Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Oops here's a link to the rest of that interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/o0bvgi/miyazaki_famitsu_interview_translation_part_4/

looks absolutely incredible, sounds like it's trying to deliver on everything you could possibly want from "open world dark souls" and even more (there's a summonable monster collecting mechanic, combat is taking on some aspects from sekiro too), and bc it's fromsoft i believe they can actually pull it off. world design sounds like it's taking a lot from botw while directly addressing the biggest problems i had with it too

there's one more interview out there, in german but it's comprehensible enough with machine translation: https://www.4players.de/4players.php/dispbericht/Allgemein/Vorschau/40800/84122/0/Elden_Ring.html

I mean, it basically looks and sounds like another Dark Souls, which is fine with me.

Dark Souls (or at least some of them) are basically open world games anyway so i'm bout it bout it

Yesss, perfectly happy with how Dark Souls (except with added horse, jump button, wayfinding, stealth, and NPCs moving their mouths) this looks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JldMvQMO_5U

that looks really cool, definite Breath of the Wild things going on with it

Super cool, super glad this is coming out on PS4. Nice to see so much comfortably familiar stuff recycled from Souls/Sekiro games (and borrowed from BotW), plus new stuff.

Witcher RPG structure, Elder Scrolls sprawl, Dark Souls dialogue/lore/design/combat/UI and Breath of the Wild improv/central castle mechanic sounds like just what i'm looking for. just keep the stakes continually high and the procedurally generated shit minimal and you got me.

The summoning spirits thing seems intriguing, as is the absence of health bars and the like in those clips.

Oh the HUD is definitely just turned off for the demo, to make it look more cinematic I'm sure.

Ive never played Dark Souls (the way everyone talks about how hard it is put me off - I dont play games to get MORE stressed out). I love and still play Skyrim and BOTW, would I like this? It looks very nice.

The thing about Dark Souls and all its successors is that they're difficult in a very specific way; it's all about paying careful attention to things like the timing of your own attacks. It's not hard the way a bullet-hell game is hard. It's a slower-paced, almost meditative challenge. I didn't think I liked "hard" games either, but I did get pretty into DS1. I found it frustrating and I did eventually slide off it. A few boss fights aside, I didn't find it "stressful" exactly. YMMV of course.

That having been said, I'd love to see From embrace the recent trend of allowing players a temporary assist if they're stuck, a la God Mode in Hades, or the assist features in Celeste.

I think so? The difficulty of the games is way overstated imo, and this one is sure to be the most user-friendly version so far. It's more that you can't rush through or brute force it, at least not on a first playthrough. And there are so many different ways to approach the game, you can summon helpers and use magic from a distance if you don't want to get deep into the melee combat.

Forks otm...like, I get to enjoy the 'aimlessly riding around on a horse' mechanic of BotW and Red Dead Redemption, except when you get off the horse, it's Dark Souls? Yes please.

xp

Definitely overstated imo.... you mostly just have to pay close attention and remember things, and you're rarely put in a position where you can't take a breath (admittedly the only souls game I've played is demon's on ps3 but they apparently get easier from there)

To expand on X's point, I'd say the "taking a breath" aspect is a huge part of these games, eg. bonfires. The moments of peace and quiet are all the more delicious after having slogged through lugubrious combat

*part of the appeal of these games*

A lot of these games are indeed pretty meditative, in mood and design. They're lonely and emphasize exploration and experimentation. All the dying and setbacks become amusing after a while, with the reward being how easy stuff that once challenged you becomes later on in the game, as if to emphasize, "See? you've come so far!" The only real stress comes with the boss fights, imo, which is where the real challenges lie, with a few specific areas or enemy exceptions here and there. The bosses, on the other hand, both impede progress and are the least forgiving, plus are more or less the only enemies where you can see just how close you are to beating them while still dying. Or, you know dying in just a couple of seconds, which can be frustrating, too. Don't think I found any/many enemies in Dark Souls 1/3 or Bloodborne as annoying or frustrating as many of the enemies in Sekiro, though, but clearly different strokes, etc. Maybe I'm just blocking them out. I'm sure I can find some posts of mine to the contrary.

Also the boss fights are designed to psyche you out with their epic scale and music, but almost all of them are a matter of learning the boss's moves and how to avoid them, and picking your moments.

