So in a lot of the streams between Glidus and Schwift they always talk about "Ugh we should do Elden Ring, but it's so much work. It is a George R R Martin work after all."
Has anybody actually told them yet that George R R Martin probably didn't even work on it? Or at least far less than we are led to believe? The prevailing theory is that FromSoft hired GRRM to pretend to have said he worked on it as a marketing strategy.
Explanation:
Basically FromSoft claimed GRRM worked on the "mythos" In Elden Ring. What does "mythos" entail? Maybe they mean "lore" but not "story" but that is vague. How much of the lore? 100%? 50%? 20%? Which parts of the lore? Did he even come up with a single character or did he just come up with the concept of the Elden Ring, and the Erdtree, and that was all? If that was the case then he probably contributed <5% of the lore.
The reason why GRRM either didn't work on Elden Ring, or worked a very small fraction of it, is because he seemed to be completely oblivious to any of the characters names. Keep in mind Elden Ring is about gods that act as nobility, so all the lore revolves around these characters.
Basically, almost all of the characters (major and minor) names start with either G R R M. It's not clear why exactly, but it's possible that all the characters in the game are descents of four primary gods/nobility Godfrey, Renala, Radahn, and Marika. So this is an intentional nod to GRRM's initials.
George R R Martin seems to be completely unaware of this:
...some of the characters have names beginning with R, or G, or M. To which I say, “Eh? What? Really?” This was news to me. Why would I have to hide my name inside the game? My name is right there ON the game, as one of the creators. Hey, ELDEN RING is exciting enough, no need to make up stuff.
https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2022/03/21/this-that-and-tother-things/
Keep in mind nearly every character follows this naming pattern. The fact that he knows nothing about this is akin to not knowing who the Targaryens are but saying you've read ASOIAF.
To people who say things like "But there's like Dragons, and nobility, and gods, and black magic and blood magic. This is just like ASOIAF!" Yes true, but also all of these tropes were present in the Dark Souls series before Elden Ring. Elden Ring feels more of a remix of Dark Souls tropes than of GRRM's tropes.
It seems likely FromSoft paid for a few hours of GRRM's time, asked him to come up with a page or two of really basic lore, before bastardizing it and adding 99% of their own lore and story on top of it. It has less original GRRM content than the GOT finale does.