Look further
Elden Ring’s lore videos should be more like Nate Sandhart’s silly two-minute animation to a Taylor Swift song. As much as I enjoy listening to VaatiVidya read item descriptions, we could watch FromSoftware’s wacky little guys try to ruin the world, Adventure Time style.
If you’ve finished Shadow of the Erdtree or don’t like spoilers, you must check out Sandhart’s silly retelling of the story, featuring lyrics from Taylor Swift’s oddly fitting song “Mastermind.” In it, the young demigod Miquella hops around the lands between worlds to set up a series of events leading up to the DLC, while singing things like “It was all my plan / ‘Cause I’m a mastermind.”
For two years, fans believed that Miquella, cursed from birth with eternal youth, was the only good egg in a family of traitorous gods. Then Shadow of the Earthtree proved them wrong. Sandhart’s animation is the story of Miquella’s carefully orchestrated deception in the style of a Cartoon Network show, with visual gags, like a Post-It note with “No idea, MAYBE JUST EVIL?” circled and “SOLID” written underneath, worked into every scene.
“This world is so dark, you have to take it with humor,” says Sandhart, who works full-time as creative director for interactive doodles at Google, in an interview with PC Gamer.
It’s almost uncanny how accurately Swift’s song describes Miquella’s perspective. As Swift sings, “So they’d love me and make it seem effortless,” the young demigod charms a group of warriors who give him unconditional devotion. In the end, it’s the very group that recruits you in the DLC. The video ends as Miquella enters the Divine Gate, an ancient structure made of mixed corpses to rule the world with suffocating goodness. No wonder New York Times reviewer Jon Caramanica called “Mastermind” Swift’s “villain origin story” in his review—it’s all right there in the lyrics.
“Whenever I got to a point where I felt like I had to answer an unanswered question, I just tried to make a silly joke out of it instead.”
Nate Sandhart
“When I heard ‘And the first night that you saw me / I didn’t know I wanted your body’ and ‘I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian cause I care’, I knew I HAD to do it,” Sandhart said. “The whole structure basically fell into place from there.”
Sandhart was playing Shadow of the Erdtree with his husband, David, when they were told the ending, which led them down a rabbit hole of research, “since the final boss reveal was so unexpected,” he says. So Sandhart did what many of us do when FromSoft’s stories don’t make sense and started watching lore videos, particularly those from VaatiVidya and The Tarnished Archeologist.
During the three weeks it took him to create the cartoon – with his husband fact-checking every scene – Sandhart tried not to fill in the gaps that continue to haunt FromSoft fans years after the games came out. “Because the story is so murky, everyone has their own idea of what actually happened, and that’s half the fun,” he said. “Whenever I got to a point where I felt like I had to answer an unanswered question, I just tried to make a silly joke out of it instead.”
Watching the cartoon Miquella get his puppy eyes while sweet-talking himself into a god isn’t quite as grim as the game’s story, but it captures the absurdity of a 14-year-old who has good intentions and is bringing the world to ruin. For all the fallen kings and dying kingdoms in FromSoft games, there are always a handful of weirdos, like the hideous Manure Eater. Sandhart’s sense of humor isn’t far off from what has always been present in FromSoft games.
“The idea that Miquella was just a silly little idiot who just did what he thought was super smart and didn’t recognize reality just makes me laugh,” Sandhart said.
The positive response to the video surprised Sandhart, who only occasionally uploads funny animations to his YouTube channel. The comments are full of fans who got every joke he put into the video. “Shoutout to Messmer roasting marshmallows in an oven golem,” wrote user someguy4405.
My favorite is the scene where Miquella is dancing on a cliff with his alter ego St. Trina. He sends her flying off the edge where we find her abandoned in the DLC and tiptoes away as if nothing happened.
If another song comes out that fits the characters of Elden Ring as well as “Mastermind,” Sandhart says he’ll make another one. “There are so many amazing characters and crazy stories in this game, I could probably make at least 10 more videos!”
Of all the DLC characters, he was particularly drawn to the old sorceress trying to become a mother. “When I saw (Count Ymir) holding the little finger monster, I was like, ‘Oh my God. I love this game,'” he said. “When you create a world this dark, you cling to any humor or lightheartedness that’s in it. You’re so desperate for any glimmer of light, which is super endearing. I hope they make more characters like this in their next game, because it’s definitely one of my favorite parts of the game.”
Picture 1 from 8th
