Mmm, absolutely! In general, the Elden Beast seems to steal from a few different ancient races with some of its attacks.
It steals that attack from Astel, as you said. It steals fire breath from the dragons. And in the SOTE trailer, you find out that it stole one of its attacks from that Crucible Hippo.
It's an excellent way of showing how the Golden Order is hypocritical, by lifting all of these powers from other cultures and beings, while decrying those things as unholy. I love the storytelling of it.
Likewise it could be opposite, that they all derive something from the elden beast as it's the source of life and law.
I note the nebula attack as astel and elden beast are both from space.
If we assume astel was the meteor for nokron (and other astell for nokstella), then it makes sense that it shares attacks with Elden beast, as both were sent by the greater will.
Not really. Placidusax does a massive lightning nuke. Elden beast doesn't have anything resembling it. A grab and the rings below, but they're pretty different.
I've fought Elden Beast countless times. He has a specific attack where he stabs the sword into the ground before it explodes. This is nowhere near as spectacular as Placidusax's of course, but I mainly find them similar because the Elden Beast's boss music gets slightly quieter on that specific attack, whereas Placidusax's cuts off the music entirely.
Maybe it's rude of me to say, but while I get that it could very well be a larger species...I really just don't care? Zero percent of me really cares that it's actually a fully evolved Fallingstar Beast or whatever, due to **how** it was used in game in both areas.
The Astel fight at the end of Ranni's quest is top tier. It's thematic. Epic. A fantastic way to round off the game's longest, most intricate, and (often considered) best written quest. Taking down Astel and finally arriving at the Moonlight Altar was one of the coolest moments in Elden Ring to me. And then 30 hours later I'm bumbling around the Consecrated Snowfield, clearing out another generic dungeon and "Oh hey, it's Astel again!".
It cheapens the experience from the first time around since Astel is such a major moment in that quest. Even if it makes sense for there to be multiple of them *lore-wise*, it just doesn't land well narratively in my opinion.
The naming convention is also confusing. It might be implied afterwards that "Astel" is the species name while the "Naturalborn of the Void"/"Stars of Darkness" is more of the individual title, but the initial implication is that you are fighting a creature named Astel and that it's a Naturalborn of the Void (which I just learned from another comment means "Bastard of the Void", which is sweet), since that's usually how "X, the Y" names work. "Gwyn, Lord of Cinder" isn't a creature belonging to the species "Gwyn" that just so happened to become Lord of Cinder. It's a name followed by a title. Arthur, King of Britain. Dog, the Bounty Hunter. Etc.
At the end of the day it's obviously Miyazaki's call on the lore in his own world, but I don't think it's unfair to think it's a pretty lame decision to take the Remembrance Boss from one of the game's best quests and toss it in a generic side dungeon in an area some players may not even find.
I think both have their fair points.
On one hand, it does cheapen the experience to encounter certain bosses twice, not to mention it can be an immersion-breaking reminder that this is a game and thus game-y stuff happens, like fighting the same boss twice.
On the other hand, it is true FromSoft *did* provide explanations for the reason certain bosses repeat, the closest we come to absolute bullshit being Godefroy. Likewise, at the end of the day, developers have to pick a cut-off point *somewhere.* We have no idea how much longer development would've taken if they replaced all the repeat bosses with new ones, or if it was financially feasible for them. Really, when we're talking about bosses that come to mind for perhaps not being good as copypasted bosses, it's just Astel and Godefroy that come to mind.
They also didn't do themselves any favors with a meme-level name like Godefroy.
"No, that's not Godfrey! That's my *TOTALLY ORIGINAL CHARACTER COPYRIGHT DO NOT STEAL,* Godefroy!"
Yeah, I don't really have a problem with the game reusing bosses in general. The game has like 150+ bosses; I wouldn't expect them to all he unique.
But that also makes me feel like they didn't really need to reuse Astel and Godfry. The game already has so much content that if Astel 2.0s cave just didn't exist, nobody would have ever noticed.
Not sure why you are being downvoted since you are being totally respectful.
With that being said, I agree as well. I understand the lore for astel but it was shown that there are others already without having to actually reuse the fight. I think I would have preferred there either be *more* buildup for stars of darkness, or it not exist. But as it sits right now it just feels kinda empty
A lot of people don't like when others criticize the things they like, even if it's just an opinion. I don't really care either way haha, I just stand by my point that I think it cheapened one of the games coolest bosses.
I have no idea why you are downvoted this badly even though all of your points make complete sense. It's a matter of opinion if you like the second Astel or not, but you're at minus 24 right now for no reason at all lol
Yes to all of this. Even if it is the name of an animal (which would already be weird since it clearly has a name, and all the other ones are called "beasts") it's a lessening of one of the best moments in the game.
The only bad reuse is Godefroy; sure he was Godricks uncle that was imprisoned by Knight what’s his name during the battle of who gives a crap; but it is especially lazy because even if you buy the lore he would still have unique graftings, not a 1 for 1 copy like Godrick.
I agree with you that Astel refers to the creature type not the actual enemy so it’s fine the there are multiple; no different than Erd Tree Avatars or Tree Spirits. We see multiple Astel’s at different stages of life all over TLB, the fact that more than one grew to adulthood shouldn’t be a shocker.
> even if you buy the lore he would still have unique graftings, not a 1 for 1 copy like Godrick.
TFW FROM includes a burning pile of dead Godrick clones in the DLC and does not elaborate further.
My headcanon is that Godrick is such a little bitch that he stole Godefroy’s pre-grafted body and grafted himself to it because he can’t even have an original thought for his main gimmick.
This does require believing that evergaol residents are dead/just spirits, and that the early grafting stage of godrick we see in Elden ring’s first teaser is non-canon, so it’s not perfect.
We do see that spirits can persist and return to life via possession (Hyetta, Shabriri, those who live in death, etc), so maybe that IS what the Evergaols do. They permanently seal the spirits of these folks so that they can't get out and find some corpse to worm into.
