„AI, reliable as always.” A popular Elden Ring meme became „canon,” reminding us that Artificial Intelligence has a long way to go

While Elden Ring’s popularity never really waned, its co-op counterpart subtitled Nightreign, might have rekindled people’s curiosity towards this rich universe. The two worlds of those productions intertwine and coexist, while being part of a multiverse of a sort. This phenomenon can be explained in the light of the game’s lore by being an effect of an event called The Shattering. While, of course, it is only a theory, it puts a good ground that explains why so many items, foes and environments are similar. When venturing through either one of those worlds, some fans might have stumbled upon a cryptic, quite literally, armament called Coded Sword. Of course, people want to learn more about it. Asking AI is one way to look for answers nowadays, yet it can still leave a lot to wish for, as it can confuse memes with significant information.

AI mistakes a meme for a lore description of a weapon in Elden Ring

Looking for an explanation outside of the Elden Ring’s enigmatic universe, and using the world’s most popular search engine enriched by AI capabilities is a natural thing to do to learn more about the lore of the world created by Hidetaka Miyazaki. However, by trying to verify the linguistical mystery of an item called Coded Sword, we can see that in some cases Artificial Intelligence must train a whole lot more to be able to give us correct answers.

To provide a bit more context, Coded Sword is a weapon consisting of only a hilt and a “blade” made from a runic-like sentence. There is also another armament fitted in a similar fashion – a fist called Cipher Pata. Both are unique thanks to their blades being a string of unknown words. Since everything in Souls series appears to have a meaning and be connected to each other, players want to squeeze out some information from those edges made from odd symbols.

The first place to look for answers in the contemporary world is of course Google. And so, as a Reddit user Fresh-Cockroach5563 noticed, using this search engine to uncover this secret provides us with the following explanation:

AI mixes community jokes with Elden Ring lore. Source: Google Search screenshot

This, generated by AI, answer is wrong from the very beginning, as from the description of Cipher Pata in the game we can already learn that the text is written in “the language of light spoken by the Two Fingers,” hence it has nothing to do with “elvish and nordic runes.” Moreover, such races are not mentioned in the lore of Elden Ring, which further undermines the credibility of the tool. It was well summirized by one of the commenters, Dear_Perspective_157 – “AI, reliable as always.”

The cherry on top, however, is the translation of the blade, which Gemini describes as “Try fingers, but hole.” This is the running joke of the community who, unable to write in-game messages freely, and only using predefined text, include such joyful notes to make people smile and relieve the stress of transversing The Lands Between, where death can be met on every corner of the map. Suffice to say, that this meme has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the sentence used to create the blade. However, one of the redditors took this matter more seriously, long before AI came up with this explanation. According to that fan, it is the language of the outer gods that mortals are unable to understand.

To be honest, the most interesting part of this weapon is the text which makes its blade, as the item itself is practially useless in the world of Elden Ring, since it deals solely Holy damage, without even a trace of the physical one. It is quite unheard of in this production. Additionally, most of end-game bosses are very (or completely) resistant to this type of harm, which further lessens its usability. In Nightreign, though, this weapon can find a bit more of use, because Nightlords are not that strong against Holy. Still, you will be probably better off by chosing a different blade.

As you can see, AI generated answers are still far from perfect. This should be enough of a reason to start looking for explanations on your own from credible sources of information. And Elden Ring is very rich in lore treats. You might wonder what the Journal is used for or what are the huge giants roaming on the horizon. Finding explanations and asking others for their views is the core part of titles developed by From Software. Do not take shortcuts, as there are no definite answers to those questions. It is all part of the journey. Have fun!

Elden Ring

February 25, 2022

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• fantasy
• co-op
• FromSoftware
• action RPG
• Bandai Namco Entertainment
• TPP action games
• soulslike