Elden Ring
Elden Ring, a videogame brainchild of FromSoftware, was released under the auspices of Bandai Namco Entertainment. Notable figures behind this venture are Hidetaka Miyazaki, famous for his creation of the Dark Souls series, and George R.R. Martin, acclaimed author of the much-loved fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. They've combined forces to craft a novel world in this open-world action RPG.
The inception of Elden Ring stemmed from Miyazaki's ambition to bring to life an open-world game that evolved beyond the mechanical confines of the Dark Souls series. His aspiration was to transcend the limits of FromSoftware's prior games' constricted dungeons, with the belief that a larger setting would enrich exploration's freedom and complexity. To realize this, he enlisted George R.R. Martin, a fan favorite, to impart his worldbuilding expertise. Miyazaki envisaged that Martin's input would yield a narrative more palatable than the studio's preceding games.
While Miyazaki retained the lead writer's role for the central storyline, he empowered Martin to recount events predating the principal narrative. He likened their collaboration to utilizing a "dungeon master's handbook in a tabletop RPG". True to FromSoftware's style, the storyline isn't spelled out explicitly, but intended for players to deduce via flavor text and optional NPC dialogues. Miyazaki noted his pleasure in providing NPCs with extra depth, believing they were more engaging than those in his prior works.
In an IGN interview, Miyazaki explained his decision to entrust Martin with the pre-narrative due to the constraining nature of FromSoftware's storytelling approach. He pointed out that FromSoftware aspired for a game format beyond linear or story-driven. Allowing Martin to freely design historical elements that didn't directly involve the player was a means to that end. Some team members from Game of Thrones, a TV rendition of A Song of Ice and Fire, also contributed to the game's development.
Work on Elden Ring kicked off in early 2017, post the launch of The Ringed City, a DLC for Dark Souls III. The game was built alongside Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, another creation under Miyazaki's direction. FromSoftware adopted a "co-director" framework to concurrently create both games, with a director from the staff assigned to each game during its initial development phase. Miyazaki subsequently steered the mechanics, art, and music of the games.
Elden Ring's design team honed in on scale, role-playing, and storytelling as the chief ingredients. The team attributes the game's sense of diversity to its scale and designed the role-playing elements to facilitate diverse player interactions with the environment. The game's expanded scale necessitated the development of multiple explorable structures, which were then integrated into the open world. Miyazaki cites Shadow of the Colossus, The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher 3, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as design influences. He also draws storytelling inspiration from RuneQuest, The Lord of the Rings, and Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion. Elden Ring's original soundtrack was composed by Tsukasa Saitoh, Shoi Miyazawa, Tai Tomisawa, Yuka Kitamura, and Yoshimi Kudo.
