Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki said meeting Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin to discuss Elden Ring was "like speaking with an old friend" in an interview with Edge – and explained more about how the two legends of their fields collaborated.
Martin helped construct the fantasy world of Elden Ring – effectively its history and major figures, but not the game's plot – and Miyazaki has good memories of travelling to America to have the initial conversations, saying Martin already knew about the Dark Souls games before they met.
Miyazaki said: "I knew immediately from talking to him, it just became apparent his skill and his passion for the fantasy genre, and for games as well. There was a little bit of a generation gap between us, so I felt a bit apprehensive about going to these talks, but after a lot of these conversations, it was just like speaking with an old friend.
"It just felt so fresh to have those conversations with someone who was so passionate about the same things, and to show that pure joy and sense of curiosity for these fantasy worlds."
The two seemingly developed a high level of respect for each other, professionally and personally, and this helped Miyazaki tell Martin that From Stofware only wanted him to write Elden Ring's history, not the actual story or in-game text.
Miyazaki said: "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, along with what kind of games we typically make, and the sort of themes we'd like to explore in our games.
"It was all very loose and quite vague. Then he would come back to us with a lot of ideas: how about this, this, and this? That back-and-forth started the exchange of ideas."
Martin provided Miyazaki and his team with samples of text depicting different parts of Elden Ring like its history or important figures, along with a "sort of backbone" story to the world.
Developer FromSoftware interpreted these to build an actual game, Miyazaki said, and "the issues that Mr Martin dealt with in his writing provided these motifs for the game itself, so that is something I am very grateful for."
Miyazaki recently commented that Martin may be "shocked" by what he's done to the characters in teh final game, and confirmed that Elden Ring's gameplay is as hard as ever.
The game will be released on February 25, and IGN already has you covered with our guide that includes everything we already know about Elden Ring's dungeons, bosses, secrets, and more.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.