Elden ring

Elden Ring is a third-person action / RPG with a wide variety of weapons, items and ways to fight enemies - even larger than in the Souls series ^[2] . Although the game does not have a direct connection with this series, from the point of view of the gameplay, it is heavily based on Dark Souls ^[3] . Compared to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice , the studio’s previous game, Elden Ring should have more emphasis on RPG elements and less emphasis on action ; unlike Sekiro , where a predetermined hero was controlled by the player, the Elden Ring player can create and customize his unique character ^[2] .

Elden Ring - an open world game; Hidetaka Miyazaki described his understanding of the term as “a large open space” that can be freely explored ^[2] . This open world must contain various dangers and areas that can be explored, including multi-level castles with an intricate layout ^[2] . The game character can move around the open world on horseback ^[3] . An integral part of the game is fighting with unique and frightening bosses ^[2] . Unlike many computer role-playing games , Elden Ring will not have peaceful settlements with friendly non-player characters - a character can only stumble on the ruins of villages ^[3] . Like the Souls series, the Elden Ring setting is a Western-style fantasy ^[3] .

Elden Ring development began in 2017 after completing work on additions to Dark Souls III , one of the studio’s previous games. FromSoftware wanted to create a new dark fantasy -style action / RPG where new ideas could be implemented that were not suitable for the Souls series. Like in other recent FromSoftware projects, Miyazaki provides only the most general leadership in various aspects of game design, art design and music, but tries to convey his vision of the game being developed to subordinate managers and employees. Miyazaki called Elden Ring the largest project in terms of content, scope and freedom of exploration of the game world, which FromSoftware has ever developed. According to Miyazaki, the world and the plot of the game is characterized by “darkness”, but an important topic is also “the will of mankind, or its ambition” ^[2] . The decision to move from levels of limited size, as in previous FromSoftware games to a large open world, was caused by several reasons - to show the world of the game and its history on a larger scale than before, to make exploring the world more free and deep, and battles with enemies - more diverse ^[3] .

Miyazaki long before developing Elden Ring admired George Martin's books and recommended them to other studio staff. Knowing about this hobby of the boss, studio executive director Eichi Nakajima contacted Martin with a proposal for cooperation; although Japanese developers expected Martin to refuse, the writer agreed to collaborate. Martin supported Miyazaki’s initial ideas, and they had a lot of creative conversations - on their basis Martin composed the mythology of the future world “with many interesting characters and dramatic moments, secrets and mysteries” ^[2] . Martin did not describe the actual events of the Elden Ring , but rather the history of the world, the events that occurred before the start of the game; Miyazaki compared the texts written by Martin with the manual for the master in a board role-playing game - they served as a guide to the studio Elden Ring for the studio staff ^[3]

Before the official announcement in the press, there were reports that FromSoftware was working with Martin on a game under the working name Great Rune or GR , based on Norse mythology ^[4] ; Martin indirectly confirmed these rumors, saying on his blog that he was consulting a video game developer from Japan ^[5] .

The game was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles in 2019 ^[6] .