One fan theory suggests that the ending of Elden Ring directly leads to the setup of the very first Dark Souls game.

One Reddit user enthusiastically shared his headcanon on the Elden Ring subreddit, as he thought he figured out the secrets of the game. According to the user, what is considered to be the “bad ending” of the game, the Frenzied Flame Ending, is actually the canonical ending of the game.

The Reddit user argues that the Frenzied Flame's ending would bring about a “renewal” of the Lands Between, which would lead to a new world order. The former Golden Order becomes the Undead, who are not endowed by the Frenzied Flame's power. Many years passed and the Frenzied Flame grew weaker, and those endowed by its power also grew weaker. The Undead, having never touched the Frenzied Flame, received a small dose of it, bringing to him power. And thus, the Chosen Undead embarks on a journey to the “First Flame” with a choice to prolong its fire or to completely douse it. The First Flame, the Redditor argues, is the Frenzied Flame from the Elden Ring ending mentioned above.

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The argument sounds plausible. However, other Reddit users quickly reminded the user that FromSoftware themselves have previously declared that Elden Ring is in no way connected to the Dark Souls series. In a 2019 interview with IGN, Hidetaka Miyazaki himself confirmed that the two games' stories are not connected.

Even if this theory didn't pan out, Elden Ring's mysterious lore encourages these kinds of speculation. Hence, fan theories are as ubiquitous as discussions on Dark Souls' accessibility and difficulty. Games rarely make this kind of impact and, even if they don't always lead to a happy ending, it's nice that there are games like Elden Ring that really get people thinking.