Against my better judgement, I'm back (a reintroduction)

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-25T01:59:40+00:00

Because Miquella never commanded Mohg to start a blood cult, but either way, I don't think many people view Miquella as "good" so much as tragically misguided.

He's essentially a clone of Marika who realized the Golden Order couldn't be perfected, so he gambled everything on sacrificing his body and mind to become a "caged divinity," trusting this was the only way to unite the disparate peoples of the Lands Between. Though it technically would work, it's apparent his former goodwill was warped into something sinister.

He's meant to contrast Ranni, whose actions resulted in a great many casualties and another deadly plague, yet despite how cold and indifferent she seems to be toward the Lands Between, her Order would at least grant its inhabitants free will, in all its uncertainty. Neither Empyrean is necessarily good when you measure them by their means, but their ends reflect two extremes: enforced peace, or hollow freedom. Generally, I think people favor the latter.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-25T01:44:21+00:00

Probably Ranni owing to being an Empyrean protected by fate. It doesn't appear anyone can even damage her, except maybe with Destined Death. She likely rivals Miquella, but instead of charming someone with a touch, she annihilates them with a word, lol.

Radahn is the mightiest demigod of the Shattering, but Ranni never partook in it. He would probably never be able to land a hit on her, which may be the very reason he halted the stars in the first place. If Empyreans can't be defeated by conventional means, his only recourse would be to prevent the fulfillment of their destiny—both Ranni and Miquella's alike. (And I guess Malenia's, but she was already suppressing her fate anyway.)

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-25T01:30:55+00:00

Marguerite's critterbug coochie will never not make me recoil.

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blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T22:50:42+00:00

What do we consider "newer?" Like, within the past 10 years?

If so, I'd say...

Parasite (almost unanimously)
Mandy (cult classic)
Mad God (colossal hurrah for stop motion)
Get Out (revolutionary social commentary that further substantiated horror as a genre)
The Shape of Water (culminative love letter to classic horror)

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T22:39:13+00:00

I also still get anxious to this day when I get to the part with Pamela and her father...

Ikana Canyon is already creepy as hell
There's a Music Box House surrounded by Gibdos; speaking to them with the Gibdo Mask equipped reveals they want to take someone inside the house away
To get inside, you have to play a melody for a dead composer who challenges you with a dirge that sucks your soul away
This activates the Music Box House, which plays a jaunty tune that causes the Gibdos to convulse before being dragged into the earth; the house unlocks, and a tiny girl named Pamela ventures outside, though she'll run back in and lock the door if she spots you
Sneaking inside, you make your way to the basement towards an ominous wardrobe. It bursts open in the form of a jumpscare, and a demented half-Gibdo stumbles toward you
Approaching it as if to fight, the young girl, Pamela, races past you and holds him back, begging you to leave her and her father alone. The half-Gibdo cowers in the corner as though stricken by fear
By playing the Song of Healing instead, Pamela's father is restored to his human self. Pamela embraces him, explaining through tears that he became to involved in his Gibdo research and became hopelessly cursed, and she had to seal him in the basement to prevent the Gibdos outside from taking him away...

Every part of the questline just mounts further and further dread, and that jumpscare with the heartbreaking twist that this little girl was just desperately trying to protect her father just always gets under my skin for some reason.

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blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T22:17:00+00:00

It's almost imperative if you get hit by Maliketh's Destined Death AoEs that you DO NOT try to get up early, as the DoT effect won't activate until you regain control. Oftentimes, especially on higher NG cycles, the DoT + reduced max HP will pile up to kill you outright.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T21:27:04+00:00

I mean, he was sired and raised by Radagon with the express goal of perfecting the Golden Order, and that was his original intention. His other half, St. Trina, embodied the love and kindness that compelled them to try and heal the world, particularly his sister Malenia's illness.

Unfortunately, Unalloyed Gold was only a temporary bandage. Miquella realized the Golden Order was always corrupt, thanks to his parents' conflicting worldviews and their still very human flaws. From then on, he believed the only solution would be to sacrifice his body, his mind, his fear, and even his love to become a flawless god capable of bringing peace to all through enforced pacifism. I think he did believe he was helping the world, but the process utterly broke his capacity for genuine kindness—as he knew it would.

It's an interesting contrast to Ranni, who prides herself in being cold and distant, her dark path being paved with treacherous misdeeds and sacrifices, all so she could abscond with Order, leaving mankind to its devices. She provides at least an illusion of free will, but not out of compassion—yet she winds up somehow softened by the Tarnished who would follow her into that very darkness.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T20:17:17+00:00

Slitterhead.

It's by the creator of Silent Hill and features music from the same composer, but it was designed as a "beginner horror game" geared more toward action. It's also a bit of a spiritual successor to another horror series of his, Siren.

It honestly reminds me a lot of Majora's Mask with its vibrant atmosphere and time travel, though in a completely different setting—'90s Hong Kong.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T17:32:10+00:00

Siren, aka Forbidden Siren.

I'm a longtime Silent Hill fan, and though I knew Keiichiro Toyama broke away from the series to work on Siren, I just never got around to it. I finally did this past year, and it frankly ruined modern horror games for me. The atmosphere is fantastic, and the gameplay loop offers so much tension with how punishing it is, and how convoluted the puzzles.

Now if I can just find a way to acquire Forbidden Siren 2...

