Elden Ring - What is the Elden Beast?

I feel a little silly using the same song for two videos in a row, but I tried a dozen songs and this was a Twilight Realm video whether I wanted it or not. The fact that the Elden Beast is referred to as a "Beast" has always felt a little strange, but it feels notable that there's some precedent for the Greater Will evidently "uplifting" Beasts to use to its own end, with the Beastmen of Faram Azula, and the fact the Fallingstar Beasts are similarly named raises some question about the basic nature of the living stars.

This makes me appreciate the end boss fakeout even more. Is the last enemy a dude? No, it is an alien wielding a dude.

Weird how I never felt the Elden Beast WASN'T sentient

"I swear, if we get to the final boss and it's another Ulcerated Tree Spirit..." ~A very unfortunate man

The Greater Will is often nearly described as more of a force than an actual being, but seeing as how the Elden Ring itself had its form with the Elden Beast, it makes me wonder what kinda cosmic horror the Greater Will actually is...

I love the Elden Beast's design. I want to pet the space dragon-slug.

I don't think it's just that EB is more "properly" formed, but rather that the other forms are illegitimate, non-sanctioned by higher law in some way. "Naturalborn" is another term for bastard, and the weapon we can get from Astel is also called "Bastard's Stars". Another reference within that weapon's description is to "debris", which indicates these other beasts might be formed of some fundamentally similar property, plus space and/or earthly gunk. This makes it sound like there's an archetypal seed, a substance, which in the EB is pure born and orthodox, but bastardy, impure and heterodox for all the others.

An interesting thing about Elden beast to me is, right after the cutscene where it appears, the first thing it does is seemingly bow, even holding its left hand up where a person would over their heart! And right after, it uses its extremely powerful gold fire breath, almost as if it means to say "Tarnished who's beaten even Radagon, it was a pleasure to meet you, now die" lol

I love the fact they used "star sounds" for Elden Beast's idle even tho there's no way players would have noticed it. It really does feel like everyone on the team at FROMSOFT goes above and beyond just to tell little bits of story whenever possible.

I love how elden ring depicts cosmic beings. they're not incomprehensible nightmares like is often portrayed. they're awe-inspiring and beautiful

never have I ever wanted more badly to just be able to talk to bosses in a game so intently designed to not allow it.

Something very interesting is the start of the fight with it, I think. It always starts the same way, with the beast almost formally greeting you. Holding it's arm in a manner similar to the reverential bow. To me, it seems like it actually knows what your arrival and defeat of Radagon actually imply.

Man the visuals for the arena and the lore implications just makes the universe of Elden Ring so vast and it makes me want to know more about the Greater Will and the cosmos at large, and if those Erdtrees we see in the arena are other worlds it has influenced.

The sounds are legitimately an amazing observation. This is why Zullie is so good

I didn't notice that the Elden Beast actually has a scar. Now that I think about it, I think that when you stagger her, the scar glows a little?

The aquatic structure of the Elden Beast is quite beautiful in a sense, as it implies that these creatures are meant to swim in the vast ocean of the void between the stars to find its home in a world capable of sustaining life. And with the Elden Beast, we have more context with the Astels, or malformed stars, as it implies these creatures perhaps were warped or twisted in some capacity during their evolution, perhaps they landed far too son and were malformed by the very crust of the world they landed on unlike the Elden Beast that was fully grown by the time it landed on the Lands Between.

The Elden Beast is the Hunter of Yharnam after he ate all the umbilical cords and became a great old one.

The Elden Beast also bears some striking similarities to the Night Walker, the nocturnal form of the Spirit of the Forest from Princess Mononoke. I feel it's similar in nature as well, granting intelligence and speech to beasts, while being a force of nature itself.

2:43 Y'know, interestingly, cosmic horror actually has some amount of presence in Lord of The Rings. There are hints to creatures that existed before the creation of Arda, LOTR's Earth, that reside deep beneath Moria that ISN'T the Balrog, referred to only by Tolkien as "The Nameless Things" throughout all of his writing, and it is thought that The Watcher in The Water that guard the hidden Gates of Moria is possibly one of these Nameless Things, Gandalf claiming it to be among creatures that are "older and fouler things than the Orcs". It's said that these Nameless Things were so unbelievably deep below the earth that not even the deepest reaches of the Dwarves' depths were even close to reaching the depths of The Nameless Things. It's also said that they're still active, just in hiding. It's said that when Goblin-town was established beneath the central Misty Mountains that "the original owners" never left the caves, they merely withdrew to "odd corners, slinking and nosing about", and this is not in reference to Gollum, as it's thought that Gollum may have even encountered these creatures himself. A quote from Gandalf in The Two Towers, after having pursued and defeated the Balrog Durin's Bane in the caverns of Moria and returning to The Three Hunters: "Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day." Unfortunately, Tolkien never wrote too much about The Nameless Things prior to his passing, so to this day they remain a bit of a warp in the world and lore of Lord of The Rings, as it's fervently said and damn-near hammered into the minds of readers that nothing existed before Eru brought the universe, therefore Arda, into existence through song. It's a bit of a shame really, since The Nameless Things are really one of the only prime examples of cosmic horror in Fantasy as a genre. Both Tolkien and Lovecraft took inspiration from Norse mythology for their "horrors residing deep beneath the earth" themes in their works on account of things like Nidhogg gnawing on the roots of Yggdrasil, and from my understanding Elden Ring takes quite a lot of inspiration from Norse Mythology, as we do seem to encounter The Elden Beast only after reaching The Erdtree, Elden Ring's own Yggdrasil, and defeating someone of mortal and comprehendible form, before evolving into the Elden Beast's otherworldly and almost alien physicality. Coincidence?

I also feel like the elden beast has something primordial about it. It’s design reminds me of ancient creatures from the Cambrian era, it’s face particularly reminds me of Tully’s monster