Elden Ring wasn't just FromSoftware's biggest game ever: it was also the studio's most high-profile collaboration with someone outside the world of game development. George R.R. Martin wrote the lore for The Lands Between, which FromSoftware built upon to create their fantasy game's story. FromSoftware hasn't done that kind of collaboration many times in its history, but there is one other famous example. Throughout the Armored Core series, FromSoftware has relied on mecha designer Shoji Kawamori to guide the visual style of the hulking piles of metal players pilot and destroy.
Kawamori isn't famous on the international level of George R.R. Martin, but he is a legend within his old field. Or fields—he started working as an animator in the anime industry as a teenager in the 1970s, and eventually created, wrote and directed most of the entries in the Macross series. He also designed Macross's famous transforming variable fighter jet-mech hybrid.
