Elden Ring v. America
By Joe Rojas July 8, 2022
*content warning for discussions of mass shootings, depression, and a person's right to choose*
I rolled credits on Elden Ring is a thing I never thought I'd say after my first 15 minutes with the game as a squishy samurai worthlessly swinging at some princely spider creature.
Turns out, princely spider creatures can be found on Earth and, at least in The U.S., they're kind of taking over.
This was going to be the game - I was determined to make Elden Ring the first FromSoft offering to bare me its credits. The Evangelion-like ending robbed me of runes thrice and thrice and thrice over, my PS5 controller on the brink of total collapse under my obscene gamer hand-strength - oh, but I didn't care. Where was I going to spend those runes anyway - this was the final encounter, rife with this-isn't-even-my-final-stage cosmic transformations. A couple of weeks on from that high, I reflect; it wasn't just the inspired enemy designs and obfuscated solutions to difficulty that kept me true to my quest - equally, the violent and beautiful nature scapes were the stuff of addiction. Lush were the meadows of Limgrave, each patch of windswept greenery an embarrassment of serotonin. The twang of an enemy's armament - a vampire's invitation for me to let enter my katana. Toasty and uncomfortable was Volcano Manor. Hopeless and bright was Lyndell, ghosts haunting this once-great capital with the remembrance of what was - and who will see it once it's bereft of curse and blight? It's just me and the remainder of the non-essential enemies that have scurried to the uninhabitable.
4th of July was celebrated in The States recently and there is no other American holiday that has hurled me into the tendrils of depression increasingly year over year since #45 came and went. In years past, I wore t-shirts plastered with American regalia and eagerly lit sparklers and loud-bang fireworks, varying in degrees of legality. Every year, I looked forward to celebrating the country that raised me by drinking American beer and spirits. I still honor the country I call home, but I often find myself daydreaming and subconsciously scouring the internet trying to create an accurate picture of what it would be like to live in any other country, perhaps one with the beliefs and respect for the Earth that match my own. Futility, however, is constantly nipping at my heels; each country doesn't inhabit its private plane of existence separate from the repercussions of another's neglect and malfeasance - we're all connected and if any one of us is a saboteur, we eventually ruin it for everyone. Earth lives and breathes - it's a cat waking up from a long nap, its stretch and shudder immanently waiting to cast us off, we minor annoyances.
I'm not a savant when it comes to playing video games, when given the option I play at normal difficulty and I've long since given up being a completionist. Trophies, what are those? My devil-may-care attitude is not the ideal toolset for Elden Ring. I learned quickly that brute force wasn't an option; I couldn't just button-mash an enemy hoping to raze it and move on. Precision and patience, I learned, are chief allies, more the latter than the former. Elden Ring became a dance for me, I silently counted beats between swipes knowing that after each attack there's an invisible cool-down bar that needs to replenish before anything additional could find purchase. It became this bizarre rhythm game where clipping into an enemy's bestial legs occasionally became the only safe spot, at least for a second or two. And for a game that required rigorous focus and discipline, my attention was constantly being violently interrupted. I was never able to rid myself of the desire to see what was over that next hill, I wanted to sit with these long-dead nobles whose final breaths were taken from an ornate chair, perhaps having their final summit before they were robbed of life.
The bouquet of this game is found in the nooks and crannies of the dungeons and sewers, routing out all the abominations keen on ending your Tarnished life. And every step into the unknown, down the stairs away from safety is a gamble. Grim beauty lies below, but so does a new way to die, your pile of precious runes lost because the desire to explore vastly outweighed the battle-readiness of your would-be Elden Lord.
I regularly connect with friends in different countries and, almost in jest, something newsworthy that occurred in The U.S. almost always trickles into the conversation very much in the style of "Hey Joe, what's up with [terrible event]?" Those conversations, while uncomfortable, help me to decompress and gain perspective from folks that weren't raised here. And I search for answers, answers to the regular cadence of horror brought on us not only by the glut of guns but the vail-thin barrier between someone having the desire to purchase a firearm and the ability to do so within the next 30 minutes or so, depending on a store's location within The U.S. and its operating hours. Columbine happened when I was in high school and it was the progenitor of the term "mass shooting" as I know it today. It set off torrent finger-pointing. Video games were blamed, parents were blamed, heavy metal music was blamed, and what was once considered counter-culture or "weird" became threatening. This video from the movie "Bowling for Columbine" features an educator narrating over a student removing from his pants, one by one in ever-increasing size, gun after gun after gun. In retrospect, it's a ridiculous video and elicits from me a chuckle. Following Columbine, strict dress codes were implemented in schools nationwide. At my school, we couldn't wear hats, baggy pants, boots, "gang" colors, or trench coats. We were encouraged to report any suspicious activity from other students. Not surprisingly, all this did was target minorities. I was raised with earthquake drills throughout my public education. Active-shooter drills came after I entered adulthood and were largely due to events like Columbine. Unless my day job requires it, I'll probably never experience one. If and when I have kids, though, I'm sure they'll practice them regularly - a terrifying thought.
