Could this be the first great Game of Thrones video game? It’s premature to start praising Telltale’s upcoming series before we’ve even gotten a chance to play it, but the stars seem to be aligning for this one.
For starters, it looks great, as you can see in the just-released trailer below — our first good look at the new game outside of those leaked screenshots. Also, Telltale, previously responsible for The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us among others, has a good track record of high-quality adventure games.
Plus, they have snagged some of the HBO cast members — including Lena Heady and Peter Dinklage — to play their parts in the game, which should make for some badass moments. (Here’s hoping Dinklage performs better than he did in his last video game.)
From Telltale:
Based on the award-winning HBO television drama series, Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series tells the story of House Forrester. Caught up in the events of The War of the Five Kings, they are placed in a precarious position where members of the household must do everything they can to prevent the house from meeting its doom.
Today we can announce that some cast members of the series will reprise their roles in the game. While players will control five members of House Forrester in their story, the series will have them interacting with fan favourite characters throughout the season, including Tyrion Lannister performed by Peter Dinklage, Cersei Lannister performed by Lena Heady, Margaery Tyrell performed by Natalie Dormer, and Ramsay Snow performed by Iwan Rheon. Additional cast members will appear in later episodes.
As for the game’s story? You’ll get to play as five different characters, Telltale says:
House Forrester is a noble house from the Wolfswood in the north of Westeros. Bannermen to House Glover, they have always offered unswerving loyalty to the ruling great house of the North – the Starks. The Forresters are seated at Ironrath, an imposing stronghold surrounded by towering ironwood trees. Built over fifteen hundred years ago by Cedric Forrester and his triplet sons, Ironrath is a testament to the strength and endurance of Ironwood. The Forrester house words are ‘Iron from Ice’, which echoes their belief that – like the ironwood itself – the adverse conditions and unforgiving landscape of the North only makes them stronger.
The game will be played from five different points of view. Each is a member of House Forrester; either a direct family member, or a person in service to the House. Scattered across Westeros and Essos, each will play their part in seeking to save House Forrester from destruction.
Playing as five characters not only reflects the epic scope of Game of Thrones, but is also something that the player needs to be mindful of. This is because the actions of one character can ripple out to affect the rest of House Forrester. Multiply the actions of one character by five, and you’re truly playing the Game of Thrones… where you win, or you die.
Telltale hasn’t announced a release date for this six-episode series yet, other than “soon”. (By the end of the year, they say.) On the big Westeros timeline, the Game of Thrones game will wind up kicking off where season three of the show ends and finishing around where season five begins — likely just in time for that season to actually start airing.
Comments
11 responses to “Finally, A Game Of Thrones Video Game That Looks Worthy Of The Name”
In fairness to the 2012 RPG, it had an excellent story but was letdown by a clunky combat system, dated visuals and spotty voice acting. Once you got accustomed to it the narrative aned characters were enthralling.
Let’s hope Peter Dinklage’s voice acting has improved.
Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister is great.
Peter Dinklage as Dinklebot is quite the opposite!
I could not be more excited for this.
All the hype? All the hype.
This storyline should be very interesting.
At the end of the third book/season 3, House Glover has sworn fealty to the Lannisters (under threat of death) and their castle has been seized by Asha Greyjoy. By the end of season 4, their castle has been returned to them and they decide to side with Stannis against the Iron Throne.This should make for some great moral dilemmas for the members of House Forrester.
*Ygritt thinks you know nothing*
I’m playing the Walking Dead at the moment and I get the feeling that my choices mean nothing outside of a few different character reactions. Am I right in thinking that all of the deaths and events happen for everyone no matter what choices they make?
And if so, hopefully the GoT version introduces some more consequences.
Pretty much. But that doesn’t necessarily cheapen the drama. You should think of it as a zombie colouring book: while the outlines don’t change much, your choices still influence the finished picture; particularly on an emotional level.
Personally, I vastly prefer this approach to having “branching” endings, most of which are invariably rubbish.
I totally agree, branching isn’t always better. But I kinda feel slighted. Like, they emphasise that the game dramatically adapts to your choices and out very hard binary choices in front of you like – save person A or B but it turns out no matter what you do person A dies. I can understand the drama of the personalities is what fuels the game, but the characters move like really awkward marionettes being operated by a drunk person so it kinda detracts a bit. But all in all, it’s still been a very fun experience. My girlfriend and I play an episode over a few nights in bed before sleeping and we’ve gotten a few good scares and jumps out of it. For $6 a pop it’s hard to be too critical of it.
You can make some choices which dramatically alter things in TWD S2E5 but otherwise there are minor differences