Because lovecraft!
His great ones, his gods, were beings fundamentally beyond our understanding.
His gods were unknown. And:
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
The ocean is an entirely different world to us. That we know precious little about.
Hence, there's a thematical connection.
Dude also had a major fear of the ocean.
Honestly, I see so many people deciphering these games and i just can't do it.
I like reading the item descriptions, but i just can't put 2 and 2 together. I normally have to go on to watch VaatiVidya or The Brothers Code to get the layout and timeline of the story, before i REALLY appreciate the story.
After watching them, I take note of everything I pick up and walk past and indulge in the flavour of the lore now that I understand it.
I like to try and piece some stuff together myself at first. And then watch some videos to get the full picture.
But when it comes to elden ring i believe fromsoft made it too convoluted. Even after watching videos it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I think Elden ring wasn't so much a linear story as bloodborne, souls or Lies of P for example, it was more like a collection of stories that make the universe. It semi makes it harder to get into but also appreciative of the scale and grandeur of such a world.
Understandable that this works for some, not for others.
Personally I love the ER lore, despite the fact it was so much harder to string to an understandable story
That is fair. I personally prefer a more focussed narrative. Fewer but deeper themes.
But I'm nothing but happy for those who enjoy elden ring. It's a massive game after all, of you enjoy it, there's a lot to enjoy.
I also have to side with you.
I much prefer the linear but deep, saturated story.
I'm currently playing bloodborne and i just can't get enough of the story and themes.
It's a communal effort. Even these content creators watched other videos and conversed with other people about this lore before they crafted their revelations
It is, and I think our communities can collectively agree that everyone, including the community, is appreciated and well respected for it.
It's a monumental effort, and for some gamers like myself that struggle piecing things together on our own, it is a saving grace.
Never understood why I couldn't do it myself, but these guys, and the community, have basically stopped me from missing out on the story due to my own struggle, stories that ended up being some of the best fiction I've ever come across, in all avenues of entertainment.
I have nothing but respect for everyone involved.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't think your struggle is as hard as you think. I think most people gather about as much info from a playthrough as you do. I know I'm the same.
I'm saying that I think it takes many people expressing many revelations to start putting together the lore. Figuring out all the lore is close to impossible for any one person to do even in multiple playthroughs.
That's why we're a community. :)
Maybe that's why there is a cult following of this series like nothing I've seen before in gaming.
I may be blind to other communities, but I swear I've never been involved as much as soulsborne.
When I play other games, I just play them. Finish them, then I'm done with them.
But when I play souls games, I'm on the game, I'm on reddit, I'm on the wikis, I'm on YouTube videos from boss tier rankings to weapon moveset videos to lore collections.
I mean. Heck. Dark souls is the reason I even started reading berserk, and now I'm into a range of mangas and Anime's that are souls like.
>Dude also had a major fear of the ocean.
Dude had a major fear of just about everything. The ocean, dogs, the dark, wells, mixed race couples, fish...
Despite being IN a mixed race couple himself.
FWIW, Lovecraft repeatedly started to pull his head out of his ass towards the end of his life, but unfortunately passed too young to do much with it.
When people online talk about how mysterious and vast outer space is, inevitably someone chimes in with something like “well, the oceans are right here on earth, and we’ve still barely explored their vast depths”
Both are vast, deep, dark, mostly unexplored, and lethally hostile to humans. I think there’s a pretty clear thematic similarity.
Contrary to popular beliefs we have discovered far more then 5 % of the ocean. It was never a sensible statement to begin with. 5% could mean anything : species, ocean floor, water volume and so on. So its not so unknowable. However especially the deepsea is very alien to us in many aspects. How things live down there is remarkable. Also there could absolutely be giants lurking down there unbeknownst to any human. Especially squid haha.
Because of Lovecraft's influence.
One of the things he was afraid of was aquatic life. That's why a lot of his creatures have fishy and tentacly features. The most famous example are Cthulhu, who has a six-eyed squid for a head, and Dagon and the deep ones, who are fish-people.