Yeah, I remember reading a recommendation that sometimes when you hit a wall, just turn off the sound. Though sometimes you miss certain cues when you do that. Regardless of moves or scale or whatever, there will always be some bosses that some people can beat with their bare fists blindfolded the first attempt, but you'll fight 50 times and barely make headway. I tend to get bored after a while more than frustrated, which is another reason to turn down or off the sound.

I definitely turn off the music sometimes (you can do that and leave the sound on).

!

Yeah! Just go into settings and there should be separate volume sliders for music and sound fx.

I never had a PS3 so it was interesting to come to the Demon's Souls remake after playing all the other games. Some of the levels, one bonfire and all, seem monstrously punishing compared to later stuff, but the bosses don't really have any capacity to surprise when you've been through all the more developed, multi-stage/gimmicky ones from later games

I beat most of them in one try so far

Didn't get a network test code :(

Tons of info & videos out there today from people who have early access. I'm trying to avoid spoilers for the most part, except for stuff about the mechanics.

Standing poise (instead of Dark Souls 3-style hyperarmor) = in (not sure how I feel about this)
Powerstancing (ie you can equip two weapons of the same type and get a different dual-wielding moveset) = in
Mixing your own combo potions that can make you explode = sure why not
Solo hosts can't be invaded unless they use a few items = ok, fine
Invaders get a compass to see what direction the host is = sick
Invaders also get an item to quickly vanish from the host's world and reappear nearby = oh my god

It really does seem like a blend of all their games plus a bunch of new stuff, can't wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzFR5HsPcng

all sounds cool. I have no problem with spoilers, because not only will I forget by the time I get it, I can't play any of these games without walkthrough help anyway lol.

i have the same problem/gift with forgetting everything! really comes in handy on very rare occasions

Just finished that video and have some thoughts. One, I've never played Dark Souls II because I've ... well, I guess I just skipped it, but I've heard mixed things (and there are essentially two versions of it, for that matter). But it is interesting that some of its elements have made their way to other games, despite its reputation as a disappointment. For example, as I understand it your health can be halved in DS2, and a similar mechanic was brought into Sekiro. And according to this video, power stances from DS2 have made their way to this one, too. Second, I've never used magic in any of these games, because choosing magic is like choosing an entirely different, novel way to play the game, and if you're only going to play it once I'm not sure magic is the way to do it. But maybe it is in this game, because magic looks super cool. Third, I really hope this plays well on PS4 (and other last generation systems), but I have a bad feeling between it being open world and generally newer than the past several From games it might really benefit from the speed and power of newer systems. That's one advantage of (as this video points out) From never being on the tech vanguard, because it means the games generally don't *need* next gen tech to run. (I know Demon's Souls is PS5 exclusive, but those that have played it, do you think it could run on a PS4?)

Anyway, I can already tell there are going to be a lot of funny videos generated by this game.

Oh, also, looks like you don't take fall damage when you jump, which would have been a very perverse thing for From to do, so I'm glad they didn't do it! Or at least, maybe there are height restrictions/allowances? And I like how there is environmental damage that can be done by at least bosses, which I know was in "Sekiro," though I can't recall if it was introduced there.

Demon's Souls is quite a tech showcase, it wouldn't have been able to run at that framerate on ps4, and some of the lighting/particle effects look like they would have been a big stretch too

I like Dark Souls 2 to some degree, some dispiritingly shit world design like the infamous Earthen Peak Elevator Jaunt travesty aside. It's like a difficult 3rd album that isn't among the classics but fits a certain mood when you happen to want it. I found the DLC far too much of a grim slog though

Elden Ring looks unreasonably good, can't wait

This game looks fun, and by early accounts the open world design is supposed to be good, but I can't help but wonder whether the openness actually adds much to the Souls formula. The main draw of the world design in DS1 (admittedly the only one of these I've played) was for me, its labyrinthine density. Eldenringland just looks kinda vast and drab to me.

i was moderately interested in this game, but after watching some of those videos posted above i am now EAGERLY ANTICIPATING. my only problem is i don't have a system for it, and i was leaning toward getting a steam deck rather than a ps5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DWTt37khU

Fwiw, both videos note the difficulty of the first mandatory boss.

i showed the game a friend of mine who really likes dark souls, and he seemed to be a bit disappointed at first. i think he was thinking of it as a souls-like game, which, it is in some ways of course, very much so. but just being open world and adding jumping completely changes it. it reminds me of GTAIII or breath of the wild in terms of how those games were a departure from the games they built on

Souls-like.

