Elden Ring

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Elden Ring was developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It was announced at E3 2019 originally for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. No further information was revealed until a June 2021 trailer announced a release date of January 21, 2022, with additional releases on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. In October 2021, it was announced that the game would be delayed to February 25, 2022. Elden Ring is directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with worldbuilding by fantasy novelist George R. R. Martin, best known for his A Song of Ice and Fire novel series. A fan of Martin's work, Miyazaki contacted him with an offer to work together on a project, giving him the creative freedom to write the overarching backstory of the game's universe. Miyazaki used his contributions as the foundation of the game's narrative, comparing the process to that of using a "dungeon master's handbook in a tabletop RPG". Some staff from the Game of Thrones television series adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire also assisted with the game's development. As with many of Miyazaki's previous games, the story was designed to not be clearly explained as FromSoftware intended for players to interpret it for themselves via flavor text and optional discussions with non-player characters (NPCs). Miyazaki hoped Martin's contributions would produce a more accessible narrative than the studio's previous games. Work began on the game in early 2017 following the release of The Ringed City, a piece of downloadable content for Dark Souls III, and was developed alongside Sekiro. As with games in the Souls series, players have the ability to create their own custom character instead of using a fixed protagonist. Miyazaki also considered Elden Ring to be a more "natural evolution" to the Souls series, featuring an open world with new gameplay mechanics such as horseback riding. Unlike many other open-world games, Elden Ring does not feature populated towns with NPCs, with the world having numerous dungeon-like ruins in their place. Miyazaki cited Fumito Ueda's work such as Shadow of the Colossus (2005) as an influence that "inspired him to create" Elden Ring, while also drawing influence from "the design and the freedom of play" in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017). Yuka Kitamura, who has composed for many of Miyazaki's previous games, contributed to the game's soundtrack.