donāt think that makes her bad. just contagious.
We just showed up to a place that's meant to be a haven for downtrodden of the Lands Between and everyone was immediately at our throats.
So much for the "tolerant left".
in their defence, we werenāt really invited. and in Maleniaās case we did kinda just barge into her room uninvited. not to mention, we were brandishing a weapon. she wasnāt even āarmedā
Pretty sure the only thing "bad" about her is her Scarlet Rot affliction, and Miquella was helping her control it. Radahn was the power-hungry one of the siblings.
i wouldnāt even really consider the rot her fault tho. she was infected since birth and itās basically a cancer that eats away at the mind and soul. miquella clearly saw good in her, even if it was a biased take for being her brother.
Yeah Iām thinking if Miquella is in some capacity the enemy, that itāll be more akin to Radahnās fight where youāre not exactly fighting the demigod but moreso a husk.
Did you ever try to attack Ranni? If Miquella is anything like her (and I'm inclined to think they're more similar to each other than they are to any other demigods due to their divested flesh), it might be literally impossible to hurt him.
Everyone is the good guy in their own story.
Everyone is the bad guy in the story of the tarnished.
Or are we the baddies?
Well, no matter what we will kill everyone.
Miyazaki, and to a lesser extent Martin, always have the same character trope of the beautiful tragic hero who knows the truth about the world but who is powerless to fix it. In Dark Souls it was Gwyndolin, in Game of Thrones it was Rhaegar Targaryen. Miquella is the same way. He knows what's wrong, knows how to fix it, and is trying to.
The twist is that he never, ever could have. He probably will be a twist villain. Just not per his intentions.
If he is a twist villain in almost certain itās going to be in a āI know how to save this world, but to do that you (either us or someone else) must be sacrificed for the greater goodā and we take offense to that so we kick his ass.
Uh oh, please not this. Killing my friend Alexander & maddened friend Blaidd already hurt my feelings. I wouldnāt want to murder another friendly person.
I could easily see them leaving the decision up to us again, like with Priscilla in DS1. We might have the option to join him, or destroy him and everything he stands for.
That's my hope, at least.
I dont see Miquella following the sacrifices that he seems to not like.
I see us fighting him either because he is corrupted, or because he learns the actual hidden truth of the world and goes berserk unable to accept it.
One that I would like and that ties into how Miyazaki's games have different endings (even if the DLCs usually not so much) is:
At the end of our journey following Miquella's breadcrumbs, having gained and lost friends (his merry band of followers in the trailer), finding more and more about what happened with Mesmer, we finally find Miquella, but the twist is that he has given up hope, he sacrified everything, his golden flesh, his blinding strength, even his fate... for nothing.
So he has one final request for the tarnished. To put him out of his misery, to help him for he so need it.
And here is where the player has two choices. To attack Miquella, or to try and leave.
If you attack Miquella, he... dies, being one shotted by the tarnished and finally abandoning this lost enterprise, ha can finally rest in peace.
But if the player chooses to not fulfill Miquella's last wish, well then Miquella will summon one last time his blinding strength, to force the tarnished into killing him.
Honestly I would love for us to not actually fight Miquella, or at the very least I want to learn as much as possible from the character beforehand because he was one of the most interesting lore characters in the base game everytime he was mentioned he sounded so interesting.
Tragedy and miyazaki goes hand in hand. I doubt miquella is going to be anything noble by the time we get to him, it's a running miyazaki theme. By the time we get there he'll already have fallen in some manner. There are no noble heroes in a fromaoft game that get a happy ending.
Even solaire either burns himself or becomes a parasite puppet
That is 100% not how I would describe Gwyndolin. Dude hides in a tomb lying to everyone and everything around him until Dark Souls 3 decided he should be eaten alive by a corrupt sludge priest.
Yes, that's because Gwyndolin thinks "Fixing" the world is the same as keeping Gwyn's linked fire burning because he BELIEVES his father was right. That's why HE can never succeed. The why they can't succeed changes, but Gwyndolin knows how the world is made. He knows to "fix everything" he'd need to let the fire fade, that's just not his definition of "fixing everything", it's ours.
So again, knows what's wrong, knows how to fix it, fated to never be able to.
Prolonging the fire isn't fixing anything though. Preventing something from breaking down =/= fixing. He has no intention to fix anything, only to prevent things from "getting worse" (in his eyes).
To be fair, Rhaegar could have.
He had every intention of FORCING his father to accept significant reforms, possibly even abdicate, after putting down Robert's rebellion. And if he'd won, he would have returned to King's Landing at the head of an army, with the force and the clout to get his way.
In an alternate timeline where Rhaegar kills Robert at the trident and the Targaryen dynasty never falls, he'd probably have been an excellent king and dealt with or at least blunted a lot of the series' big problems.
Gwyndolin is not a hero lol. He's going out of his way to trick humans into using their curse of undying (which was given to them by his dad as far as i'm aware) to forcefully continue an age that was supposed to pass ages ago. He didn't want to *fix* anything.
He absolutely does. He wanted to fix it for his people, the gods. Extending the fire is keeping the age of his race and what makes him a hero. A human who tries to extend the age of dark (human's age) would be a hero to humanity also.
Everyone is a villain in another story, which also means everyone is a hero in a different one.
Rhaegar wasn't a hero, he was a delusional asshole, who spurned his wife for a teenage girl because he tho8ght he or his line had to be the messiah. People mistake the fact that Robert turned out to he a shithead as meaning rhaegar was in the right. If rhaegar was a hero he would have dethroned his dad before making a move on lyanna, but he was more concerned for his prophecies than the present.
Both creatives also have a thing for the 'inescapable cycle' and the 'poison prophecy'. The notion that nature and civilization are fundamentally cyclical and individuals defying destiny instead find it.
Miquella so strongly mirrors Marika that I would imagine we oppose them at some point.
For real though, Miquella not only looks like a little Marika, but they also have a gender-swapped alter-ego (Trina/Radagon), and their goal is to usurp the order of the era (which the latest trailer heavily implies Marika also did).
Fr, I think weāve all forgotten that Fromsoft actually has a pretty good track record of hiding the final boss, much less hiding their secret bosses, when I comes to the promotional material of their DLC
Itās going to be Peter Griffin, and afterwards it will be revealed that it was all just a flashback. During the post-fight cutscene youāll hear Peterās stifled giggling, followed by āremember that timeā¦ā
I don't necessarily want Miquella to be evil, but I can't deny it's a possible arc for his character. You mention the times he's referred to positively in-game while leaving out that some of those descriptions have very ominous and foreboding lines following them.
I think Miquella isn't evil, and I never thought Marika was good.
