So yeah moral of the story is go follow me on twitch if you wanna see me make various discoveries live or just join me playing Elden Ring in general: twitch.tv/lancemcdonald
It's not Just the network test, even the day one version (without any patch) has a lot of tiny differences with the current version, such as enemy and items locations. I happen to fight a knight in stormeil that you encounter as a boss in Castle surrounded by poison in altus, he literally invades you and if beaten drop a perfume potion. This, only if you play the game without the day one patch. If you can, you should try make some experiment with that version
hey men awesome footage, would you consider doing a full out of bounds video, it has so much potential to do something likt it,like hundreds of hours of stuff never seen. it would be really something else to watch it made by you also
Yeah, he definitely sounds hostile or disdainful in the NTVer, while in retail, he's more empathetic (or at least feigning so) which seems more appropriate, considering our future interactions with him.
To me his dialogue in the network test seems specific for the test. "go die in a ditch" is Fromsoft telling the player to "have fun with the test but remember this ain't the real adventure".
I remember seeing those giant flaming heads from Margit's arena in the network test and recently tried to search for it post launch to absolutely no avail, i thought i was fucking going insane. Thanks
I'm guessing the big magma like heads were a previous design concept for those colossal dead beings that we see all over Caelid and a few other places buried in the ground. I find those things so weird because there's no mention of them at all in game.
@@PleasantLeech No, you can actually fight a fire giant later in the game and you can see many of their corpses in a late game area, they look completely differentand are smaller.
@@PleasantLeech I thought so too until I fought one. They have much smaller heads compared to the rest of their bodies, and are wayyyy smaller in general.
@@RosieJonesRules they're all over Caelid, not golems for sure. Their bodies are almost fused into the ground, you can get a good look at one that lingers overtop of Sellia.
Speculation/potential spoilers: some of the large skulls in Caelid/Mountaintops seem to have replaced the burning heads as hints of dead giants. The head models may have had too high of a polygon count, causing slowdown and/or were too distracting. Fromsoft clearly liked them, maybe they’re saving the burning heads for a DLC zone. Also, their smoldering effect is used on several corpses in the game and I could never figure out what was up with that. My only guess is victims of the flame of frenzy? I’m not sure.
I'm saying it's the opposite. These heads looked basic and generic in their shape. The ones in Caelid look beyond ancient, primordial, decayed, integrated into the landscape, and more detailed as such even though polygons might or might not be more/less. These smouldering heads could have just been placeholders to test out the idea for having giant heads sticking out of the landscape somewhere.
I think they might have been an early version of the massive skeletons you see embedded on cliffsides in Caelid. Possibly removed from Limgrave to allow players to feel like Caelid is a more sinister and mysterious area.
Nah, those skeletons are also in the same leaked trailer, and there are statues of bald guys with scratches on their cheeks in Lyndell, they must be connected.
These burning stone heads remind me a lot of the statues you find along the highway to Leyndell. Every 50 feet or so there's a strange statue in the middle of the road featuring a hairless person with marks on their face, as well as some plant imagery. Might be totally unrelated, but interesting.
is it possible that the change to Varre's dialog wasn't so much a rewrite as them wanting to hide the roundtable hold reveal until release? from my memory of playing the CNT i don't think it was mentioned at all, so maybe they had some alternative dialog that was no longer going to be used, and subbed that in?
@@MajokkoMoonie You people have serious issues if that would be enough to set you off. The Crestfallen Knight in Dark Souls is similarly snarky, and the way they curbed people attacking him was making him a parry king. To disuade players from getting testy. Honestly Fromsoft feels like it's losing its identity a bit in this game.
