Game of Thrones writer and creator George R.R. Martin helped From Software develop the magical fantasy world of upcoming video game Elden Ring. The game will release on February 24 for PC and February 25 for PS4 and PS5.
The game’s director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, believes Martin may be “shocked” by what has been done with the Elden Ring characters he helped create.
What happened? —
Martin wrote some very human characters for Elden Ring, but Miyazaki’s team has adapted them. “When Martin wrote these characters... these demigods were much closer to their original form, and maybe closer to human form,” Miyazaki said in a recent interview with GameInformer.
“If we get a chance to show Martin and if he gets a chance to see the game and see these characters, I think he might be a bit shocked.”
Why change them? —
Miyazaki explained his rationale for adapting the characters, citing character development and game events.
“So it was more up to us to interpret this and say, ‘how did [Martin’s characters] become such inhuman monsters? And how did the mad taint of the shattered shards of the Elden Ring and its power affect them?’ So that was our job to take these grand heroes and sort of misshape them and distort them into something they were not,” Miyazaki said.
“The process of taking these very human characters with flaws but these very dramatic, heroic characters and basically breaking them and making them misshapen, grotesque monsters...that was a lot of fun for me personally,” he added.
Working with Martin —
Miyazaki also helped build anticipation for Elden Ring in a recent interview with Sony’s PlayStation blog.
In it, he explained that Martin “created these very heroic and grandiose designs, essentially these demigods from the history of Elden Ring’s world. So we wanted to take what he provided us and create a new core for these characters and how we design them.”
On working with Martin, Miyazaki said, “Honestly, one of the major appeals of working with George R.R. Martin was how the medium he works in is such a different style. Games and books are vastly different forms of media, after all.”
