Prolific fantasy author and Ranni fan number one (“I’ll choose the ending where my character gets a waifu”) Brandon Sanderson has thought a lot about how to apply the Elden Ring and Souls game storytelling approach to his novels. While last pass on his YouTube channel, he was asked if he thought there was a way to recreate Souls-style descriptions in books. “I’ve thought about it. I really have,” Sanderson replies.
“I think you could do something interesting…” Sanderson begins, before describing the storytelling in Souls and perhaps getting distracted by a collectible cookbook in the distance. He talks about the restrained utilize of NPCs and cutscenes, and item descriptions that tell bits and pieces of the game’s overarching stories. “They don’t want to hand you the story. You have to piece it together.”
He then compliments this approach, especially in relation to video games. “It doesn’t stop the action, you can stop it whenever you want. Games are about having fun.” Sanderson believes that having to work to piece together a mystery is in keeping with FromSupple’s approach to mood. “There aren’t many answers, so you’re building the game on top of the game.”
“Can you do that again?” he continues, referring to writing conventional fiction, “I think you can. It’s like using epigrams as a complementary storytelling style.” A complementary storytelling style to subtly slip the distinctive storytelling of the Souls series into Sanderson’s paperbacks? Go ahead! “Of course, Dune is a great pioneer of that. Watchmen is another really great example.”
Unfortunately, we don’t get any more insight from Sanderson, as he’s immediately distracted by a gnarled tree with a hanging corpse. “I bet those guys are going to fall and attack me,” the 34 million-selling mega-nerd speculates before going to investigate.
Sanderson has been open about his love for FromSoftware’s work in the past, and Bandai Namco is apparently keen to work with him, sending him a package of gifts in advance containing an expression of interest in cooperationand also huge sword. It’s always the men who can afford huge swords who get free swords, to quote Engels. Oh, he certainly deserves it. Sanderson commented at the time that he had actually already come up with the whole idea for a Soulsborne game, previously expressing good-natured salt George RR Martin was the one who wrote the history of Elden Ring.
“From Software decides to make a fantasy game and work with a fantasy novelist, right? And they choose someone who spends his days blogging about the NFL over someone who’s been playing their games since King’s Field and consistently listed their games in his top 10? What are you people thinking?”
Sanderson, who also wrote the story for the Moonbreaker RPG, also doesn’t shy away from offering an additional tongue-in-cheek remark about the series’ previous lack of a dedicated jump. “Whoever went to Myazaki and said, ‘Hey, you know there’s this revolution in video games. Why don’t you try this — it’s called a jump button!’ And showed him Mario and he said, ‘Oh wow, now you can have a button for that?’” Of course, true fans know that if you utilize a jump to get over an obstacle in Elden Ring, you haven’t really gotten over it.