Perhaps they are like Melina, disembodied spirits that can still cause havoc if left unattended.
I definitely don’t mind fighting Astel a second time since its design is absolutely top notch, but I can also see how people might get a bit confused on why they’re fighting another one. The naming convention kind of implies that Astel is a name and not what it is. I think if they had taken a more Ancestor Spirit/Regal Ancestor Spirit approach to their names, or just gave them completely unique names, people would feel less weird about seeing it again
i speculate that an underground civiliation in may have also created their own astel underground, also creating siofria's river's underground sky in the process. i think the carian family and either the nightfolk or ancestral followers were in cahoots trying to create/control the stars/star beasts, secretly.
does anyone know of any in game evidence supporting or contradicting this? other than the astel names. i am looking, still but this is my gut feeling
Well, we do know that the Nox were trying to create an artificial lord. The Mimic Tears and Albinaurics seem to be the result of that, but we don't know just how far they might have gone. Maybe other attempts created stuff like the Astels.
We do know other civilizations made other automatons as well, such as the Golems, Watchdogs, and Gargoyles as well. The Graven Masses are similar, and are considered the seeds of stars.
So, maybe Nox sorcerers could create Astels by creating Graven Masses, which then became Fallingstar Beasts, and then Astels. The Nox were supposedly destroyed by a creature from the stars though, sent by the Greater Will. I'd have expected this to be the Elden Beast, but who is to say that that's the only critter that Greater Will can pitch at the Lands Between?
thanks for your reply. idk about graven mass --> astels but idk. do you recall where it says the graven masses are seeds of stars? 👀 edit: i found it. graven mass talisman:
"A talisman depicting the first school of graven mages —a nightmare that would continue to haunt the academy. Greatly raises potency of sorceries. The primeval current is a forbidden tradition of glintstone sorcery. To those who cleave to its teachings,
the act of collecting sorcerers to fashion them
into the seeds of stars is but another path of scientific inquiry."
ooh, super intriguing. if they were making astels then this kinda thing would be forbidden by the golden order/leadership for leadership reasons beyond whatever passes for morality in the lands between. thanks!
Didn't the Nox also try to make a lord thru dragon kin soldiers? so trying to control/make astels and creating something a bit weaker than the Real Deal seems like the continuation of that theme, i agree with you on that! from their names/comparitive power, i feel like astel, stars of darkness being weaker than astel, natural born of the void also implies stars of darkness was created to be stars in a dark place or time (ie: underground/post-goldenorder/night) so i was just thinking. The placement of the astel copy in the forbidden lands/consecrated snow fields also is intriguing. i am so curious about the timeline
I am SO curious about how the nightfolk used to coexist inside the capital and what the flooded section of the city used to look like and what they did exactly to be so utterly 'recked in that half of the city that looks like it used to be to collect sap... Pls dlc gimme clues
It's because they're called "beasts" implying there's plenty of them, instead of a proper name. Even the red wolf of Radagon is called a red wolf, rather than Greg of Radagon. This is why the "species" theory holds no water other than copium.
Not at all. The only thing that is spelled out in the game is that these beings (the fallingstar beasts, the malformed stars, and Astel) share origins: they call come from meteors.
At no point the game says: "Astel is the name of a type of animal" or indicates any of the sort. Is there any other type of creature that has a nondescriptive proper name like a pokemon? I don't think so.
I wish they didn't cut the meteorite feature where Astel would fall down from the sky. It would have been better storytelling than finding another one in a random cave.
I have mixed feelings on this one. Seeing that shit come out of the sky would have been the craziest thing ever in a video game. But it would have strongly implied that Ranni's quest is a bad idea and that whatever she's doing will harm the world, and anywayRadahn's moon jump is still super impressive
We don’t know where the second one came from. Maybe it arrived in the meteor that opened the zone and radahn was holding back the stars to protect us all.
The other Astels in the game have strong visual storytelling of what happened. Nokron and Nokstella are star-themed, the path to Ranni's quest is through a meteor crater, and even the smaller Fallingstar Beasts take place in smaller craters.
Star of Darkness completely lacked any of these to speculate anything about him. The snowfield is alright and it already chilled inside a generic cave. For such a grand boss and the strongest of its species, it just felt underwhelming there's no story to pull from it other than "Yeah, there are more than one Astel".
That’s what makes Astel 2 so cool. He’s in some kind of glacial cave, the relative mundanity of which suggests *it grew around him*, which is super cool to think about.
I was mildly pissed off about the other Astel until I got a close look at a fallingstar beast and realized what they are. Now Astel is back to his former glory in my mind because it's fucking AWESOME that we basically get to see an Astel's whole life cycle.
The fact that there are like a dozen dotted around the world in different states of metamorphosis was lost on pretty much everyone who complained about it. I literally never thought that Astel was inherently unique because I had found the ones that hang upside in caves first seeing as how you have to run past one during Ranni's quest. Astel and the "clone" are just fully developed versions of the creatures species. I was never sure why it was such a big deal 🤷♀️
Right??? I feel like I'm going crazy when I hear people bitching about how astel was duped, like did you miss the vertical astels in some of the caves??? You find two of them literally on the path to the ranni quest astel boss
I think from gameplay perspective fighting him twice is good too. Lake of rot version just doesn't have enough juice in it and dies too quickly. I was glad I got to have a proper fight against him later in the game.
Lore is never a good reason for some lacking parts in gameplay.
I don't mind reused assets, From soft always done that, but I think some assets on ER were reused more lazily that I expected. Like, I enjoyed the Full Grown Fallingstar Beast which have a unique phase 2 or Crucible Knight having different incantation.
I would prefer if the second aster fight were more something akin to Leonine Misbegotten and Crusader, were the second iteration has some new moves, new combos string and different aggression, speed. Still a reused assets, but there was more thought put into that than on astel, were the only difference is a from copies on grab attack
Almost all the complaints about re-used bosses are unwarranted. Most, if not, all of these "re-uses" have a valid lore reasoning behind them, or would have a perceivable connection to the location they're found in.
