The action-RPG game Elden Ringedited by bandai namco and big competitor for the title of GOTY 2022, is a best-seller with 12M sales as of March 16, 2022, i.e. three weeks after its launch. Surfing on this wave, its publisher, Bandai Namco, approaches another legend of fantasy literature.
A new collaboration in perspective
The developer well known to gamers for its series of souls (Demon Souls, Dark souls) and other “die and retry” classics (BloodBorne, sekiro), FromSoftware is currently on cloud nine since the release of its new hit Elden Ring, an open-world action-RPG set in a fantasy universe. To do this, who better than a best-selling fantasy author to collaborate to the construction of the lore of the game.
George RR Martinprolific fantasy author of the epic saga The iron Throneadapted as a hit TV series by HBO from 2011 to 2019, participated in the writing of the open world in which Elden Ring comes to life. Despite the aura of the author, it seems that the collaboration with the development studio has not been as fruitful as it seems: many characters have indeed been rewritten by the teams of the studio itself , while fans of the Iron Throne still waiting for the release The Winds of Winter, the next installment to appear in the saga.
Corn it seems that Bandai Namco, the publisher of the game, learned lessons from this success : whereas since the success of Game Of ThronesFantasy has once again become a fashionable genre (testified by the many series to come, from House of the Dragon at The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerPassing by Willow), announcing collaborations with renowned authors of the genre is an excellent move.
Thus, during a live stream on the YouTube platform, the famous Brandon Sanderson, fan of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s studio games, received a gift from Bandai Namco in the form of a box containing, among other things, the game and a personalized message displaying the willingness of the publisher to collaborate on their next project. The author of the books Sons of the Mists and the latest volumes of The Wheel of Time (recently adapted by Amazon Prime Video) immediately expressed his excitement about his participation in such a project. Moreover, he had already tweeted in January in a humorous register:
George RR Martin would rather spend his time commentating on the NFL than playing games from the FromSoftware studio.
We can expect that a partnership between an accomplished development studio and a player clearly seasoned in Souls-like could give rise to the next phenomenon of the video game world.