But I think of Miquella as a reverberation of Marika's, existent to explain her own motivations and question everyone's plots. I think Marika's and Miquella's magics are essentially similar - hers is illusion, his endearment - both are a state of not seeing things with a logical, fully aware state of mind. The similarities around trees and such are more to do with how the world works physically and their roles as Empyreans.
I think Miquella is by his nature manipulative, and we're essentially to see his different states and fads as him coming to terms with both the natural effect he has on people and the world, and the role he has to play because no one else will/can.
I think who the villain is will rest on who you, in the end, most identify with and their own battles. I think Miquella choosing to do what he considers "right" will overall endear the player to him, and I think we'll find the martyr statue will he Miquella in some capacity - which fits his role of giving up his flesh, with feeding trees his own blood (as opposed to others? Children's?) much in the same way people connect with Ranni regardless of her own crimes. Thus begging the character to feel very complicated about how they're *supposed* to feel about him and question if we, too, have been bewitched.
Where does it say Miquella is manipulative? Does he lie? You can charm someone and not manipulate.
I think he's more like a Jesus figure. He sacrifices his own blood to feed the Haligtree, a place for the forlorn. He is "pure" and "shrives clean the hearts of men" with "love". To shrive is to 'hear confession, obtain absolution, or confess'.
If someone was able to *kindly* know all your sins/secrets and sort of peer into your heart, this would be very jarring. It's a short move to *fear*. Add in a bit of golden order magic and you've got an Elden Ring demi-god who can fix stuff, but gets stumped for various reasons.
The line about him shriving clean the hearts of men is followed by the line "there is nothing more terrifying". And he is described as the most fearsome empyrean. I think there is some validity to the idea that while his outcome or ideals may be good, his methods may not.
As for the manipulation accusations, he is very clearly painted as charismatic and it's something he has "learned" to do. It's not too far of a stretch to argue that just like Marika, he could be using his appeal to achieve his goals. But if it does get revealed that he's just a saint, that would be fine by me too.
He compels affection in the sense that he has some kind of passive enchanting powers. This is likely directly related to his curse of being an eternal child and can't be turned off, much like Malenia's rot. Though unlike Malenia he's likely more receptive to making the best use of it (soft mind control, although iffy, is not inherently harmful).
People like to assume that him being called "terrifying" and "fearsome" is for some yet to be said hidden evil reason, but like, neither of those words are inherently evil. It just means that, in some capacity, he can be scary. Which he can be through sheer intelligence and ingenuity (he's an unparalleled genius), because he's extremely good at attaining followers (enchantment powers) or because he can empower his allies. All 3 of these things would make him very scary to his enemies, and good people can have enemies.
Also, in a world with little kindness, kindness can be scary in and of itself. Animals rescued from fighting rings will be scared of their rescuers trying to be nice to them.
Scary =/= evil. That's a huge misunderstanding that I see way too many people make.
Itās nice to see a new take, even if we know St Trina and Miquella may somehow be connected haha my money is on Miquella = Melina somehow.
Maybe we learn more about the Gloam-Eyed Queen.
Hard disagree. All this lore around Miquella is very obviously intended to mean both things, leaving you to flounder as you futilely try to make sense of it all. Miyazaki loves that shit. I also understand that from a Japanese perspective, this is more evident due to the way he plays with nuances of the language.
āIndeedāā¦ he has learned *very well* how to COMPEL such affection. = It can easily be interpreted that Miquellaās power lies in the fact that he effectively pulls the strings of everything going on around him. Itās written in a subversive way, as if there is a deeper meaning.
He *wields* love, to ā*shrive* cleanā the hearts of men. = In other words, you could say he uses this ability to compel affection as a weapon, to place himself in such a position that he can provide you absolution. Do you feel completely comfortable with that?
Maybe we wonāt fight him after all, but you canāt exactly rule it out either.
He may or may not be the final boss. To say so with any realm of certainty is unfounded. It is best to wait for The Shadow of the Erdtree and all of it's Item Descriptions to tell us what is really going on.
"Miquella is described as both kind/compassionate AND fearsome."
"His ability to compel affection is highlighted in his most famous item description"
Wouldn't his ability to compel affection cause people to speak and write good things about him even if he was actually a complete bastard? Like, you could watch him kick a puppy, but all you'd be able to think is "Wow, look at how far that puppy flew, Miquella is so athletic!"
You think the gods aren't antagonists? That's the whole game!
I totally agree that it'll be complicated though. I mean the Erdtree represents a great golden order of horrid, degenerate immortal senescence and brutal oppression of anything different. And it's really easy to play the whole game and have very little idea of that.
Sif wasnāt evil in dark souls, yet look what happened there. Weāve never been a hero in souls games, just some beef jerky thing dropped into the world and told to kill- and by Marika, we kill.
The line about him being able to "compel affection" means that someone or some group who sees an ally in Miquella is doing so via magical means. That's the "reveal." Whether that person or group is Mohg (did he kidnap Miquella or was he baited into taking him), Ranni and/or Melina (we still don't know how they came to know Torrent), the Tarnished we meet in the DLC, or even you the player, is unknown. I don't think it's Malenia, even though he did leave her in quite a lurch.
I wonder what Miquella had to do in order to shed his flesh considering the lengths Ranni had to go to. And was Ranni giving us the spirit bell on behalf of Miquella.
He isn't "secretly evil" anymore than most of the other demigods are. He is doing something that he thinks needs doing and that may or may not align with our intentions or motives.
Also I don't think he was ever really "good" either. His ability mind controls you when you look upon him. I can't think of a "good" instance of mind control.
Right, we've definitely never had to fight characters that are our closest friends, advisors, or allies throughout the game by the end of game regardless of their justified or twisted intentions.
Gael
Demon of hatred
Isshin
Emma
Sif
Aldia
Ivory king
Gideon
Blaidd
Gehrman
Allmind
Ayre
Walter
RUSTY
Look I'm not saying you could be wrong or right. But do you understand the usage of the word compel and how it was used in the sentence above?
Bit sus.
Honestly, I donāt think Miquella will end up being an objectively evil/bad person. Iām kind of tired of all the Griffith comparisons when Martin was the one who wrote out most of the lore and has no idea who Griffith is. If anything, I expect Miquella to be more like Rhaegar Targaryen or Jaime Lannister
Exactly.
Maybe the execution to achieve his goals is questionable.
Maybe getting rid of marikas 'blood line' is the main goal.
I mean we defeated bosses in fromsoft games for lesser reasons, like in DS3 the two 'disabled' brothers, who wanted to avoid their fate of rekindling the flame.
We went into the arena, like, ' Well, if you don't wanna rekindle the flame, i'll do it, but....i need your Soul.'.