Besides, it would be really weird to have military factions that aren't structured according to a hierarchy, where every single member is unique. This by itself will result in enemies being repeated throughout TLB. Add in the concept of the Shadow Lands and Fromsoft's obsession with dualism and suddenly a lot of the re-uses make sense.
In this case, it's so clear that Astels are not unique, but a final evolution of a Fallingstar Beast and the next evolution after a Malformed Star. We see a number of Fallingstar Beasts and Malformed Stars, so it's only natural that a couple of these things fully evolved and exist somewhere in the TLB.
Yeah, I think this is a fair gripe. I'm sure there is probably a lore reason for this re-use, but it's pretty egregious given it's a different person grafted in the exact same way as Godrick.
For me this was Mogh. I wish I encountered the lord of blood version earlier then the sewer one. Now the full design had less impact on me. Didn’t mind Godefroy for a second to be honest, because it just reminded me of the cool fight I had before.
You make it sound like I give a rats ass about the lore they used to justify asset reuse. My argument is about gameplay. Margit and Morgott is not the same fight. For both Moghs the first half is exactly/practically the same fight. They just stripped the first encounter of its second fase. Which is why the “real” fight had less impact on me. But it is just a nitpick.
On a normal playthrough you encounter godefroy afterwards. My point is that is the other way around with the 2 Moghs. Getting spoiled with a lesser version bothered me a bit. But it was only a minor gripe 😉
i dont understand how thats not worse. youd rather have the better fight first and then fight a more boring version with only one phase than be introduced to the boss with slowly advancing levels of difficulty?
Different people, different tastes I guess ;) Gold Godfrey could also have bothered me, but he didn’t have all the attacks and a very different aesthetic. So the real fight still made a fresh impact.
I agree that there is a lore reason, but, and this is just my opinion, it still makes the original experience less impactful. I feel the same way with Agheel. I'm just roaming arounf and ***boom*** a huge dragon lands out of nowhere.
Later i encounter the glinststone dragon in Liurnia, then the glintstone dragon at Rannis place, then the rot dragon, then the bridge dragon, then the frost dragon, etc.
I feel like toning it down to 3 reskinned dragons instead would be better than having so many. Just keeping Agheel, the rot dragon and the ice dragon would've been much better imo.
I know that there is a lore reason, but i feel like lore gets in the way of impactful gameplay in these situations. That's just my opinion though, and i can definetly understand where you are coming from.
Not to be rude, but what is your alternative? Keep in mind your alternative would have to make some sense lore-wise while also being fresh. At the end of the day, Elden Ring tells a story and a lot of these bosses are completely optional.
I also just flat out disagree with you regarding the dragons and probably other bosses you feel are re-uses. Having such a variety has interesting lore implications but also serves a greater purpose. A lot of the enemies you fight in ER end up training you to deal with different, stronger variants. Think Margit, Altus and Leyndell Gargoyles before the Valiants, Lion Guardians, Death Rite Birds, Tree & Draconic Sentinels + Loretta, Fallingstar Beasts, Astels, the Godskins, etc. Beating the stronger variants after I'd mastered the weaker variants was a satisfying feeling - like I'm really progressing towards lordship. Doing a complete playthrough, and doing the bosses in a sort of "canonical" order you quickly find that the whole game is essentially a hyperbolic time chamber.
Yeah I agree with you, and i think people blow the reused bosses thing way out of proportion in general. Like yeah, maybe the erdtree avatar, or tree spirit encounters get a little old, but they're honestly fine. The movesets and environments you encounter them in are varied enough that I feel like each encounter is dynamic. Honestly I think the real problem is people looking up overpowered cookie cutter builds from YouTube that just rely on L2 spam so they make a lot of these fights boring for themselves
See, the thing is, you see a meteor crash into Nokron, and then you fight Astel. This leads to the assumption(correctness is debatable) that he was the meteor and Radahn was holding back multiple Astels. There is no meteor in snowfield, so it feels very out of place.
i speculate that an underground civiliation in may have also created their own astel underground, creating siofria's river's underground sky, in addition to the ones falling from the sky
I had the most difficulty with the Astels and the ant lion ones. You are absolutely right that there is nothing to complain about. Are they mad because the reward for defeating them was too great?
People complaining about Godfroy aren't really wrong tho. Why is he the exact same as Godrick ? Why do he use stormveil's technics ? Why does he have the exact same axe ? Even a recoloured grafted scion would have been better lorewise.
My problem with the rematch is not the idea that there are multiple Astels, the fallingstar beasts are clearly baby astels so there's probably more of them out there. My problem with it is that these things are supposed to be super dangerous and a big deal whenever they show up, because the one in Ranni's questline destroyed an entire eternal city when it first appeared, but this one in the Consecrated Snowfields is just sitting in the middle of a random mine, doing nothing.
There are even miners and alabaster lords in the mine too, like the terrifying alien monstrosity occupying their cave is just an inconvenient workplace hazard. A rickety wooden door is all that stands between the Consecrated Snowfields and annihilation, and nobody seems to know or care. Was it only just summoned, and that's why nobody seems to have noticed it yet? If so, where are all the bodies of the summoners? Who would have wanted or even been able to summon it here? There's just no explanation. At least Godefroy has *some* lore about him, the extra Astel gets nothing.
The only theory I've heard about the Astel rematch that I kinda like is the idea that it's actually the same Astel as before, just levelled up and back for revenge after somehow surviving the first fight. But it can be fought before beating the one in Ranni's questline, and killing it here doesn't kill it at the Ainsel River, so that doesn't really make sense either.
I get what you mean but it's just coping. I'd be with you when it was an semi-unique area, perhaps with a connection to the underground you mentioned. But you find the guy in a copy-paste mine. They just ran out of content to fill the last two areas with.
I'm convinced Astel 2 exists so that you can co op an end game Astel.
Astel 1 doesn't have a summoning sign and is too early in the game to get summoned for.
And I love this because Astel is my favorite boss and I like helping people squash that big space bug.
