Update: Here's a very important development in this story. The following image is now iconic:
Original Story: A big part of the early excitement surrounding Elden Ring was the involvement of famed author George R. R. Martin. His book series A Song of Ice and Fire — along with the HBO adaptation, Game of Thrones — cemented him as an incredibly talented fantasy writer. His efforts combined with FromSoftware's action RPG chops? It's no wonder the gaming community went mad for it from the very first trailer.
Martin was brought onto the project in order to build the game's fiction and establish its world, so his work wrapped up long before the title we're all playing today was finished. Writing on his personal blog, the author is clearly thrilled with how the game has been received by critics and fans.
"Years in the making, Elden Ring was released last week, and has been taking the gaming world by storm," he writes, before linking to a handful of the spotless reviews.
He continues, asserting that "almost all the credit should go to Hidetaka Miyazaki and his astonishing team of games designers" and that he's "honored to have met them and worked with them". He signs off by revealing his current mood as "bouncy". If we'd worked on something as well-received as Elden Ring, we'd be pretty excited, too.
Have you felt Martin's world-building influence while you've been exploring Elden Ring? Let us know in the comments section below, and take a dive into our Elden Ring guide if you're after some help.
[source georgerrmartin.com]
Comments 41
Maybe it will make him excited enough to finish his books
What did he contributed to the game, besides the look of at least 2 of the monsters? 😊 I'm not noticing his influence.
I've been wondering what he's meant to have added to be honest. I haven't noticed anything that seems influenced by him.
Feels like pure marketing to me.
May sound bold but this game might be the best I've ever played. This is coming from a huge Soulsborne fan though.
Hmmm I guess he gave them a lore background to work with but the lore seems pretty much Miyazaki-style so maybe he was just a consultant.
Just curious what would make people say "Ah this was clearly GRRM influenced."? I never really got into GoT so I have no idea what would stand out as clearly his influence. It makes sense the majority of the credit would go to Fromsoft since well its a game and they are game developers where as Martin is an author.
If I was to take a guess though I wouldn't be surprised if the table with all the swords stuck in the middle at the hub area was an example of his influence. It kind of reminds me of the throne made of swords featured in GoT.
Playing it just feels like he's had no influence storywise or otherwise as Sammy said just seems like pr which has worked.
Really was expecting more storywise with lots of characters and lore. But still enjoying it
@get2sammyb indeed. Everything is marketing when it comes to superlatives and praising their products... $$$
I guess he was a consultant to get some fresh ideas, and having a big name attached does not really hurt. I expect they wanted to try to make it feel less like a rehash of the Dark Souls stories.
Apparently:
According to Miyazaki, Martin primarily wrote snippets of text about the world's history, its characters, and mythology, including the destruction of the Elden Ring and the subsequent scattering of shards. While this was something we learned previously, Miyazaki further clarified why this was the case.
“In our games, the story must always serve the player experience,” Miyazaki said. “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.”
Based on this it sounds like he wrote the intro segment and some bits and pieces through the game.
@get2sammyb Wasn't it just some lore and early world building? It's not like that's a part of Martin's writing that would stand out enough to feel like his handiwork - dark fantasy settings all kind of mesh together at their most basic.
If he had written character dialogue or story events, sure, it'd be more noticeable. As it stands, Martin and Miyazaki basically had one brainstorming session where Martin came up with a bunch of fundamental ideas, and Miyazaki & his team took it from there.
How about he just finish his freaking books…
The NPCs in these From games always be talking obscure and strange, so maybe RR Martin helped to further make things even more cryptic with more YE YE YEES 😄. So far it's just galloping past strong enemies till I'm levelled up enough. As a completionist this will be one heck of a BIG game. Plus I'm glad the art style is still there.
I've played all Dark Souls games and Demon's Souls but I wouldn't call myself a fan of this genre, I bought into it simply because I was curious and the amount of "YOU DIED" memes I came across were very funny too. I haven't purchased Elden Ring yet but I will before the end of this Month.
This always kinda struck me as thing where they had lunch once and talked about fantasy stuff and they paid him to use his name as marketing. Like he probably had insight and even wrote a character background or two or whatever but he probably wasn't doing a powerpoint presentation at From Software HQ explaining how sorcery works.
The game lore seems great but I don't think it's different from other FromSoftware games like demon/dark souls or bloodborne.
I wonder if he's an actual gamer...?
@get2sammyb All I know is that there’s a sword that’s a clear Game of Thrones reference. Other than that I have no clue.
I have no opinion of the game one way or another......I dislike fantasy but I stay my butt away from it as a result. So I couldn't speak to whether the game was good or bad, because I simply haven't played it. Would I play it? No; will I badmouth it? No, I don't have a right to if I haven't played.
He is never finishing the books 🙄
Even if Martin had done extensive writing for the game I'm not sure it would stick out. Certainly no one working on the game would want it to be noticeably different, because that would be jarring. Besides, Martin's writing tone and the typical Souls tone are pretty compatible, which is probably why they consulted with him in the first place.