And something else I was thinking about, given From's propensity for hidden walls/loot/enemies/NPCs/entire levels and/or alternate endgames, I wonder what that portends for an open world game? Gonna be a lot of OCD dudes slashing at every bush, rock or piece of foliage, looking for secret stuff, a la the first Zelda.

To be honest the open world part isn't particularly compelling to me. I do like the idea of all the new handcrafted zones that are the equivalent of large Dark souls areas, and a whole bunch of new build options and mechanics (and invasions, of course).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEypd23I0pQ

here's footage of the PS4 version - it seems like it runs without any serious issues or significant visual downgrades. i got into the network test on PS4 so i'll see how it is in a few hours from now.

i'm not at all concerned about the open world, all the footage of the network test has made it very clear that it's avoiding all the common open world pitfalls (repetitive content, big for the sake of being big, etc.) & is very dense with unique content. there are at least 10 bosses in the network test area alone (which is estimated to be around 1/12 of the full game's map). it's a big change, sure, but i don't think anywhere near as radical a shift as say GTA3 or BOTW were - the core gameplay is still very much the same despite the change in environmental scale.

For example, as I understand it your health can be halved in DS2, and a similar mechanic was brought into Sekiro.

DS2's max health decreasing on death (in increments down to a min of 50%) was more of an iteration on Demon's Souls' mechanic where you lost half your max health when you were in 'soul form' opposed to 'human form', which happened upon dying while human. in both cases, the game was generally balanced around the halved max health, with more than that being a bonus, but it was still kinda presented as a punishment. i think both were intended to give the player another incentive to go into human form, which enabled being invaded as well as summoning other players as well as removing the max health penalty. DS3 improved upon this by having embers, which worked the same way in enabling multiplayer, provide a bonus to your max health instead.

there wasn't any sort of max health restriction upon death mechanic in Sekiro though, and there doesn't seem to be in Elden Ring either.

DS2 is one of the weaker souls games but it's still worth playing. the issues with it are largely that the encounter design isn't quite as tight, the world design is clumsier & it rarely reaches the same sorts of high-point boss fights as the best of the series. i'd still put it above Demon's Souls at least.

i may be a minority opinion here, but i don't worry at all about whether something can run well enough on a certain machine. i can count the number of times i have been bothered by the framerate/slowdown of a game on one hand. i think part of it is that i came to gaming age playing games like LIFE FORCE. the slowdown was part of the game. the bug became the feature. aiming for this perfect-smooth framerate ideal is understandable but also kind of disappointing. it's just different, i guess

blighttown was pretty miserable at times in the original console versions of ds1 due to all the slowdown. it's certainly something to be concerned about & can make experiences much worse. with cross-gen games like this, it does happen sometimes that the last-gen versions are significantly inferior due to cutting corners trying to get the game to run on hardware they weren't focusing on, but that thankfully doesn't seem to be the case here at all.

IDK I think having a smooth frame rate is critical for a game like this where you have to time movements precisely. And while 60 is nice, 30 is perfectly good as long as it stays consistent. I played DS1 on Switch and it runs great!

As a relatively recent returner to games, I've learned my lesson the hard way. When I got "Doom" for the Switch it kinda ran like shit, even after a few updates. The slowdowns definitely affected game play in such a fast paced game, and even things like jumping were impacted. Like, you would run at a couple of spots (even with no enemies) and suddenly things would slow down, right before you pressed jump, and you would fall to your death. But tbf, "Doom" is almost uniquely busy and fast paced, and yeah, I can't think of another game off the top of my head with issues like that.

That said, I sort of suspect at least some of my problems with "Sekiro" were related to the frame rate. Usually I don't notice/care, but that game was all about timing, and while it could have been me (I mean, for sure it was me), it's also possible it was just that much trickier for me at 30fps than it would have been at 60.

there wasn't any sort of max health restriction upon death mechanic in Sekiro though

Oh, I just meant the mechanic that makes you lose half your souls or whatever. And gives everybody dragonrot. There's a cost of dying, which I found irritating since these games are built around dying over and over again. DS1 and DS3 don't have that cost, and Bloodborne gives you a shot to get some echoes back, too.