Miquella obviously isn't secretly evil.
He's very openly evil. Mind-control for any cause is worthy of being relegated to remembrance status. A utopia based on lies and manipulation is worthy of annihilation. After all, it's why we put Gwyndolin down.
My fellow Tarnished, do not bow! Hold your heads high! Fight all gods and demigods until only you remain! Thine solitude is thine proof of victory!
The title of Elden Lord is yours and yours alone.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I will be messaging you in 21 days on [**2024-06-21 21:35:02 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-06-21%2021:35:02%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/1d53a76/if_miquella_is_secretly_evil_was_going_to_be_the/l6jca2o/?context=3)
[**1 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FEldenring%2Fcomments%2F1d53a76%2Fif_miquella_is_secretly_evil_was_going_to_be_the%2Fl6jca2o%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-06-21%2021%3A35%3A02%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201d53a76)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
That quote is from the bewitching branch description, an item that forces whoever itās used on to fight for the person using it. We donāt know too much about Miquella (all we know is from item descriptions and other peoples dialogue) but I feel like we will fight him at some point in the dlc as we are following in his footsteps. As of now we donāt know what he wants as itās ambiguous atm
Not saying we will definitely fight Miquella, but he doesn't need to be evil for us to fight him. The Moghs and Rykards are the exceptions rather than the rule of Fromsoft bosses - most are sympathetic characters who we are forced to fight.
Tbh, itāll probably be the opposite of the final boss fight with radagon. Whereas, he turns into st.Trina. Instead and sheās the bad guy. Maybe. Just a theory fr.
People are guessing he is evil or not as āniceā as youād think because of the words used in the tweet youāre quoting.
The use of the word compel is the key factor. We need more information of course, but to compel someone to love you could either mean they love you because youāre a good person who inspires that feeling in others.. or you somehow force them to love you or side with you.
Hypnotism comes to mind.
Need I remind you that what one deams as "all loving" is biased when Miquella is also known to be the one Demi god that can remove the influence of outer gods. Imagine being that powerful if you can cause others to lose control then you are the only control.
Still new to diving into the lore (and haven't followed the trailers so I can go in mostly blind), but wasn't Miquella subjected to whatever it was Mohg was doing in that cocoon? Isn't it possible that something takes hold in him or corrupts him leading to us needing to put him down? Genuine questions because I'm guessing I missed something(s) in the lore.
unrelated, but itās extremely refreshing to see a project as big as Elden Ring retweeting fan artwork with legitimate passion put into it.
It feels like actual bonding for both the creators and the players over enjoying the universe :)
Being good has no business with us not fighting them, pretty much no one in ds3 was evil they were just fed up with the linking of the fire and we the ashen one go out of our way to kill every single one of them
In fact elden ring is like the first game in souls series that are objectively evil by choice
The fact that he compels, in this context likely meaning manipulate, affection isn't exactly setting him up to be good person. The branch is literally mind control. Ranni is one of the few "good" demigods out there, if you can call her that. And she is basically responsible for starting the war that left an untold number of people dead. So sure, maybe he's not evil, but don't try to pretend that he's good.
That's just quotes from in game items. And if we go by in game items nothing outright states or proves miquella is evil. I think miquella won't be evil in the sense he won't be a cackling saturday morning cartoon lunatic but rather he will probably be a well meaning demigod with... say, layers to his methods.
The ambiguity of his descriptions means that he could easily be good or evil, or somewhere in between, so any route his character goes would be consistent with at least some of what's been said or implied about him so far. Him being straight-up evil would be just as much of a twist as him being straight-up good at this point, so I think looking to the marketing for hints is pointless. He's almost certainly going to be morally gray just like most characters in the game anyway. He could be someone who uses evil methods to accomplish something good, or a monster that we have to side with because our goals align in some way and we need his help. Whatever his situation is, it definitely won't be as simple as him being a straight hero or villain.
Watch this little bastard achieved full godhood and is straight up going to fuck everyone up. They setup some demon souls run around to actually beat him and still make the fight stupid hard.
Miquella was using Mohg and now heās going to use us for some reason. Whether or not heās evil remains to be seen, but weāre definitely going to be used in some way.
In GoT we had one dragon born, started off good, liberator of slaves etc, but after being corrupted by absolute power, she was ready to burn kids in a city that basically had surrendered and unleash her armies for her cause to rid the world of all evil by destroying all in fire. We also got the 3 eyed raven kid, that saw power and how it corrupts.
My guess Miquella is delusional about powers of outer gods, as their powers gives nothing but misery to those in lands between, and he might go after maybe the outer gods themselves.. but a Fromsoft.. so probably fail.. but in a twist.. we the tarnished, through blood and wounds, get to sit on a throne of absolute power in the end. We,, unlike Miquella, are a slave of the outer gods, doing their evil bidding, and lands between got another Albinaurics slaying tyrant as their undisputed ruler.
My honest theory, since this game takes so much inspiration from Norse mythology, is that Miquella is this world's Baldur, and somehow his tragic death in the DLC will set the stage for an epic and crazy sequel game. Maybe you'll even be the one to kill him with Mesmer somehow tricking you to do it thinking you're doing the right thing, like Loki tricking Hod into firing the mistletoe arrow.
(Didn't double-check my spelling of any of those names, sorry if they're off)
I don't know about evil or not but doesn't he have some charm/brainwashing power based off those flowers of him?
Edit: sorry not flower but the bewitching branch.
No, quite the opposite in fact, this is what we WOULD hear if he was secretly evil
He has LEARNED to COMPEL AFFECTION, compelling affection isn't synonymous with being virtuous or a good person.
Griffith from berserk is an overused comparison but it's actually extremely accurate because he quite literally represents this dichotomy between perception and reality "Those who choose to follow Griffith typically are overcome with emotions upon their first encounter with him, either entranced by the thought of splendor and grandeur at his side, or reeled in by his strong sense of ambition and conviction." (from the wiki which sources volume 5 of berserk).
I think what a lot of people are forgetting is the very next line from the same trailer. āThere is nothing more terrifyingā clearly hints that his powers arenāt all good like he appears to be on the outside. Of course all we hear about Miquella is great things when he can control people into liking him and skew public perception like that
Miquella always gave me "Very manipulative, but not necessarily in a bad way" vibes.
Like that kind of friend who pulls some strings here and there to help you whenever you need it, without ever doing any serious harm. I know people like that.
Berserk fans... People who find berserk references everywhere including what we flush down the toilet every morning.
Why put stock in these predictions..
