Call of Duty Season 3 teasers continue for Warzone, as Activision has released a new clip of Caldera’s mines collapsing under the attack of something gigantic stomping across the island’s surface.

“The island’s surface is no longer safe. When they go high, we go low,” the Call of Duty Twitter account says, including a new story teaser for Season 3. The video’s narrator is vaguely explaining that a device needs to be activated within Caldera’s phosphate mines, but discussion of the plan is cut off by vibrations of something large shaking and collapsing the underground area.

The island’s surface is no longer safe. When they go high, we go low. pic.twitter.com/2xOvaIDOrD

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) April 18, 2022

“It’s not ready yet…they’re coming,” the narrator shouts, and the video abruptly ends with screaming.

This seems to be yet another teaser leading up to a monstrous battle on Caldera for Season 3 of Warzone. Season 3’s theme is Classified Arms, and the season’s first cinematic trailer explains that the Nebula bombs detonated in Season 2 have awoken a ferocious creature. Another teaser seems to suggest that the King of the Monsters himself, Godzilla, is coming to Warzone to cause problems on Caldera.

Previous reports from leakers suggested that Godzilla and King Kong were both coming to Warzone, and the wording in this latest teaser seemingly confirms that Godzilla won’t be the only monster to battle on the island.

In addition to battling monsters, here is everything we know about Call of Duty Season 3’s big update that arrives on April 27. Monsters won’t be the only new additions to Call of Duty, iconic rapper Snoop Dogg is arriving on April 19 as a playable operator for both Warzone and Vanguard.

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Whether or not Activision Blizzard founder and CEO Bobby Kotick stays with the company, should the proposed sale to Microsoft go through, is one of many questions that remains unanswered about the deal. We still don’t know what will happen, but Activision Blizzard recently updated a proxy filing with the US government, and it specifically mentions that management at Activision Blizzard and Microsoft have not sat down to discuss Kotick’s employment status as of yet.

“No discussions or negotiations regarding post-closing employment arrangements with Microsoft occurred between Microsoft and Mr. Kotick prior to the approval and execution of the merger agreement and the transactions contemplated thereby, or have occurred subsequent to such approval and execution, through the date hereof,” the statement says, as spotted by Stephen Totilo of Axios.

Although no official announcement has been made about Kotick’s future with Activision Blizzard should the deal be finalized, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kotick will leave. The official word is that Kotick will stay on at Activision Blizzard as its CEO for the time being, but behind the scenes, management at Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have reportedly agreed that Kotick will leave when the deal is done.

The silence on this matter and others is seemingly connected to how the deal remains pending, subject to approval from the US government. Or there could be other factors at play. Recently, four US Senators–including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren–wrote a letter to the FTC to say they are “deeply concerned” about the proposed buyout.

The lawmakers said the FTC ought to find out if Microsoft’s proposed buyout of Activision Blizzard could “exacerbate the flurry of sexual-abuse, harassment and retaliation allegations at Activision stemming from recent federal and state investigations.”

The senators also said they are concerned that Kotick will remain with the company should the deal go through. Kotick is accused of, among other things, knowing about and covering up reports of sexual harassment. Kotick is also said to have threatened to kill an assistant. Staff at Activision Blizzard have, for months, called for Kotick to step down.

Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, believes that the deal will go through, which is not a surprise. He said in an interview that, if the deal should materialize, Microsoft will still be number three in terms of market share.

In January, Microsoft announced it was planning to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, a figure that has since climbed to $75 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. This is by far Microsoft’s biggest acquisition ever–its next biggest was the $26.2 billion it paid for Skype in 2016. It’s one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of acquisitions across all business fields.

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Call of Duty: Warzone has seen quite a few odd glitches over the years, but players have discovered a hilarious new killcam bug that uses the operator’s head as a gun.

Reddit user “Meatier_Showerr” shared a Warzone clip to the Warzone subreddit, showing a ridiculous killcam from a match on Rebirth Island, where the player’s gun is shown as their operator head instead. The bullets appear to fly from a floating female head, while her pigtails are seemingly the weapon’s grip.

Some Redditors shared their confusion on how a bug like this even gets in the game, while another user jokingly commented to say the player in the killcam just had all the right attachments. “He’s just got it kitted out. Pigtails, adjustable nose, sawed-off neck. It’s the meta loadout, bro,” the Redditor said.

While Warzone has seen some frustrating and unfair bugs in the past, including invisible operator skins that helped players score easier wins, this seems to be a harmless visual bug that only affects the killcam. Players should still see their proper weapon in hand, but the killcam could get bugged out to show their operator head instead.

Additionally, Activision is already teasing content for Season 3 of Warzone, which seems to involve a new event themed around Godzilla. Season 3 of Vanguard and Warzone is set to arrive on April 27, and here is everything we know so far about the big updates.

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A new update has arrived to Call of Duty: Vanguard, and while the patch notes are small, the April 18 update focuses on quality-of-life updates for multiplayer and Zombies mode.

According to the patch notes from Sledgehammer Games, the update addresses an issue that previously caused operators to be invisible during the MVP Voting phase on Castle. And speaking of invisibility, the update squashes a bug that caused operator heads to disappear when using a combat shield and akimbo weapons.