I never minded slow downs either, it's like slo mo at a dramatic moment.

Glad the PS4 version runs well, I never cared about graphics but had to admit that 60fps is really nice after playing the DS1 remaster and now DS3 on PS5. But I played all of the other games at 30fps for hundreds of hours and had a great time, so it's definitely not essential.

very positive impressions

https://kotaku.com/elden-ring-may-just-reinvent-the-open-world-genre-1848093261

I look forward to suddenly earning souls from some NPC that dies fighting enemies on the other side of the map.

I keep wondering if I should give the other From games a shot? I just got incredibly fed up with BB but maybe having a shield would make me feel better? (Probably not.)

On the one hand having experience in one of these games helps with all of them since they have some basics in common, but on the other hand, ER looks to be the most user-friendly of them all (from little things like the menus and upgrade systems, to how the combat system seems to align with what you see onscreen in a more intuitive way, rather than having to look up online how combos/poise/parries/etc work...that's mostly for pvp though).

Generally speaking though Dark Souls 1 and 2 are slower paced, while the combat in Bloodborne is faster (and DS3 is somewhere in-between).

I never had any issue killing reveants with a heal spell, maybe it depends on the spell? Or maybe Ive only tested it on the easy ones in Liurnia haha. I didn't know about that trick in areas where it wouldve really helped like that poison castle.

xxp Jordan I see you like to git gud. Some of us have lazy days, or are magic users.

Tonight! So excited!

(As if I haven't been playing ER every evening this week)

Jealous! Hopefully I get some time to dig in this weekend, gonna try and avoid spoilers in the meantime.

I did only co-op last night during my stationary bike + Elden Ring session, just to get runes for pre-dlc smithing stones. It was pretty silly - I'd say 90% of hosts died during the first ten seconds. I think they wanted their phantoms to beat the boss, but didn't want to seem like they weren't contributing so they just threw themselves into the meat grinder instead? I saw hosts continuing to spam Radagon with holy spells, Rivers of Blood, and Waterfowl Dance despite the fact that they were doing zero damage to him (and he would poise through and destroy them). I felt bad for the person who put on three buffs and promptly ran off the ledge at the entrance to Maliketh's arena though, lol. We did manage to beat Maliketh another time though, I think that was the only win. I was surprised to never get a Mohg summon.

Wow, you can use the horse in the Elden Beast fight now! Also lots of nice quality of life additions (new items are flagged, you can see how much FP different skills consume in the menu, roll out of gestures sooner, etc).

https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-version-112

Decreased the effect that increases the power of spells of Terra Magica.

Decreased the effect duration of the Cerulean Hidden Tear.

How dare you nerf my magic user cheese!

Increased the speed of some attacks of the following weapon types:

Axes / Greataxes / Hammers / Flails / Reapers

Increased the damage of charged attacks of the following weapon types:

Axes / Greataxes / Some Colossal Weapons

Okay - definitely time to respec to my dual great stars bonk build

Heh I'm curious how the changes to spinning slash affect my dragon halberd build. It's probably a good time to nerf the strong builds (power-stanced weapons etc) to get people to try the new dlc weapons.

They done nerfed the Blasphemous Blade just as I was getting to Malenia. DAAAARRRGHHG

Thinking I might livestream my first play of the DLC in about 30 minutes

Miyazaki interview in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/games/article/2024/jun/21/hidetaka-miyazaki-fromsoftware-elden-ring-shadow-erdtree

Only a couple of hours in. Been more or less poking my nose around the opening area, mostly seeing what there is to see, dying, then going some other place.

It is gobsmacking. Two things that really strike me are in the architectural aesthetics, which truly give the base game a rub for its money. Use of music and general sound effects also feel like a huge step up.

It's so weird starting this after having familiarised myself so thoroughly with Elden Ring over the last two years. To suddenly be unbridled by a lack of orientation is such a thrill, and they've done well to give that sense of "Okay this feels new". The game is screaming at me to stop relying on my old build and try new techniques.