It wasn't long after I left Limgrave that I hit a wall with Elden Ring. Yes, beauty sang to me every time I
guided my Tarnished around, but I was dying constantly. I nearly bounced off of the game entirely, much like I did with Sekiro. I'm relieved that cooler minds prevailed. You see, long before this moment, Elden Ring became my video game vitamins. To be a better, well-rounded gamer, I needed to take my vitamins no matter how bad they tasted. So, I did research. I remembered coming across multiple message boards and walk-throughs going over different builds you could create in Elden Ring to make your character extremely overpowered. That was my answer, that's what I wanted. I wanted enemies to melt before my might. Surely I could do that, right? Alas, I had progressed too far and I didn't have the fortitude to start again. So what did I do? Like a dirty gamer, I dove deep into pages 23 and 25 of those message boards for the real sicko stuff. I found different farming areas throughout the game where I amassed kingdoms-worth of runes, the precious currency used to level up your character. I found exploits and selfishly used them to dump points into my Tarnished, giving him the strength to demolish any area before stepping foot in it. I summoned other players to help me with tough bosses and I returned the favor in kind, for I remembered how hard it was starting the game and desperately needing someone's help. And I didn't cheat. I merely did what the game let me do. And in doing so, I felt as though I unlocked the squishy-sweet underneath the dread and decay. The embers from the affected sky fell on my Tarnished face like rain after a drought. I stood in place as ethereal minotaurs flourished and charged, only to wisp away as parchment does in a gust of wind. Flying banshees sang at me, then bled out. Great Enemies and Elden Lords fell before my dual-wielding katanas. Gods died. Floating heads on fire and crabs the size of houses were my playthings. I never met my match and I never felt better playing a video game than when I hurled my level 200+ character around as if everyone owed me money
I wake up every morning asking myself the same question: "what can I do to make the world a better place and my existence in it a positive light?" Frustratingly, there's no answer to that, or more accurately, there's no satisfying answer. We are constantly getting thrust down our throats, the importance of voting. Voting is important - I'll always vote, no matter how small the election is, but what has become a companion to political power is the actual game of politics. The politicians that hold the same ideals and beliefs I do are too nice and middling - they're not good gamers. Their political adversaries, the same ones that put the previous president in Office got to where they are by saying the quiet part out loud. Those conversations around your uncle's dinner table where racist insensitivities were thrown around with disheartening ease are now being televised and celebrated. We are left with another front on which we fight a generational war. Within the last two months, the national right to terminate a pregnancy was overturned after being the law of the land for nearly 49 years, there were three mass shootings totaling 40 deaths (many of those children), and the Environmental Protection Agency was gutted in its ability to regulate and fine companies that release pollutants into the air. There is beauty and compassion in The U.S. but it's getting pushed farther and farther back by the invasive decay of ignorance and hate. We woken-few, we reach from the depths and scream that we're still here and we're fighting for a world we'll never see, but maybe our descendants will.
I placed my controller down and walked to the kitchen. I opened the fridge, grabbed a LaCroix, then closed it. I stood there and drew breath. I opened the fridge again and put the LaCroix back. I needed something stronger. I poured a whiskey instead. Over my shoulder, a prompt flickered on the screen, "Mend The Elden Ring." This was it. The final boss fight having been dispatched, mending the Elden Ring was the only task left. I took a long pull of whiskey and trusted in the integrity of my glass as I slammed it down on the table. I mended the hell out of that ring, and in an unsatisfyingly short cutscene, the camera slow-pulled away from my Tarnished as he sat on the Elden Throne, pensively deciding what to do next. The world is his and his to make again. Will he plant flowers or build castles? Will a council be created? Will he begin the long process of burying the pour souls that litter the Lands Between? Or, will he sit in apoplexy as he takes stock of those tortured beings that squandered existence and seeded malevolence? "Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink," is probably what he'll mutter.
There's a fine line between a fatalist mindset and an extreme realist - this line shrinks every day. This line is my home and I cling to it. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.