Improvements were also made to some of Vanguard’s multiplayer modes. For Search and Destroy, bomb timers will now always be shown on the HUD. And for Season 2’s Arms Race, the update improves physics when colliding with a Nebula Crate using the mode’s CD12 transport vehicle. The patch notes also mention a bug fix in Ranked Play, which previously prevented some players from being placed on the CDL Leaderboard after completing their five Skill Evaluation matches.

Additional multiplayer updates include a fix to allow operators to showcase the correct weapon during the countdown of a Free-for-All match, and it resolves an issue that previously caused Vanguard to crash when resuming the game from an idle state on Xbox consoles.

On the Zombies side, there are some stability improvements included in the patch notes. This includes a fix for a stability issue that previously kicked players from a match when reviving a player using melee and tactical items. The update also fixes a crash that would occur while inspecting the Decimator Shield or Ray Gun Wonder Weapons.

The full patch notes can be found below, as shared by Sledgehammer Games.

While this week’s Vanguard update was on the smaller side, players can expect a much bigger update to arrive when Call of Duty Season 3 begins for Warzone and Vanguard on April 27. Traditional maps have finally been announced for Vanguard’s Zombies mode, but that update is not scheduled to arrive until sometime in Season 4.

MULTIPLAYER

Maps

Castle

Addressed an issue where Operators could be invisible during the MVP Voting phase.

Modes

Search & Destroy

Bomb timers will now always be shown on the HUD.

Arms Race

Improved physics when colliding with a Nebula Crate using the CD12 Transport vehicle.

Weapons

Combat Shield (Melee)

Addressed an issue that caused Operator heads to disappear when using a Combat Shield and Akimbo weapons.

Killstreaks

Glide Bomb (5 Kills)

Targetting UI elements will no longer persist if a teammate uses a Ball Turret Gunner while the player’s Glide Bomb is active.

Ranked Play

Addressed an issue that prevented some players from being placed on the CDL Leaderboard after completing their five Skill Evaluation matches.

User Interface & Experience

Progression is now accurately displayed on the Rank widget in Multiplayer menus.

Players can now access the Armory while the cross-platform play option is disabled.

Operators will now showcase the correct Weapon during the countdown of a Free-for-All match.

Fixed a crash when resuming the game from an idle state on Xbox consoles.

Bundles & Cosmetics

The Hard Shell Bundle will now grant the correct item for the Typhoon Weapon Charm.

Addressed an issue that prevented Halima’s face from properly animating during loot previews.

ZOMBIES

Stability

Addressed a stability issue where players would be kicked from a match when reviving a player using melee and tactical items only.

Added stability fixes for crashes that would occur while inspecting the Decimator Shield or Ray Gun. Weapon inspects for both of these items have been enabled.

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Ark: Ultimate Survivor Edition is coming to the Nintendo Switch in September, bundling together the base game alongside several expansion packs. This includes the Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, and both Genesis parts, and will retail for $50 when it arrives on Nintendo’s hybrid gaming system.

For those players who already own Ark’s regular edition on Switch, they’ll receive a complete revamp of functionality, graphics, and optimization for the game. Ark developer Studio Wildcard says that a third-party developer has been hired to lead the charge on this new version of Ark, which has resulted in the game’s Switch code being entirely rewritten and developed on the latest version of Unreal Engine 4.

All existing Switch player progress and save data will be maintained when the update is applied.

Ark Ultimate Survivor Edition cover

“Overhauling the gameplay for Ark on Switch has been on our radar for a while and we’re happy to have found a talented team who can help us realize that vision,” said Studio Wildcard co-founder and co-director Jesse Rapczak.

The Ark franchise continues to grow lately, as an animated series based on the dinosaur action-adventure game is in development alongside a fully-fledged sequel which stars Vin Diesel. The Fast and Furious star isn’t just the face of protagonist Santiago in the game either, as he’ll be serving as an executive producer on the game as well.

If you’d like to try the game out on a different platform, Ark: Survival Evolved is currently available on PC and Xbox consoles through the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, as well as PC and PlayStation consoles.

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Portal writer Erik Wolpaw says he’d love to make a Portal 3, but he’s only one part of the process and can’t start it on his own. He noted that the company is relatively small and almost everyone is already on a project, so assembling a team to make a hypothetical Portal 3 is difficult.

Wolpaw said on the Kiwi Talkz podcast (via VGC), “I’d work on another Portal in a second, but I can’t make it happen by myself. I could advocate for it […] it might help a little bit, but the problem is [Valve has] 300 employees and I don’t know exactly the breakdown–how many of them are on the production side versus Steam business side versus legal versus whatever.”

He said that means there’s an opportunity cost to taking 75 employees to go work on a project, and they’d have to leave behind whatever they’re currently working on to start Portal 3. He also said that you’d “make some money” but it won’t be “Counter-Strike: GO money.”

“But having said that, maybe every game doesn’t need to make Counter-Strike: GO money, you know, Gabe, if you’re listening,” he said. It’s worth noting that Wolpaw doesn’t work full-time at Valve, so these decisions wouldn’t be his alone.

He added, “I am not getting any younger. We are reaching the point where it’s crazy to think [that we’re] literally going to be too old to work on Portal 3, so we should just do it.”

Portal was an eccentric puzzle-FPS centered around portals, but the experience was short and experimental. Portal 2, which came out more than a decade ago, significantly expanded on the concept with new mechanics. The series is especially known for its humorous writing. No plans for Portal 3 have been announced, but Portal 2 hinted at a connection with the Half-Life series that continued to carry forward in Valve’s latest release, the VR game Half-Life Alyx.