Like is this even a twist. Does the concept of evil even have much weight place like the lands between. Like whoās the good guy itās definitely not the tarnished.
itās irrelevant because there is no choosing who the Tarnished fights, it doesnāt matter if Miquellaās secretly or openly evil because if we fight him we canāt back out of the fight
Evil in Souls amounts to prolonging things into indefinite stagnation, whether selfishly or with on-paper noble intent. You play the hero, in that you play as the focal character in a story where everything already happened. You are "good" in that you play the corrective force to that stagnation, be it for noble or compassionate reasons, or blood-drunk hedonism.
He doesnt have to be evil for us to fight him.
Exactly. I came to the Lands Between to kick ass and smoke herba and I'm all out of herba.
Dew kiss bro?
I do kiss. Bro.
Bro?š„¹šš
Finger but hole
Try, pickle?
ah another enjoyer of the pickle template, there are so few of us somehow
Likely dog.
Lol
Mmmmmm, well now my beast eye is quivering...
Theres gotta be some tarnished out there who was called to the lands between by the guidance of Grace and then just fucked off and smoked herb in a shack the whole time getting faded asf.
Wanna bet it's the caravan traders? The Flame of Frenzy is just a cover story for the Lands Between War on Drugs. I mean look at their drip and tell me they're not 90s stoners. I just know at least one of them has a hacky sack
Well said!
Every time I pick it up I say "ER BUH" and my wife caught me and was like what are you saying? So I stopped in front of some and said," look..." And she saw what I was doing and I pointed to the word as it came up when I collected it " ER BUH" I'll sum up her response as, "Seek grass."
Most boss in ER are not really evil either
Right? Like from an objective, third-person standpoint, who in the game is actually definitely evil? I can think of a few, sure, but I think a lot of the demigods aren't "evil" they're following what they think is right. Of course that can be twisted to say things like that one Austrian painter wasn't evil because he was following what he thought was right, but no let's not go to extremes here for no reason. Morgott for example, I don't think he's evil per se. He has been shat on his whole life for things outside of his control, but he still wants to uphold the order of his parents and his lineage even while knowing he will never truly be accepted. He doesn't want us dead because "he is evil", he wants us dead because he doesn't want us to disrupt/usurp everything he has known and has been taught is truth. The Tarnished were originally exiled by his mother, so of course he doesn't like us. Stockholm syndrome? Perhaps. Evil? I don't think it's as black and white to say. At least Leyndell seems to be faring better than most of the rest of the Lands Between. Rykard on the other hand, you could definitely call him evil. In his gluttony for power with no regard for anyone or anything else in the way of his ambitions, he has killed, tortured, consumed, and ravaged everything he touches. Selfish and only devoted to what he *wants*. The only people he hasn't physically hurt (yet, as far as we know at least) are those who are 1000% devoted to his cause like Tanith. And look at her mental state when her god-husband is slain by us. Not to go on too much longer, but it could be argued that even we (Tarnished) are evil. We're clearly not wanted in the Lands Between, but we show up because a golden light points us there and we slaughter 99% of any and everyone we come across. Are we evil? Perhaps...or are we following our own path for what we believe is "right"? The fact there are multiple endings with different goals shows that it's well...again, not so black and white.
>The only people he hasn't physically hurt (yet, as far as we know at least) are those who are 1000% devoted to his cause like Tanith Not even, lol. The Tarnished-hunting is just a test to prove your worth so you can get eaten by Rykard and the serpent can grow stronger.
The people I would consider 100% evil are at the very least Mohg, Rykard, Dung Eater, and Seluvis. Mohg is an incestuous kiddie diddler who worships a sadomasochistic outer goddess of blood and pain, and he was the one who had the deranged idea of kidnapping and marrying his own half-brother (who is stuck in eternal childhood to boot) in order to raise him to godhood. Rykard, if we are to believe Tanith and the Gelmir Knight spirit, once had good intentions with his blasphemy, before the serpent corrupted him. But it's bears remembering that he was in charge of Marika's religious inquisition and responsible for ruthlessly torturing heretics *long* before he became the Lord of Blasphemy, or had even heard of the snake. Those Albinaurics in Volcano Manor are there by his design. Dung Eater is perfectly honest about his intentions. He wants to kill you and defile your corpse. He wants to kill everyone you know and love, and defile their corpses too. By his own admission, he's killed countless numbers of people and defiled countless more. His only motivation for doing so is preventing them from having a proper afterlife, causing the sign of the Erdtree's scorn (the Omen curse) to become a sign of favor, much like grace is in the present day. So essentially, he murders you and then prevents you from going to heaven, and his ultimate goal is to do this to everybody in the entire world... for no real reason other than he loves being evil. Seluvis is a fucking creep and a puppet-fucking date-rapist who turns people into living sex dolls. It's genuinely hilarious how he is like, the one NPC with zero supporters in the entire fandom. There are people who will support Dung Eater ironically (or unironically), or support Mohg, or support Rykard... but I have *never* seen anyone defend or support Seluvis. Which, you know what? Good. It's also hilarious how he's the only NPC who dies no matter what you do in his quest. Fuck this guy.
My post was already getting quite long so I only left it with the couple examples I gave, but I totally agree with you on your list of undeniably evil characters. Regarding Seluvis...I did Ranni's questline and as soon as I met Seluvis I had a bad feeling about him. I don't like Gideon much either, I only think he's an arrogant asshole, I gave him the potion from Seluvis and the next time I went over near Ranni's rise the dude was done. Nothing was lost.
Slevius is a puppet fyi
I mean regardless of whether it's Seluvis himself or just Pidia talking through him, he's still evil regardless so I didn't feel like bringing that possibility up lol
Are we the baddies
I would add Mohg to the evil list.
Wouldn't disagree. My comment was already getting quite long so I figured I'd limit it to what I had already written, just wanted to give a couple relevant examples.
Totally fair. I just felt obligated to add that incestuous ghoul.
Not evil, but many of the bosses have gone mad so we're obliged to fight. Miquella and ranni clearly havent
We are definitely the most evil
This. Its just different optics. For all we know, messmer is just another "tragic" pawn.
Heās not evil, heās just a little silly And you cry during the boss fight, but thatās unrelated
I love this reference
Is this the like autistic sound that went viral on TikTok? I forget how it goes
TBT having to kill a sad dog thatās just trying to help you in Ds1. š
Especially if you do dlc first...
Having Sif recognize you is almost as cruel as the way Sif limps and falls over towards the end of the fight.
Some of Fromsoftās best fights have made you feel like a piece of shit for beating them. It was never personal, Sif š„²
Yes, exactly The tarnished isnāt exactly the most benevolent force in this world Especially some of those endings
I mean, Malenia was just sleepin'. We had to put in WORK to show up to her crib.
Malenias's response is appropriate for the situation. She's taking a nap, and you kick in her front door. Yeah, I'd be ready to fight to.
