Deleuze, Guattari and Elden Ring
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Fromsoftware are on a generational run of form currently. The Dark Souls series was an incredible triumph of vision, that was hugely successful despite its “difficult” mechanics and labyrinthine story. Bloodborne topped all of those, and to me is the best game to be released on the Playstation 4. Sekiro was too hard for me, sold gangbusters, and is obviously a work of singular skill and love. Hell, Armoured Core 6 was awesome despite being a mech thing in the year 2023. But most successful of all has certainly been Elden Ring, From’s sojourn into a properly open world, and amazing blockbuster, made in conjunction with a First Team All-Procrastinator George R. R. Martin. I don’t think its unreasonable to say that Fromsoft is probably the best studio of the 2010’s to now, all of their games are very very good, even when difficult or vexing, assuming we leave Dark Souls 2 out of it (everyone gets a mulligan). Part of that is more than the gameplay or even the story and the lore, but the messages and ideas that the game embodies. In general From’s games have a lot of interesting themes, messages and different possible reading, and there is certainly an interesting discussion to be had about how they use gameplay to impart lessons about the world, but I digress. Fromsoft is known for their DLC’s, which have historically contained some of the best moments in the series, such as the iconic Artorias of the Abyss, or the series capping Ringed City of Dark Souls 3. Elden Ring‘s DLC is coming up soon, and just watching their trailer and promotional material got me excited to think about the game again, as well as some recent things I’ve been reading and thinking about.
One of the most interesting and compelling stories contained within Elden Ring is of the Three Fingers, and the Flame of Frenzy. I now have the unenviable task of trying to quickly establish Elden Ring‘s story and setting, as well as the themes From tend to play with to try and explain why this is interesting. Throughout almost all of their games, particularly the Souls series, From are very interested in loss, grief, and the difficulties of letting go. The original sin of Dark Souls is that Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight doesn’t want to let go of his world, and refuses to let the flame fade, instead denying the world of it’s natural death and rebirth. Elden Ring deals with very similar themes, being set after the logos of the world, the Elden Ring, has been shattered and those that remain attempt to piece things back together, or at least deal with it. The principle religious and philosophical doctrine of the setting is the Golden Order, founded by Queen Marika, all of whom serve the ‘Greater Will’, a mysterious Outer God of order and hierarchy. There is a lot I’m brushing over here, but I’m trying to be quick. The envoy of the Greater Will is the Two Fingers, a sort of interpreter of this divine agent. Set in opposition to this are the Three Fingers, who themselves are envoys of the Flame of Frenzy, the Outer God of Chaos. Now we’re starting to get somewhere. The earthly messenger of the yellow Flame of Frenzy is Shabriri, referred to as the “most reviled man in all history”, who performs a sort of metempsychosis, travelling between bodies. When we meet him in game he is wearing the body of our dear friend Bloody Finger Hunter Yura, who in classic Fromsoft fashion died tragically like 40 hours ago. Whatever the case though, Shabriri and the things he says, and the entire perspective of “Chaos” are really quite fascinating to me.
Talking to Lightseeker Hyetta late in her questline reveals that “All that there is came from the One Great”, but this was fractured by the Greater Will, into a sort of order and hierarchy that now defines the world as we understand it. As another avatar of the Frenzied Flame, she begs for “No more fractures. No more birth…”. Shabriri’s dialogue further complements this idea, when he says “Burn the Erdtree to the ground, and incinerate all that divides and distinguishes”, concluding with his iconic line “Ahh, may chaos take the world! May chaos take the world!”. All of this works together to build a fairly unique perspective for the side of Chaos, one that makes me wonder what Miyazaki and Martin were reading and thinking about as they created these characters.
Now you’re probably hoping that this article finally goes somewhere, and look no further. I think this notion of chaos, as a force that seeks to return the world to a sort of primordial totality through a destructive conflagration is quite interesting. Maybe most interesting of all is Shabriri’s exhortation to “incinerate all that divides and distinguishes”. Hyetta’s dialogue gives this an even more interesting dimension, saying that the imposition of order, presumably through labels and hierarchy is the sort of “original sin” of this world, at least from her perspective. In particular, it reminds me a lot of the ideas that Andrew Culp develops in his book Dark Deleuze (2016). In this book, Culp rails against the contemporary interpretation, and application of the ideas developed by the French postmodernist. Instead of the disruptive innovation preached by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs using Deleuze’s ideas, we should instead embrace a revolutionary “hatred for this world”. To understand this in the context of Elden Ring, its useful to start from the idea of the rhizome. For Deleuze and Guattari, this is a way of thinking that encourages non-linear thinking, where any point could connect to another point, in a non-hierarchical way. This is in opposition to an arborescent way of thinking, which like a tree, proceeds from the roots to the branches in a rigorously structured fashion, allowing few points of connection. The rhizome is embraced as a creative and joyful method of connecting ideas and identities along new latitudes. But that clearly doesn’t seem to be what Shabriri is endorsing when he calls for us to “Burn the Erdtree to the ground”, destroying every source of difference. Instead he calls for a different sort of connectivity, the equalizing force of destructive flame, purging the world of the order, hierarchy and arborescence that Marika’s Golden Order instantiates. This mirrors some of the “dark paths” that Culp develops in understanding Deleuze, abandoning the joyous auto-production that undergirds a cybernetic capitalism, in favour of nomadic and destructive revolution. He argues that the only future that we can possibly have will only come when cease reproducing the present, and that the coming apocalypse may ruin the face of the earth, but “we should greet it with cheer” (p.60), perhaps with some of Shabriri’s own enthusiasm.
Whether it was intentional or not I think this is a fun through line between this rather niche body of thought, and one of the most popular video games of the past few years, and further cements Fromsoft’s status as one of the few remaining game studios with credibility or character. I’m sure there is plenty to be said about other motifs in From’s work, particularly from Nietzsche, by way of Kentaro Miura’s Berserk. I’m still a beginner when it comes to D+G’s work, and make no claim that I fully understand it, or Culp’s thoughts for that matter, so take all of these thoughts with a grain of salt, or maybe some of your own research. While hardly definitive, I think these are some fun ideas that Elden Ring may be playing around with, and certainly adds more flavor to this recurring sort of role in the Souls series. What was previously the nihilism of Kaathe or Yuria instead becomes the invigorating Flame of Frenzy and Chaos of Shabriri, which makes no attempt to hide it’s barbaric nature. But perhaps this is a different avenue of realizing the sort of authentic and omnidirectional connection that Deleuze and Guattari wrote of.
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