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Microsoft is teaming up with NBA 2K22 and the New York Liberty professional WNBA team to give one fan a chance take a half-court shot at an upcoming game with $1 million on the line.

The competition is called the Xbox $1 Million Half-Court Shot sweepstakes challenge. Anyone in the US who is 13 years or older can enter by posting a video of NBA 2K22 gameplay featuring a half-court shot on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #1MillionXboxShotSweepstakes.

One person will be chosen at random and given a paid trip to New York City, tickets to a Liberty game on July 23, and then the opportunity to try to make a half-court shot to win $1 million.

New York Liberty star Sabrina Lonescu said in a blog post, “We hear a lot of talk from NBA2K players, and now it’s time to show us what they’ve got on the big stage. I’ll be watching.”

Anyone with a Microsoft Rewards account can redeem points or complete an Xbox punch card to earn additional entries. More details can be found here.

Even if the player misses, they still get a $10,000 prize, according to the fine print. Should the contestant sink the basket, they’ll get $1 million paid as a 40-year annuity at $25,000 per year without interest. The winner could also opt for a lump sum payment of $626.507.37.

Half-court shot competitions like this are usually underwritten through prize indemnity insurance, so in the extremely unlikely event that the fan makes the basket, Microsoft will be covered and its insurance provider will have to pay out.

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Developer Grasshopper Manufacture and publisher XSEED Games have announced that No More Heroes 3 is coming to PC, PlayStation, and Xbox in Q3 2022. The game will be available for $60 as both a digital and physical version edition, with the special Day 1 version adding a softcover art book, a CD soundtrack, a Santa Destroy biker license plate, and a custom box with a new illustration by series artist Yusuke Kozaki.

Originally launching on the Nintendo Switch in August 2021, No More Heroes 3 is set nine years after the last game and stars Travis Touchdown as he once again looks to reach the top of the assassins leaderboard, although this time he has to face off against intergalactic contract killers who are attempting to take over the world.

For the PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC release, Grasshopper Manufacture has added that the game will have improved visuals, increased framerates and faster loading times. Grasshopper–which was acquired by NetEase recently–previously ported the first two No More Heroes games to PC in June last year.

Known for other games with an irreverent sense of humor like Lollipop Chainsaw and Killer7, the studio plans to release three new games over the next decade that retain the “Grasshopper Manufacture flavor” that can be found in its titles.

“No More Heroes 3 lacks the irreverent charm and personality of its predecessors,” Richard Wakeling wrote in GameSpot’s No More Heroes 3 review. “Combat picks up the slack, and there’s a degree of vivid style to be found there, but the game falters in so many other areas.”

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The world of Elden Ring is full of subplots and sidequests, usually given to you by completely missable NPCs who travel around the Lands Between, stopping at various landmarks along the way. Some of them are the keys to new weapons, armor, or spells, while others will unravel whole layers of lore and in-game mythology that will lead you to alternate endings and, maybe, change your understanding of your mission as a would-be Elden Lord altogether.

This is certainly the case with the Frenzied Flame, one of Elden Ring’s most dense (and most easily missed) side stories that will walk you down an entirely new path on your quest to the Erdtree–which will even make for some new enemies and some ominous foreshadowing of the future, should you choose to see this quest through.

So what, exactly, is the Frenzied Flame and what does it have to do with Elden Ring’s story? The answer is a little complicated, so strap in–and brace for a lot (and we do mean a lot) of major game spoilers along the way.

The World, As It Is

One of the key components of Elden Ring’s internal mythology is the idea of The Greater Will, which is what’s known as an “Outer God,” or an eldritch force that is exerting its influence on the Lands Between via conduits–regular gods, like Marika. There’s a lot of finer points and ins-and-outs to being a god, outer or otherwise, in Elden Ring, but for now, its best to understand the Outer Gods in this story as puppet masters trying to pull the strings of the Lands Between while also existing firmly outside of the normal concept of reality.

The Greater Will uses Marika as a conduit, but it also uses monstrous hand-like creatures known as the Two Fingers to communicate. At some point in the past, it established the idea of The Golden Order, a sort of quasi-religious movement anchored by the communication of the Two Fingers and Marika’s reign, that believed in a divine plan or set of rules for all life. In fact, we even have the names of two of those rules in-game, as incantations known as the Law of Causality and the Law of Regression.

Put simply, The Greater Will has a very strict view of how things work and how life must function–and, unsurprisingly, not everyone is super eager to go along with it, especially if they don’t quite see eye-to-eye with those rules. One such dissenter is another Outer God, popularly known as The Frenzied Flame.

The Frenzied Flame is, in essence, the exact opposite of The Greater Will. Where The Greater Will instills rigid order and strict laws, The Frenzied Flame instills–well, frenzy. Absolute chaos, madness, and in the words of some of their faithful, a complete breakdown of everything that “divides and distinguishes.”

The Greater Will may have been the top dog in terms of influence in the Lands Between prior to the Shattering and subsequent decay, but it was never without challengers. It’s hard to tell just when or how The Frenzied Flame began to take root within the population but evidence suggests it’s been around for a while–and, in fact, has been actively buried by The Greater Will’s loyalists in an effort to keep it hidden and locked away. There’s only one piece of concrete text in the game pointing to any sort of origin, found on the incarnation the Howl of Shabriri which reads: “it is said that the sickness of the flame of frenzy began with Shabriri, the most relieved man in all history.”