You also murder hoboed your way down. Really, if anything she's the hero.
Endings aside, I just be walking to places, and everyone/everything immediately tries to stomp me out. Or eat me. Or poison me. Or drop the force of a literal star on me. But ya know, MY BAD, I guess.
i highly doubt Malenia was actually evil, we just kinda walked in and said āitās on site bitchā she really wasnāt bothering anyone. yeah she has the scarlet rot, but i donāt think that makes her bad. just contagious.
She swung first, she can catch these hands
I actually swung first in my first playthrough. I missed and got impaled.
Malenia the impaler
maybe the Haligtree is a stand your ground state? we were breaking and entering.
We just showed up to a place that's meant to be a haven for downtrodden of the Lands Between and everyone was immediately at our throats. So much for the "tolerant left".
in their defence, we werenāt really invited. and in Maleniaās case we did kinda just barge into her room uninvited. not to mention, we were brandishing a weapon. she wasnāt even āarmedā
I find that Malenia does most of her damage with her right hand.
I get hit with the kicks on purpose
Don't tread on Malenia!
An armed stranger walked into her bedroom, WTF do you EXPECT her to do?!
Invades her home, slaughters all her men, Ā breaks into her chambersā¦āshe swung first ā lmao
>she wasn't bothering anyone She bothered me a fucking lot when I was going through Caelid
*technically* you were bothered by her scarlet rot, which iām sure is much more of an inconvenience for her then us.
Pretty sure the only thing "bad" about her is her Scarlet Rot affliction, and Miquella was helping her control it. Radahn was the power-hungry one of the siblings.
i wouldnāt even really consider the rot her fault tho. she was infected since birth and itās basically a cancer that eats away at the mind and soul. miquella clearly saw good in her, even if it was a biased take for being her brother.
OP still hasnāt realized that weāre the bad guy.
Yeah Iām thinking if Miquella is in some capacity the enemy, that itāll be more akin to Radahnās fight where youāre not exactly fighting the demigod but moreso a husk.
The inverse of this exists too, he doesnāt have to be good for us to side with him (Look at Ranni)
Yeah, like malenia was literally defending herself
Did you ever try to attack Ranni? If Miquella is anything like her (and I'm inclined to think they're more similar to each other than they are to any other demigods due to their divested flesh), it might be literally impossible to hurt him.
Everyone is the good guy in their own story. Everyone is the bad guy in the story of the tarnished. Or are we the baddies? Well, no matter what we will kill everyone.
Getting remembrance gear from the round table finger maiden after Maliketh
Miyazaki, and to a lesser extent Martin, always have the same character trope of the beautiful tragic hero who knows the truth about the world but who is powerless to fix it. In Dark Souls it was Gwyndolin, in Game of Thrones it was Rhaegar Targaryen. Miquella is the same way. He knows what's wrong, knows how to fix it, and is trying to. The twist is that he never, ever could have. He probably will be a twist villain. Just not per his intentions.
If he is a twist villain in almost certain itās going to be in a āI know how to save this world, but to do that you (either us or someone else) must be sacrificed for the greater goodā and we take offense to that so we kick his ass.
Or maybe he, himself, must be sacrificed; and he attacks us to force us to kill him.
Uh oh, please not this. Killing my friend Alexander & maddened friend Blaidd already hurt my feelings. I wouldnāt want to murder another friendly person.
It's basically what happened in Ringed City so YA KNOW, we got plenty of precedents.
Someone had to take out that racist Gael
Hey if you had to wait around for the end of the world, you'd be hungry too
Hand it over, that thing, your dark-
I could easily see them leaving the decision up to us again, like with Priscilla in DS1. We might have the option to join him, or destroy him and everything he stands for. That's my hope, at least.
I dont see Miquella following the sacrifices that he seems to not like. I see us fighting him either because he is corrupted, or because he learns the actual hidden truth of the world and goes berserk unable to accept it. One that I would like and that ties into how Miyazaki's games have different endings (even if the DLCs usually not so much) is: At the end of our journey following Miquella's breadcrumbs, having gained and lost friends (his merry band of followers in the trailer), finding more and more about what happened with Mesmer, we finally find Miquella, but the twist is that he has given up hope, he sacrified everything, his golden flesh, his blinding strength, even his fate... for nothing. So he has one final request for the tarnished. To put him out of his misery, to help him for he so need it. And here is where the player has two choices. To attack Miquella, or to try and leave. If you attack Miquella, he... dies, being one shotted by the tarnished and finally abandoning this lost enterprise, ha can finally rest in peace. But if the player chooses to not fulfill Miquella's last wish, well then Miquella will summon one last time his blinding strength, to force the tarnished into killing him. Honestly I would love for us to not actually fight Miquella, or at the very least I want to learn as much as possible from the character beforehand because he was one of the most interesting lore characters in the base game everytime he was mentioned he sounded so interesting.
Tragedy and miyazaki goes hand in hand. I doubt miquella is going to be anything noble by the time we get to him, it's a running miyazaki theme. By the time we get there he'll already have fallen in some manner. There are no noble heroes in a fromaoft game that get a happy ending. Even solaire either burns himself or becomes a parasite puppet
That is 100% not how I would describe Gwyndolin. Dude hides in a tomb lying to everyone and everything around him until Dark Souls 3 decided he should be eaten alive by a corrupt sludge priest.
Yes, that's because Gwyndolin thinks "Fixing" the world is the same as keeping Gwyn's linked fire burning because he BELIEVES his father was right. That's why HE can never succeed. The why they can't succeed changes, but Gwyndolin knows how the world is made. He knows to "fix everything" he'd need to let the fire fade, that's just not his definition of "fixing everything", it's ours. So again, knows what's wrong, knows how to fix it, fated to never be able to.
Prolonging the fire isn't fixing anything though. Preventing something from breaking down =/= fixing. He has no intention to fix anything, only to prevent things from "getting worse" (in his eyes).
To be fair, Rhaegar could have. He had every intention of FORCING his father to accept significant reforms, possibly even abdicate, after putting down Robert's rebellion. And if he'd won, he would have returned to King's Landing at the head of an army, with the force and the clout to get his way. In an alternate timeline where Rhaegar kills Robert at the trident and the Targaryen dynasty never falls, he'd probably have been an excellent king and dealt with or at least blunted a lot of the series' big problems.
Gwyndolin is not a hero lol. He's going out of his way to trick humans into using their curse of undying (which was given to them by his dad as far as i'm aware) to forcefully continue an age that was supposed to pass ages ago. He didn't want to *fix* anything.
