George R.R. Martin has broken his silence on Elden Ring’s launch to lavish praise on the FromSoftware team.
Linking to reviews for the “landmark megahit” on his blog like a proud parent, he called the widespread acclaim for Elden Ring “music to the ears”.
“Of course, almost all the credit should go to Hidetaka Miyazaki and his astonishing team of games designers who have been laboring on this game for half a decade or more, determined to create the best videogame ever,” he went on.
“I am honored to have met them and worked with them, and to have played a part, however small, in creating this fantastic world and making Elden Ring the landmark megahit that it is.”
You’d be forgiven for not having total clarity on Martin’s role in making Elden Ring. Marketing campaigns have promised ‘a new world created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin’. Martin himself refers to his work on the project as “worldbuilding”, which matches FromSoftware’s characterisation of his involvement.
“George R.R. Martin wrote the mythos for Elden Ring, creating a history set long before the events of the game,” said producer Yasuhiro Kitao in a FromSoftware interview released by Bandai Namco. “With that foundation, we then created the story, the world, and the actual gameplay.”
According to the New Yorker, Miyazaki deliberately restricted Martin’s contributions to backstory rather than script. “In our games, the story must always serve the player experience,” said the director. “If [Martin] had written the game’s story, I would have worried that we might have to drift from that. I wanted him to be able to write freely and not to feel restrained by some obscure mechanic that might have to change in development.”
It’s an approach that suits FromSoftware, which has long held its lore at arm’s length – communicating the past of its worlds by opaque means. Fans might be happy to learn that, despite Miyazaki’s concerns about an age and language gap, he and Martin get on famously – it’s a relationship built on “great conversations,” in the words of Kitao.
The best thing about Martin’s blog is that it features a mood tracker. When writing about Elden Ring’s success, he was feeling ‘bouncy’.
Game of Thrones fan? Nervous about Soulslikes? Dip your toe into the genre with our Elden Ring guide.