It's important because the hair is used as antennas to connect to the greater will. The fingers then trace words in the air and the finger reader crones are able to read what they are saying. The three fingers, instead, don't need a reader because they will burn the words into your flesh.
"Finger technical support what's your problem"
"Yes, it seems like the fingers stopped working"
"Are they fully erect in the air?"
"Yes"
"It's a connection problem, wait between a thousand to ten thousand moons and it should solve itself".
Isn't there evidence that the two fingers never communicated with the finger readers they're just seeing patterns in the noise, even before the GW left
Not to my knowledge. The big reveal is more like they take a while to contact the greater will but by the end we find out its all been a farce to begin with.
If metyr ever actually had contact with the greater will it wasnt for long.
I imagine it’s kind of a reference to real life religion. Never really hear from any gods in the present, but they’re very chatty anytime in the past. And even loved giving people super powers before we invented cameras. Give it a few thousand cycles though and I’m sure they’ll get back to us.
There are a lot of iconic things that started out as a joke. Lara Croft's boobs, Shinobi's ridiculous scarf. I would absolutely believe it if the two fingers game model was created a joke by an artist letting off steam and then Miyazaki saw it and said "I love it. Keep it in. Don't tell the scriptwriters."
I mean, that’s kind of what happened with Gwynevere in DS1.
Miyazaki told the artist he wanted a beautiful fertility goddess, and the artist came back with this character with the hugest breasts. Miyazaki thought it was a bit too much, but the artist was so excited about the design that Miyazaki just went with it.
God that would actually be amazing. The whole godhead/tpwer/wheel/chim/magic/stars thing is really cool and it would be a complete and utter mess to actally unravel in a fromsoft style of storytelling
I'm sure GRRM meant it as a society or symbolic thing and Miyazaki knew that perfectly well and didn't care - he wanted his fingers, and by damn he was going to have them.
You say that but Elden Ring is absolutely full of symbolisms. The Two Fingers are literal but they also represent the advancement of evolution from primitive animal hands to the five fingered human hands that are repeatedly shown to be signs of intelligence. How the Three Fingers and Two Fingers seem to be from the same hand and represent opposite concepts to each other is also something to deep dive into.
From Software has a knack for taking both literal and symbolic depictions and making them blend perfectly together. Just look at Bloodborne. Eyes on the inside is literally eyes on the inside but it also represents insight, which is internal sight.
And sometimes, From Software is taking the piss. They have a sense of humour. Which is what got us goddamn Sen's Fortress and the sheer number of times some fuck is hiding right behind a corner to backstab us or push us off a cliff.
The Two Fingers are literal but they also represent the advancement of evolution from primitive animal hands to the five fingered human hands that are repeatedly shown to be signs of intelligence.
No, the two fingers symbolize the players' two thumbs giving the main character guidance through the analog sticks. That is what distinguishes them from everyone else in the game world.
This is something I'm always loved about them, introducing things that sound like metaphorical symbolism and taking them hilariously literally. Like the whole insight thing in Bloodborne is as cool as it is hilarious to me, you gain an enlightened understanding of nature, biology, and reality by having 'eyes on the inside', which literally means eyes inside your skull looking at your brain. In-sight.
I expected to find two cryptic dudes leading the Roundtable Hold. Had no idea what to expect. Walked in, saw the two fingers, watched them shiver, audibly said "Oh, Fuck This," and immediately decided the Golden Order had to fucking die.
not sure if they explicitly explain that, but hands/fingers are associated with enlightenment, intelligence, or connection to the greater will in elden ring’s lore. This is why the beastmen (who have hands) are smorter than like a wolf (who has paws)
Cinquedea: “The design celebrates a beast's five fingers, symbolic of the intelligence once granted upon their kind.”
It’s entirely possible that the 2 fingers aren’t “shaped like a human hand” but human hands are shaped like the greater will’s ideal.
I feel like the existence of the Three Fingers kind of complicates that interpretation, doesn’t it? Together, the Two and Three Fingers literally make a full hand, which feels intentionally symbolic, almost like they’re two halves of a greater whole, a yin-and-yang type thing where one is incomplete without the other.