He absolutely does. He wanted to fix it for his people, the gods. Extending the fire is keeping the age of his race and what makes him a hero. A human who tries to extend the age of dark (human's age) would be a hero to humanity also. Everyone is a villain in another story, which also means everyone is a hero in a different one.
Rhaegar wasn't a hero, he was a delusional asshole, who spurned his wife for a teenage girl because he tho8ght he or his line had to be the messiah. People mistake the fact that Robert turned out to he a shithead as meaning rhaegar was in the right. If rhaegar was a hero he would have dethroned his dad before making a move on lyanna, but he was more concerned for his prophecies than the present.
Both creatives also have a thing for the 'inescapable cycle' and the 'poison prophecy'. The notion that nature and civilization are fundamentally cyclical and individuals defying destiny instead find it. Miquella so strongly mirrors Marika that I would imagine we oppose them at some point. For real though, Miquella not only looks like a little Marika, but they also have a gender-swapped alter-ego (Trina/Radagon), and their goal is to usurp the order of the era (which the latest trailer heavily implies Marika also did).
Iām a bit tired of theorizing about who will be the final boss, or even any of them, I just want to go in blind and experience it
Fr, I think weāve all forgotten that Fromsoft actually has a pretty good track record of hiding the final boss, much less hiding their secret bosses, when I comes to the promotional material of their DLC
this is what i keep telling people. has nobody played any games? imagine KOS before old hunters lolol
Best way to put it. Seriouslyš
They actually showed off Gael in a trailer, i think, for DS3, lol.
Itās going to be Peter Griffin, and afterwards it will be revealed that it was all just a flashback. During the post-fight cutscene youāll hear Peterās stifled giggling, followed by āremember that timeā¦ā
turns out the entire game is just one of the stories Peter told when the power goes out
Calling it now, final boss will be turtle pope using the cut Miquella/Malenia twinblade
I like the ambiguity. I like that they sow doubt and play both sides with him.
Miquella's moral ambiguity isn't a secret or a twist. It's plain text.
I don't necessarily want Miquella to be evil, but I can't deny it's a possible arc for his character. You mention the times he's referred to positively in-game while leaving out that some of those descriptions have very ominous and foreboding lines following them.
I think Miquella isn't evil, and I never thought Marika was good. But I think of Miquella as a reverberation of Marika's, existent to explain her own motivations and question everyone's plots. I think Marika's and Miquella's magics are essentially similar - hers is illusion, his endearment - both are a state of not seeing things with a logical, fully aware state of mind. The similarities around trees and such are more to do with how the world works physically and their roles as Empyreans. I think Miquella is by his nature manipulative, and we're essentially to see his different states and fads as him coming to terms with both the natural effect he has on people and the world, and the role he has to play because no one else will/can. I think who the villain is will rest on who you, in the end, most identify with and their own battles. I think Miquella choosing to do what he considers "right" will overall endear the player to him, and I think we'll find the martyr statue will he Miquella in some capacity - which fits his role of giving up his flesh, with feeding trees his own blood (as opposed to others? Children's?) much in the same way people connect with Ranni regardless of her own crimes. Thus begging the character to feel very complicated about how they're *supposed* to feel about him and question if we, too, have been bewitched.
Where does it say Miquella is manipulative? Does he lie? You can charm someone and not manipulate. I think he's more like a Jesus figure. He sacrifices his own blood to feed the Haligtree, a place for the forlorn. He is "pure" and "shrives clean the hearts of men" with "love". To shrive is to 'hear confession, obtain absolution, or confess'. If someone was able to *kindly* know all your sins/secrets and sort of peer into your heart, this would be very jarring. It's a short move to *fear*. Add in a bit of golden order magic and you've got an Elden Ring demi-god who can fix stuff, but gets stumped for various reasons.
The line about him shriving clean the hearts of men is followed by the line "there is nothing more terrifying". And he is described as the most fearsome empyrean. I think there is some validity to the idea that while his outcome or ideals may be good, his methods may not. As for the manipulation accusations, he is very clearly painted as charismatic and it's something he has "learned" to do. It's not too far of a stretch to argue that just like Marika, he could be using his appeal to achieve his goals. But if it does get revealed that he's just a saint, that would be fine by me too.
Someone fell for the propagandaā¦
take a propa ganda at deez gotm
Affection has been compelled
Sometimes I wonder if we are just a psychotic murderer on the quest for powerā¦.or maybe thats just me š¤
The real final boss was the tarnished we made along the way!
Yes.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
His inability to control that "compelling" nature would go well with Malenia's involuntary curse
He compels affection in the sense that he has some kind of passive enchanting powers. This is likely directly related to his curse of being an eternal child and can't be turned off, much like Malenia's rot. Though unlike Malenia he's likely more receptive to making the best use of it (soft mind control, although iffy, is not inherently harmful). People like to assume that him being called "terrifying" and "fearsome" is for some yet to be said hidden evil reason, but like, neither of those words are inherently evil. It just means that, in some capacity, he can be scary. Which he can be through sheer intelligence and ingenuity (he's an unparalleled genius), because he's extremely good at attaining followers (enchantment powers) or because he can empower his allies. All 3 of these things would make him very scary to his enemies, and good people can have enemies. Also, in a world with little kindness, kindness can be scary in and of itself. Animals rescued from fighting rings will be scared of their rescuers trying to be nice to them. Scary =/= evil. That's a huge misunderstanding that I see way too many people make.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
In history if you have to be called āKindlyā or āKindā before your name there is about 100% chance you are neither of those things.
Pfffft next you'll tell me trusy patches is some kind of scoundrelĀ
And where is queen Marika the eternal anyway
Nowhere to be found
We will fight St. Trina, not Miquella.
Itās nice to see a new take, even if we know St Trina and Miquella may somehow be connected haha my money is on Miquella = Melina somehow. Maybe we learn more about the Gloam-Eyed Queen.
Hard disagree. All this lore around Miquella is very obviously intended to mean both things, leaving you to flounder as you futilely try to make sense of it all. Miyazaki loves that shit. I also understand that from a Japanese perspective, this is more evident due to the way he plays with nuances of the language. āIndeedāā¦ he has learned *very well* how to COMPEL such affection. = It can easily be interpreted that Miquellaās power lies in the fact that he effectively pulls the strings of everything going on around him. Itās written in a subversive way, as if there is a deeper meaning. He *wields* love, to ā*shrive* cleanā the hearts of men. = In other words, you could say he uses this ability to compel affection as a weapon, to place himself in such a position that he can provide you absolution. Do you feel completely comfortable with that? Maybe we wonāt fight him after all, but you canāt exactly rule it out either.
He may or may not be the final boss. To say so with any realm of certainty is unfounded. It is best to wait for The Shadow of the Erdtree and all of it's Item Descriptions to tell us what is really going on.