@@Krystalmyth Except they didnt, Leutrec gets punted off a cliff all the time due to his attitude. Basically all my friends who played did that right away bc they didnt trust him. Not to mention Patches, who gets destroyed by people on sight alot despite his value as a vendor in most of the games. And I dont really remember Crestfallen being that hard to beat even on my first playthrough. I also wouldnt go so far as to say people have "serious issues" if being told to go die in a ditch sets them off. Especially in a video game. Just look at how everyone treats Nazeem in Skyrim lol
@@codenameend3r526 You're right but, well - it's an rpg. That's an option. I dunno. People facing consequences because of their monke impulses kind of defines classic rpg. It gives weight to your decisions. That's why there's no quick save you know?
Shooting it in the head with an arrow sends it on its way too; presumably magic and other projectiles work as well. It changes the direction it moves in. I had to figure that out on my way out of that area because it moves back and forth in that corner and you can't jump down and run out of the way fast enough to go back up the way you came.
How fun to see them actually appear in the leaked footage! Gonna be fun to see if more old footage/even never trailers has some changes from final version.
Wild guess- perhaps these heads were supposed to be seen in later parts of the game when you come back to limgrave- something like the insight mechanic from bloodborne
I'm so sad they changed varre's dialogue. When I played the NT, i thought his dialogue was the best i've ever seen for a From Soft NPC. The whole thing flows so well. It has so much personality and gusto and uniqueness to it. I could quote it all from memory. perfectly written. Thanks for the content Lance!
Personally I feel its because dialogue like that is going to make alot of players just instantly destroy him out of annoyance. Which prevents him from getting his quest furthered. Take blackguard for example, me and my friends pretty much went and killed him instantly due to how much of a dick he was. Granted, I waited until the end of the game so I could humiliate him via a 1 hit kill, but generally speaking if an NPC acts like too much of a dick players are going to get really antsy about killing them ASAP. Just look at how many people punt Leutrec off the cliff in Firelink in DS1 right off the bat. lol
@@codenameend3r526 I assume the network test dialogue was more for the sake of keeping things vague, since it was just an early preview of the game. In all likelihood the lines from the released game were probably always the "original" ones.
They change the whole atmosphere of Limgrave into something otherworldly which is really cool. That they were an early design for the giant skulls seen in Caelid seems likely but I also wonder if the smoldering heads might have been meant to come down with the stars.
@@FeralPhilosopher Sure can, if you bring a troll or other similarly giant enemy to them and bait them into attacking them, they will break open. They're full of smithing stones
I believe that these burning heads were replaced with the gigantic skulls on the cliffside in Caelid (The one near Fort Haight close to the huge dragon infected by scarlet rot) in the retail version of the game.
Great video. Looking forward to seeing all of the things that have been cut from the game. I always find it so interesting to consider what could have been, especially in games like Dark Souls / Elden Ring which have such deep lore and background.
there's some ship wreckage south east of radahns arena out in the ocean, can you take the free camera there and see if theres anything? i feel like it's something fromsoft wouldn't just add that as decoration
1:48 Way better than what we got in the full version. I was just pissed at the point where I fought my way trough the dungeon for a 3rd time only to fail the fucking barrel-shooting minigame again
Great video! I had forgotten all about that giant head from the leaked footage until now. I can't wait to see the mountain of cut content that's hiding in this game.
No idea why they were originally included, but I have a feeling the burning heads were removed to make Limgrave a bit less intimidating and more "traditional" for onboarding newer players. Similar to the reason they changed Varre's dialogue. Saving the weirder stuff for later areas makes those instances feel a bit more unique as well.
I dunno if that would make much sense though. Considering the Ruins seem to be parts of Farum Azula given the style of the ruins being similar. Unless im mistaken of course.
FromSoft undoubtedly changed Varres dialogue to be less aggressive to discourage players from immediately killing him. I can imagine a lot of play-testers attacking him after that line, then getting spawn camped at the first site of grace.
Honestly they should have kept the heads, would have been a memorable spectacle to any person who randomly found one. Just a random red hot stone head like in the middle of a field or stuck to a mountain
It’s interesting how different the lighting is. I don’t know if that’s due to lighting not being fully implemented in an area that was meant to be out of bounds in the network test, or if they just tweaked the light engine. Either way it’s cool to see.