@KayOL77 My sister's students asked her that when she tooled around school in a Dreamcast hoodie (that I had bought her). She is a card-carrying gamer since 1993, so she was like "excuse you".
One of the npcs at that roundtable hub was talking about his tomboy sister and I could've sworn it was arya he was talking about
I couldnt care less..the game is brilliant..
@kyleforrester87 That’s interesting—where did you read that?!
@get2sammyb The golden centipede being kept as a fetish feels like sos thing he wrote lol.
@Korgon well, the thing about Game of Thrones that always gets made fun of is the incest. So probably if there was a bunch of incest, people would feel that's from R. R. Martin.
@shadow2k So is the moral to that story:. Bloody of-course 😂
@Milktastrophe Maybe that's where some of the monsteosities in elden ring have came from 😂
@Northern_munkey It IS in another league 😍
@KayOL77 No teacher would be complete without the "show your work" and in this case, she had the Dreamcast hoodie (Dreamcast is NOT dead, Dreamcast is LIFE and you will get my modded 'Cast from my cold dead fingers), the Mario and Luigi tattoo, and she and I both have matching Horizon Zero Dawn tattoos.
@KayOL77 @Milktastrophe
Oh no! I just faced a super weird looking monstrosity in the swamps yesterday! I now wish I didn't ask!🤣
@Ear_wiG just an interview on IGN!
I can recognize Martin's writing better than the back of my hand having read a lot of his material, my favorite being the Theon Greyjoy/Reek Chapters in the 5th asoiaf book (where my username comes from). He's a political writer with deep complex characters in the story with fantasy primarily in the background.
There is nothing in the first 10 hrs I played or in the marketing of the game thats actual Martin. He probably has an old-fashioned perspective on videogames, and certainly has no proper idea of what fromsoft games really are. My guess is he sat down and had coffee, gave a bunch of humdrum ideas that he thought Fromsoft, 'those gamey developers' would like from him and thats all his contribution is. Old man probably doesn't even know what he's wearing in the picture.
So yeah, marketing at the height of his spotlight, nothing else. If anybody's interested, do read or see what he says when he talks about games, it's hilariously cringe. Sounds like a grandpa who has no idea but is trying not to offend or saying what he thinks people would like to hear. Very funny.
Got to admit I was excited he was working on a game, less excited it was FromSoftware. I just do not get the praise lavished on this studio. Not my cup of tea.
I'm curious as to what he actually did, this game still feels completely like From Softwares other games for the most part
I recall an interview with Miyazaki in which he compared Martin’s contribution, and From Software’s process of building a game from it, to that of building a D&D campaign from a DM’s handbook. Miyazaki and company presumably wanted a fresh set of ideas from a creatively pure source in which to build their game on, and as artists, I think it was a brilliant alteration to their creative process for this project. Also, creators are people too, and Miyazaki obviously felt Martin’s contribution to be of enough importance to the vision of the game as to promote it as such, which, at least to me, speaks to the humbleness from where Miyazaki operates from.
Having played 70 hours of Elden Ring and am still finding new and interesting things, I can definitely see Martin's influence in the world building. Some of the things in lore and world building in past FromSoftware games made absolutely no sense, or had very little or vague explanations that, while interesting, would amount to little as you really didn't see the affect on the world aside from maybe an item or two.
In Elden Ring, even being teleported to seemingly random places make a lot sense once you actually look around at your surroundings. Random creatures like giant termites make sense when they're deep underground surrounded by roots. The NPCs have writing that, while similar to a lot of the Souls titles, seems more engaging with really cool and memorable things that they say, like Miriel for instance, who, when asked to teach you more esoteric incantations will say, "Heresy is not native to this world; it is but a contrivance." Which is a cool thing to say, but also has a lot of meaning as well. Especially when you fight monsters that are basically meteorites, and if they can get there, what else got there?
Story is as vague as always, but the world building is next level. It actually feels accessible to someone playing on their own rather than a community all piecing it together straw by straw. There's still a big aspect to sharing with the community, but instead of sharing straws you're sharing a piece of a puzzle, and you have many of them without looking through item descriptions as well.
@reek FromSoftware doesn't lay out the story for you in 30 interactions a minute with people and unending dialogue. I've certainly sensed the difference in ER's lore compared to BB and DS. There are many factions in this game and the demigods battling is certainly the work of Martin, I recommend you go more into the game, in 10 hours I'd reckon you've barely scratched the surface. I'm 40 hours in and I've explored a third of the world and met just a bunch of NPCs, but the story has Martin's prints all over it, I don't want to spoil anything, but look well for backstories of the demigods and the interactions between them and the effect this had on the world around them.
@shadow2k I'm not convinced she showed enough evidence to be unilaterally categorized as a gamer 😂
@Korgon I also haven't watched Game of Thrones yet really. I tried the first 3 episodes and got bored/disinterested.
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