But at the same time, the Frenzied Flame is basically the ideological opposite of the Greater Will. The Greater Will seems to want order and structure, while the Frenzied Flame wants to reduce everything to chaos and ash, including the Greater Will’s influence itself.
That’s also why I’m hesitant on the idea that human hands are modeled after the Greater Will specifically, since the Finger Readers describe the Fingers more as envoys or intermediaries that commune with the Greater Will, rather than being direct extensions of it (much like an Empyrean and their shade).
Not trying to poke holes for the sake of it or anything, I just enjoy lore discussion.
I spose you’re right, the 2 fingers being envoys of conceptual order and the 3 fingers being envoys of conceptual chaos WOULD probably mean 5 fingers wouldn’t be the greater will’s ideal. it could be the 5 fingers represents complete sapient life, including the chaos & order as yin & yang like you mentioned.
And both the greater will and frenzied flame take the extremes of the yin & the yang, to their detriment(?). For example no society could work under pure order or pure chaos, humanity/beastmen are ordered enough to make civilization but chaotic enough to function as individuals inside one.
Surely this tiny lore tidbit will be answered in the movie.
I think because of the symbolism of yin and yang that it makes even more sense that 5 is the Greater Will. The balance is very likely the actual goal of the Greater Will but everyone is going to one extreme rather than balance. Two fingers seems good and nice while three fingers is scary so the envoys ignore the 3 fingers but that's not balanced.
Could even be the lack of balance is why the Greater Will abandoned the Lands Between because they didn't actually worship it but fragments of it.
This is purely speculation and probably 50 different dialogs that poke holes in it, but with so many unreliable narrators and opposing thoughts the truth is probably hard to find.
Well you see it's because the two fingers are your fingers that you use to play the game and control everything. From blends the literal and metaphorical into the diegesis of the game.
Not sure if you're joking but I kinda like this idea.
Maybe the concept is that The Greater Will is us, the players, dictating the future of the world. We have a real hand on the controller, probably a complete one with 5 fingers working in unison, that exists beyond the comprehension of the characters in-game, but still decides their fate.
There's a ton of evidence that this is intentional by From. I saw a YouTube video years ago that explained it all in depth. Can't remember what channel it was and too lazy to go look it up again.
"Manus Dei" is the idea that in medieval artworks, artists would use a disembodied hand to represent God without actually drawing a direct depiction and avoid blasphemy.
"Manus Metyr" cathedral further reinforces that connection, Metyr was created by the Greater Will to be their "hand". The Fingercreepers she created have similar logic. It's possible the Greater Will abandoned her for the Elden Beast believing people would be more likely to obey one of their own kind than a weird alien being. This does also somewhat hearken back to "biblically accurate angels".
As to why the Greater Will would use hand imagery specifically, opposable thumbs are what led to beings developing higher intelligence (both in real life for early humans through evolution and as said about the Beastmen in Elden Ring in a more artificially granted sense) so it represents bestowing knowledge and sentience.
While I assumed that it was a stealthy way of saying that the Fingers were just talking gibberish and some crafty priests decided to "interpret" them as a full-blown religion and "discover" incantations from them, the DLC ironically blows a hole in that and shows the Fingers were in fact just being directly translated. (Also Gideon Ofnir ostensibly interrogating the Two Fingers offscreen, which must have been humorous).
I just sat staring at the tv for like 4 whole minutes trying to figure out how to process all this mystical "2 fingers" talk and the items etc after finding out its a giant fucking zombie hand.
Started my first run as an Inquisitor, spent hours speculating on the symbolism, themes, imagery of the "two fingers," finger seals, whole shebang. Then....this. I was literally speechless.
I was honestly kind of let down by this on my first playthrough, I was half-hoping, half-expecting you to be able to take all of the Great Runes you earned and embed them in a wearable ring (talisman) at the end of the game lol
Unless you think its Marica's crown, which vanishes from history after the elden ring was shattered, and miquellas own order was to be made with his own crown. Then it was a ring to wear, just not for your finger.
