In an update on George R.R Martin’s blog page, he explains how he became involved with the Elden Ring project. All took was a message from Hidetaka Miyazaki.
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. 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.