The flaming heads remind me of Prometheus, when they reanimated the head of the engineer, and it ended up exploding. Wonder if that's some of the inspiration behind the design.
Welcome back! EDIT : Is there information on the missing NPCs and their quests? I've heard of Patches dialogue regarding the lady of the Volcano Manor that can't be triggered!? Anyway, hopefully you'll make a video on it one day.
Nothing makes me quite as happy on CZcams as seeing a new video from you, Lance! Fastinating stuff! I had meant to ask previously, but does the developer tool have a setting for showing active hit/hurt boxes? I have been wondering this since your Master Willem video for Bloodborne (which I would have loved to have seen the hitboxes for)
@@dovakhin-os7cs Interesting! I wonder if it's done by the same method in elden ring then... I suppose Bloodborne is a bit of a lost cause for me, since I only have the final version on PS4
The two burning heads seem to have the marks melina and ranni have. Also knowing that they both died from being burned alive can possibly mean something.
i remember those burning stone heads being in the leaked internal trailer for the game. its probably one of the main things i remember from that video. a shame they cut it cause they do look really cool.
Part of me feels like it's not "cut content" but stuff they intended to put in and didn't have done in time on pressure from Bamco to meet a release deadline. They're not drawing a ton of attention to it and it's worded in patches like it's been "enabled." What they've "added" so far was clearly supposed to be there. I'm not criticizing them btw, I think it's cool they're so dead-set on making the game fabulous. Other developers and publishers would have axed this stuff altogether or charged money.
@@SpookyDollhouse tbh, I don’t personally have an issue with it because I don’t really do the quests, but I feel like other developers would get a lot more shit for having incomplete quests on launch
@@SpookyDollhouse It seems to me that the stone heads simply had no narrative reason to exist, despite the creation of their models, so it was ultimately decided to scrap them. It's possible that they were the original heads of the golems and were meant to give players a bit of foreshadowing, but the golems how have helmet-like heads so the head assets lost their purpose.
I think the heads might have been removed and replaced with the skeletal heads you can see in other parts of the game. The older models stuck out like a sore thumb and didn't really blend with the environment at all, but that's just my speculation. Nobody really talks about all the giant skeletal remains you can see in the mountain sides either. I assume they're just dead giants from the "war against the giants" the predated the time in which we play, but they seem a bit larger than any giants you see in the game.
The giant heads seem more like an easter egg to me than something they were going to keep. They're the same faces from the babies that were on Vordt of the Boreal Valley's chest in DS3 as part of his cut-content alpha version. They even have the ashy look and the cinders on them. The shot in the trailer is just because they got a nice cinematic shot of one with a unit next to it, even if it wasn't going to be something you'd really see in game, it was a cool shot of something giant next to something small to give scope without spoiling much.
Aren't the fiery giant heads just that? Heads of fire giants? Though they had a redesign we do see dead Fire giants' heads littered in the mountaintop and in caelid in the current version But they're not on fire anymore😂
Dang it, I was just getting back into Sekiro after beating ER one and a half times. Now I want to come back and finish my Incantation runthrough. Thanks.
If you didn’t know this network test version can be accessed at any time as long you have the disk version of the game and install with out the update by turning off your internet
i really wanted to do a video like this but i just dont think i could do it justice. Especially since all i could do was just download a patch for the CNT. i would love to learn to actually do stuff like this. Thanks for showing us this stuff!
I could have sworn i saw a head in Caelid as a low poly version too! it even has a nose unlike the final build low poly skull? i think they were replaced huh
I would imagine they are the remains of demi-gods slain in the Night of Black Knives, but these are really dead both in body and soul, unlike what one might find at the bottom of Stormveil Castle
Oh yeah I remember seeing those burning heads in the network test posts, something about seeing them from stormveil/margit, so they wer probably loaded in that old Load model of limgrave
the most obvious amswer to the burning heads is that they were supposed to foreshadow the war against the fire giants. i assume it got cut due to story changes, since i think in the final draft that war took place entirely in the forbidden lands
I kind of wondered when I first heard of this, if they were somehow relevant to the 3 fingers, given their smoldering appearance and all. Could have just been assets like the giant bodies found in Caelid and the Mountaintops of the Giants. Who knows now, lol.
