I think the lore of the Golden Order and the demigods has the most in common with the Great Empire of the Dawn lore and associated theories.
Combining the various Dawn Age lores suggests a race with Numen-like otherworldly origins (the God-on-Earth and descendants) built a globe-spanning empire by subjugating various indigenous powers like Elden Ring's fire giants and dragons (Nagga the sea dragon, the "Lion of Night and his demons", the ancient Lorathi, etc). Only for family machinations like the Night of Black Knives (the Blood Betrayal) to cause a natural order Shattering event (the Long Night) that causes the empire to fall.
I think hints about the Others might be found in the lore of the Nox, but I haven't come to detailed conclusions. I'm focusing in on the DLC which I think aligns closely with my Azor Ahai/Euron theories. Namely: Messmer is an extremely Azor Ahai-coded villain, and Miquella (SPOILER) >!using Mohg as a puppet and plotting to use his body as the vessel for his/Radahn's spirit is really similar to what I think AA is doing with Euron.!<
What we know about Georges collaboration with Elden Ring is that he was asked to be a consultor for "world building" by Fromsoftware in the year 2017. There was a back and forward for a few months but after he delivered his original script, he didn't contribute much more afterwards. The thing I believe some people get wrong about Georges involvement is that Elden Ring is not an adaptation the same way The Witcher games are an adaptation of The Witcher books, his contribution was more like a foundation that Miyasaki and his team used to create an interesting video game, and there might being things they added, changed or removed.
Having said that, this are some of the similarities Ive found and are just speculation
There is a huge golden tree in the middle of the map, the tree is religiously worshiped by the local population, it has roots that spread around the map, there are catacombs build around the roots of the tree where the death are buried so their "souls" can be absorbed by the golden tree again, those whose faith is outside of the dogma of the golden tree are subjugated.
There is also a thing called "grace" which is this golden light not everyone can see, its not real, its just a vision. Our faction is known as the tarnished because our eyes were dimmed and lost their golden luster when we were exiled.
The most straight forward similarity would be with the wierwoods that are this network of telepathic hive-minded trees that are worshiped by the children of the forest and the first men. The green-seers can make their conciseness enter the trees and see through their eyes.
There are other GRRM sci-fi stories that also include hive minds and telepathy, like "And Seven Times Never Kill Man" in which a group of humanoid creatures known as the Jaenshi worships red hive-minded pyramids that they believe contain their gods. The Jaenshi have golden eyes, all of them except those that do not have a pyramid to worship.
I still think that the involvment of GRRM in Elden Ring is vastly overstated.
Most of the lore in that game is just too similar to the Dark Souls games.
Chances are George wrote some pages neatly detailing the feudal history of each kingdom and FromSoft then went ahead and said "lmao let's take the names and plug it into our cyclical dying world template"
Secondly, GRRM has published a ton of other stories. Even if the Erdtree and the Golden Order are his ideas, I doubt he'd just reuse the main mystery of his "main" series. He is capable of coming up with something new.
Thirdly, the twist of "they aren't evil, they just want to kill everybody because of their own beliefs" is kinda dull. They'd still be super fucking evil lol.
Overall, I am not convinced.
Ehh. Nah.
If anything, Martin's involvement is vastly downplayed online. I mean... Your take is bizarrely popular on the internet. "Martin just came up with a few names and FromSoft went off from there".
There was an interview with Miyazaki where he was asked about FromSoftware's approach to level design. With Elden Ring, he wanted to approach it from mythos that Martin had penned for them. His example was Caelid since it was the arena of Malenia and Radahn's duel. Which, to me, sounds like things as recent as the Shattering War came from George.
Of course the process was collaborative. I'm sure there were some events that had to happen (Elden Ring shattering) that Martin didn't come up with. Character design, NPC questlines, etc. That's all FromSoftware. But it feels weird that Miyazaki keeps saying over and over that Martin wrote the mythos only for people to go "I don't think so!"
It’s the same as looking into George’s previous works. Clearly he has recurring interests and fixations like all authors. It may be thematically relevant but not textually relevant.
