Winter is Coming
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George R.R. Martin explains his involvement in Elden Ring

By Daniel Roman

SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 25: Writer George R.R. Martin of "Game of Thrones" signs autographs during the 2014 Comic-Con International Convention-Day 3 at the San Diego Convention Center on July 25, 2014 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Tiffany Rose/Getty Images)
SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 25: Writer George R.R. Martin of "Game of Thrones" signs autographs during the 2014 Comic-Con International Convention-Day 3 at the San Diego Convention Center on July 25, 2014 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Tiffany Rose/Getty Images) /
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We may not have The Winds of Winter in our hands quite yet, but the time is drawing near for another of George R.R. Martin’s many projects: Elden Ring. Elden Ring is a marriage between the A Song of Ice and Fire author and FromSoftware, the studio behind the immensely popular Dark Souls video game franchise. We’ve heard a little bit about Elden Ring from Martin before, but in a new Not A Blog update he talked just a bit more about his involvement, and how excited he is for the game.

“A few years back, Hidetaka Miyazaki and his incredible team of game designers, the creators of the DARK SOULS videogame series, reached out from Japan to ask me to help them create the backstory and history for a new game they were working on,” Martin wrote. “Now, video games are not really my thing — oh, I played a few back in the dawn of time, mainly strategy games like RAILROAD TYCOON, ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS, and MASTER OF ORION — but this offer was too exciting to refuse. Miyazaki and his team from FromSoftware were doing  groundbreaking stuff with gorgeous art, and what they wanted from me was just a bit of worldbuilding: a deep, dark, resonant world to serve as a foundation for the game they planned to create. And as it happens, I love creating worlds and writing imaginary history.”

"So I did my bit, and handed off to my new friends in Japan, and they took it from there. And years passed. Videogames are as big as movies these days (bigger, actually)… and take just as long to create.But the day of ELDEN RING is finally at hand.And I’ve got to say, it looks incredible."

George R.R. Martin lends his worldbuilding expertise to Elden Ring

Personally, I’m very much inclined to agree with him. Though I haven’t played any of the Dark Souls games yet, I will absolutely be checking out Elden Ring. It looks gorgeous…in a horrifying, will-haunt-your-nightmares sort of way, and the worldbuilding does seem very much in line with Martin’s other work. I love how much of his influence you can feel in some of these reveal videos. Names like Godwyn the Golden and Malenia the Severed sound like they’d fit right in in Westeros.

Plus, it’s cool to see Martin working in a world that is this dark again. Yes, Westeros has plenty of scary stuff, but it’s easy to forget that before he wrote those novels Martin also wrote quite a bit of horror fiction, like his short story Meathouse Man and the Mississippi steamboat-era vampire novel Fevre Dream. That kind of riveting darkness pervades the Elden Ring teases we’ve seen thus far, so it seems like the author’s style was a perfect fit for the similar tones that Hidetaka Miyazaki and FromSoftware like to evoke.

Elden Ring releases on February 22, 2022 for PS4, PS5, XBoxOne, XBox Series X | S, and PC.

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