My only personal explanation is it may have been related to the Agheel dragon fight considering it also breathes fire and is fairly close to that area. Maybe breaking them would’ve summoned it to fly down
So yeah moral of the story is go follow me on twitch if you wanna see me make various discoveries live or just join me playing Elden Ring in general: twitch.tv/lancemcdonald
Don't tell me what to do Lance.
if you change your stream titles maybe i will consider
@@Crit-Multiplier His stream titles may be the most entertaining thing on Twitch.
His hype train may give me epilepsy though.
It's not Just the network test, even the day one version (without any patch) has a lot of tiny differences with the current version, such as enemy and items locations.
I happen to fight a knight in stormeil that you encounter as a boss in Castle surrounded by poison in altus, he literally invades you and if beaten drop a perfume potion.
This, only if you play the game without the day one patch.
If you can, you should try make some experiment with that version
hey men awesome footage, would you consider doing a full out of bounds video, it has so much potential to do something likt it,like hundreds of hours of stuff never seen. it would be really something else to watch it made by you also
I feel like they removed the "go die in a ditch" line so players are less motivated to immediately attack him. I did like that line though.
Yeah, he definitely sounds hostile or disdainful in the NTVer, while in retail, he's more empathetic (or at least feigning so) which seems more appropriate, considering our future interactions with him.
Thing is people still mostly killed him for calling them maidenless
Killing him = Absolute Maidenless Behaviour
@@ImSoKishi Angry = No bitches (maidenless :trollface:)
To me his dialogue in the network test seems specific for the test. "go die in a ditch" is Fromsoft telling the player to "have fun with the test but remember this ain't the real adventure".
I remember seeing those giant flaming heads from Margit's arena in the network test and recently tried to search for it post launch to absolutely no avail, i thought i was fucking going insane. Thanks
I'm guessing the big magma like heads were a previous design concept for those colossal dead beings that we see all over Caelid and a few other places buried in the ground. I find those things so weird because there's no mention of them at all in game.
What dead beings? You mean the golems?
I assumed those are the corpses of fire giants which are mentioned a lot
@@PleasantLeech No, you can actually fight a fire giant later in the game and you can see many of their corpses in a late game area, they look completely differentand are smaller.
@@PleasantLeech I thought so too until I fought one. They have much smaller heads compared to the rest of their bodies, and are wayyyy smaller in general.
@@RosieJonesRules they're all over Caelid, not golems for sure. Their bodies are almost fused into the ground, you can get a good look at one that lingers overtop of Sellia.
Speculation/potential spoilers: some of the large skulls in Caelid/Mountaintops seem to have replaced the burning heads as hints of dead giants.
The head models may have had too high of a polygon count, causing slowdown and/or were too distracting.
Fromsoft clearly liked them, maybe they’re saving the burning heads for a DLC zone.
Also, their smoldering effect is used on several corpses in the game and I could never figure out what was up with that. My only guess is victims of the flame of frenzy? I’m not sure.
I'm saying it's the opposite. These heads looked basic and generic in their shape. The ones in Caelid look beyond ancient, primordial, decayed, integrated into the landscape, and more detailed as such even though polygons might or might not be more/less. These smouldering heads could have just been placeholders to test out the idea for having giant heads sticking out of the landscape somewhere.
I would say that'd be further evidence as the dead bodies of giants, as the giants were closely connected with fire
@@iWillWakeYouUp Yeah that might be right!
The smoldering/still burning effect on them reminded me of Vyke's War Spear that is connected to the Flame of Frenzy and Three Fingers.
@@iWillWakeYouUp theres giant heads in caelid?
