Watch a Thai family squabble over grandma’s Elden Ring in official ad

A Thai advert has turned George R.R. Martin’s Elden Ring backstory into domestic drama.

Commissioned by Bandai Namco’s Southeast Asia office, the trailer runs to almost four minutes and situates the lore of The Lands Between in a suburban home. This is a magical realist short story in which a family smashes its heirloom - a ring - and then squabbles over the pieces that remain.

And frankly, who’s to say this isn’t exactly what old George wrote? Like most of his work, the trailer relies on multiple perspectives over multiple generations to build a complex web of pain and eventual catharsis. And FromSoftware has already explained that George R.R. Martin’s role in Elden Ring was to write a fictional history, which the studio then interpreted into the warped, cryptic world we know and love to die in today. Perhaps The Lands Between are Thailand.

My personal favourite moment comes when a weary young teen boy asks, “Did we… force grandma to run away from home again?”. It’s the tired resignation of somebody who’s been asked to endure too much interpersonal Souls drama in his short time on the planet. Still: cool to have an Erdtree out in the front garden.

We haven’t seen numbers for Thailand yet, but early data from other countries suggests that Elden Ring is the fastest selling Souls game yet. So we can’t say for sure that this wasn’t the shrewdest marketing move ever made.

Check out our Elden Ring guide for tips on beating bosses the way grandma might.