More on Shabriri in a second.

Now, while these two are far from the only Outer Gods in Elden Ring’s mythology, they seem to be the two most closely related to one another. While The Greater Will uses the Two Fingers as conduits, The Frenzied Flame uses a creature called the Three Fingers for itself. This could potentially suggest that the two of them are, in fact, one entity that was bifurcated somehow into two opposing forces.

This is further implied by dialogue later in the game with an NPC, Hyetta, who explains: “All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction… every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake. And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again.” Though, the possibility for unreliable narration certainly shouldn’t be discounted.

So, now that the Shattering has occurred, many of the Fingers are dead, and the Lands Between is in a state of extreme decline, The Frenzied Flame is among the many powerful forces trying to make a move. To do this, it, like the other Outer Gods, needs the help of some powerful loyalists.

Merchants, Samurai, and Maidens

While The Greater Will may rely on everyone from Tarnished fundamentalists to spurned demi-gods, The Frenzied Flame keeps things a bit more lowkey in terms of its followers and conduits. The first hints of The Frenzied Flame you’re likely to find in your adventure are an item called “Shabriri Grapes” which, despite the name, aren’t fruit at all but rotten eyeballs plucked from the sockets of (mostly) willing donors looking to give their “grapes” to maidens. You’ll eventually be able to give these grapes to one such maiden, a blind girl named Hyetta who is on a quest to follow the guidance of “a distant light” that she can only see once she’s eaten a grape.

Oh, and, yeah–she does think they’re literal grapes. Don’t worry, you eventually get to tell her what she’s eating. It doesn’t go well, but doesn’t change her mind about it, either.

Hyetta begins her mission believing that she’s going to become a finger maiden as a servant of The Greater Will but, somewhere along the way, decides that she’s actually better suited to a different power. She makes this choice after you feed her a “fingerprint grape”–yes, another eyeball–this time from an invading Tarnished warrior who was “scorched by the Flame of Frenzy.” This Tarnished, named Vyke, also drops some items with even more clues, talking about how he was once very close to becoming Elden Lord but ventured “deep below the capital” where he was burned by the flame, leaving finger print marks melted into his flesh and armor.

Vyke himself can be found at a whole corner of the map devoted to The Frenzied Flame, in the northern corner of Liurnia, where a village has apparently succumbed to the Flame’s influence wholesale. They even have a guard tower that will inflict madness on anyone approaching, presumably to both guard their little community and grow their numbers. It’s also worth noting that the church within the village is called, ironically, the Church of Inhibition–which may imply that the flames took root here with some deliberate sense of irony, seeing as “inhibition” is defined as the restraint against expressing an instinct, or, you know, the exact opposite of being “frenzied.” If this is the case, it points even more strongly to the possibility of The Frenzied Flame and The Greater Will being, more than any other Outer Gods, diametrically opposed enemies or rivals. A sort of eldritch Batman and The Joker, if you will–as opposed to the other big powerful forces around the Lands Between that seem pretty happy to do their own things or pursue their own goals.

The residents of the Frenzied Flame Village aren’t the only followers to be found, however. Eventually, if you follow the questline given to you by Yura, a samurai and Bloody Finger hunter you first meet in Limgrave, you’ll be able to meet Shabriri himself–the guy who named the grapes, and apparently, started the Frenzied Flame fad. In addition to the grapes and the incarnation, he also has a talisman named after him–Shabriri’s Woe–which states that he had his eyes gouged out as punishment for “the crime of slander and, with time, the bright flame of the frenzy came to dwell in the empty sockets.”

If you couldn’t tell, the eye theme is pretty prominent here.

Shabriri doesn’t seem to have a physical form anymore, and instead, manifests within the corpse of Yura, which he’s apparently reanimated to speak with you and once again impress upon you the importance of venturing below the capital to find a well hidden secret. The incentive he offers you is the safety of Melina, explaining that if you embrace The Frenzied Flame, she won’t have to sacrifice herself to burn the Erdtree–you’ll have your own fire to get the job done.

Clearly, it’s a manipulative tactic–Vyke’s armor set implies that the same pitch was given to him, at some point in the past. “Did he make his choice for his maiden, or did some other force lure him with suggestion?”

If you do make the long trek down below Leyndell’s already subterranean system of jails, you’ll find a sort of mausoleum, filled to the brim with the dead (and the nearly dead). Another thing you’ll likely recognize immediately is that the corpses littering (and we do mean littering, there’s hardly any space to walk) this place are all merchants. Yes, merchants, the friendly guys who you’ve no doubt been meeting along your travels, who are always happy to sell you useful stuff. The handful that do still survive somehow are playing the simple stringed instrument some merchants carry with them–a melody you’ll probably recognize.

An explanation for this grisly mausoleum can be found in the description of the Nomadic Merchant’s Finery, which reads “these merchants once thrived as the Great Caravan, but after being accused of heretical beliefs, their entire clan was rounded up and buried alive far underground. Then, they chanted a curse of despair, and summoned the flame of frenzy.”

More context about the “Great Caravan” and the merchants can be found in some cut content, datamined from previous builds of the game, where Kale–the first merchant you meet–had a quest to uncover his own roots, leading him to eventually succumb to the flames himself.