Miyazaki must have been pretty hot headed when he realized they forgot to take those out of the network test huh
(this is funny because the stone heads are on fire)
I think they might have been an early version of the massive skeletons you see embedded on cliffsides in Caelid. Possibly removed from Limgrave to allow players to feel like Caelid is a more sinister and mysterious area.
There are some in the mountaintops as well.
Nah, those skeletons are also in the same leaked trailer, and there are statues of bald guys with scratches on their cheeks in Lyndell, they must be connected.
@@jakub_zawadzki which leaked trailer? And also what bald guys?
I absolutely love varres voice acting.
These burning stone heads remind me a lot of the statues you find along the highway to Leyndell. Every 50 feet or so there's a strange statue in the middle of the road featuring a hairless person with marks on their face, as well as some plant imagery. Might be totally unrelated, but interesting.
They remind me of the skulls that are part of the cliffsides and such all over Caelid, especially near the southern part.
Yeah, they're the exact same face, there must be some connection.
Yes I was thinking the same
Damn was not expecting this so soon. This is the kind of content I will be craving from you and this game for many moons to come
Okay I can see why everyone was killing Varre in the network test
is it possible that the change to Varre's dialog wasn't so much a rewrite as them wanting to hide the roundtable hold reveal until release? from my memory of playing the CNT i don't think it was mentioned at all, so maybe they had some alternative dialog that was no longer going to be used, and subbed that in?
It was mentioned in CNT, I think the last set of lines from Varre explains how to earn an invitation, similar to final build.
ah ok, maybe after he told me to die in a ditch i thought "eff this guy" and went off to get killed repeatedly by the tree sentinel.
@@MajokkoMoonie You people have serious issues if that would be enough to set you off.
The Crestfallen Knight in Dark Souls is similarly snarky, and the way they curbed people attacking him was making him a parry king. To disuade players from getting testy.
Honestly Fromsoft feels like it's losing its identity a bit in this game.
@@Krystalmyth Except they didnt, Leutrec gets punted off a cliff all the time due to his attitude. Basically all my friends who played did that right away bc they didnt trust him. Not to mention Patches, who gets destroyed by people on sight alot despite his value as a vendor in most of the games. And I dont really remember Crestfallen being that hard to beat even on my first playthrough. I also wouldnt go so far as to say people have "serious issues" if being told to go die in a ditch sets them off. Especially in a video game. Just look at how everyone treats Nazeem in Skyrim lol
@@codenameend3r526 You're right but, well - it's an rpg. That's an option. I dunno. People facing consequences because of their monke impulses kind of defines classic rpg. It gives weight to your decisions. That's why there's no quick save you know?
You can destroy the chariot!? Omg, 2 minutes in sand can't wait to learn more! Ty Lance for the info ☺️
I finished the game TWICE, and I don't even know that!
Shooting it in the head with an arrow sends it on its way too; presumably magic and other projectiles work as well. It changes the direction it moves in. I had to figure that out on my way out of that area because it moves back and forth in that corner and you can't jump down and run out of the way fast enough to go back up the way you came.
I didn't know either!!! Game changer!!!
You only get three shots, need to get the timing right or the jars will miss and you have to reset.
Sand
How fun to see them actually appear in the leaked footage! Gonna be fun to see if more old footage/even never trailers has some changes from final version.
One thing you should try and check out is the giant shipwreck on the map that is east of Northern Caelid.
Wild guess- perhaps these heads were supposed to be seen in later parts of the game when you come back to limgrave- something like the insight mechanic from bloodborne
Nah probably just downgraded. Thank you console limitations, stunting growth and depth.
@@theblackbaron4119 I Sharted
@@theblackbaron4119 doubt it, console can handle few stone heads lol
I'm so sad they changed varre's dialogue. When I played the NT, i thought his dialogue was the best i've ever seen for a From Soft NPC.
The whole thing flows so well. It has so much personality and gusto and uniqueness to it. I could quote it all from memory.
perfectly written.
Thanks for the content Lance!
