Brandon Sanderson, acclaimed fantasy and science fiction author, most notable for his works on the Mistborn series, The Stormlight Archive and Wheel of Time books 12-14 has a bone to pick with Elden Ring developer FromSoftware — namely that they should have chosen him to work as a writer on the game instead of Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin.
When asked about allowing his characters to appear in other entities at a recent Q&A session at the Dragonstone MiniCon panel, Sanderson explained the process behind Mistborn‘s Survivor of Hathsin, Kelsier appearing in Fortnite, but then quickly ended up voicing his dissatisfaction, or saltiness with FromSoftware’s decision to choose George R.R. Martin as the game’s lore architect instead of himself.
“Let me be salty!” Sanderson exclaimed. “FromSoftware decides to make a fantasy game and partner with a fantasy novelist, and they choose someone who spends his days blogging about the NFL rather than the person who has played their games since King’s Field and has listed their games as his favorite games among his Top 10 consistently over time. What are you thinking, people?!
FromSoftware
“If you don’t know, they went to George,” Sanderson added, “and made a game with George, and I’m like, George doesn’t play video games. George has no idea. So anyway, there you go.”
Although Sanderson’s comments were facetious, GRRM did admit that “video games are not really [his] thing,” though he does cite classics such as “Railroad Tycoon, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Master of Orion” as some of his favorites.
Notwithstanding, GRRM has been very candid regarding his work on Elden Ring, which he explained on his blog back in December.
“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,” GRRM explained in his blog post.
FromSoftware
“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.”
Do you agree with how Brandon Sanderson thinks he should’ve been Elden Ring writer instead of George RR Martin? Or is GRRM’s writing style better suited to the dark, intricate world of Elden Ring?
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