Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of Elden Ring – the open world action RPG that launches on February 25 – has commented on some of the most important influences in the creation of the new FromSoftware universe during an interview in the latest issue of the EDGE publication. . George RR Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones participated in the myths of this title, one of the most anticipated of 2022 .
“It’s difficult to give any one single inspiration that had a major impact on Elden Ring. There have been a lot of different works that influenced the creative process in various ways – The Lord Of The Rings, The Eternal Champion series of novels by Michael Moorcock, aspects of tabletop RPGs such as RuneQuest, etc. There are a lot of motifs and themes that I was able to pick from these various works that had an effect on the development of Elden Ring.” says Miyazaki.
Writer Michael Moorcock has been very critical of JRR Tokien’s work in the past – instead he praises Terry Pratchett, JK Rowling, Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip Pullman and Alan Garner – so it is still a curiosity that Elden Ring draws ideas from both authors.
George RR Martin has been a constant source of inspiration
Miyazaki also speaks in the interview of the creative process with George RR Martin, which is one of the keys that most differentiates Elden Ring from Dark Souls . The director and other developers traveled to Martin’s home to meet him in person, and while there is a significant age difference, the passion for fantasy worlds brought the two together.
Mind you, Miyazaki remembers that George RR Martin has only participated in the Elden Ring mythology because they thought that working directly on the game’s story and dialogue would limit his creative potential. One of the themes that came up with the story is the connections between characters, such as the relationship between parents and children.
The article also gives some details on Godfrey, the character featured on the cover of the magazine and the metal box edition of Elden Ring, which represents many of the values of the character created by the player and with many connections to him: something that It used to glow brightly and now it has been fogged up, it has fallen out of favor.
When we were talking with George Martin, we had these themes and ideas for creating pieces of artwork for the bosses, for these core characters of the story. And when he wrote the mythos, we asked him to create these dramatic heroes of this ancient mythos that takes place before the events of the game. These dramatic and heroic characters weren’t really present in our previous titles, so this is something that was really appealing to me – how he would depict the mystique and heroic qualities of those characters. And Godfrey is sort of an embodiment of that. He’s one of the major players in the game. One of the motivations of the player character in Elden Ring is to become Elden Lord – they’re to journey to The Lands Between and become the next Elden Lord.
In the sort of heyday of the Golden Order of The Lands Between there were two Elden Lords, and Godfrey was the first of these. He was the very first Elden Lord and was married to Eternal Queen Marika, who’s been detailed in some of the lore we’ve released publicly so far. And he was representative of this period of grandeur and affluence. He represents everything great about the Elden Ring and about The Lands Between at that time. Eventually, he was exiled from The Lands Between. He himself became tarnished and he shares this deep connection with the Tarnished – the player character. Godfrey is an embodiment of their long history and struggle. He represents a lot of what the player character stands for and he symbolises a deep connection with the player – something that used to shine brilliantly and has now become tarnished and fallen from grace.