A Google Doodle animator is my new favorite Elden Ring lore theorist thanks to this cartoon retelling of Shadow of the Erdtree set to a Taylor Swift song
What if I told you none of it was accidental?
Elden Ring lore videos should be more like Nate Sandhart's silly two-minute animation set to a Taylor Swift song. Much as I enjoy listening to VaatiVidya read item descriptions, we could be watching FromSoftware's messed up little guys try to ruin the world in the style of Adventure Time.
If you've finished Shadow of the Erdtree or don't care about spoilers, you need to watch Sandhart's goofy retelling of the story using the lyrics of Taylor Swift's oddly fitting song "Mastermind". In it, boy demigod Miquella skips around the Lands Between to set up a series of events leading up to the DLC while singing things like, "It was all my design / 'Cause I'm a mastermind."
For two years, fans believed that Miquella, cursed with eternal adolescence at birth, was the only good egg in a family of traitorous gods. But then Shadow of the Erdtree proved them wrong. Sandhart's animation is the story of Miquella's carefully orchestrated deceit in the style of a Cartoon Network show with visual gags like a Post-It note with "IDK, MAYBE JUST BE EVIL?" circled and "SOLID." written underneath tucked into every scene.
"That world is so pitch black, you gotta cut it with humor," says Sandhart, whose day job is creative lead on interactive Doodles for Google, in an interview with PC Gamer.
It's almost uncanny how accurately Swift's song describes Miquella's point of view. As Swift sings, "To make them love me and make it seem effortless" the young demigod charms a group of warriors into having an unyielding devotion to him, which ends up being the very group who recruits you in the DLC. The video ends as Miquella steps into the Divine Gate, an ancient structure made out of blended corpses, to rule the world with suffocating kindness. No wonder New York Times reviewer Jon Caramanica described "Mastermind" as Swift's "villain origin story" in his review—it's all right there in the text.
"Whenever I got to a point where it felt like I had to answer an unanswered question, I just tried to make a stupid joke out of it instead."
Nate Sandhart
"When I heard ‘And the first night that you saw me / I knew I wanted your body’ and ‘I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian cause I care.’ I knew I HAD to make it," Sandhart said. "The whole structure basically wrote itself from there."
Sandhart was playing Shadow of the Erdtree alongside his husband David when they were spoiled on the ending, sending them down a research rabbit hole "since that final boss reveal seemed so unexpected," he says. So Sandhart did what many of us do when FromSoft stories don't make any sense and started watching lore videos, particularly ones by VaatiVidya and The Tarnished Archeologist.
Over the three weeks it took to make the animation—with his husband fact-checking each scene—Sandhart tried not to fill in the blanks that keep FromSoft fans busy for years after the games have come out. "Because the lore is so opaque, everyone has their own idea of what actually happened, which is half the fun," he said. "Whenever I got to a point where it felt like I had to answer an unanswered question, I just tried to make a stupid joke out of it instead."
Watching as cartoon Miquella's puppy dog eyes come out as he sweet talks himself into godhood isn't quite as dark as the in-game story, but it captures the absurdity of a 14-year-old with good intentions dooming the world. For all the fallen kings and dying kingdoms in FromSoft games, there are always a handful of weirdos in there too, like the Loathsome Dung Eater. Sandhart's sense of humor is not that far off from what's been in FromSoft games all along.
"The idea that Miquella was just a kinda dumb little bouncy bean just doing what he thought was super smart and not seeing the reality of it 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 caught every joke he snuck into the video. "Shoutouts to Messmer toasting marshmallows in a furnace golem," user someguy4405 wrote.
My favorite is the scene where Miquella is dancing at the top of a cliff with his alter ego St. Trina. He lets her go flying off the ledge to where we find her abandoned in the DLC and tiptoes off like nothing happened.
If another song comes around that fits Elden Ring's characters as well as "Mastermind", Sandhart says he'll make another one. "There are so many great characters and crazy stories in that game, I could probably make 10 more videos at least!"
Out of all the DLC characters, he's particularly fond of the old wizard trying to become a mom. "When I saw [Count Ymir] cradling the little baby finger monster I was just like, 'Oh my god. I love this game,''' he said. "When you create a world so dark, any humor or levity that penetrates it you latch onto. You're so desperate for any ray of light, so it’s super endearing. I hope they keep doing more characters like this in whatever they do next, because it’s one of my favorite parts of the game for sure."