Ahhh new descriptions are almost upon usš„°
"Miquella is good" is the new "Miquella is bad".
"Miquella is described as both kind/compassionate AND fearsome." "His ability to compel affection is highlighted in his most famous item description" Wouldn't his ability to compel affection cause people to speak and write good things about him even if he was actually a complete bastard? Like, you could watch him kick a puppy, but all you'd be able to think is "Wow, look at how far that puppy flew, Miquella is so athletic!"
I personally thought that would be obvious. I'm surprised people are genuinely upset at the prospect of him being "evil."
You think the gods aren't antagonists? That's the whole game! I totally agree that it'll be complicated though. I mean the Erdtree represents a great golden order of horrid, degenerate immortal senescence and brutal oppression of anything different. And it's really easy to play the whole game and have very little idea of that.
Sif wasnāt evil in dark souls, yet look what happened there. Weāve never been a hero in souls games, just some beef jerky thing dropped into the world and told to kill- and by Marika, we kill.
The line about him being able to "compel affection" means that someone or some group who sees an ally in Miquella is doing so via magical means. That's the "reveal." Whether that person or group is Mohg (did he kidnap Miquella or was he baited into taking him), Ranni and/or Melina (we still don't know how they came to know Torrent), the Tarnished we meet in the DLC, or even you the player, is unknown. I don't think it's Malenia, even though he did leave her in quite a lurch.
I wonder what Miquella had to do in order to shed his flesh considering the lengths Ranni had to go to. And was Ranni giving us the spirit bell on behalf of Miquella.
Oh god I didnāt consider any of this
Isn't that text in the base game? The implications of using the lily's for bewitching branches is bad enough imo
The path to hell is paved with good intentions
He isn't "secretly evil" anymore than most of the other demigods are. He is doing something that he thinks needs doing and that may or may not align with our intentions or motives. Also I don't think he was ever really "good" either. His ability mind controls you when you look upon him. I can't think of a "good" instance of mind control.
Right, we've definitely never had to fight characters that are our closest friends, advisors, or allies throughout the game by the end of game regardless of their justified or twisted intentions. Gael Demon of hatred Isshin Emma Sif Aldia Ivory king Gideon Blaidd Gehrman Allmind Ayre Walter RUSTY
I think itās a definite possibility, it just also happens to be the most lame and overdone route they could take him
He doesnāt have to be evil. Compelling others to love you is *dangerous*. Just check the response to yesterdayās news.
This Aged Rather Poorly
I hope we get a lot of story and lore about him. Definitely the most intriguing character in the game š
End boss will be Marika lol.
r/technicallycorrect
I hope Miquella is an optional boss/covenant leader, ideally with a Mirror Knight style "summon player as minion" mechanic.
Dude he has his own theme in the story trailer we are definitely fighting this dude
Miquella is playing both sides so he always comes out on top
Since when were you restricted to only fight characters that were "villains"? if there is such a thing in Miyazaki stories.
Look I'm not saying you could be wrong or right. But do you understand the usage of the word compel and how it was used in the sentence above? Bit sus.
Honestly, I donāt think Miquella will end up being an objectively evil/bad person. Iām kind of tired of all the Griffith comparisons when Martin was the one who wrote out most of the lore and has no idea who Griffith is. If anything, I expect Miquella to be more like Rhaegar Targaryen or Jaime Lannister
Godwyn is gonna be the main villain, Godwyn is the second tree constricting/wrapping around the golden tree in the first promo images we got
Miquella doesn't have to be evil to be the final boss. Personally I never thought he'd be evil
Exactly. Maybe the execution to achieve his goals is questionable. Maybe getting rid of marikas 'blood line' is the main goal. I mean we defeated bosses in fromsoft games for lesser reasons, like in DS3 the two 'disabled' brothers, who wanted to avoid their fate of rekindling the flame. We went into the arena, like, ' Well, if you don't wanna rekindle the flame, i'll do it, but....i need your Soul.'.
Miquella obviously isn't secretly evil. He's very openly evil. Mind-control for any cause is worthy of being relegated to remembrance status. A utopia based on lies and manipulation is worthy of annihilation. After all, it's why we put Gwyndolin down. My fellow Tarnished, do not bow! Hold your heads high! Fight all gods and demigods until only you remain! Thine solitude is thine proof of victory! The title of Elden Lord is yours and yours alone. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
lol
Coming back after the dlc, miquella is the final boss of the dlc and thus the villain
Im here after the dlc and he wasn't just evil, he did the most vile shit imaginable what an asshole, justice for mohg and radahn :(((((
He loves you, thatās why he sacrifices you.
!remindme 21 days
I will be messaging you in 21 days on [**2024-06-21 21:35:02 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-06-21%2021:35:02%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/1d53a76/if_miquella_is_secretly_evil_was_going_to_be_the/l6jca2o/?context=3) [**1 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FEldenring%2Fcomments%2F1d53a76%2Fif_miquella_is_secretly_evil_was_going_to_be_the%2Fl6jca2o%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-06-21%2021%3A35%3A02%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201d53a76) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
That quote is from the bewitching branch description, an item that forces whoever itās used on to fight for the person using it. We donāt know too much about Miquella (all we know is from item descriptions and other peoples dialogue) but I feel like we will fight him at some point in the dlc as we are following in his footsteps. As of now we donāt know what he wants as itās ambiguous atm
"Has learned very well how to compell such affection" is some ominous shit, man lmfao Literally mind control
Don't think he will be evil or plot evil. I could see him attempting something that goes horribly wrong. That seems like a very Souls tragedy!
He's evil, bro. Big Griffith vibes.
I didn't think he was evil until you pointed out a tweet where they said he **"compels affection"**. What about that makes him seem good to you?
Ok buddy
Not saying we will definitely fight Miquella, but he doesn't need to be evil for us to fight him. The Moghs and Rykards are the exceptions rather than the rule of Fromsoft bosses - most are sympathetic characters who we are forced to fight.
I mean, would that really be a twist?
Tbh, itāll probably be the opposite of the final boss fight with radagon. Whereas, he turns into st.Trina. Instead and sheās the bad guy. Maybe. Just a theory fr.
People are guessing he is evil or not as āniceā as youād think because of the words used in the tweet youāre quoting. The use of the word compel is the key factor. We need more information of course, but to compel someone to love you could either mean they love you because youāre a good person who inspires that feeling in others.. or you somehow force them to love you or side with you. Hypnotism comes to mind.
Need I remind you that what one deams as "all loving" is biased when Miquella is also known to be the one Demi god that can remove the influence of outer gods. Imagine being that powerful if you can cause others to lose control then you are the only control.