The concept of Great Ones itself is also influenced by Lovecraft. They seem to be a mix of Lovecraft's own Great Ones, where the name comes from, and Great Old Ones.
Lovecraft didn't care about canon, though, so it's all a bit murky, and a lot of "official" classifications come from later writers who took the mantle after Lovecraft died.
ye I did figure that much, very hard not to associate the concept of cosmic horror and celestial gods with Lovecraft 😅 I did not know about his fear of marine life tho
I expressed myself wrong because my ear is being a pain in the rear. I assumed you know Great Ones are influenced by Lovecraft.
I tried to clarify in this comment what I actually meant to say with what I said in my previous comment, but it just wasn't making any sense no matter how many times I rewrote and reformulated it. It WAS something about Lovecraftian influence and inspiration for Great Ones, so I was on the right track.
I think that's enough of internet for today. XD
Water has a huge significance to great ones in Bloodborne. The lake rune says that "great bodies of water serve as a bulwark guarding sleep, and an augur of the eldritch truth". Then you have the research hall patients who were experimented on by implanting water into their heads in some way, up to the point where they start mumbling nonsense about sounds of water. You have Rom hidden underneath Byrgenwerth's lake, Kos washing up ashore on a beach, the arcane infused water that Ludwig sprays out from his neckhole filled with eyes, which, as you know, are connected to the eldritch truth.
Now as for the main question regarding why exactly water is so important to the great ones? Well, we don't really know, aside from it being part of Lovecraft's influence on Bloodborne. That's the beauty of things that lie beyond human comprehension. Maybe we just don't have enough insight and need to be granted more eyes.
Definitely possible for them to be linked. My take was based on the item description of the brain fluid we gather from the patients.
"In the early days of the Healing Church, the Great Ones were linked to the ocean, and so the cerebral patients would imbibe water, and listen for the howl of the sea. Brain fluid writhed inside the head, the initial makings of internal eyes."
>Water has a huge significance to great ones in Bloodborne
Reminded me of this banging line:
"A bottomless curse. A bottomless sea. Accepting of all that there is, and can be."
Don't forget the omnipresent birth/abortion/stillbirth symbolism in Bloodborne. The fetus is surrounded by amniotic fluid, circulating and flowing.
When the amniotic sac starts to tear, we say that the mother's water has broken.
Others have said it's because of Lovecraft's influence, and this is true, but to give an in universe explanation rather than a meta one:
The lore makes constant mentions of bodies of water being both bulwarks against and also conduits of great power/the eldritch truth. They are described as hinderances we must overcome to seek "what is ours." Add to this the fact that, from the Fishing Hamlet in the Hunter's Nightmare, one can look down through the water and see Yharnam down below, on top of the lore putting forth the idea that the Cosmos and Nightmares/Dreams and the Waking world all exist layered on top of each other, separated only by the thinnest barrier, and the idea that that barrier is actually some form of ocean or lake makes sense. The Gods exist beyond and within these barriers. They transcend them, they can move through them, and so it makes sense for them to take forms that appear, to us, as aquatic in nature.
the cosmic horror genre is always linked to sea creature aesthetics. The word "unfathomable" is thrown out a lot to describe eldritch beings, while a "fathom" is just a measurement of depth for water. "Unfathomable" is used literally to describe a body of water too massive to properly measure, and so if you take that, look at how little of the ocean we know about (like how they recently found 1,000 new animals near new zealand), and how horrendous the deepest sea creatures look, you can see how the ocean is where a lot of inspiration comes from
This isn't lost to the in-game world of bloodborne either, one of the brain fluid's description says "*In the early days of the Healing Church, the Great Ones were linked to the ocean, and so the cerebral patients would imbibe water, and listen for the howl of the sea".* Even they got that connection, and they don't even have access to an ocean (seriously where tf is the fishing hamlet? Byrgenwerth is famously just next to a **LAKE**, the city's landlocked. Where is the ocean??)
In ancient and esoteric beliefs the heavens or cosmos were viewed as a body of water so the great ones as divine beings aquatic is a shot out to this idea of the divine/death/spirit world being aquatic. We see a similar idea in Elden Ring and Dark Souls.