Thanks for the reminder to turn my music back on! I disable it sometimes for boss fights (to stay calm) and always forget to turn it back on.

Woke up at 6am and thought "hmm, why not explore the shadow realm before work?" Loving it so far.

The first boss I found is a real dang doozy, incredible design though. Can't decide if I'm going to keep throwing myself at him (I've gotten him down to half health so far and have been making progress, but he can kill me in three hits) or come back later. It also crashed my game spectacularly at least once (no big deal, the save file was fine and I'm sure they'll patch everything soon).

(he also

Also loving the new 'recent items' tab, although it's a bit silly that your flask keeps rotating to the top every time you use it.

gave it quick go round after returning from some travel. enjoying the desolation. some nice jump scare SHRIEKS in the woods, killed a gargoyle, got mauled to death YOU DIED by some spectral dogs that i didn’t think would be a problem.

A+ would YOU DIED again. (and will when i go back to retrieve my runes i imagine)

Yeah the recent items tab is a great addition. I'm loving my somewhat over-leveled NG+2 character going into this. Retains the challenge of mid-late game of my first run, but with a bit more damage. Dying frequently but making some decent progress. Killed the first big boss after about 20-30 go rounds and with the help of the given summons. I've been getting more items to strengthen spirit ashes vs my character proper and I kinda feel the game is telling me "yeah it's okay, use your spirit ashes"

On this run I am doing a magic user build too, which is a fun and less frustrating way of taking this on so far. Still in the initial area, but already seeing that there's a LOT here to explore and it's got the feeling of "this is just getting started".

Not sure it's a good idea to respec to my proposed bonk/strength build yet (was going to tackle NG+3 with it)

Where is this Recent Items tab? I can't see it

God the scare shriek. I jumped so hard I had to spend 10 minutes rearranging my skeleton

Level 130, I'm dying to everything

Where is this Recent Items tab? I can't see it

everything does *so much damage* lol.

even the scorched mobs, which aren’t hard to kill but man if you get at all overwhelmed…

Xps thanks!

I left the boss for now and am having fun exploring. I'm having build fomo though...finding all these fun dex weapons, but I'm on my dual halberd strength character. And I don't actually like most strength weapons because they're too slow, but want to switch things up. Might respect but will wait to see what else I find (seems like a lot of hybrid stuff with requirements in 3-4 stats?).

Lol nevermind, I embraced the bonk and equipped the giant anvil I found in the forge, proceeded to destroy that boss. I guess if you're gonna do a strength build you may as well play to its, uh, strengths.

just lost 200,000 souls rolling off a ledge on a run back thru the gaol. the purist dark souls experience.

Got a friend to help me on the first boss, and it was fun! Now we're both very much stuck on the second boss

I was at the bottom of a great dungeon, which literally kept going down and down, having a good boss fight when the power went out. Then our basement flooded and we had to unplug and disassemble everything, so I don't know when I'll be getting back to the shadow realm. :(

Sounds like the realm of shadow came to you :(

Haha yes, that lightning whip-wielding Death Knight was just trying to increase damage by flooding the arena. Dastard!

that sounds awful, hope everything's alright Jordan!

Managed to beat the second boss within an inch of my own life after about 10 tries. A very dramatic fight involving the NPC and Mimic Tear. I spent much of the fight keeping my distance and just buffing my aids.

In interesting news: My friend managed to somehow skip Castle Ensis by finding a route round the back way. I've tried to work out what she did and I've been all round, but no idea how she did it. It's not recommmended though as it apparently breaks a few NPC quests

So far I'm really enjoying this. The atmospheres and biomes are amazing. The boss fights and many of the NPCs are challenging. And I'm only just getting started. No idea about the lore yet. I'm enjoying meeting all these different NPCs (many of them look very similar to each other - they're all wearing masks!)

Bearing in mind, I'm only on the second map fragment. But a small qualm so far is that the Shadow Realm feels a little wide and empty compared to, say, Limgrave or Altus Plateau.

I'd compare Gravesite Plain to Consecrated Snowfield for that reason. I can spend a long time ploughing through these wide empty fields without really hitting anything special. Or heading down a particular road only to find a dead-end with just a single item.