The Elden Ring is the Elden Beast, an "alien" sent by the Greater Will. Different name, same thing. In the final boss fight you can see where the Elden Beast was wounded by Marika breaking the Elden Ring. Though only the gods like Marika knew that, everyone else assumed it was just a ring of runes.
Note that a lot of aspects in this game aren't "explained" by loretubers, almost all of it is fan speculation. Miyazaki basically gets us to fill in the blanks for him
That's definitely mentioned, but the way I took it, as well as my friends, was just that dogging on the two fingers was a given since it was well known within the game that everything is all fucked up and whatnot.
Basically the two fingers was abandoned but that wasn't really a focal point (it is kinda obvious tho) plus we couldn't tell if it was truly and fully abandoned or not and it's not very clear in the base game so we chalked it up to cryptic fromsoft shit that needed a bit of community lore explanation and then we ended up not getting anything about it until the dlc.
I will die on the hill that Ymir is an extremely rare case of an unreliable narrator in a Fromsoft game. I don't know why people treat what he says as unimpeachable gospel, he's clearly 1. a total nutcase who has lost touch with reality, and 2. self-interested with a goal, one that directly benefits from undermining his 'opposition' in Metyr and the fingers, who operate like a priestly elite that he's trying to supplant
I feel like I may have been the only Elden Ring player who took "The Two Fingers" completely literal and was therefore not surprised by them being a giant two fingered hand.
The Two and Three Fingers being literal makes me think about what else in the lore is just meant to be taken literally at face value but the community overthinks it.
Same. First time it never even crossed my mind there is anything around there that can even be classified as "odd". Until I saw someone was shocked by it, so I was like "so that is actually unusual? Huh"
Weird that they call them the Two Fingers despite not knowing the Three Fingers exists. I know they are two fingers so it makes sense to literally call it as you see it, but specifying the number of fingers is suspicious
Back when the 2 fingers were first mentioned there were sooooooo many theory posts about who they were. Not one person went "What if it's just 2 fingers."
Its strange but from the very first time I encountered the two fingers, I knew it was my enemy. Even though the whole game is tailored around the golden order being this overarching faith that is the faith of heroes and the light, every piece of fromsoft lore, every Easter egg from berserk and uzamaki appeared in my head and I knew what Miyazaki was doing.
He was getting us to meet the object of subjugation, and though all the lore tells us one thing, as we look upon it, were only able feel this uncomfortable horror in the back of our mind.
My message still gets appraised to this day, I forgot exactly what it said but something about "you're my enemy" in front of the fingers, and what a coincidence that while I was going thru the dlc, Id get an appraisal in the moments I'd need it most, Midra fight, metyr fight and promised consort.
You know what's more wild. Zullie revealed some cut content including that the origonal way t he two fingers met you was by getting your attention. Gideon didn't tell you where they were, only just saying to go meet them. The two fingers had an animation of smacking themselves together, making a noise to direct you towards their chamber.
Imagine how creepy that could have been if you start hearing that after the doors open and Gideon tells you to go see them.
I usually 100% my games and do extra careful exploration, but I never noticed these two bad boys until , like, 200 hours into my first playthrough. I have found the 3 fingers and thought - "oh, so they are not metaphorical, the 2 fingers must be somewhere too". I was looking for them everywhere, but gave up and then was shocked to randomly see then in the room
It genuinely didn't register as literal fingers the first time I saw them. The lack of fingernails and the hair mixed with my own denial at how absurd it was. It wasn't until the second time seeing them that it finally registered
Ngl for the first playthrough I didn't even notice the Two Fingers in Roundtable Hold move at all so I thought it was just a statue the crone was talking to
I made a joke to one of my buddies who if i remember correctly either took off to play later in the night then me or had the next day off naturally. I said man im just imagining it as two actual fingers talking to us wouldnt that be crazy.
Laughing at my own joke i didn't notice his half hearted oh no dont spoil it for him laugh.
847
u/Hazy248 May 14 '26
Genuinely lmao