George R. R. Martin is an incredible author. He has been proving his expertise in the art of creating worlds for well over 30 years now. He is known for writing A Song of Ice and Fire series of books, which inspired the popular HBO series Game of Thrones. Then he went on to work on Elden Ring, one of the most successful Soulslike games of all time.
He worked on Elden Ring with FromSoftware and the game’s director, Hidetaka Miyazaki. While this game retained all the Soulslike genre’s conventions, it still went on to become a big success. This was in no small part due to George R. R. Martin’s involvement with it. While he says he only worked on the game’s lore, many fans think he left more than just some stories in this game.
George R. R. Martin refutes some crazy fan theories about Elden Ring
Sometimes artists love leaving their mark on their body of work. It’s done a number of times in video games too. Sometimes developers would leave messages in games, like that one in God of War: Ragnarok, while other times they would just leave artwork in their games, like in Dying Light.
What do writers do? They would leave small hints or references in the story through their writing. They would sometimes mention some things in the dialogue, and sometimes they would name the characters behind something or someone.
This is exactly what fans suggested George R. R. Martin did in Elden Ring. They looked at the names of bosses like Godfrey, Radahn, Rykard, Miquella, and many more and got the impression that this is how he left his mark on the game.
While it all sounds pretty interesting, the author himself suggested nothing of the sort happened. He said he has been writing for a very long time, and he now finds that naming characters has become harder, given how many characters he had to name in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. He also suggested that he has been naming his characters with those initials for a while, but he does not do that because they are in his name.
“There’s a weird story all over the internet about how I ‘hid’ my initials in Elden Ring. Because…ah…some of the characters have names beginning with R, or G, or M. To which I say, ‘Eh? What? Really?’. This was news to me. I have been writing and publishing stories since 1971, and I suspect that I have been giving characters names beginning with R and G and M since the start. Along with the other twenty-three letters of the alphabet as well.”
This is an interesting insight; it is pretty easy for people to start seeing things in Elden Ring that do not exist. Given the fact that they actually keep on looking for hints of lore in every aspect of the lore of this massive game.
One thing is for sure: George R. R. Martin might not have hidden his initials in this game, but Hidetaka Miyazaki surely hid hints of lore in every corner of this open-world game.
His influence on Elden Ring is pretty huge
While none of those characters in this game are named after him, George R. R. Martin’s influence on it and the world around it is something else. His knack for writing about politics and his way of defining fragile characters are seen in Elden Ring too.
From Radahn to Malena, all are destroyed, yet they cling to the world. This writer definitely knows how to write an engrossing tale.
