Having begun his work on From Software’s Elden Ring years ago, around 2017-18, A Song Of Ice And Fire author George R.R. Martin has now completed what may be his last piece of writing on the game, publishing a post on his personal blog.
Titled Long Long Ago…, the blog post clocks in at two whole paragraphs, hinting that Martin, renowned for starting epic pieces of writing he cannot finish, has perhaps learned to reign in his ambitions a little in order to see something completed and published.
Here’s the post, in which he drops both Railroad Tycoon and the original Master of Orion mentions, which rules:
A few years back, Hidetaka Miyazaki and his incredible team of game designers, the creators of the DARK SOULS videogame series, reached out from Japan to ask me to help them create the backstory and history for a new game they were working on. Now, video games are not really my thing — oh, I played a few back in the dawn of time, mainly strategy games like RAILROAD TYCOON, ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS, and MASTER OF ORION — but this offer was too exciting to refuse. Miyazaki and his team from FromSoftware were doing groundbreaking stuff with gorgeous art, and what they wanted from me was just a bit of worldbuilding: a deep, dark, resonant world to serve as a foundation for the game they planned to create. And as it happens, I love creating worlds and writing imaginary history.
So I did my bit, and handed off to my new friends in Japan, and they took it from there. And years passed. Videogames are as big as movies these days (bigger, actually)… and take just as long to create.
But the day of ELDEN RING is finally at hand.
And I’ve got to say, it looks incredible.
Please note he also concluded the post with this, which I’ve had to capture as a gif because it’s not an actual emjoi:
Elden Ring is out on February 22, 2022, but you Elden Ring freaks knew that already.