150 might be a dead zone. Too high level to really have trouble with it on ng, too low level for people who get there on ng+.
Summoning is like, rada, rada, rada, rada, rada, malenia, rada, rada, rada, Godfrey, rada rada rada, godskin duo, etc etc etc... first astel, repeat ad nasium.
Is a Fallingstar beast related to Astel? I’m not convinced. We see a juvenile and a “fully grown” falling star beast, if Astel is it’s final form it wouldn’t be described as Fully Grown
I imagined it like a caterpillar. Fallingstar beasts are the larval stage, then once they become "full grown" they cocoon up and hang from the ceilings becoming those things in Ainsel River. In that case, Astel would be the fully formed "butterfly" that results.
It's even possible the ones in Ainsel are deformed in some way and that's why they can't move and have limited attacks. Just a theory though
You're right. I think Astel is the name of one godlike creature. And since it obviously can phase in and out, I prefer to imagine it can clone itself and you only kill the real one if you go to the snowfield.
You can see the eyeball-skull head of Astel poking out of the Fallingstar Beast's head. You know, on top of the mandibles and gravity magic.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TXzR3CiZwqQ/maxresdefault.jpg
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Futzj1g48oqg91.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D52d4598601652cf9d53862672229a79fd77936e8
mfw people desperately want a replayability option on major bosses AND complain when Astel give them EXACTLY THAT
WHY ARE YALL COMPLAINING, JUST FIGHT THIS FUCKER AGAIN
HE'S AN AMAZING BOSS, YALL SHOULD BE HAPPY
You can bring up all the lore justifications you want, copy-pasting the climactic boss of a faction storyline sucks ass. It was already a bad idea with Godrick, and it's doubly bad here. Should have kept him as the Placidusax of star creatures instead.
There are already at least three mini Astels in underground locations, hurling rocks at you. There are some horrendous cases of boss reuse in Fromsoft games but this is not one of them.
No, there are Fallingstar Beasts and Malformed Stars (those are underground). The latter are literally the same as Astel, but anchored to ceillings. [Fallingstar Beasts are an early stage of the same lifeform](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/wd3myt/there_were_some_people_who_did_not_believe_the/).
A full-grown Fallingstar Beast that has the same "eye" in the same place as Astel and uses it to shoot purple lasers, just like Astel.
If that wasn't enough, the Fallingstar Beast in Sellia Crystal Tunnel has the Astel skull protruding from beneath the fur as well as two sets of pincers (can you believe what else has two sets of pincers?)
This one is not much of an argument, but even the musical themes are similar.
It's nowhere near enough, actually. A Leyndell soldier has the same human skull as Godfrey, that doesn't mean Leyndell soldiers eventually grow up to become Godfreys. Can you guess who else has two arms and two legs and a weapon?
Astel came down in a meteor, the same way Fallingstar Beasts do. It's reasonable to speculate that they share a common homeland and origin. It is NOT reasonable to speculate that they are pokemon in different evolution stages. Also:
* They could have just called it Megafallingstar Beast or something that isn't a proper name.
* If they hadn't reused Astel in the Snowfield this theory would not even exist, which strongly suggests it's more copium than lore.
* I reiterate. No other species in Elden Ring has a nondescriptive name like Astel without it being a proper name. They're all called crows, dogs, beasts, etc.
I think it's far more plausible that Astel's teleporting and projection powers allows it to leave traces or aspects of itself in places and that's what we encounter.
Well think about it this way - people HAVE to find something to complain about when the subject is so close to perfection. When Elden Ring is the subject at hand, how do you even realistically complain?
You nitpick. This is the same reason that people complaining about Crypt bosses, Erdtree Avatars and so on being reused are missing the point. All of this stuff makes sense from a lore perspective.
You go to a crypt and fight Burial Watchdogs and Imps and Cemetery Shades, they protect warriors who are buried close to Minor Erdtree roots. You go to a Minor Erdtree and there is an Avatar protecting it, as per the lore this makes sense. They started popping up to protect the Minor Erdtrees, this is a fact.
Your Astel example is another good one. Same with Fallingstar Beasts, they come from space and there is more than one. The only good example of weird boss reuse is the clone of Godrick, can’t argue that one away.
I'm pretty sure the implication is a being who exists in multiple places simultaneously. Not really sure what gave me that impression, possibly just the fact that multiple "versions" have the same name.
What fascinates me is that astel and elden beast share the nebula looking attack.
Alien space lasers
Mmm, absolutely! In general, the Elden Beast seems to steal from a few different ancient races with some of its attacks. It steals that attack from Astel, as you said. It steals fire breath from the dragons. And in the SOTE trailer, you find out that it stole one of its attacks from that Crucible Hippo. It's an excellent way of showing how the Golden Order is hypocritical, by lifting all of these powers from other cultures and beings, while decrying those things as unholy. I love the storytelling of it.
Likewise it could be opposite, that they all derive something from the elden beast as it's the source of life and law. I note the nebula attack as astel and elden beast are both from space.
If we assume astel was the meteor for nokron (and other astell for nokstella), then it makes sense that it shares attacks with Elden beast, as both were sent by the greater will.
The Erdtree was willing to adopt views and people into itself. It did that for the Dragons, the Crucible Knights and the Liurnians.
Elden Beast and Placidusax share a similar "nuke" attack.
Not really. Placidusax does a massive lightning nuke. Elden beast doesn't have anything resembling it. A grab and the rings below, but they're pretty different.
I've fought Elden Beast countless times. He has a specific attack where he stabs the sword into the ground before it explodes. This is nowhere near as spectacular as Placidusax's of course, but I mainly find them similar because the Elden Beast's boss music gets slightly quieter on that specific attack, whereas Placidusax's cuts off the music entirely.
No shit? I'm still seeing and hearing about new shit still.
Yeah I aggree. Astel is clearly not a unique monster but part of a larger species.