Yeah, I hate his watered down version. Feels like he got a lobotomy. :/
Personally I feel its because dialogue like that is going to make alot of players just instantly destroy him out of annoyance. Which prevents him from getting his quest furthered. Take blackguard for example, me and my friends pretty much went and killed him instantly due to how much of a dick he was. Granted, I waited until the end of the game so I could humiliate him via a 1 hit kill, but generally speaking if an NPC acts like too much of a dick players are going to get really antsy about killing them ASAP. Just look at how many people punt Leutrec off the cliff in Firelink in DS1 right off the bat. lol
@@codenameend3r526 people punt lautrec off the cliff for his ring
@@codenameend3r526 I assume the network test dialogue was more for the sake of keeping things vague, since it was just an early preview of the game. In all likelihood the lines from the released game were probably always the "original" ones.
It's completely unremarkable dialogue, calm down.
They change the whole atmosphere of Limgrave into something otherworldly which is really cool. That they were an early design for the giant skulls seen in Caelid seems likely but I also wonder if the smoldering heads might have been meant to come down with the stars.
It's a scam account...
The burning heads are the same person that is in the roundtable hold statues
Aesthetically, these remind me of those statues with the blue light coming from the cracks in them that can be broken by large enemies to get shards
Wait those things can be broken?!
@@FeralPhilosopher Sure can, if you bring a troll or other similarly giant enemy to them and bait them into attacking them, they will break open. They're full of smithing stones
this seems to be the only video that shows varre's initial dialogue! thank you! i wanted to hear the "die in a ditch" thing lol
I believe that these burning heads were replaced with the gigantic skulls on the cliffside in Caelid (The one near Fort Haight close to the huge dragon infected by scarlet rot) in the retail version of the game.
Great video. Looking forward to seeing all of the things that have been cut from the game. I always find it so interesting to consider what could have been, especially in games like Dark Souls / Elden Ring which have such deep lore and background.
The big burning heads were maybe an early concept of the giants skulls in caelid
I bet that they are going to re sell us the cut content as dlc again.
3:55 the old version didn’t tell you how to get an invitation either, unless it’s in a ditch
WHAT YOU CAN DESTROY THE FUCKING CHARIOT????
there's some ship wreckage south east of radahns arena out in the ocean, can you take the free camera there and see if theres anything? i feel like it's something fromsoft wouldn't just add that as decoration
Always great to see more of your content, Lance.
1:48 Way better than what we got in the full version. I was just pissed at the point where I fought my way trough the dungeon for a 3rd time only to fail the fucking barrel-shooting minigame again
Great video! I had forgotten all about that giant head from the leaked footage until now. I can't wait to see the mountain of cut content that's hiding in this game.
No idea why they were originally included, but I have a feeling the burning heads were removed to make Limgrave a bit less intimidating and more "traditional" for onboarding newer players. Similar to the reason they changed Varre's dialogue. Saving the weirder stuff for later areas makes those instances feel a bit more unique as well.
Been waiting for someone to talk about this! To me it seems like they fell from the sky along with the other pieces of ruins.
I dunno if that would make much sense though. Considering the Ruins seem to be parts of Farum Azula given the style of the ruins being similar. Unless im mistaken of course.
@@codenameend3r526 You're right I'm talking about cut content though. Farum Azula may have been changed and the heads no longer fit.
7:09 AHHHHHGHGHG WHAT OTHER KINDA INFO HAVE YOU BEEN SITTING ON FOR TWO YEARS PLEASE!!
FromSoft undoubtedly changed Varres dialogue to be less aggressive to discourage players from immediately killing him. I can imagine a lot of play-testers attacking him after that line, then getting spawn camped at the first site of grace.
the music is so creepy it gives of the vine that heir were hiding actual dead bodies and dark secrets in the game lol
Honestly they should have kept the heads, would have been a memorable spectacle to any person who randomly found one. Just a random red hot stone head like in the middle of a field or stuck to a mountain
It’s interesting how different the lighting is. I don’t know if that’s due to lighting not being fully implemented in an area that was meant to be out of bounds in the network test, or if they just tweaked the light engine. Either way it’s cool to see.
