Elden Ring Creator Reveals if George R.R. Martin Is Involved With Shadow of the Erdtree

Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki has opened up about the involvement that George R.R. Martin has had with the game’s upcoming DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree. When Elden Ring first launched back in 2022, one of the title’s biggest marketing pushes was that it was created in tandem with George R.R. Martin, the author most notably behind the Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) saga. Since then, Martin has publicly stated that he hasn’t done any work on Elden Ring in many years as his contributions were done at the start of the project. Now, it’s known that this has continued to be true with Shadow of the Erdtree. 

Speaking to Famitsu (via TheGamer), FromSoftware president and director Miyazaki was asked about whether or not Martin helped contribute to Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree in any new ways. Miyazaki explained that the work that Martin had previously done for the game was still used to help establish the story and lore than would be expanded upon in the expansion. Outside of this, though, Martin himself didn’t work with FromSoftware to write anything new for the DLC. 

“The world and story of the DLC was inspired by the mythology that [Martin] penned just as in the main title, and was created thus,” Miyazaki said via translation. “To be more precise, what was created this time is part of what was created from the inspiration we took from his mythology for the main title. So, there was no additional writing done specifically for the DLC.”

Generally speaking, this news from Miyazaki isn’t all that shocking, especially given the manner in which Martin originally collaborated on Elden Ring. In all likelihood, there was still a lot of lore associated with Elden Ring that FromSoftware wasn’t able to incorporate in a major way in the base game that it then opted to spin out with this expansion. To that end, Martin still had a big hand in creating Shadow of the Erdtree even though his own efforts on this front were completed quite a long time ago. 

After first being announced roughly a year ago, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree finally has a launch date of June 21, 2024. When it arrives at this time, it will be available to play across all of the game’s current platforms which include PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC. A Collector’s Edition of Shadow of the Erdtree is also being sold by publisher Bandai Namco and comes with a statue of the expansion’s newest bosses.