We can also look to Sekiro were the Foutainhead Palace is connects to the divine realm where the Divine Dragon lives. Water acts as a medium or connection point between the two worlds.
Rom's boss fight is an example of this. We leap into the water and enter a different realm that has a god like being in it. This is a microcosm of this whole idea.
The moon is a common symbol for the gateway between the conscious and unconscious world and we find a giant moon in Rom's arena that acts as a sort of veil or gate, hiding the truth of the world.
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The definition of Eldritch/Lovecraftian Horror is fear of the unknown. And the Oceans we have only explored 5% of. There's still 95% still explored, who knows what else it holds considering how many weird looking species of marine biology we've discovered. So then kicks in that fear of the unknown.
Lovecraft himself had a major Thalassophobia too (fear of the ocean) which definitely inspired his many eldritch creatures. Cthulhu for example is defined by his beard of tentacles along with large bat wing and titan physique.
Bloodborne has the most exciting and mysterious story out of all FS games. Sometimes I spent hours reading theories and lore like I'm reading real life events 😂😂😂
The one that came to earth was squidlike. That was the once th church experimented on and the old hunters killed. So most of the kin originate from it.
But they can take many forms. Your forggetting the moon prescence, the amygdala and Rom for example.
Because lovecraft! His great ones, his gods, were beings fundamentally beyond our understanding. His gods were unknown. And: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." The ocean is an entirely different world to us. That we know precious little about. Hence, there's a thematical connection. Dude also had a major fear of the ocean.
There is so much depth to this answer. Really makes you appreciate the amount of mindful themes that go into souls games.
Oh definitely! That's why I have a hard time with elden ring... It's not the normal fromsoft flavor of "wtf is going on?" Is just "wtf is going on?"
Honestly, I see so many people deciphering these games and i just can't do it. I like reading the item descriptions, but i just can't put 2 and 2 together. I normally have to go on to watch VaatiVidya or The Brothers Code to get the layout and timeline of the story, before i REALLY appreciate the story. After watching them, I take note of everything I pick up and walk past and indulge in the flavour of the lore now that I understand it.
I like to try and piece some stuff together myself at first. And then watch some videos to get the full picture. But when it comes to elden ring i believe fromsoft made it too convoluted. Even after watching videos it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I think Elden ring wasn't so much a linear story as bloodborne, souls or Lies of P for example, it was more like a collection of stories that make the universe. It semi makes it harder to get into but also appreciative of the scale and grandeur of such a world. Understandable that this works for some, not for others. Personally I love the ER lore, despite the fact it was so much harder to string to an understandable story
That is fair. I personally prefer a more focussed narrative. Fewer but deeper themes. But I'm nothing but happy for those who enjoy elden ring. It's a massive game after all, of you enjoy it, there's a lot to enjoy.
this was the most polite "I disagree" I've ever read why tf is it getting downvoted lol
I also have to side with you. I much prefer the linear but deep, saturated story. I'm currently playing bloodborne and i just can't get enough of the story and themes.
It's a communal effort. Even these content creators watched other videos and conversed with other people about this lore before they crafted their revelations
It is, and I think our communities can collectively agree that everyone, including the community, is appreciated and well respected for it. It's a monumental effort, and for some gamers like myself that struggle piecing things together on our own, it is a saving grace. Never understood why I couldn't do it myself, but these guys, and the community, have basically stopped me from missing out on the story due to my own struggle, stories that ended up being some of the best fiction I've ever come across, in all avenues of entertainment. I have nothing but respect for everyone involved.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't think your struggle is as hard as you think. I think most people gather about as much info from a playthrough as you do. I know I'm the same. I'm saying that I think it takes many people expressing many revelations to start putting together the lore. Figuring out all the lore is close to impossible for any one person to do even in multiple playthroughs. That's why we're a community. :)
Maybe that's why there is a cult following of this series like nothing I've seen before in gaming. I may be blind to other communities, but I swear I've never been involved as much as soulsborne. When I play other games, I just play them. Finish them, then I'm done with them. But when I play souls games, I'm on the game, I'm on reddit, I'm on the wikis, I'm on YouTube videos from boss tier rankings to weapon moveset videos to lore collections. I mean. Heck. Dark souls is the reason I even started reading berserk, and now I'm into a range of mangas and Anime's that are souls like.
