Elden Ring has been available for a few days now and fans of FromSoftware were delighted by the grandeur and level of detail of this new game world that came out of the minds of Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin: the game designer has recently expressed himself on Elden Ring narration, they explain once again how important it is for him that some elements remain freely interpretable by the player.
Elden Ring: the narration is deliberately left to free interpretation
What the games of FromSoftware tell their story in silence is certainly not new: since Demon’s Souls the events that took place in the game world were strictly left to the player’s interpretation, which could be based on some elements found in the game, such as the descriptions of the objects, to understand what had happened and why a certain place was in its current state.
This hasn’t changed with Dark Souls, con Bloodborne e Sekiro, despite the latter having a much more linear narrative style. With Elden Ring, also thanks to the work of George Martinthe software house has proposed a story with much more defined outlines than in the past, without however providing the complete picture, as per tradition, so that users can have fun reconstructing it.
Here is what Miyazaki said:
“In our games, the story must always serve the player’s experience. If Martin had written the story of the game, I would have worried that we might have gotten away from that. I wanted him to be able to write freely and not feel held back by some dark mechanics that may need to change during development. That power of imagination is important to me. Offering space for user interpretation creates a sense of communication with the public and, of course, it favors the exchange of opinions between the users of the community themselves. This is something that I like to see play out with our games and that has continued to influence my work. “