There’s a bit of a chicken/egg dilemma happening here with the merchant tribe and Shabriri as well, both of which seem to be guilty of summoning the flame of frenzy in one way or another. It’s possible that Shabriri was part of an ancient merchant tribe himself, and that his crimes of slander were punished so harshly because of the strong oral traditions shared by the nomadic merchants around the continent–but there’s concrete evidence either way.

As Above, So Below

Once you reach the very bottom of the mausoleum, you’ll find yourself before a massive, fleshy door. If you’ve also done Hyetta’s quest up to this point, she’ll be, miraculously, waiting for you to explain that you can only be granted an audience with the Three Fingers if you remove all your clothes.

Doing so will allow you to enter and confront the monster–but don’t worry, it’s not a fight. Instead, the Three Fingers will embrace you and sear their fingerprints into your flesh, much like they did to Vyke before you. This will prompt Hyetta to offer herself up as your new maiden because Melina will promptly abandon you if you decide to travel down this path. Unfortunately for Hyetta, however, anointing her with the flames she seems to desire so much will ultimately kill her–so much for Shabriri’s promise of saving a life, huh? (Though, given Shabriri’s own ability to body-snatch corpses and exist without his original form, maybe this is all part of the plan, we can’t be certain one way or another.)

So what was the point of all this, you may ask?

Well, once you’ve been anointed with the mark of the Three Fingers, you are locked into a specific ending for the game. It doesn’t matter how many potential mending runes you’ve collected or which other quests you’ve completed, if you’ve got the fingerprints on your skin, you’re stuck. That is, unless you gather Miquella’s needle from defeating Malenia, which will allow you to remove the mark of frenzy from your body. The needle’s item description specifically notes that it was made to “ward off the meddling of outer gods” and that it allows one to “cheat fate and avoid becoming the Lord of Frenzied Flame.”

If you do not use the needle, however, you will get the Frenzied Flame ending, which is–well, pretty bleak. Unlike the other endings, which include a voice-over announcing the dawning of whichever age you picked, the Frenzied Flame ending includes only ominous silence and the world being engulfed in sickly yellow flames–which, oh yeah, have also replaced your head. The roaring flames continue uninterrupted until Melina, assuming she survived the game, is given a little cut-away scene where she promises to hunt you down and deliver your Destined Death.

Now, Melina’s story, motivations, allegiances, and relationship to various Outer Gods is a whole other can of worms, but it’s still worth noting that her design has changed slightly in this brief scene. Her closed eye is now open–and visibly blind–and her hand is prominently scarred.

Melina’s presence in this ending doesn’t tell us much, but it does confirm that despite the absolutely apocalyptic appearance of the world, life in some form or another still apparently is able to persist in the Lands Between. That, or maybe Melina is an extraordinarily special case. Still, there’s a lot of unanswered questions as to what exactly a world ruled by chaos incarnate actually means and how things would progress under this particular brand of rule.

Some other Frenzied Flame adjacent items in the game, such as the Eye of Yelough (a rather disgusting looking herb) seems to imply that life is definitely possible in some form or another in lands affected by frenzy. Its description reads “grown in lands afflicted by frenzy, it’s used for its pain-relieving properties…though it’s also known to be a dangerous intoxicant.” The name Yelough also appears in the name of some ruins found in the Consecrated Snowfield, which may or may not be pointing toward the existence of an entity–either another Outer God or another Outer God-like creature, or perhaps even another name for the Frenzied Flame itself–that controls or thrives in frenzy. It’s worth pointing this out if only because Melina will warn you, in no uncertain terms, that the flames of frenzy are basically antithetical to life.

Meanwhile the existence of crafting books such as the Frenzied’s Cookbook explain that people afflicted by frenzy were discovering new techniques and items to make “in desperation,” and were actually healed by frenzy-touched items once they themselves were infected.

So what does all this actually mean in the bigger picture? It’s difficult to say–the best we can do is hope for a future DLC that will touch more about the relationships between the outer gods, and maybe even something that picks up the threads of the Frenzied Flame ending and Melina’s quest for vengeance against you.

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The story of Elden Ring is a broad, confusing one–like the Elden Ring itself, it’s fractured, made up of tiny pieces as its different characters serve a variety of masters and enact their own plans. Even as you play it, you might find yourself lost as you interact with other Tarnished and hunt down demigods in an attempt to become Elden Lord. Heck, it’s not even especially clear most of the time what terms like “Elden Lord” and “Elden Ring” even mean.

We’ve been poring through Elden Ring’s lore for weeks now, piecing together its vast and complicated backstory and the motivations of its many characters to get a sense of what’s happening in the game. The story of your Tarnished character is to fight through the world and try to gather Great Runes to become Elden Lord–but that simplified explanation belies the fact that you’re taking part in the war between various political factions and a bunch of nameless gods, all of whom are vying to control the Lands Between. The fate of reality itself in this place hangs in the balance, and if you’re successful in your quest, you can choose how to reshape the world.

There’s a lot of granularity to the story of Elden Ring, but these are the broad strokes of what’s happening: What happened before your arrival, why you’ve come to the Lands Between, what you’re trying to accomplish, and who’s trying to stop you.

A story about Death

Like the Dark Souls games and Demon’s Souls, your relationship with dying is at the center of Elden Ring–and actually, it informs a lot of what’s happening in the world. In the Lands Between, a strange place “beyond the fog,” the very structure of reality is dedicated by the will of its gods and demigods. And one of most important things about the Lands Between is that Marika, who is both the land’s goddess and its queen, altered reality to put an end to “Destined Death”–the rule of nature that all things, including the gods and demigods, will pass away.