Doesnt help when you constantly mix up who is who since they all have similar names lol
>There is so much depth to this answer I see what you did there
Wait until you hear Laurence=Jesus
>Dude also had a major fear of the ocean. Dude had a major fear of just about everything. The ocean, dogs, the dark, wells, mixed race couples, fish...
Don’t forget about his fear of Air Conditioning as well
Despite being IN a mixed race couple himself. FWIW, Lovecraft repeatedly started to pull his head out of his ass towards the end of his life, but unfortunately passed too young to do much with it.
Now I pray to a God with 6 tentacles.
When people online talk about how mysterious and vast outer space is, inevitably someone chimes in with something like “well, the oceans are right here on earth, and we’ve still barely explored their vast depths” Both are vast, deep, dark, mostly unexplored, and lethally hostile to humans. I think there’s a pretty clear thematic similarity.
Contrary to popular beliefs we have discovered far more then 5 % of the ocean. It was never a sensible statement to begin with. 5% could mean anything : species, ocean floor, water volume and so on. So its not so unknowable. However especially the deepsea is very alien to us in many aspects. How things live down there is remarkable. Also there could absolutely be giants lurking down there unbeknownst to any human. Especially squid haha.
Very good point
Because of Lovecraft's influence. One of the things he was afraid of was aquatic life. That's why a lot of his creatures have fishy and tentacly features. The most famous example are Cthulhu, who has a six-eyed squid for a head, and Dagon and the deep ones, who are fish-people.
ahh makes sense, thank
The concept of Great Ones itself is also influenced by Lovecraft. They seem to be a mix of Lovecraft's own Great Ones, where the name comes from, and Great Old Ones. Lovecraft didn't care about canon, though, so it's all a bit murky, and a lot of "official" classifications come from later writers who took the mantle after Lovecraft died.
ye I did figure that much, very hard not to associate the concept of cosmic horror and celestial gods with Lovecraft 😅 I did not know about his fear of marine life tho
I expressed myself wrong because my ear is being a pain in the rear. I assumed you know Great Ones are influenced by Lovecraft. I tried to clarify in this comment what I actually meant to say with what I said in my previous comment, but it just wasn't making any sense no matter how many times I rewrote and reformulated it. It WAS something about Lovecraftian influence and inspiration for Great Ones, so I was on the right track. I think that's enough of internet for today. XD
vibes bestie 😂
You got an ear on your rear? What's that like?
he was also afraid of his cat
That's what you would *think* after "The Cats of Ulthar". Then You read "Rats in the Walls" and "The Dream-Quest of unknown Kadath".
And anyone who wasn't white.
same thing technically aint it
Water has a huge significance to great ones in Bloodborne. The lake rune says that "great bodies of water serve as a bulwark guarding sleep, and an augur of the eldritch truth". Then you have the research hall patients who were experimented on by implanting water into their heads in some way, up to the point where they start mumbling nonsense about sounds of water. You have Rom hidden underneath Byrgenwerth's lake, Kos washing up ashore on a beach, the arcane infused water that Ludwig sprays out from his neckhole filled with eyes, which, as you know, are connected to the eldritch truth. Now as for the main question regarding why exactly water is so important to the great ones? Well, we don't really know, aside from it being part of Lovecraft's influence on Bloodborne. That's the beauty of things that lie beyond human comprehension. Maybe we just don't have enough insight and need to be granted more eyes.
I thought they were hearing the water from the Hamlet via the nightmare?
Definitely possible for them to be linked. My take was based on the item description of the brain fluid we gather from the patients. "In the early days of the Healing Church, the Great Ones were linked to the ocean, and so the cerebral patients would imbibe water, and listen for the howl of the sea. Brain fluid writhed inside the head, the initial makings of internal eyes."
