Elden Ring Video Ponders Why Ranni's Doll Has Four Arms

gamerant.com:

A new video from Zullie the Witch takes a closer look at why Elden Ring's Ranni and all the RPG's other dolls all appear to have four arms. Elden Ring players who have completed the game likely noticed the arm count for Ranni as well as the marionettes — it's hard to ignore a marionette dual-wielding bows, after all. Few likely questioned why FromSoftware decided to give all of Elden Ring's dolls four arms, but FromSoftware usually has a reason for all of its design choices.

Elden Ring is full of marionette enemies, but they largely break down into two types. There are standard marionette enemies that lurk behind corners in caves or are found close to mages, and then there are «winged» half-sized marionettes that, upon closer inspection, use their second set of arms to hold their wings. All of these Elden Ring doll enemies have four arms, but why they were made that way and who made them is never explained.

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The answer could be found in Ranni the Witch. Ranni, whose body has been destroyed, placed her soul in the body of a doll. An inspection of the Snow Witch Set armor that this doll wears explains that the doll was modeled after the Snow Witch herself, a powerful magic user and Ranni's secret mentor. The answer, then, could be that the Snow Witch herself had four arms.

The Snow Witch isn't a part of Elden Ring outside some light references, so it's impossible to know if she had four arms or not. There are no known races in The Lands Between that have four arms, so she'd be unique to herself. The only thing that's comparable would be the Wraith Caller and Revenants, which are nobles that have grafted arms onto their bodies.

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