The tarnished is a reanimated corpse forced to fight monsters. Most of the bosses are demigod children who started a global war for a little bit more power.
The shattering was bad but all the demigods decided to start fighting afterward of their own accord. Ranni is really the one who could be said to have set everything off since the killing of Godwyn led to the shattering. It's crazy how many people messed up in elden ring lol
I agree but also think a character doesn’t have to be sympathetic to be in the right. The tarnished and Ranni are not sympathetic but I feel like they’re making the most of a very shitty world. Goldmask is like the only other tarnished who might be a decent Elden lord, and he’s not trying
I think a lot of it comes down to agency. The Greater Will (space whale, the fingers it communicates through / Metyr) set up a lot of the power structures in the lands between, both the good bits (e.g. the capital had housing, medicine, order) and the horrible ones (e.g. persecution of the omen).
Other Outer Gods are vying for influence, to overthrow the Greater Will, e.g. the Formless Mother that Mohg worships, the rot that Malenia is taken over by. Ranni killed a lot of people, even a sibling, but isolating the world from all exterior influence could be a good thing.
It might bring something they've never achieved before; self-determination. Would the native denizens do any better? Maybe not.. Honestly probably not. But better internal strife than a pawn in a proxy war between dead or absent gods?
I didn't understand much about the plot of this game when I started but I did understand that my character is a menace and has it out for almost everyone.
I wish I could pick what my Tarnished's agricultural and public transport policy was (Lobsters) so that I could at least tell myself I'd be a better Elden Lord, in the end I got demotivated to finish the game. Think I'd end up like a hermit tarnished that didn't make it tbh
Yeah but you could make arguments like these for pretty much any soulsborne boss. The reason why the Tarnished is doing what they do is entirely up to the ending they're going for and most of them are actually pretty good.
As for that "one person who is as unsympathetic as you", Ranni's goal is to end the gods' influence on the people of the Lands Between and allow them the space to chose their own destinies. That doesn't seem bad to me.
She does, I'll concede that. Her actions in the murder of Godwyn sparked an era of war and bloodshed that lasted longer than we have the time to admit.
But the Lands Between are not dying and can still be saved, and I think that was her entire plan. Whether she kicked it off right or not I dunno!
You, the Tarnished of No Renown: Random weirdo from beyond the fog. You are driven entirely by ambition. You're working-class, but in this setting, being working-class gives you rapid-cycling resurrective immortality, so, you know.
counterpoint: i am only doing things because women (melina, ranni, tanith, etc) tell me to do them, my sole motivation is being a hopeless lesbian and my moral failing is that if women tell me to kill i will. also everywhere i go people attack me on sight so i fight back.
From soft protagonists are privileged unfathomably on every level, and i smile every time someone realizes how much the world gives them every advantage.
it's actually acknowledged in all the Armored Core games how the Player Character is a supreme demi-god. one who rules as an unstoppable Judge, Jury & Executioner. and makes it part of the storyline around that disturbing level of power.
Godrick: Self-obsessed grasping predator, but his viciousness and brutality barely cloak a deep, unmanageable inadequacy and loneliness, and he seems almost glad to die.
Rennala: Woman driven to a mental break by losing literally everything and everyone in her life. The version of her you actually fight is a simulacrum created by her daughter, one of the few characters in the story as unsympathetic as you are.
wait what's your beef with Ranni, one of only two people trying to break the cycle of the lands between being used as a playground for outer gods who don't care about their subjects?
To be clear, I politically support Ranni, it's just that she's a Machiavellian schemer and her plans tend to have a pretty high price in innocent blood
Starscourge Radahn: Man reduced to violent, feral insanity because he's suffering the incurable neurodegenerative aftereffects of a biological weapon of mass destruction.
This is one particularly interesting because the whole reason he got infected in the first place is to fulfill the godly desires of his (half?) brother possibly even unbeknownst to him (dlc lore fills in a lot here)
Rykard: Asshole even before he turned into the asshole he is now, but at least Rykard can truthfully say his rationale for overthrowing the gods was to stop them oppressing the people; the "endless hunger" thing is not something he could reasonably have seen coming.
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I totally get why people like it, but… there’s a reason I communicate mostly in fart jokes.
>Murders everything
>Doesn't elaborate
But the Lands Between are not dying and can still be saved, and I think that was her entire plan. Whether she kicked it off right or not I dunno!
... while your 'just a lil guy' in Souls games 😆