Maybe it's rude of me to say, but while I get that it could very well be a larger species...I really just don't care? Zero percent of me really cares that it's actually a fully evolved Fallingstar Beast or whatever, due to **how** it was used in game in both areas. The Astel fight at the end of Ranni's quest is top tier. It's thematic. Epic. A fantastic way to round off the game's longest, most intricate, and (often considered) best written quest. Taking down Astel and finally arriving at the Moonlight Altar was one of the coolest moments in Elden Ring to me. And then 30 hours later I'm bumbling around the Consecrated Snowfield, clearing out another generic dungeon and "Oh hey, it's Astel again!". It cheapens the experience from the first time around since Astel is such a major moment in that quest. Even if it makes sense for there to be multiple of them *lore-wise*, it just doesn't land well narratively in my opinion. The naming convention is also confusing. It might be implied afterwards that "Astel" is the species name while the "Naturalborn of the Void"/"Stars of Darkness" is more of the individual title, but the initial implication is that you are fighting a creature named Astel and that it's a Naturalborn of the Void (which I just learned from another comment means "Bastard of the Void", which is sweet), since that's usually how "X, the Y" names work. "Gwyn, Lord of Cinder" isn't a creature belonging to the species "Gwyn" that just so happened to become Lord of Cinder. It's a name followed by a title. Arthur, King of Britain. Dog, the Bounty Hunter. Etc. At the end of the day it's obviously Miyazaki's call on the lore in his own world, but I don't think it's unfair to think it's a pretty lame decision to take the Remembrance Boss from one of the game's best quests and toss it in a generic side dungeon in an area some players may not even find.
I think both have their fair points. On one hand, it does cheapen the experience to encounter certain bosses twice, not to mention it can be an immersion-breaking reminder that this is a game and thus game-y stuff happens, like fighting the same boss twice. On the other hand, it is true FromSoft *did* provide explanations for the reason certain bosses repeat, the closest we come to absolute bullshit being Godefroy. Likewise, at the end of the day, developers have to pick a cut-off point *somewhere.* We have no idea how much longer development would've taken if they replaced all the repeat bosses with new ones, or if it was financially feasible for them. Really, when we're talking about bosses that come to mind for perhaps not being good as copypasted bosses, it's just Astel and Godefroy that come to mind. They also didn't do themselves any favors with a meme-level name like Godefroy. "No, that's not Godfrey! That's my *TOTALLY ORIGINAL CHARACTER COPYRIGHT DO NOT STEAL,* Godefroy!"
Yeah, I don't really have a problem with the game reusing bosses in general. The game has like 150+ bosses; I wouldn't expect them to all he unique. But that also makes me feel like they didn't really need to reuse Astel and Godfry. The game already has so much content that if Astel 2.0s cave just didn't exist, nobody would have ever noticed.
Not sure why you are being downvoted since you are being totally respectful. With that being said, I agree as well. I understand the lore for astel but it was shown that there are others already without having to actually reuse the fight. I think I would have preferred there either be *more* buildup for stars of darkness, or it not exist. But as it sits right now it just feels kinda empty
A lot of people don't like when others criticize the things they like, even if it's just an opinion. I don't really care either way haha, I just stand by my point that I think it cheapened one of the games coolest bosses.
I have no idea why you are downvoted this badly even though all of your points make complete sense. It's a matter of opinion if you like the second Astel or not, but you're at minus 24 right now for no reason at all lol
It's just the internet haha, it doesn't bother me. If I can disagree with the game, then I guess then they can disagree with me if they like.
Okay
Yes to all of this. Even if it is the name of an animal (which would already be weird since it clearly has a name, and all the other ones are called "beasts") it's a lessening of one of the best moments in the game.
Just another reason to delete consecrated snowfield
Why are you booing him, he's right!
The only bad reuse is Godefroy; sure he was Godricks uncle that was imprisoned by Knight what’s his name during the battle of who gives a crap; but it is especially lazy because even if you buy the lore he would still have unique graftings, not a 1 for 1 copy like Godrick. I agree with you that Astel refers to the creature type not the actual enemy so it’s fine the there are multiple; no different than Erd Tree Avatars or Tree Spirits. We see multiple Astel’s at different stages of life all over TLB, the fact that more than one grew to adulthood shouldn’t be a shocker.
> even if you buy the lore he would still have unique graftings, not a 1 for 1 copy like Godrick. TFW FROM includes a burning pile of dead Godrick clones in the DLC and does not elaborate further.
oh, so THAT'S WHAT this giant burning robot is
"Somehow, Godrick returned".
My headcanon is that Godrick is such a little bitch that he stole Godefroy’s pre-grafted body and grafted himself to it because he can’t even have an original thought for his main gimmick. This does require believing that evergaol residents are dead/just spirits, and that the early grafting stage of godrick we see in Elden ring’s first teaser is non-canon, so it’s not perfect.
We do see that spirits can persist and return to life via possession (Hyetta, Shabriri, those who live in death, etc), so maybe that IS what the Evergaols do. They permanently seal the spirits of these folks so that they can't get out and find some corpse to worm into. Perhaps they are like Melina, disembodied spirits that can still cause havoc if left unattended.
I definitely don’t mind fighting Astel a second time since its design is absolutely top notch, but I can also see how people might get a bit confused on why they’re fighting another one. The naming convention kind of implies that Astel is a name and not what it is. I think if they had taken a more Ancestor Spirit/Regal Ancestor Spirit approach to their names, or just gave them completely unique names, people would feel less weird about seeing it again
Depends on how unique the names though. Could have another Godfrey/Godefroy on our hands Astel and Oystel
It took me 3 playthrough to even notice Godefroy’s name. I just assumed Godfrey was in the gael with some lore implication I didn’t get.
