George RR Martin compares Elden Ring’s world to Lord of the Rings and Conan

Now that the game finally has a release date of January 2024, Elden Ring writer George RR Martin has confessed that all his work was completed “years ago” – but likens the world to Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barbarian.

In an interview with WTTW News Chicago, George RR Martin – who if you didn’t know already, is the creator of Game of Thrones  – was asked about his collaboration with Dark Souls developer From Software on Elden Ring, where he admitted that it’s been “several years” since he’s worked on the game. “My work on it was actually done years ago,” Martin says. “These games, they’re like movies, they take a long time to develop.”

Martin then explains that his work on Elden Ring was entirely focused on characters and world-building. He then cites “JRR Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age, [and] the Foundation universe of Isaac Asimov” as his major influences in how he approached creating the universe of the Elden Ring. He may be responsible for this weird sentient pot, in other words.

“I worked up a fairly detailed background for them and then they took it from there,” Martin adds. “Really it’s been several years since I’ve last seen them but they would come and periodically show me some monsters they’d designed or the latest special effects, or cool things.”

George R. R. Martin talks Elden Ring in new interview:
-His work on the game was done many years ago
-He wrote the worldbuilding & characters
-From would periodically show him enemy & graphic designs
-He is excited for the final game ? pic.twitter.com/y5gUDvo2Hd

— Mordecai (@EldenRingUpdate) June 17, 2024

The writer also notes that “I’ll be as excited as anybody else to see it” and confirms what we already know – that Elden Ring has a release date of January next year. At least they told him that much. He also says, bizarrely, that Elden Ring is a sequel to Dark Souls, but that should probably be considered a mistake on George RR Martin’s part as there’s been no indication that this is true.

They may not be connected, but the game’s director Hidetaka Miyazaki did confirm that Elden Ring will have more “manageable” difficulty than the studio’s Souls games. Furthermore, unlike George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones, Elden Ring won’t be pulling a ‘Winds of Winter’ on us either.

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