>Water has a huge significance to great ones in Bloodborne Reminded me of this banging line: "A bottomless curse. A bottomless sea. Accepting of all that there is, and can be."
Don't forget the omnipresent birth/abortion/stillbirth symbolism in Bloodborne. The fetus is surrounded by amniotic fluid, circulating and flowing. When the amniotic sac starts to tear, we say that the mother's water has broken.
Others have said it's because of Lovecraft's influence, and this is true, but to give an in universe explanation rather than a meta one: The lore makes constant mentions of bodies of water being both bulwarks against and also conduits of great power/the eldritch truth. They are described as hinderances we must overcome to seek "what is ours." Add to this the fact that, from the Fishing Hamlet in the Hunter's Nightmare, one can look down through the water and see Yharnam down below, on top of the lore putting forth the idea that the Cosmos and Nightmares/Dreams and the Waking world all exist layered on top of each other, separated only by the thinnest barrier, and the idea that that barrier is actually some form of ocean or lake makes sense. The Gods exist beyond and within these barriers. They transcend them, they can move through them, and so it makes sense for them to take forms that appear, to us, as aquatic in nature.
Thank you this is more so what I was looking for…god I love this game lol
makes me think of ash lake in ds1 and the trees in the hunters dream
the cosmic horror genre is always linked to sea creature aesthetics. The word "unfathomable" is thrown out a lot to describe eldritch beings, while a "fathom" is just a measurement of depth for water. "Unfathomable" is used literally to describe a body of water too massive to properly measure, and so if you take that, look at how little of the ocean we know about (like how they recently found 1,000 new animals near new zealand), and how horrendous the deepest sea creatures look, you can see how the ocean is where a lot of inspiration comes from This isn't lost to the in-game world of bloodborne either, one of the brain fluid's description says "*In the early days of the Healing Church, the Great Ones were linked to the ocean, and so the cerebral patients would imbibe water, and listen for the howl of the sea".* Even they got that connection, and they don't even have access to an ocean (seriously where tf is the fishing hamlet? Byrgenwerth is famously just next to a **LAKE**, the city's landlocked. Where is the ocean??)
Humans are fishes
real
Because the human body is mostly made of water and the great ones are inspired by parts of the human body. And lovecraft
Don't forget the amniotic sac.
Lovecraftian inspired
In ancient and esoteric beliefs the heavens or cosmos were viewed as a body of water so the great ones as divine beings aquatic is a shot out to this idea of the divine/death/spirit world being aquatic. We see a similar idea in Elden Ring and Dark Souls. We can also look to Sekiro were the Foutainhead Palace is connects to the divine realm where the Divine Dragon lives. Water acts as a medium or connection point between the two worlds. Rom's boss fight is an example of this. We leap into the water and enter a different realm that has a god like being in it. This is a microcosm of this whole idea. The moon is a common symbol for the gateway between the conscious and unconscious world and we find a giant moon in Rom's arena that acts as a sort of veil or gate, hiding the truth of the world.
The ocean is the last Great Mystery of Earth....we know more about the moon's surface than the depths of our own planet...
reminds me of [this comic (you meet God and she's mostly dead fish)](https://that-house.tumblr.com/post/733631486179393536/amp)
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The definition of Eldritch/Lovecraftian Horror is fear of the unknown. And the Oceans we have only explored 5% of. There's still 95% still explored, who knows what else it holds considering how many weird looking species of marine biology we've discovered. So then kicks in that fear of the unknown. Lovecraft himself had a major Thalassophobia too (fear of the ocean) which definitely inspired his many eldritch creatures. Cthulhu for example is defined by his beard of tentacles along with large bat wing and titan physique.
Bloodborne has the most exciting and mysterious story out of all FS games. Sometimes I spent hours reading theories and lore like I'm reading real life events 😂😂😂
Dog means fish in Hebrew. Dog backwards is God. Makes perfect sense.
Because old Howie said so
The one that came to earth was squidlike. That was the once th church experimented on and the old hunters killed. So most of the kin originate from it. But they can take many forms. Your forggetting the moon prescence, the amygdala and Rom for example.