The ever-elusive Elden Ring was ultimately shown to the public in the Summer Game Fest E3 2021 Showcase. And in today’s interview with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu (via Siliconera), FromSoftware’s president Hidetaka Miyazaki speaks more details regarding the story of the Elden Ring world as well as what is actually George RR. Martin’s involvement in the whole project.
According to the interview, Elden Ring’s world itself is ruled by Demigods, people who are blessed with the blood of Queen Marika the Eternal — her children. Those who have been blessed have eyes shining like gold, and thanks to the power of Elden Ring, the Lands Between is blessed by golden-colored trees. Those who have lost that light from their eyes are banished from the land. However, fragments of the fabled Elden Ring were taken by Queen Marika’s children and it ends up engulfing the land with bloody war.
Unlike in Sekiro and similar to Dark Souls, you won’t play as a named character. You will take control of the Tarnished, the descendant of people who has been exiled from the Lands Between, whose looks you can freely customize. Something, a Guidance, is leading you to the location of Elden Ring, and you can decide for yourself whether to follow it or not. FromSoftware itself learned a lot about combat mechanics from Dark Souls III. This time you can “attach” one particular combat move (out of around 100) into any weapons you like. You can also summon NPC “spirits” that have specific tools to help you in combat, such as a shielded spirit or a bow-wielding one.
Miyazaki added that for Elden Ring, George R. R. Martin helped built the foundation, the lore or myths, of the world. And while he and his team know Martin is an extremely busy man, Miyazaki is pleased that Martin has contributed to the game and thought that it’s “mysterious and thick”, with dramas based on “complex blood relationships” that gave the development team a lot of “new stimulation” that they never had before. Miyazaki stated that he is particularly a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, Fevre Dream, Tuf Voyaging, and Wild Cards. This fact is also the catalyst that drove director Eiichi Nakajima to contact Martin for help building the base story of Elden Ring.
After years of leaks, Elden Ring will finally be released for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on January 21, 2022. Now adopting fully open-world gameplay, Miyazaki promises that the game will be easier to understand/piece together than in the Dark Souls series but have a considerably higher degree of freedom.
