George R.R. Martin: Elden Ring Is a Sequel to Dark Souls

If you watched the Elden Ring trailer, you probably thought it looked a lot like Dark Souls. Well, that could be said for just about any modern FromSoftware game. It’s a good thing George R.R. Martin has our backs confirming the upcoming action RPG is indeed a sequel to the influential 2011 release.

The A Game of Thrones author was recently interviewed by the Chicago-based WTTW network after receiving an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. The interviewer asked several questions about his life, including topics related to his incredibly popular book series. He was also asked about how working on video games differed from writing fantasy.

“Actually it’s considerably different. I’ve played some video games. I’m not a big video gamer,” replies Martin. “But the game is called the Elden Ring and it’s a sequel to a game that came out a few years ago called Dark Souls and it came out of Japan.”

So, there you have it. Martin confirms the Elden Ring is a sequel to Dark Souls. How deep the connection between the two has not yet been revealed, but we’ll inevitably find out when it launches next year.

Martin also confirms that he’s actually been done with his work on Elden Ring for a while now. In fact, he states that his work was done “years ago,” and mainly centered around creating its world.

“I worked up you know a fairly detailed background for them, and then they took it from there so really it’s been several years since I’ve last seen them,” says Martin. “But they would come in periodically and show me some monsters they’d designed, or the latest special effects, or the cool things, but the game has been very slowly developing and it’s coming out in January I believe so I’ll be as excited as everyone else to see it.”

Elden Ring is scheduled to launch on January 21, 2022, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.