The gameplay loop of Elden Ring, like the other Soulsborne games, sees you facing tough enemies and often dying while trying to fight them, either because they stand in your way or because you’re trying to gain their power–and often both at the same time. However, because of the actions of Queen Marika and your role as a Tarnished, death is somewhat trivial; you’ll awaken at a nearby Site of Grace or Stake of Marika when you fall in battle. Enemies respawn when you rest at a Site of Grace for the same reason: Death is largely broken in the Lands Between, and most everyone has been alive for a really long time. It’s why you hear the howls at night of the many crucified characters scattered around Limgrave, why so many enemies look like zombie knights, and why a few people seemingly wander around aimlessly or dig at the ground, as if they’ve lost their minds. As in Dark Souls, a lot of people seem like they’ve been alive so long that their wits and intellect have failed them.

When people do die, their souls generally return to the Erdtree, the big golden tree at the center of the world that’s both the primordial source of life and, now, the major component of the Elden Ring and the “Golden Order.” There seems to be some kind of eternal life or resurrection possible through the Erdtree, although it’s not super clear what’s going on there. The fact that souls physically return to the Erdtree, rather than ceasing to exist or being destroyed, is why Elden Ring includes so many ghosts, as well as gameplay elements like Spirit Ash–there are a lot of souls floating around. Returning to the Erdtree is also why you enter so many catacombs dungeons that end with a boss room full of Erdtree roots; the proximity makes it easier for the souls to get where they’re going.

The Erdtree is at the center of life and death in the Lands Between, thanks to Marika’s Golden Order.

Into this world come the Tarnished, a name for people who were once from the Lands Between but who were exiled long ago, heavily implied to be descendants of Godfrey (ne Hoarah Loux) the first Elden Lord who was expelled from the Lands an age or more ago–though the direct lineage and connections here are never made explicit. After the events that are laid out in Elden Ring’s opening cinematic, the Tarnished who had died in the outside world were beckoned back to the Lands Between to compete to become Elden Lord.

The fight to become Elden Lord, your ostensible goal throughout the game, seems strange at the outset of your journey–a lot of people ask you or tell you that that’s what you’re trying to do, but you basically just wake up in the Lands Between with no idea why you’re there. That’s because the role of “Elden Lord” is extremely powerful and important, with a lot of people and forces hoping to use that role, or whoever earns it, for their own ends. And a lot of those ends have to do with how death works, or doesn’t, within the world. A number of people want to change the role of death in the world of the Lands Between, and they need the power of the Elden Ring and the Elden Lord in order to make that happen.

Marika and the demigods

To understand the whole deal of the Elden Lord, you have to understand how reality in the Lands Between work, and how it is ruled over by Marika and her family, who are both god-like beings and the equivalents of feudal kings, queens, and lords.

First up, there’s the Elden Ring, a magical object that governs the rules of reality in the Lands Between–it’s that gold thing on the title screen when you boot up the game. The ring is made up of Great Runes that seemingly govern different elements of the world. In removing the Rune of Death, Marika was able to change how death worked in her kingdom. The Elden Ring isn’t native to the Lands Between, though. It was sent to the world by the Greater Will, a cosmic force known as an Outer God.

The Greater Will is the main Outer God in the Lands Between–the source from which many blessings and abilities spring. Marika was elevated to godhood by the Greater Will through its emissaries, the Two Fingers.

The Greater Will exists somewhere far away from the Lands Between, so to exert its, uh, will, it has emissaries and agents. Marika is one of those agents–she was originally of a people from outside the Lands Between called the Numen. Emissaries of the Greater Will, the Two Fingers, chose Marika to become an Empyrean, a person who could be elevated to godhood and serve as a vessel for the Elden Ring. Marika fulfilled that purpose and eventually became a god. So at the top of the hierarchy is the Greater Will, then Marika and the Elden Ring, then, seemingly, the Two Fingers, then the demigods, who are Marika’s children and step-children.

While Marika had the power of the Elden Ring behind her, she didn’t find the Lands Between empty. In fact, quite a few people lived there, with civilizations and gods of their own. They included giants in the mountains, dragons (who may have been subjects of the Greater Will before Marika), and humans, as well as various other races scattered throughout the world. With control of the Elden Ring and the Rune of Death, Marika established the Golden Order, a sort of “Church of Marika” that also encompassed the rules of reality in the Lands Between. And she started a campaign to bring the other civilizations to heel under her monarchy and the Golden Order. For that, she needed someone to wage war on her behalf–a king to her queen, essentially. The role of consort to Marika was known as the Elden Lord, a person who would wield massive power in the Lands Between as Marika’s right hand.

For her first Elden Lord, Marika chose a powerful warrior called Hoarah Loux; in his new royal position, he was renamed Godfrey the Golden. Under Marika’s orders, Godfrey waged war on the giants and various other races. (When you get to the Mountaintops of Giants, you find a whole lot of frozen giants there, thanks to Godfrey.) He also had children with Marika: Godwyn the Golden and the twins, Morgott and Mohg.