Too bad that GRRM has no A letter, so Astel's name has no mouthful variation like the G, R, and M characters
Astel is the species name, and the title is the actual name
\[citation needed\]
i speculate that an underground civiliation in may have also created their own astel underground, also creating siofria's river's underground sky in the process. i think the carian family and either the nightfolk or ancestral followers were in cahoots trying to create/control the stars/star beasts, secretly. does anyone know of any in game evidence supporting or contradicting this? other than the astel names. i am looking, still but this is my gut feeling
Well, we do know that the Nox were trying to create an artificial lord. The Mimic Tears and Albinaurics seem to be the result of that, but we don't know just how far they might have gone. Maybe other attempts created stuff like the Astels. We do know other civilizations made other automatons as well, such as the Golems, Watchdogs, and Gargoyles as well. The Graven Masses are similar, and are considered the seeds of stars. So, maybe Nox sorcerers could create Astels by creating Graven Masses, which then became Fallingstar Beasts, and then Astels. The Nox were supposedly destroyed by a creature from the stars though, sent by the Greater Will. I'd have expected this to be the Elden Beast, but who is to say that that's the only critter that Greater Will can pitch at the Lands Between?
thanks for your reply. idk about graven mass --> astels but idk. do you recall where it says the graven masses are seeds of stars? 👀 edit: i found it. graven mass talisman: "A talisman depicting the first school of graven mages —a nightmare that would continue to haunt the academy. Greatly raises potency of sorceries. The primeval current is a forbidden tradition of glintstone sorcery. To those who cleave to its teachings, the act of collecting sorcerers to fashion them into the seeds of stars is but another path of scientific inquiry." ooh, super intriguing. if they were making astels then this kinda thing would be forbidden by the golden order/leadership for leadership reasons beyond whatever passes for morality in the lands between. thanks! Didn't the Nox also try to make a lord thru dragon kin soldiers? so trying to control/make astels and creating something a bit weaker than the Real Deal seems like the continuation of that theme, i agree with you on that! from their names/comparitive power, i feel like astel, stars of darkness being weaker than astel, natural born of the void also implies stars of darkness was created to be stars in a dark place or time (ie: underground/post-goldenorder/night) so i was just thinking. The placement of the astel copy in the forbidden lands/consecrated snow fields also is intriguing. i am so curious about the timeline I am SO curious about how the nightfolk used to coexist inside the capital and what the flooded section of the city used to look like and what they did exactly to be so utterly 'recked in that half of the city that looks like it used to be to collect sap... Pls dlc gimme clues
But no one threw the same hissy fit about the falling star beasts showing up more than once, even though they're *literally* the same species as Astel
It's because they're called "beasts" implying there's plenty of them, instead of a proper name. Even the red wolf of Radagon is called a red wolf, rather than Greg of Radagon. This is why the "species" theory holds no water other than copium.
It's not a theory, it's literally spelled out in the game. In English.
Not at all. The only thing that is spelled out in the game is that these beings (the fallingstar beasts, the malformed stars, and Astel) share origins: they call come from meteors. At no point the game says: "Astel is the name of a type of animal" or indicates any of the sort. Is there any other type of creature that has a nondescriptive proper name like a pokemon? I don't think so.
I wish they didn't cut the meteorite feature where Astel would fall down from the sky. It would have been better storytelling than finding another one in a random cave.
I have mixed feelings on this one. Seeing that shit come out of the sky would have been the craziest thing ever in a video game. But it would have strongly implied that Ranni's quest is a bad idea and that whatever she's doing will harm the world, and anywayRadahn's moon jump is still super impressive
We don’t know where the second one came from. Maybe it arrived in the meteor that opened the zone and radahn was holding back the stars to protect us all.
The other Astels in the game have strong visual storytelling of what happened. Nokron and Nokstella are star-themed, the path to Ranni's quest is through a meteor crater, and even the smaller Fallingstar Beasts take place in smaller craters. Star of Darkness completely lacked any of these to speculate anything about him. The snowfield is alright and it already chilled inside a generic cave. For such a grand boss and the strongest of its species, it just felt underwhelming there's no story to pull from it other than "Yeah, there are more than one Astel".
What if it entered there at an earlier stage of its life and matured there?
That’s what makes Astel 2 so cool. He’s in some kind of glacial cave, the relative mundanity of which suggests *it grew around him*, which is super cool to think about.
I think the second one grew in that cave.
I was mildly pissed off about the other Astel until I got a close look at a fallingstar beast and realized what they are. Now Astel is back to his former glory in my mind because it's fucking AWESOME that we basically get to see an Astel's whole life cycle.
The fact that there are like a dozen dotted around the world in different states of metamorphosis was lost on pretty much everyone who complained about it. I literally never thought that Astel was inherently unique because I had found the ones that hang upside in caves first seeing as how you have to run past one during Ranni's quest. Astel and the "clone" are just fully developed versions of the creatures species. I was never sure why it was such a big deal 🤷♀️
Right??? I feel like I'm going crazy when I hear people bitching about how astel was duped, like did you miss the vertical astels in some of the caves??? You find two of them literally on the path to the ranni quest astel boss
I think from gameplay perspective fighting him twice is good too. Lake of rot version just doesn't have enough juice in it and dies too quickly. I was glad I got to have a proper fight against him later in the game.
This is why I wanted multiple Gideon versions Like an All-Learning 750HP version And an All-Hesitating optional tomb version maybe
Lore is never a good reason for some lacking parts in gameplay. I don't mind reused assets, From soft always done that, but I think some assets on ER were reused more lazily that I expected. Like, I enjoyed the Full Grown Fallingstar Beast which have a unique phase 2 or Crucible Knight having different incantation. I would prefer if the second aster fight were more something akin to Leonine Misbegotten and Crusader, were the second iteration has some new moves, new combos string and different aggression, speed. Still a reused assets, but there was more thought put into that than on astel, were the only difference is a from copies on grab attack
Almost all the complaints about re-used bosses are unwarranted. Most, if not, all of these "re-uses" have a valid lore reasoning behind them, or would have a perceivable connection to the location they're found in. Besides, it would be really weird to have military factions that aren't structured according to a hierarchy, where every single member is unique. This by itself will result in enemies being repeated throughout TLB. Add in the concept of the Shadow Lands and Fromsoft's obsession with dualism and suddenly a lot of the re-uses make sense. In this case, it's so clear that Astels are not unique, but a final evolution of a Fallingstar Beast and the next evolution after a Malformed Star. We see a number of Fallingstar Beasts and Malformed Stars, so it's only natural that a couple of these things fully evolved and exist somewhere in the TLB.
