Chritin
He/Him- 322
- 219
Just cause invasions are apart of the hame doesn’t mean that the rules applied to them aren’t just game mechanics. Invasions where we help NPCs happen in our game world, it’s just interacting with summon signs is a way for us to initiate combat. As an example, Yura in our world summons is to help him when he’s dealing with bloody fingers (specifically at Raya Lucaria). Later when he dies, we see his body in our world and we don’t need a summon sign. My point is that NPCs like Yura and the things that happen to them exist in our world, it’s just the developers use summon signs as a conduit for us to interact with those encounters. It’s the same with Leda when she goes to fight the Hornsent or Ansbach. Hell it’s even the same for red NPCs like Thiollier.I'd have considered this argument, had the invasions/wanderings NOT been a part of the lore/story. But, as we know at certain locations in the Lands Between, there are several AI invasions as well as our invasions into worlds with AI Tarnished. This means that the world hopping is done canonically, albeit the why and how aren't exactly know like you pointed out. Moreover, if they're NOT different worlds, there'd be several contradictions such as the ones that I pointed out.
The multiple Erdtrees we see in Elden Beast's arena further solidify this, as the Erdtree defines order in all of existence. Multiple Erdtrees would mean that there are multiple existence(s)/realities. I believe this much evidence is enough for a verse like Elden Ring, as its medieval fantasy setting simply doesn't allow for fairly modern cosmological terms such as "universe" being used.
Granted, I will say the idea of multiple Erdtrees implying the existence of other worlds is interesting and worth arguing, I don’t see any other relevant evidence besides their existence which points to anything. And like Latin said too, I’m open to the idea, but in my opinion there isn’t much strong evidence to say whether the idea of invading other worlds is literal or not.
Edit: This is also something else I just noticed while looking at descriptions, but I feel like it’s kind of obvious that a lot of the “other world” statements used in multiplayer items are in sections of non-canon information. They use words like “multiplayer”, “cooperator”, “invader”, “boss”, etc, while explicitly keeping the lore names of things in separate parentheses. Thus, I think it makes it kinda obvious that the kind of invasion we use on other players is separate from how invasions are used in game, and the word worlds is just used to describe said mechanic.
I hope that all makes sense, I know I’m kinda spouting off a lot of ideas lol.