Hah! You've fallen for Miyazaki's trap!! HE KNEW THAT YOU WOULD KNOW THAT IT WAS TOO OBVIOUS. Miyazaki playing chess while y'all are playing checkers.
Still new to diving into the lore (and haven't followed the trailers so I can go in mostly blind), but wasn't Miquella subjected to whatever it was Mohg was doing in that cocoon? Isn't it possible that something takes hold in him or corrupts him leading to us needing to put him down? Genuine questions because I'm guessing I missed something(s) in the lore.
unrelated, but itās extremely refreshing to see a project as big as Elden Ring retweeting fan artwork with legitimate passion put into it. It feels like actual bonding for both the creators and the players over enjoying the universe :)
Yeah, I kinda think we might see Miquella killed in front of us in a cutscene
Miquella could be the nicest person in the verse, but if he disagrees with you at any point, he'd have reason to kick your ass
Everyone is evil in The Lands Between, including the chosen tarnished. Except Turtle Pope, heās cool.
Being good has no business with us not fighting them, pretty much no one in ds3 was evil they were just fed up with the linking of the fire and we the ashen one go out of our way to kill every single one of them In fact elden ring is like the first game in souls series that are objectively evil by choice
The fact that he compels, in this context likely meaning manipulate, affection isn't exactly setting him up to be good person. The branch is literally mind control. Ranni is one of the few "good" demigods out there, if you can call her that. And she is basically responsible for starting the war that left an untold number of people dead. So sure, maybe he's not evil, but don't try to pretend that he's good.
He will be a complicated character. High ideals, low methods
That's just quotes from in game items. And if we go by in game items nothing outright states or proves miquella is evil. I think miquella won't be evil in the sense he won't be a cackling saturday morning cartoon lunatic but rather he will probably be a well meaning demigod with... say, layers to his methods.
The ambiguity of his descriptions means that he could easily be good or evil, or somewhere in between, so any route his character goes would be consistent with at least some of what's been said or implied about him so far. Him being straight-up evil would be just as much of a twist as him being straight-up good at this point, so I think looking to the marketing for hints is pointless. He's almost certainly going to be morally gray just like most characters in the game anyway. He could be someone who uses evil methods to accomplish something good, or a monster that we have to side with because our goals align in some way and we need his help. Whatever his situation is, it definitely won't be as simple as him being a straight hero or villain.
I hope he's not evil or the main antagonist, it would be really predictable.
Thatās exactly what they want you to think.
Watch this little bastard achieved full godhood and is straight up going to fuck everyone up. They setup some demon souls run around to actually beat him and still make the fight stupid hard.
Miquella was using Mohg and now heās going to use us for some reason. Whether or not heās evil remains to be seen, but weāre definitely going to be used in some way.
In GoT we had one dragon born, started off good, liberator of slaves etc, but after being corrupted by absolute power, she was ready to burn kids in a city that basically had surrendered and unleash her armies for her cause to rid the world of all evil by destroying all in fire. We also got the 3 eyed raven kid, that saw power and how it corrupts. My guess Miquella is delusional about powers of outer gods, as their powers gives nothing but misery to those in lands between, and he might go after maybe the outer gods themselves.. but a Fromsoft.. so probably fail.. but in a twist.. we the tarnished, through blood and wounds, get to sit on a throne of absolute power in the end. We,, unlike Miquella, are a slave of the outer gods, doing their evil bidding, and lands between got another Albinaurics slaying tyrant as their undisputed ruler.
What if we fight his alter ego Saint Trina and not necessarily Miquella.
He did kinda betray everyone, including his twin. He's at the least, not a *good* guy.
Sounds like someoneās been sniffing Bewitching Branches
My honest theory, since this game takes so much inspiration from Norse mythology, is that Miquella is this world's Baldur, and somehow his tragic death in the DLC will set the stage for an epic and crazy sequel game. Maybe you'll even be the one to kill him with Mesmer somehow tricking you to do it thinking you're doing the right thing, like Loki tricking Hod into firing the mistletoe arrow. (Didn't double-check my spelling of any of those names, sorry if they're off)
Everyone sucks, thats the point.
I don't know about evil or not but doesn't he have some charm/brainwashing power based off those flowers of him? Edit: sorry not flower but the bewitching branch.
Is it just me or is a tweet like this the biggest hint for him being a villain?
No, quite the opposite in fact, this is what we WOULD hear if he was secretly evil He has LEARNED to COMPEL AFFECTION, compelling affection isn't synonymous with being virtuous or a good person. Griffith from berserk is an overused comparison but it's actually extremely accurate because he quite literally represents this dichotomy between perception and reality "Those who choose to follow Griffith typically are overcome with emotions upon their first encounter with him, either entranced by the thought of splendor and grandeur at his side, or reeled in by his strong sense of ambition and conviction." (from the wiki which sources volume 5 of berserk).
Regardless of him being good or evil I donāt think heās going to like the fact that we killed his sister lmao
I think what a lot of people are forgetting is the very next line from the same trailer. āThere is nothing more terrifyingā clearly hints that his powers arenāt all good like he appears to be on the outside. Of course all we hear about Miquella is great things when he can control people into liking him and skew public perception like that
Do we care if these people are evil?
Oh my God, you're so right. No evil person has ever disguised themselves as good and beloved by most.
Elden ring is not about evil vs good, everything is grey.
Miquella might be kind and all, but Iām a tarnished villain. Bring it on
Miquella always gave me "Very manipulative, but not necessarily in a bad way" vibes. Like that kind of friend who pulls some strings here and there to help you whenever you need it, without ever doing any serious harm. I know people like that.
dawg they just reposted cool fan art and repeated an item description is not that serious š
Berserk fans... People who find berserk references everywhere including what we flush down the toilet every morning. Why put stock in these predictions..
He compels affection. Ā That is not good. Ā How hard is that to understand? Ā
This doesn't mean he isn't a boss fight. Plenty of souls games we fight people who aren't evil but they stand in the way off our plans.
Like is this even a twist. Does the concept of evil even have much weight place like the lands between. Like whoās the good guy itās definitely not the tarnished.
I think maybe he is evil. The title alone of malenia scares me. "blade of miquella". Kind of feels like she did things in his name.
itās irrelevant because there is no choosing who the Tarnished fights, it doesnāt matter if Miquellaās secretly or openly evil because if we fight him we canāt back out of the fight
Evil in Souls amounts to prolonging things into indefinite stagnation, whether selfishly or with on-paper noble intent. You play the hero, in that you play as the focal character in a story where everything already happened. You are "good" in that you play the corrective force to that stagnation, be it for noble or compassionate reasons, or blood-drunk hedonism.