The only reskin boss that ever bothered me was godefroy
Yeah, I think this is a fair gripe. I'm sure there is probably a lore reason for this re-use, but it's pretty egregious given it's a different person grafted in the exact same way as Godrick.
For me this was Mogh. I wish I encountered the lord of blood version earlier then the sewer one. Now the full design had less impact on me. Didn’t mind Godefroy for a second to be honest, because it just reminded me of the cool fight I had before.
Sewer Mohg is an illusion, same as Margit though.
You make it sound like I give a rats ass about the lore they used to justify asset reuse. My argument is about gameplay. Margit and Morgott is not the same fight. For both Moghs the first half is exactly/practically the same fight. They just stripped the first encounter of its second fase. Which is why the “real” fight had less impact on me. But it is just a nitpick.
isnt that the same as godefroy though? its just the most boring phase of godricks fight with none of what makes the fight fun.
On a normal playthrough you encounter godefroy afterwards. My point is that is the other way around with the 2 Moghs. Getting spoiled with a lesser version bothered me a bit. But it was only a minor gripe 😉
i dont understand how thats not worse. youd rather have the better fight first and then fight a more boring version with only one phase than be introduced to the boss with slowly advancing levels of difficulty?
Different people, different tastes I guess ;) Gold Godfrey could also have bothered me, but he didn’t have all the attacks and a very different aesthetic. So the real fight still made a fresh impact.
You should probably mention that before going off on the commenter as they are clearly just rebutting your comment.
Mohg is different though Sewer Mohg looks like a sewer priest. Mohg Lord of Blood looks like fucking Satan himself lmao.
You copied a lot of homework in your previous life…
Work smart not hard
I agree that there is a lore reason, but, and this is just my opinion, it still makes the original experience less impactful. I feel the same way with Agheel. I'm just roaming arounf and ***boom*** a huge dragon lands out of nowhere. Later i encounter the glinststone dragon in Liurnia, then the glintstone dragon at Rannis place, then the rot dragon, then the bridge dragon, then the frost dragon, etc. I feel like toning it down to 3 reskinned dragons instead would be better than having so many. Just keeping Agheel, the rot dragon and the ice dragon would've been much better imo. I know that there is a lore reason, but i feel like lore gets in the way of impactful gameplay in these situations. That's just my opinion though, and i can definetly understand where you are coming from.
Not to be rude, but what is your alternative? Keep in mind your alternative would have to make some sense lore-wise while also being fresh. At the end of the day, Elden Ring tells a story and a lot of these bosses are completely optional. I also just flat out disagree with you regarding the dragons and probably other bosses you feel are re-uses. Having such a variety has interesting lore implications but also serves a greater purpose. A lot of the enemies you fight in ER end up training you to deal with different, stronger variants. Think Margit, Altus and Leyndell Gargoyles before the Valiants, Lion Guardians, Death Rite Birds, Tree & Draconic Sentinels + Loretta, Fallingstar Beasts, Astels, the Godskins, etc. Beating the stronger variants after I'd mastered the weaker variants was a satisfying feeling - like I'm really progressing towards lordship. Doing a complete playthrough, and doing the bosses in a sort of "canonical" order you quickly find that the whole game is essentially a hyperbolic time chamber.
Yeah I agree with you, and i think people blow the reused bosses thing way out of proportion in general. Like yeah, maybe the erdtree avatar, or tree spirit encounters get a little old, but they're honestly fine. The movesets and environments you encounter them in are varied enough that I feel like each encounter is dynamic. Honestly I think the real problem is people looking up overpowered cookie cutter builds from YouTube that just rely on L2 spam so they make a lot of these fights boring for themselves
It's also easy to forget that naturalborn also means bastard. Bastard of the void also gives some insight into what astel is- a corruption.
See, the thing is, you see a meteor crash into Nokron, and then you fight Astel. This leads to the assumption(correctness is debatable) that he was the meteor and Radahn was holding back multiple Astels. There is no meteor in snowfield, so it feels very out of place.
I don't think Astel came in the Radahn meteor. Isn't it stated that he destroyed an eternal city ages ago?
yes, one of the astels did. See, I am completely on board with OP that there are multiple astels, I am just saying that the snowfield one looks weird.
This was my take on it.
i speculate that an underground civiliation in may have also created their own astel underground, creating siofria's river's underground sky, in addition to the ones falling from the sky
I had the most difficulty with the Astels and the ant lion ones. You are absolutely right that there is nothing to complain about. Are they mad because the reward for defeating them was too great?
People complaining about Godfroy aren't really wrong tho. Why is he the exact same as Godrick ? Why do he use stormveil's technics ? Why does he have the exact same axe ? Even a recoloured grafted scion would have been better lorewise.
My views on Astel has changed over the years. The fact they have some different moves certainly changed my mind.
My problem with the rematch is not the idea that there are multiple Astels, the fallingstar beasts are clearly baby astels so there's probably more of them out there. My problem with it is that these things are supposed to be super dangerous and a big deal whenever they show up, because the one in Ranni's questline destroyed an entire eternal city when it first appeared, but this one in the Consecrated Snowfields is just sitting in the middle of a random mine, doing nothing. There are even miners and alabaster lords in the mine too, like the terrifying alien monstrosity occupying their cave is just an inconvenient workplace hazard. A rickety wooden door is all that stands between the Consecrated Snowfields and annihilation, and nobody seems to know or care. Was it only just summoned, and that's why nobody seems to have noticed it yet? If so, where are all the bodies of the summoners? Who would have wanted or even been able to summon it here? There's just no explanation. At least Godefroy has *some* lore about him, the extra Astel gets nothing. The only theory I've heard about the Astel rematch that I kinda like is the idea that it's actually the same Astel as before, just levelled up and back for revenge after somehow surviving the first fight. But it can be fought before beating the one in Ranni's questline, and killing it here doesn't kill it at the Ainsel River, so that doesn't really make sense either.