Gravesite Plain is surrounded by huge impenetrable rock walls and valleys, which, in the base game would have had lots of little caves and catacombs buried in them to explore. But these are much fewer and farther between. You could argue it's delayed gratification. The ones I've found are really well hidden!

Maybe it's partly because there's no Varre-type character telling you where you need to go that it feels at-once more directionless AND more linear. "Run around and find these crosses and come back to us", feels a bit more "gamey" than "You need to obtain a rune by beating the master of Stormveil so you can enter the roundtable hold".

Thinking about it, the general lay-out reminds me of Dark Souls 2's "hub-and-spoke"-style map quite a bit.

The legacy dungeons also feel a bit more compact linear than I'm used to (although I admit I got a bit lost in Belurat). I'd equate somewhere like Castle Ensis with somewhere like Castle Sol or Castle Morne than Stormveil. There's less of that intricate higgledypiggledy wrapping-around on themselves vibe. When I spent an hour in a poisoned swamp fighting an ulcerated tree spirit and hordes of insect-creatures just to gain a few random items and only to be left with the option to turn back on myself, I was frustrated.

Anyway, these are minor complaints, or qualms I should say - I'm just getting started and I'm sure there'll be a lot more to discover!

Thanks, we took out all the floor and shop-vacuumed up the water, and I hooked the PS5 back up last night to play in an empty concrete room on an exercise bike, as Miyazaki intended.

Are we in spoiler territory on the thread now? I really loved fighting this catacombs boss, very fun and unique moveset for a miniboss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEXW0XQOFYQ

I haven't ventured into what I assume is Castle Ensis yet, I'm doing everything I can around it. It's kind of refreshing not to always find caves where I would expect them, but I'm not sure if it feels more empty or not. I found a really cool path northeast of the castle, descending down where a soldier was looking out with binoculars, eventually using the horse to navigate a bunch of floating (?) rocks and pillars. In the end all I found was a cookbook, a mushroom bell-bearing (lol) that I had to shoot down, and a grace. But I'm probably missing something important, idk.

Also I appreciate that two mini-bosses have given up their weapons upon defeat, but it's the classic "this weapon seems much smaller and less cool when I use it" thing. Guess I'll stick with my giant cartoon anvil that makes it hard to see, for now.

Xp oh wow, I don't even know if I've found this yet. I feel like I've poked all round Gravesite Plain, and even ended up way off in some kind of volcano biome before thinking I should head back

Re: Spoilers, I'd say it's down to your own judgement. Maybe hide big spoilers and speak more generally?

I KNEW IT

(spoilers for what's under the dancing lion's coat)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO8vEHspEdE

10-15 hours in and won't say anything spoilery but it's got me. Started off feeling like it was a bit flat, like maybe I've done enough of this Elden Ring business, especially bombing around big dark landscapes, but bit by bit - that lion, hidden paths into big new areas, mysterious stuff lying around, fun fun weapons, repeatedly dying as I learned my way through some obnoxious gangs - I am back to thinking about it all the time and sloping off to play whenever I have five minutes.

"5 minutes"

This is always the way it goes, but it's kinda crazy to me to see all the people who are on their second or third playthrough of the dlc. I'm slowly making my way through the first main map area and still haven't entered the castle, and still telling myself I need to be more thorough at exploring (for instance I had missed that Blackgaol Knight in the starting area!). I know my tendency is to be tempted on to the next area and miss at least 35% of the things, so I'm trying to really make the most of this first experience.

I killed a dragon yesterday, did a few invasions, that's about it.

"5 minutes"

For instance I just now popped in for 5 minutes to look at a new dungeon and try out a blood backhand blade and ok, it's now 50 minutes later but that's a single order of magnitude, nothing in cosmic terms.

I've also really missed squinting at the map and trying to pick out paths to get somewhere that looks intriguing. Relatedly, fuck you cliffs.

really good playing this in summer, with me squinting at the screen because although it's sunny in my front room, it's night and raining in the proper world, and i'm crouch-walking around a camp full of things I can't really see, but which will kill me pronto.

Also fuck you cliffs. I've only played a few hours. I must admit although it's underpopulated comparative to say Limgrave, I quite like the central desolation, the sense this dimensional world is under the sole control of Messmer and his fire, with only the dubious demiurge figure of Miquella to (apparently) counterbalance the weight of power in the realm.