Elden Ring has been a highly anticipated game since its announcement. The idea of the creative minds behind FromSoftware's works collaborating with concepts by George R.R. Martin was enough to get people behind it. But it was not until last week that truly substantial information on the game was unveiled at Summer Game Fest. In an interview with Chicago-based news station WTTW, Martin went further into the extent of his involvement with the development of Elden Ring.

When Martin was asked how the process differed between writing the world for a video game, as opposed to a novel, he went into a bit of detail behind it. While Elden Ring was not Martin's first game work, he described the process behind it as "it's like working on a movie, they take a long time to develop." One of the things he noted was that his contributions for Elden Ring had been done "several years ago." This includes the worldbuilding, the characters, and the plot behind Elden Ring; the setting being the biggest contributing factor for the game. According to him, the background that he had written for FromSoftware was "fairly detailed," and that the game was developed afterwards.

RELATED: Elden Ring Is Literally Taking Soulslikes to New Heights

Martin noted that after he had given all of the details necessary to the background and lore of Elden Ring, he had not heard much from the developer. He did, however, receive periodic updates from time to time, being shown different details behind the project. Some of these included the monsters that were designed and the in-game special effects.

Development of Elden Ring had begun around the time development for "The Ringed City" DLC for Dark Souls 3 had been completed. The initial collaboration was proposed from director Hidetaka Miyazaki's great admiration for Martin's works. When executive director Eiichi Nakajima reached out to Martin at the time, the expectation from Miyazaki was that the proposal would be turned down. To his surprise, Miyazaki was able to have a one-on-one conversation with Martin regarding this game. This allowed the two to discuss the themes, ideas, and overall game elements that would be incorporated; all of which would become the baseline to what Martin would build the game's mythos over.

In the same interview with WTTW, Martin refers to Elden Ring as "the sequel to a video game that came out a few years ago called Dark Souls." Considering his self-deprecating statement of "I'm not a big video gamer," it should not be taken at face value that Elden Ring is a direct sequel to Dark Souls. However, it is more along the lines of the next step in the Dark Souls franchise. While the game had been slowly in development and will be released next year, he had expressed his excitement at the game's release, sharing the fanbase's sentiment about wishing to see the game in its entirety.

Elden Ring releases on January 21, 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE: 5 Souls/Soulslike Games to Play to 'Git Gud' Before Elden Ring Releases