Elden Ring: George R. R. Martin And His Gravy Veins
Image credit: FromSoftware
I’ll start off by saying I am a huge Souls Series fan. And, I will go so far as saying the series as a whole, along with Sekiro and Bloodborne, is my favorite game series I have ever played. The difficulty, along with the feeling of accomplishment when you actually learn a fight and win, makes these games unlike any else. They are possibly the most frustrating and most rewarding feelings you can get from a game series, and I am completely addicted.
I am also, or at least was, a massive A Story of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones series if you want to be a dick about it) fan. And as you can tell from my last two statements, I am a huge fucking nerd. So you would assume that I would be excited about a collaborative effort between two giants of their industries, joining forces and creating something that crosses their respected mediums. Well… I am not.
This is where Elden Ring comes into play. George R. R. Martin and From Software President and creator of my favorite games, Hidetaka Miyazaki, are teaming up to create a Dark Fantasy Action RPG much like the Souls Series. The overarching theme and mythos have been (will be?) created by Martin, and Miyazaki and his team at From will control everything else. This sounds great, in theory, till you sit down and think about it for a minute.
Image credit: FromSoftware
There are a lot of red flags when Martin is attached to any project. The dude is stretched thin, to say the least (that is clearly not literal because the guy looks like he’s been on a strict diet of Mountain Dew and Slim Jims for the past 40 years). He still has yet to complete the Ice and Fire series’s penultimate novel, The Winds of Winter, and it has been a fucking decade since he released the disjointed but enjoyable A Dance With Dragons and 25 years since he released Game of Thrones. Between working on HBO series, writing other novels, and now getting into the gaming world, I’m terrified that he will keel over and die of gravy veins before he gets to complete any of his projects.
His writing can be obnoxiously descriptive; just read any of his books of his where he gets into the minutia of every food item at a goddamn table. But, because of that type of detail, the worlds he builds are fantastic. A lot of back-stabbing, a lot of murder, and throw in some sibling fucking for good measure, and it’s all-around a good time. So you would think this would bode well for a video game where he only has to write the mythos and theme. So far, it seems it has not.
There has been little to no news about the game’s development other than little tidbits given in various interviews with Miyazaki. He basically said the game would be big, you can ride horses, and that Martin was a great inspiration. That’s it…That’s all we get after they announced this game at E3 in 2019. One can only assume that the conductor-hatted blob has railroaded (I really wanted to force that joke in there) the game and is delaying its production by being a perfectionist. Keep in mind, this is the same man who only uses a DOS computer with WordStar 4.0 to do all his writing. WordStar 4.0 was released in fucking 1987!! How fucking old and slow must that fucking be!?
Image credit: FromSoftware
I also tend to think that when two meticulous, detailed, and possibly neurotic people are working on the same project, problems can happen. Any disagreement on the story can and probably has lengthened production for this game. We know for a fact that Martin couldn’t give a flying fuck about timelines; he’s proved that time and time again. So, because he’s hurt us all before, I’m starting to think he will hurt us again, but this time with an RPG.
No one can deny that Martin is a talented writer, and I can’t even imagine writing a 1200 page novel as I sit here and struggle with a few paragraphs. Even the Game Of Thrones HBO series went to dogshit when they didn’t have Martin’s source material to take from. That alone shows that he is doing something right with his writing. But the guy has to step the fuck back and prioritize his time and maybe not take on 30 projects before he finishes one.
Of course, I would be excited if Elden Ring ever came out; I’m too much of a nerd not to be. I would pump hours into it like I have every other Miyazaki game. But I think Martin being attached to the game is just unnecessary. This conductor-hat-wearing pudgy-fingered old man needs to finish his book series and stay the fuck away videogames and HBO Series. I know he’s just trying to jam his cock into everything he can before the grim reaper inevitably takes him away on a forklift. But cut the shit.
