Nobody knew what Elden Ring was going to be about. We knew the gameplay would be classic Soulsborne fare (soul-crushingly difficult, with bonfires and bosses to boot), and we knew it would take place in a sprawling fantasy world. The combination of Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin had many fans salivating, but the end result of a malignant world filled with heinous creatures left many of us baffled.
What's up with Miquella? Why do my ghosty summons have tragic backstories? Who are the Outer Gods? Why are so many bosses named so similarly? Godrick and Godfrey. Margit and Morgott. Radahn, Radagon, and Rennala. What’s up with that? While there is a vague semblance of narrative, probably better described as lore than a traditional story, I couldn’t see what GRRM had added to the game. It was a mechanical masterpiece, but the story? Threadbare at best.
If you wanted to understand what was going on in this world, there was one man to turn to, and it wasn’t the Game of Thrones author. YouTuber VaatiVidya is a bona fide genius when it comes to unravelling the Elden Ring story, chewing up all the meagre scraps of lore hidden in item descriptions and throwaway dialogue lines to spit out a web of connectedness that us mere mortals couldn’t possibly fathom.
VaatiVidya is up there with LetMeSoloHer, the helpful Malenia-besting summon, as one of the most iconic Elden Ring community members. And, although things will be a bit different this time around, I can’t wait to chow down on his feature-length explanations of the Armored Core series.
With five previous entries going back decades, some people have definitely played Armored Core before. But I’m not one of them. And, while I could use Google to find out if there’s an interconnected story threading through all the entries, I’m happy to wait for the big man to do his thing. VaatiVidya has confirmed that he’s playing through the series in order to dive deep into the lore before Fires of Rubicon’s release, and I already know that his breakdown will be the best. He’ll find every hint, he’ll connect every seemingly disparate narrative, and he’ll put it all in one easy to digest video for me to lap up like the hungry lorehound I am.
Then, the game will release. I’ll play it straight away, barring any Starfield-shaped hurdles blocking my way. I imagine the story will be marginally easier to follow than Elden Ring – I’m predicting mere Dark Souls levels of convolution – but I won’t scratch the surface on my playthrough. Soon enough, though, VaatiVidya will be back to tell me exactly what I missed, to answer questions I didn’t even know I had, and to plunge me into the deep waters of FromSoftware’s mech simulator all over again.
YouTube has opened up a whole world of game analysis and criticism in the past decade, and while you can find similar creators on other streaming services, the video essay format on YouTube is unparalleled. VaatiVidya is the modern iteration of mods on gaming forums, the ones you read as a kid and marvelled at the expertise of these legendary gamers explaining the basics of parrying to your tiny mind. The internet has always been a place for discussing games as the two media have matured together (and both have a long way to go yet in that regard), and you can gain so much richness from the likes of VaatiVidya, richness that elevates whatever game you’re playing.
I was born too late to see The Beatles, too early to colonise Mars. But I was born at just the right time to watch VaatiVidya dissect the mech warfare of Armored Core, and that’s enough for me.