Those disembodied heads remind me of the Canyon Crowns in The Monument Mythos
The flaming heads remind me of Prometheus, when they reanimated the head of the engineer, and it ended up exploding. Wonder if that's some of the inspiration behind the design.
Welcome back!
EDIT : Is there information on the missing NPCs and their quests? I've heard of Patches dialogue regarding the lady of the Volcano Manor that can't be triggered!?
Anyway, hopefully you'll make a video on it one day.
Glad to see you digging deep into these games again! Very excited for everything you'll find :D
The heads remind me of Caelid where they are skulls stuck into the sides of cliffs like this.
Nothing makes me quite as happy on CZcams as seeing a new video from you, Lance! Fastinating stuff!
I had meant to ask previously, but does the developer tool have a setting for showing active hit/hurt boxes? I have been wondering this since your Master Willem video for Bloodborne (which I would have loved to have seen the hitboxes for)
You can enable them yourself with cheat engine in ds3 dont know if it work for ds2 or ds1 but there is dsanim studio
@@dovakhin-os7cs Interesting! I wonder if it's done by the same method in elden ring then...
I suppose Bloodborne is a bit of a lost cause for me, since I only have the final version on PS4
Why Lance from CZcams is a completely different person from Lance on Twitch lol
Lance from CZcams = Godfrey
Lance from Twitch = Hoarah Loux
I'm impressed how early this man is cracking open this new treasure trove of cut content^-^
I Believe those burning heads are old iterations of dead Fire Giants.
I remember the Varre in network test was waaay more rude. Glad to see I wasn't imagining it.
Been eagerly waiting your return!
The Italian user Sabaku no Maiku noticed those flaming heads while playing the CNT.
The two burning heads seem to have the marks melina and ranni have. Also knowing that they both died from being burned alive can possibly mean something.
Seems like they decided to move the heads to Caelid and make them less obvious in the process.
"Serious Lance" is so weird after watching hours of "Rumble roses rat we are the rats 4! Lance"
i remember those burning stone heads being in the leaked internal trailer for the game. its probably one of the main things i remember from that video. a shame they cut it cause they do look really cool.
I always find these cut content analysis interesting. Nice video.
there is a giant skull embedded in a cliff in Caelid, same size as those burnind heads
I was waiting for those heads to turn up during my first playthrough ever since I saw them in the leaked footage. A shame they were cut.
I hope this video ages poorly, the devs have been adding cut content in patches and it's amazing.
Part of me feels like it's not "cut content" but stuff they intended to put in and didn't have done in time on pressure from Bamco to meet a release deadline. They're not drawing a ton of attention to it and it's worded in patches like it's been "enabled." What they've "added" so far was clearly supposed to be there. I'm not criticizing them btw, I think it's cool they're so dead-set on making the game fabulous. Other developers and publishers would have axed this stuff altogether or charged money.
@@SpookyDollhouse tbh, I don’t personally have an issue with it because I don’t really do the quests, but I feel like other developers would get a lot more shit for having incomplete quests on launch
@@SpookyDollhouse
It seems to me that the stone heads simply had no narrative reason to exist, despite the creation of their models, so it was ultimately decided to scrap them. It's possible that they were the original heads of the golems and were meant to give players a bit of foreshadowing, but the golems how have helmet-like heads so the head assets lost their purpose.
Patches, you say…?
what did they add?!
You beautiful bastard! You work quick, can't wait to see what else you uncover.
been checking back every day to see more elden ring content, hype
It's funny that sabaku no maiku find these head during the network test and at the time nobody talk about that
I think the heads might have been removed and replaced with the skeletal heads you can see in other parts of the game.
The older models stuck out like a sore thumb and didn't really blend with the environment at all, but that's just my speculation.
