Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree's story trailer has fans thinking we just saw the bloody birth of a god

GamesRPGElden Ring: Shadow of the ErdtreeElden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree’s story trailer has fans thinking we just saw the bloody birth of a godWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: FromSoftware)

A still from the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree story trailer depicting two stacks of bodies with a feminine figure standing in between basked in light

Anow-deleted poston the Elden Ring subreddit states it plainly: “MARIKA MADE THE ERDTREE FROM A MOUNTAIN OF CORPSES …” The other half of the title is a Berserk spoiler and the reason the thread was taken down, but Reddit user ILBOI_X isn’t alone in this theory. Everyone is pointing at the pillars of bodies in the new Elden RingShadow of the Erdtree story trailerand calling it a tree.

Of course there is lore to support this. Elden Ring fans always keep item descriptions in their back pocket whensomething new needs to be dissected.

Reddit userProbablychrisbelieves the stack of bodies “will be at the center of theorycrafting for the next few years” and made a post asking for people’s thoughts. Several Elden Ring fans are pretty sure they’re the Erdtree before it was the Erdtree. Item descriptions in the game already reveal that something existed before it that was called “the Crucible”, and it was “where all life was once blended together.”

“I’ve seen some people speculate that this is the Crucible, which could definitely fit,” Reddit userSkeletickleswrote. “It is, after all, the place where all life [was] once blended together, and those bodies sure do look blended together.”

If you’re still unsure, Reddit user Western-Apple1610popped open MS Paint to make it extra clear—no lore required.

TheBerserk comparisonsare out there too. I haven’t read far enough in Kentaro Miura’s legendary dark fantasy manga series to understand them—which I think makes me a lesser FromSoft fan—but I can see what people are getting at. Dark Souls is stuffed with blatant references to Miura’s work, so it’s probably not a coincidence that Berserk also has scenes with piles of bodies. The other half of ILBOI_X’s original post title compared the body-tree to Berserk’s World Tree, which similarly has two trunks.

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The trailer has plenty more to talk about, like thosesoldiers with the helmetsthat mirror the design on the Erdtree’s door. All of it has something to do with that big evil tree, and on June 21, when Shadow of the Erdtree launches, we’ll hopefully get some answers about where it came from.

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