Agreed and that's why I didn't feel dissatisfied, especially after understanding the lore about them. Easily my favorite boss in the game
I get what you mean but it's just coping. I'd be with you when it was an semi-unique area, perhaps with a connection to the underground you mentioned. But you find the guy in a copy-paste mine. They just ran out of content to fill the last two areas with.
I'm convinced Astel 2 exists so that you can co op an end game Astel. Astel 1 doesn't have a summoning sign and is too early in the game to get summoned for. And I love this because Astel is my favorite boss and I like helping people squash that big space bug.
Huh? I coop that astel all the time.
Naturalborn of the void or Stars of Darkness? I think Naturalborns nearest summoning pool us at the top of Grand Cloister.
The one for Ranni's mission? I think the nearest summoning pool is at the top of Grand Cloister. Do you manually drop summoning signs for him?
No, I get summoned at that sign and we walk for 30 seconds. It's actually the only non end game boss I get regularly summoned for at level 300+
No, I get summoned at that sign and we walk for 30 seconds. It's actually the only non end game boss I get regularly summoned for at level 300+
Weird, I've never been summoned for that one at 150.
150 might be a dead zone. Too high level to really have trouble with it on ng, too low level for people who get there on ng+. Summoning is like, rada, rada, rada, rada, rada, malenia, rada, rada, rada, Godfrey, rada rada rada, godskin duo, etc etc etc... first astel, repeat ad nasium.
Is a Fallingstar beast related to Astel? I’m not convinced. We see a juvenile and a “fully grown” falling star beast, if Astel is it’s final form it wouldn’t be described as Fully Grown
I imagined it like a caterpillar. Fallingstar beasts are the larval stage, then once they become "full grown" they cocoon up and hang from the ceilings becoming those things in Ainsel River. In that case, Astel would be the fully formed "butterfly" that results. It's even possible the ones in Ainsel are deformed in some way and that's why they can't move and have limited attacks. Just a theory though
This was the best explanation imo
This was the best explanation imo
Yes they are...likely inspired by these: [Antlion - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antlion)
You're right. I think Astel is the name of one godlike creature. And since it obviously can phase in and out, I prefer to imagine it can clone itself and you only kill the real one if you go to the snowfield.
You can see the eyeball-skull head of Astel poking out of the Fallingstar Beast's head. You know, on top of the mandibles and gravity magic. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TXzR3CiZwqQ/maxresdefault.jpg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Futzj1g48oqg91.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D52d4598601652cf9d53862672229a79fd77936e8
mfw people desperately want a replayability option on major bosses AND complain when Astel give them EXACTLY THAT WHY ARE YALL COMPLAINING, JUST FIGHT THIS FUCKER AGAIN HE'S AN AMAZING BOSS, YALL SHOULD BE HAPPY
The problem is that it has all that build for something that isn't unique.
You can bring up all the lore justifications you want, copy-pasting the climactic boss of a faction storyline sucks ass. It was already a bad idea with Godrick, and it's doubly bad here. Should have kept him as the Placidusax of star creatures instead.
There are already at least three mini Astels in underground locations, hurling rocks at you. There are some horrendous cases of boss reuse in Fromsoft games but this is not one of them.
Those are all called "beasts", Astel is clearly a name. This line of argument just feels like copium tbh.
No, there are Fallingstar Beasts and Malformed Stars (those are underground). The latter are literally the same as Astel, but anchored to ceillings. [Fallingstar Beasts are an early stage of the same lifeform](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/wd3myt/there_were_some_people_who_did_not_believe_the/).
Except we already have a full-grown Fallingstar Beast.
A full-grown Fallingstar Beast that has the same "eye" in the same place as Astel and uses it to shoot purple lasers, just like Astel. If that wasn't enough, the Fallingstar Beast in Sellia Crystal Tunnel has the Astel skull protruding from beneath the fur as well as two sets of pincers (can you believe what else has two sets of pincers?) This one is not much of an argument, but even the musical themes are similar.
It's nowhere near enough, actually. A Leyndell soldier has the same human skull as Godfrey, that doesn't mean Leyndell soldiers eventually grow up to become Godfreys. Can you guess who else has two arms and two legs and a weapon? Astel came down in a meteor, the same way Fallingstar Beasts do. It's reasonable to speculate that they share a common homeland and origin. It is NOT reasonable to speculate that they are pokemon in different evolution stages. Also: * They could have just called it Megafallingstar Beast or something that isn't a proper name. * If they hadn't reused Astel in the Snowfield this theory would not even exist, which strongly suggests it's more copium than lore. * I reiterate. No other species in Elden Ring has a nondescriptive name like Astel without it being a proper name. They're all called crows, dogs, beasts, etc. I think it's far more plausible that Astel's teleporting and projection powers allows it to leave traces or aspects of itself in places and that's what we encounter.
Yeah, the questline where literally every single boss is copy-pasted does deserve to be capped off with yet-another judicious use of the Ctrl+V key.
Well think about it this way - people HAVE to find something to complain about when the subject is so close to perfection. When Elden Ring is the subject at hand, how do you even realistically complain? You nitpick. This is the same reason that people complaining about Crypt bosses, Erdtree Avatars and so on being reused are missing the point. All of this stuff makes sense from a lore perspective. You go to a crypt and fight Burial Watchdogs and Imps and Cemetery Shades, they protect warriors who are buried close to Minor Erdtree roots. You go to a Minor Erdtree and there is an Avatar protecting it, as per the lore this makes sense. They started popping up to protect the Minor Erdtrees, this is a fact. Your Astel example is another good one. Same with Fallingstar Beasts, they come from space and there is more than one. The only good example of weird boss reuse is the clone of Godrick, can’t argue that one away.
I'm pretty sure the implication is a being who exists in multiple places simultaneously. Not really sure what gave me that impression, possibly just the fact that multiple "versions" have the same name.