Godwyn was, apparently, Marika’s most favored child in the end, and he would go on to fight the dragons, even befriending a few thanks to his prowess in battle. Morgott and Mohg, however, were both “Omen” children–strange, powerful, cursed beings with horns growing all over their bodies. The Golden Order, it seemed, shunned the Omens, cutting off their horns at birth, a procedure that usually killed them. Royal Omen children weren’t treated quite so heinously–instead, Morgott and Mohg were sent into to live in the jails and sewers beneath Marika’s capital, Leyndell.

The first boss you face, Margit, is an Omen–one of the cursed people who were shunned by the Golden Order.

Meanwhile, the campaigns of Marika and Godfrey were going pretty well, and the influence of the Greater Will spread across the land. Among the armies they sent out into the world was a champion named Radagon, who advanced in the ranks and eventually stood as a major leader among Leyndell’s forces. He brought an army to bear against one of the countries of the Lands Between that wouldn’t come under the Golden Order’s purview: Liurnia of the Lakes. In Liurnia stood the Raya Lucaria Academy, where sorcerers trained using powers derived from the cosmos, at odds with the power of faith granted by the Golden Order. The country had monarchs of its own, the Carian Royal Family, and powerful knights who also wielded powers of sorcery.

Radagon and his forces found they couldn’t defeat the Carian soldiers or the sorcerers of Liurnia, and when he met the Carian royal, Rennala, on the battlefield, the two fell in love. So Liurnia came under the Golden Order’s governance not through force, like the other parts of the Lands Between, but through a marriage alliance between Radagon and Rennala. They had three children: Rykard, Radahn, and Ranni.

Eventually, though, Godfrey ran out of people to conquer, and for some reason, Marika decided to take away his title as Elden Lord. She sent Godfrey away, along with his warriors, to live outside the Lands Between. It sounds like this was the origin of the Tarnished–Marika intended for Godfrey and his warriors to live, struggle, and die outside the Lands Between, before returning stronger. That whole deal is open to interpretation, though.

Meanwhile, after Godfrey was pushed out, Radagon left Rennala–a move that devastated her–and returned to Leyndell to become Marika’s new consort, the second Elden Lord. Because of the new marriage, Rykard, Radahn, and Ranni became Marika’s stepchildren and were elevated to the status of demigods.

Rennala got a bit…weird after Radagon left her, and her lack of leadership after his departure had a devastating effect on Liurnia.

Radagon and Marika then had two more demigod children together: the twins Miquella and Malenia. Like Morgott and Mogh, though, these last two were also born cursed, but in a different way. Miquella could never grow up, forever trapped in the body of a child, while Malenia was cursed by the Scarlet Rot, a disease that ate at her from the inside despite her immortality.

Still, despite various curses, Marika and her family lived and ruled for quite a long time this way, raising a society in the Lands Between and governing as a powerful royal family. But slowly, things began to shift.

The Night of Black Knives and the Shattering

Marika had taken over the Lands Between completely, spreading the Golden Order just about everywhere. She was extremely powerful, thanks to the Elden Ring; she had a powerful army of soldiers and clerics, thanks to the Golden Order; and she had control over the Rune of Death, which meant she could deal death specifically to whoever she chose, but she and her family (and to some degree, everyone in the Lands Between) were otherwise effectively immortal.

In order to keep the Rune of Death safe, Marika entrusted it to Maliketh, her half-brother. The thing about Maliketh is that he’s both a beastman–half-wolf and half-person–and Marika’s “shadow.” There’s more to the shadow situation, but suffice to say that, as her shadow, Maliketh served Malika with unwavering loyalty. She didn’t really treat him equally well, though–his job was to safeguard the Rune of Death and pretty much nothing else, which sounds like he was stuck locked away somewhere with this incredibly dangerous power.

One night, however, someone managed to steal a piece of the Rune of Death from Malekith. Combining it with some black daggers, a group of assassins sneaked into the capital and killed Godwyn. Many were captured or killed as they tried to escape, but the damage was done. For the first time in history, a demigod had been killed.

The next part of the timeline is a bit hazy, because Godwyn’s death did massive damage to Marika and the Golden Order, but it’s not exactly clear when everything happened as a result of the Night of Black Knives. At some point, either immediately after Godwyn’s death or some time later, seemingly in a fit of grief, Marika used her hammer to shatter the Elden Ring. That broke the ring up into a bunch of smaller runes, some extremely powerful and some not, and scattered them throughout the world. Radagon tried to repair the ring, but couldn’t, and Marika soon disappeared. Again, there might have been peace for a while, but thanks to the destruction of the Elden Ring, things were already falling apart.

Godwyn’s assassination was a turning point, the event that caused the Lands Between to be plunged into chaos.

Eventually, both Marika and Radagon were missing in action. With the Elden Ring destroyed, the Golden Order started to crumble and a power vacuum was created. The various demigods got hold of pieces of the Elden Ring, called Great Runes, giving them even more power. Some wanted to restore the Golden Order, some wanted to take power for themselves, some wanted to change the rules of reality using the Elden Ring, and some had other Outer Gods to whom they pledged their loyalty. The demigods, each trying to claim the role of Elden Lord for their own agendas, plunged the entire Lands Between into a huge civil war called the Shattering.

