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With only a few days to go until the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion blesses the Lands Between, Hidetaka Miyazaki and the FromSoftware team have been answering all of the important questions. The most pressing of which: why is Messmer so hot?
FromSoftware games have a particular motif when it comes to bosses. The One Reborn of Bloodborne is a fleshy creature sculpted with flailing corpses, and Elden Ring’s Death Rite is an equally disturbing husk of a body with giant shadow wings attached. The open-world of the Lands Between comes to life in its visualisation of human limbs grafted to bodies – there are even Tarnished hunters who seek out others like the protagonist to harvest for this purpose. What’s the deal with Messmer, who looks like he’s been lifted straight out of a Castlevania’s Netflix adaptation?
“I think how Malenia kind of served as the face to a degree of the original Elden Ring, Messmer is the current face, but will he remain this way to the end of the DLC? I cannot guarantee. That remains to be seen,” Miyazaki said in an interview with CNET.
In further reference to Messmer’s mesmerising handsomeness, “Messmer may look like this right now, but as you play the DLC and get more into it, I think you’ll understand, ‘Oh, it’s FromSoftware,'” Miyazaki said. If it’s anything like Malenia’s transformation in Elden Ring, expect Messmer to devolve into a giant homunculus adorned with wings, newly hunched shoulders, and some form of eldritch energy too.
Promotional images for the DLC show off Messmer, likely before you fight him, and you can see snakes unbinding themselves from his body. Expect a scaly scourge of sinister serpents to undo whatever preconception of sexy Messmer you have.
It should be noted that before his serious answer, Miyazaki approached the question whimsically: joking that “Bandai Namco encouraged FromSoftware to make him attractive.” A recent tweet from the publisher suggests that you “treat yourself to 18-inch of Messmer the Impaler,” referencing a Collector’s Edition sculpture.