Nobody really talks about all the giant skeletal remains you can see in the mountain sides either. I assume they're just dead giants from the "war against the giants" the predated the time in which we play, but they seem a bit larger than any giants you see in the game.
I knew this day would come
This is so cool!
you know its a good day when Lance releases a video
And so it begins
Very interesting as always Lance, thanks yoo!
Did Varre say Go Die in a Ditch somewhere on launch day? I swear he said that to me, I feel like it's a mandela effect thing.
I really wish they had kept the “die in a ditch” line. It’s so fucking funny.
Would be cool if activating some object caused a noise in the distance and when you gaze in that direction you saw the faces moving
aww I like those burning heads :(
The way the 'ropes' break for the barrels is kind of hilarious.
i can't wait to see all the weird cut content in this game.
Damn we already seeing cut content lmao
good to know he would still call us maidenless in both version
The giant heads seem more like an easter egg to me than something they were going to keep. They're the same faces from the babies that were on Vordt of the Boreal Valley's chest in DS3 as part of his cut-content alpha version. They even have the ashy look and the cinders on them. The shot in the trailer is just because they got a nice cinematic shot of one with a unit next to it, even if it wasn't going to be something you'd really see in game, it was a cool shot of something giant next to something small to give scope without spoiling much.
Gonna need more of these videos bro.
YOU CAN DESTROY THE CHARIOT???
Long time no see. Looking forward to everything.
Aren't the fiery giant heads just that? Heads of fire giants?
Though they had a redesign we do see dead Fire giants' heads littered in the mountaintop and in caelid in the current version
But they're not on fire anymore😂
Dang it, I was just getting back into Sekiro after beating ER one and a half times. Now I want to come back and finish my Incantation runthrough. Thanks.
"...opening few hours of Elden Ring"
Meanwhile I left Limgrave 23 hours in.
those heads aloso have a body model suggesting they were giants; the embers may indicate that those are dead fire giants
I'm glad you made a video about the burning heads, they've been bugging me since the network test.
If you didn’t know this network test version can be accessed at any time as long you have the disk version of the game and install with out the update by turning off your internet
i really wanted to do a video like this but i just dont think i could do it justice. Especially since all i could do was just download a patch for the CNT. i would love to learn to actually do stuff like this.
Thanks for showing us this stuff!
I could have sworn i saw a head in Caelid as a low poly version too! it even has a nose unlike the final build low poly skull? i think they were replaced huh
I would imagine they are the remains of demi-gods slain in the Night of Black Knives, but these are really dead both in body and soul, unlike what one might find at the bottom of Stormveil Castle
Those heads looks simular to miquela's head inside his egg thing
Love the videos Lance!
Please do more!!! Dark Souls 3 and ds2 too maybe sometime in the future when you will get bored with ER
I miss varré's old dialogue. BTW the two heads are in spots where you trigger the painting treasures. Maybe they were placeholders
I think the burning heads had to do with the three fingers, maybe even with another main quest, which I guess was finally cut...
Oh yeah I remember seeing those burning heads in the network test posts, something about seeing them from stormveil/margit, so they wer probably loaded in that old Load model of limgrave
5:10 Surely they were fire giants.
the most obvious amswer to the burning heads is that they were supposed to foreshadow the war against the fire giants. i assume it got cut due to story changes, since i think in the final draft that war took place entirely in the forbidden lands
I kind of wondered when I first heard of this, if they were somehow relevant to the 3 fingers, given their smoldering appearance and all. Could have just been assets like the giant bodies found in Caelid and the Mountaintops of the Giants. Who knows now, lol.
The future seems exciting for Elden Ring!
Wow those are really large and detailed assets to be removed thats crazy.
Kinda hope you make another elden ring video some day
My only personal explanation is it may have been related to the Agheel dragon fight considering it also breathes fire and is fairly close to that area. Maybe breaking them would’ve summoned it to fly down
Excellent video Lance. :)
Ok so they remind a lot of the ladies next to godfrey in his throne room in stormveil castle