The Lands Between were quickly sectioned off into small territories, each with their own armies. There were clashes between several of the demigods, culminating in a huge battle between the two greatest warriors among them: Radahn and Malenia. They fought on an expanse of sand dunes in Caelid, but neither could defeat the other. Though neither of the demigods was beaten, their battle had enormous effects on the land, though–it spread Malenia’s disease, the Scarlet Rot, all through Caelid, while decimating both groups of forces. The Scarlet Rot is nasty stuff that has no cure, with the ability to eat away at limbs and affect the functioning of the brain. Radahn was so badly infected with Scarlet Rot that he lost his mind. Malenia, too, was greatly harmed by the sickness; she channeled the power of the Rot within her in order to match Radahn’s strength, and in so doing, lost a lot of her will and sense of self as she succumbed to the affliction.

After that massive battle, the wars of the Shattering died down somewhat, but they left most of the Lands Between in ruins. With the demigods unable to beat each other (or unwilling to risk being beaten by one another), they retreated to strongholds and fortresses with their Great Runes.

While several of the demigods are currently making their own moves the Elden Ring–whether they’re communing with other Outer Gods, trying to grow their power, or standing in defense of the old ways–there’s nobody to break the stalemate between them. Since no one can claim the Elden Ring to fix it and the Golden Order, and take leadership in the Lands Between, things are just stagnating in a state of semi-civil war. Nobody dies, nobody can win, and everything’s ruined.

The biggest battle of the Shattering saw Radahn fighting Malenia, the strongest among the demigods. Neither could defeat the other, and the stalemate destroyed both–as well as a huge portion of the Lands Between.

And that’s where the Tarnished come in. Called back to the Lands Between by some strange force, they find themselves guided by Grace–a big golden light only they can see. The Grace seems to be subordinate to the Two Fingers, and thus, the Greater Will, and it pushes Tarnished toward hunting down the demigods and claiming their Greater Runes so they can repair the Elden Ring and become Elden Lord. Basically, with the demigods unable to do the job, it’s being outsourced to random warriors. You meet so many Tarnished in the game because you’re by no means the first to make this attempt. And in fact, many of the Tarnished you meet have been at this for so long, their ability to see Grace has faded away. You’re not only coming in at the end of Marika’s long reign to find the Lands Between mostly in ruins, you’re also coming in at the end of the institutions of the Tarnished, like the Roundtable Hold, which are also languishing.

Agendas and Outer Gods

While your mission to eliminate the demigods and claim some of their Great Runes is at the center of Elden Ring, there’s a whole lot of other stuff happening as well. You’ll find a ton of other characters scattered throughout Elden Ring, each of whom is exercising their own plans. A lot of people want to become Elden Lord, including most of the Tarnished and demigods you encounter. Some of them will try to use you to accomplish their goals.

The primary driver behind your quest is the Two Fingers, the agent of the Greater Will. Usually, information about the Two Fingers and their orders for you would come through a Finger Maiden. These maidens are pledged to their Tarnished, guiding them to follow the wisdom of the Two Fingers and serve the Greater Will. They also help you by channeling runes at sites of Grace, allowing you to increase your power. When you start the game “maidenless,” it means that, for some reason, you didn’t get a Finger Maiden–and thus, unable to increase your abilities, you’re pretty much doomed. Luckily, a strange woman named Melina agrees to serve as your Finger Maiden, provided you help her on her own quest.

The Greater Will wants you to mend the Elden Ring for its purposes, but while lots of people are competing to become Elden Lord, they don’t all want to do so because the Greater Will tells them to. There’s a huge amount of conflict in the Lands Between because, since the Shattering, the place is pretty much up for grabs. The Greater Will has dominated for eons, but other Outer Gods also exist, and their followers are also vying for control. A bunch of them are discussed throughout the game if you pursue information about them, and their influences are all over the place.

The Frenzied Flame is another Outer God vying for control of the Lands Between, and its followers have an agenda of their own.

Take, for instance, Malenia and the Scarlet Rot. Once you venture into the areas of the game that concern the Rot, you’ll learn that it’s related to a whole Rot Goddess, complete with its own worshipers. There’s also the Frenzied Flame, another Outer God that seems diametrically opposed to the Greater Order, trying to enact an age of chaos on the Lands Between. You’ll find more mentions of more Outer Gods as you go, and uncovering their purposes and agendas illuminates more of Elden Ring’s world. There are also people who want to break free of the control of the Outer Gods altogether.

There also is a group of demigods known as Empyreans–those chosen by the Two Fingers as candidates to ascend to full godhood, just like Marika did. The rules for how Empyreans work are unclear, but we know that these characters are meant as potential candidates to serve as successors to Marika. Once someone has been chosen as an Empyrean, they get a perfectly loyal wolf shadow–Marika had Maliketh in this role. The Empyreans we know about are the twin children of Marika and Radagon, Malenia and her brother Miquella, as well as Ranni, Radagon’s daughter with Rennala. There’s also another Empyrean we know almost nothing about, a character referred to in the lore as the Dusk-Eyed Queen. So there are demigods who want to become Elden Lord, teaming with Marika and the Golden Order; factions and cults who want to reshape the Elden Ring according to their own beliefs; and Empyreans who might want to become full-on gods themselves and replace Marika altogether.

Thus, making your way through the world of the Lands Between, you’re going to run into a lot of different people who will tell you a lot of different things, and integrally, some are going to lie to you to get what they want. Others will try to kill you to take what you have. Everyone wants to become Elden Lord and claim the power that comes with it. Who you choose to help or hinder, and what you choose to do with the power you gain along the way, is up to you.

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