Should you’ve been roaming the Land of Shadow in Elden Ring’s just lately launched growth, there’s an excellent likelihood that you simply’ve met the best hater to ever reside. No, Kendrick Lamar just isn’t immediately in Shadow of the Erdtree, he’s too busy in Compton making Drake’s life a residing hell. As a substitute, you’d have met Igon, who’s each one of the emphatically voiced characters ever in a From Software program recreation, and the pettiest dude alive. We have now no alternative however to stan this Ahab insert on this storyline ripped straight from the pages of Moby Dick.
Spoilers for Igon’s questline in Shadow of the Erdtree observe.
Igon could be first encountered west of the location of grace on the Pillar Path Waypoint, however you gained’t know him by his look as a lot as his voice. Right here’s the content material creator DansGaming bumping into an “NPC making some very bizarre sounds” that seems to be none apart from Igon, a drake warrior on his closing mission.
If you likelihood upon Igon, he’s been crushed down and scarred. He can’t actually use his arms, and it looks as if his legs have failed him too. For all intents and functions, Igon is dragging himself throughout the Land of Shadow to kill Bayle the Dread, a traitorous dragon who wounded Placidusax—a reputation you may keep in mind because the loopy dragon boss you fought in Farum Azula in Elden Ring—and struck Igon with a crippling concern that’s stored him from partaking in Dragon Communion, which gave his life value.
Speaking to him on this state supplies quite a lot of anguished cries and repeated requires “vile Bayle,” and kicks off a quest line following Igon’s journey. When he’s not growling each different line he utters, he’s deeply wounded and terrified of Bayle, who’s inflicted a horror on Igon that actually nonetheless haunts him, and the best way that voice actor Richard Lintern zips between these extremes is nothing wanting spectacular. He comes throughout like two distinct characters relatively than dimensions of the identical man, and persons are already hailing Lintern’s full-throated efficiency as Igon.
Following up with Igon supplies ample alternative to proceed listening to his rantings and ravings, however earlier than lengthy, he realizes that his physique’s failing him, and he gained’t bodily make it to Bayle. At this level, he does the craziest factor but and provides you his finger to be able to summon his spirit to fuck Bayle up if you finally get to the boss struggle. After which the boss struggle occurs and Igon reaches hater ranges beforehand thought unattainable.
The second you summon him, Igon instantly shouts “Curse you, Bayle,” and launches into the mom of all tirades. He even gasses you up, saying “Behold, a real drake warrior! And I, Igon!” You’re the true drake warrior he’s speaking up! My favourite line, although, is when he screams at Bayle that he’ll “riddle with holes your rotten conceal,” and instantly follows it up by giddily delivering the road, “With a hail of harpoons!” Dude needs Bayle lifeless so badly, he doesn’t seem to be he’ll ever shut up, however he finally does. And so Igon takes up his bow fabricated from dragon bone, and the harpoons he particularly original to sink into Bayle’s “rotten conceal,” and does precisely what he was placed on this Earth to do, and kills that dragon.
Igon’s storyline is so batshit, and Lintern’s readings of each line are so unhinged, that the character has instantly change into a standout of the growth, in addition to FromSoft’s evolving gallery of bizarre little guys. Many gamers have made memes concerning the dude and his clearly obsessive anger. Others are merely paying their respects to a efficiency that completely enraptured them. One particular person has sworn fealty to the man for the insane rally he pulls on the finish regardless of every part afflicting him, in the end dubbing Igon a “gigachad.”
Apparently sufficient, a few savvy of us have managed to piece collectively that each Bayle and Igon are tied to a different work of literature in addition to Moby Dick. Contemplating that A Tune of Ice and Hearth’s writer George R.R Martin labored on the lore of Elden Ring, it most likely shouldn’t come as a shock that each names take inspiration from his foremost physique of labor. Bayle is a reference to a literal dread dragon named Balerion in ASOIAF, who’s ridden by the phonetically comparable Aegon Targaryen. And so all of it comes full circle.