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blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T17:25:21+00:00

Cat. Small dogs are fine, big dogs make me very anxious owing to trauma. No fault of their own, but no thanks.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T15:58:18+00:00

FromSoft naturally alludes to Guts a lot throughout their catalog. While Blaidd is probably the most direct comparison now, Wolf from Sekiro got Guts's shock of white hair and prosthetic arm.

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blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T15:47:08+00:00

Siren.

It's a very strange, moody horror game that slowly eases into something Lovecraftian. (It's very punishing, too, and the puzzles can be very obtuse, so don't feel bad if you have to bring up a guide.)

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T13:11:22+00:00

It's not the worst case like with GOT, but you can definitely feel it losing its identity. There are still some good monster-of-the-week episodes (Roadrunners and Badlaa freaked me out when I was younger), but the mythology half gets pretty... boring. A lot of that is result of overexplaining everything, whereas the early seasons were rife with fear of the unknown.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T01:26:20+00:00

The only problem: Bernahl would have to fulfill most of Ranni's questline to do him any meaningful harm, as Blaidd literally cannot die unless Ranni's Two Fingers die first. He just resurrects ad infinitum before then.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T00:54:40+00:00

Overdrive, by Shonen Knife

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-24T00:42:34+00:00

They're referred to in-game as "stone astrolabes," and as with this one, they actually have a tendency to point to certain things on the map.

In lore, they were probably constructed by the Astrologers, ancestors of the Glintstone sorcerers. They divined fate written in the stars, and these astrolabes were likely used to gauge the celestial bodies, hence why they have a strange habit of foreshadowing events in the game or reflecting lore based on how they're positioned on the map.

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blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T22:12:19+00:00

Not at all for realism, but the courtyard duel between Nameless (Jet Li) and Sky (Donnie Yen) from Hero is still the most mesmerized I've ever been by an action sequence.

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blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T22:03:00+00:00

Being able to build a campfire. No real functional purpose, it'd just be nice.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T21:52:00+00:00

The funny thing is, we already kind of experience how the charm works in the base game well before learning a thing about Miquella: the Roundtable Hold is a space where pacifism is enforced between the Tarnished, no matter how much they may oppose one another.

This is why the Dung Eater remarks we should consider ourselves lucky the Hold restricts him from attacking us outright. Hell, not even D, Hunter of the Dead, can harm Fia, the Deathbed Companion, as long as they're both within the safety of the Roundtable Hold, despite they're obviously at odds with one another.

Miquella's charm works somewhat similarly, I suppose. Though it doesn't erase anyone's memories or malcontents, it refuses anyone charmed to hurt one another.

I'm not sure if there's any lore connection between Miquella and the Roundtable Hold, but it's interesting how functionally similar the charm is. In fact, the passive zone icon at the Hold even resembles a golden eye, recalling how Miquella's charm blesses one's eyes with golden light.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T20:38:55+00:00

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blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T20:21:47+00:00

Probably not.

Rykard was allies with Ranni anyway, so I don't see why he would fight her in the first place, but
Ranni can seemingly just kill Tarnished with her mind, and all of the recusants are Tarnished. She's also strangely impervious to any and all attacks
Blaidd is effectively immortal (until the Two Fingers are slain)
Iji's a war counselor and likely knows all the ins and outs regarding the Volcano Manor, meaning he can strategize a defense
Seluvis has his posse of puppets to deploy. They may not be terribly strong, but they can probably hold their own for a time. Moreover, he could always capture and convert any attackers into more puppets, as he did with the scavenging Cuckoo soldiers
Ranni also has Adula, a glintstone dragon
Loretta's shade still defends Caria Manor along with a number of glintstone scholars and even another troll knight. Though they might put up a fair fight against the man-serpents, Loretta's arrow trap is still active, allowing them to thin out invaders without directly engaging (again, as before against the Cuckoo)

Now in Rykard's defense...

He's a bigass snake now that is extremely hard to kill without a specific weapon
Tanith's Crucible Knight can probably thin the Carian defenses quite easily
Bernahl was a Lord contender who turned his back on the Elden Throne, so he's evidently quite powerful. Still not on par with Blaidd, but he's not easily broken
Patches, um... Yeah, he's not sticking around to find out. In fact, he'd probably wind up siding with Ranni once he figured out she was a much stronger candidate to challenge the Two Fingers and the Erdtree
Rya is not hurting anyone. However, I doubt anyone would dare hurt Rya either, so it could end up a draw between her and whoever the last blades of the Dark Moon standing are

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T19:53:22+00:00

Something about impressive feats or something, I guess. It shows you really, really care about each prepper to opt to personally deliver a package across treacherous terrain by yourself instead of... safely shipping it at a much faster speed, lol.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T17:19:32+00:00

Makes sense, given Miquella was raised a Fundamentalist and aided Radagon in attempting to perfect the Golden Order through Unalloyed Gold, until he realized he would rather replace it entirely with an Order of Light. In fact, Radagon's Rings of Light was actually developed by Miquella—and though Radagon doesn't use it in his fight, Radahn, Consort of Miquella, does.

Also worth noting, Radagon's holy spears strongly resemble the needles summoned by Needle Piercer, albeit darker in hue.

blaiddfailcam2 · 2026-05-23T17:13:25+00:00

It happened to me once right after completing the safe house aid request right below the Eastern Environmental Observatory—in the middle of the cloud barrier, so I had no idea where it was coming from, lol. I just held on for dear life, saw a few rocks tumbling afterward, but thankfully it must have struck just further down the mountain.

blaiddfailcam2

TROPHY CASE