One of the key appeals of Elden Ring, aside from it being another grueling dark fantasy Soulsborne game by From Software, is the involvement of George R.R. Martin. Although the legendary fantasy author helped create the world-building for The Lands Between, it's been left ambiguous exactly how much influence he had over the final product. Now, some Elden Ring fans are theorizing that the "Turtle Pope" character was designed by George R.R. Martin.
Turtles--or rather, their land-bound cousins, tortoises--are a very common feature in Elden Ring. They are some of the few non-hostile mobs that can be encountered in the game's open-world setting, which has led to a torrent of screenshots. One Elden Ring player even dressed their character as a Ninja Turtle in the character creator.
Twitter user Nate E-K posted a tweet commenting on the assumption that Miriel, Pastor of Vows--an NPC nicknamed the Turtle Pope by fans due to looking like a very large tortoise wearing a papal hat--was created by Japanese game designer Hidetaka Miyazaki. Although Miyazaki is well known for putting his interests into his games, which led to many poison swamps in Elden Ring, Nate E-K argues that the Turtle Pope came from another direction. To prove his point, he shared a screenshot of a short biography of Martin.
The excerpt reveals that Martin kept turtles as a young boy because his housing complex didn't allow pet cats or dogs. This fact may become quite funny in the context of the Elden Ring dog meme, which has many players referring to tortoises as dogs. Furthermore, several other Twitter users backed this up by noting that Martin often wears turtle-shaped broaches in public. His fashion choices could imply that the tortoises in Elden Ring were added as part of Martin's world-building efforts.
A second Twitter user, Knife_28, even noted that one of Martin's real-life turtle pins made it into Elden Ring as a talisman. This discovery certainly appears to confirm the connection between the author and Elden Ring's tortoises.
While nothing on the subject has been confirmed or denied yet, Martin appears to be quite satisfied with Elden Ring. He stated that the game looked incredible before it came out and has since shared his happiness over the game's warm reception. If the tortoises were added by him--or as a tribute to him--it might help explain some of his satisfaction with the title.
Elden Ring is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.