Hidetaka Miyazaki Had A Very Good Reason For Stopping George RR Martin From Writing Elden Ring’s Main Storyline

Elden Ring‘s riveting lore is one of the greatest parts of the FromSoftware action-RPG. The game’s sprawling open world is peppered with environmental cues and textual details about the history of The Lands Between in FromSoftware’s hallmark fragmented storytelling style.

One of the biggest reasons behind Elden Ring‘s hype was the fact that it was a writing collaboration between FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki and novelist George R.R. Martin, both legends of their respective industries. However, Miyazaki recently shed some light on Martin’s role in the writer’s room, and it’s far different to what we assumed.

Hidetaka Miyazaki Played To Martin’s Strengths

FromSoftware went with a surprising approach in crafting Elden Ring‘s intricate and mysterious lore. In an interview with EDGE magazine, Miyazaki said:

Mr. Martin respected the fact that we didn’t want him to write the game’s story or the in-game text. Because we felt that would actually limit his creative output, […] and then it would limit the inspirations we could possibly get from him.

Instead, a symbiotic collaboration was formed. “So we established very early that he would be writing that foundation, that historical element to the game, something that took place long before the events of the game itself,“ Miyazaki revealed. He goes on to describe the initial brainstorming process:

We started off by giving him these very vague and broad themes and ideas for the mythos that I had swimming around in my head.

Martin, fueled by these initial sparks, flourished in this open-ended environment. Miyazaki recounted, “Then he would come back to us with a lot of ideas: how about this, this, and this? It was a fascinating back-and-forth process, where we would take his ideas and incorporate them into the world that we were building, expanding on them, and then feeding them back to him to see what kind of reactions we would get.“

Elden Ring‘s Fragmented Storytelling Lined Up Perfectly With Martin’s World-building

The foundation Martin created wasn’t a traditional narrative. Instead, it was a textual world-building document. “There were no visuals,” explained Miyazaki. It was a historical record, detailing the setting, the flow of time, and the key figures who shaped the lore.

This history contained a core narrative, but it served more as an introduction to the world and its natural order. “We could then interpret it in our own way and provide visuals to bring it to life,” says Miyazaki.

Thanks to this interview, we now know exactly what role George R.R. Martin played during the development of Elden Ring, with it affecting Shadow of the Erdtree as well. It was a very natural, strengths-based partnership that ultimately played out brilliantly for FromSoftware, as the action-RPG secured the 2022 Game of The Year award as well as mountainous critical and commercial success.