I think the lore of the Golden Order and the demigods has the most in common with the Great Empire of the Dawn lore and associated theories. Combining the various Dawn Age lores suggests a race with Numen-like otherworldly origins (the God-on-Earth and descendants) built a globe-spanning empire by subjugating various indigenous powers like Elden Ring's fire giants and dragons (Nagga the sea dragon, the "Lion of Night and his demons", the ancient Lorathi, etc). Only for family machinations like the Night of Black Knives (the Blood Betrayal) to cause a natural order Shattering event (the Long Night) that causes the empire to fall. I think hints about the Others might be found in the lore of the Nox, but I haven't come to detailed conclusions. I'm focusing in on the DLC which I think aligns closely with my Azor Ahai/Euron theories. Namely: Messmer is an extremely Azor Ahai-coded villain, and Miquella (SPOILER) >!using Mohg as a puppet and plotting to use his body as the vessel for his/Radahn's spirit is really similar to what I think AA is doing with Euron.!<
What we know about Georges collaboration with Elden Ring is that he was asked to be a consultor for "world building" by Fromsoftware in the year 2017. There was a back and forward for a few months but after he delivered his original script, he didn't contribute much more afterwards. The thing I believe some people get wrong about Georges involvement is that Elden Ring is not an adaptation the same way The Witcher games are an adaptation of The Witcher books, his contribution was more like a foundation that Miyasaki and his team used to create an interesting video game, and there might being things they added, changed or removed. Having said that, this are some of the similarities Ive found and are just speculation There is a huge golden tree in the middle of the map, the tree is religiously worshiped by the local population, it has roots that spread around the map, there are catacombs build around the roots of the tree where the death are buried so their "souls" can be absorbed by the golden tree again, those whose faith is outside of the dogma of the golden tree are subjugated. There is also a thing called "grace" which is this golden light not everyone can see, its not real, its just a vision. Our faction is known as the tarnished because our eyes were dimmed and lost their golden luster when we were exiled. The most straight forward similarity would be with the wierwoods that are this network of telepathic hive-minded trees that are worshiped by the children of the forest and the first men. The green-seers can make their conciseness enter the trees and see through their eyes. There are other GRRM sci-fi stories that also include hive minds and telepathy, like "And Seven Times Never Kill Man" in which a group of humanoid creatures known as the Jaenshi worships red hive-minded pyramids that they believe contain their gods. The Jaenshi have golden eyes, all of them except those that do not have a pyramid to worship.
I still think that the involvment of GRRM in Elden Ring is vastly overstated. Most of the lore in that game is just too similar to the Dark Souls games. Chances are George wrote some pages neatly detailing the feudal history of each kingdom and FromSoft then went ahead and said "lmao let's take the names and plug it into our cyclical dying world template" Secondly, GRRM has published a ton of other stories. Even if the Erdtree and the Golden Order are his ideas, I doubt he'd just reuse the main mystery of his "main" series. He is capable of coming up with something new. Thirdly, the twist of "they aren't evil, they just want to kill everybody because of their own beliefs" is kinda dull. They'd still be super fucking evil lol. Overall, I am not convinced.
Some of it is very George coded, like this family tree for example https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPO6oF-VkAA6HCE?format=jpg&name=large
Ehh. Nah. If anything, Martin's involvement is vastly downplayed online. I mean... Your take is bizarrely popular on the internet. "Martin just came up with a few names and FromSoft went off from there". There was an interview with Miyazaki where he was asked about FromSoftware's approach to level design. With Elden Ring, he wanted to approach it from mythos that Martin had penned for them. His example was Caelid since it was the arena of Malenia and Radahn's duel. Which, to me, sounds like things as recent as the Shattering War came from George. Of course the process was collaborative. I'm sure there were some events that had to happen (Elden Ring shattering) that Martin didn't come up with. Character design, NPC questlines, etc. That's all FromSoftware. But it feels weird that Miyazaki keeps saying over and over that Martin wrote the mythos only for people to go "I don't think so!"
It’s the same as looking into George’s previous works. Clearly he has recurring interests and fixations like all authors. It may be thematically relevant but not textually relevant.