FromSoftware is notorious for making its games’ lore cryptic. A random description on a not-so-important weapon can unfurl revelations about a Souls game’s lore, and you can easily miss it. While that may be frustrating for some players, FromSoftware fans thrive on it, as they dive into subreddits and forums to find out more about their favourite game.
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Elden Ring follows the same formula. You’ll learn a lot about The Lands Between by reading the flavour text of items, and will be very confused if you decide to skip it. However, some of its lore is also inspired from the most unlikely sources. Many fans were surprised to learn where Miyazaki and gang got the inspiration for the famed Crucible Knights from.
The Paleozoic Eras Tour
As mentioned by TheGodskin‘s post on Reddit, the Crucible Knights Ordovis, Siluria, and Devonia are named after the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian periods of the Paleozoic era respectively.
However, one of the comments pointed out that even their character models are designed based on the periods. “That’s how I remembered my bio191 course lol. I remember Devonian having tetrapods because the knight turns into a centaur. Ordovician has exoskeleton living things because Ordovis has a hard giant shield. Siluria has fungal hyphae like antlers because Silurian period has fungi emergence.”
One well-verse fan pointed out that this was because “the Crucible was a sort of proto-Erdtree. It was this big writhing mass of power and spirit (a primordial soup if you will) and existed as a religious focal point in the Lands Between before the era of the Tree itself. You might even interpret it as Elden Ring’s prehistoric era.”
Besides Berserk, it seems Miyazaki is also a fan of geology. There are other instances linked to the lore that are named after geological or precursor terms. Fans were quite surprised to learn about this connection, especially those who just recently learned about the Paleozoic era.
Even after two years, Elden Ring keeps surprising its fans with new information. Most recently it did so by revealing Elden Ring Nightreign, a co-op adventure game based on the beloved title.
With worldbuilding from Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin and developed by FromSoftware, Elden Ring is a masterpiece in what has become known as the ‘Soulslike’ genre of action role-playing games.