Game Of Thrones RPG Is Faithful To Books — Shares Similarities With TV Series

You may or may not know this but the upcoming Game Of Thrones RPG has been in development at Cyanide since before the HBO series was even a thing.

Even with that being the case however, the developers had no trouble adapting material from the live-action series to the game itself.

Lead designer Sylvain Sechi gave an interview recently where he said that it was “quite easy” to work assets from the show into the game at such a late stage because both followed the original books so closely.

“Since we’re very faithful to the books and the show is very faithful, every media blends into that one universe,” he said.

“It’s not like the books have a very different vision of the universe to the game or the TV show. We don’t have three different versions of something. We’re all very close in terms of respect towards the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire, so it was more a question of what stuff we should take from the TV show to put into the game and what are the things we shouldn’t do.”

I can answer that, in two words: More Tyrion. Please.

Sechi gave an example with the throne room in King’s Landing, which doesn’t look entirely the same but shares familiarity with the elements drawn from Martin’s descriptions. The iconic Iron Throne nonetheless remains the same.

There were some other areas where Cyanide actively chose to draw on the TV series, having attempted to figure out the key visual elements that fans would clamour for.

“Top of the list was the characters, because Game of Thrones is more about characters than places.”

And because we just love seeing Sean Bean bite it, in every way possible.

“The characters are the heroes, their House is part of that hero and the likenesses of the characters and the sigils are important. We got the actors and their voices, as we felt that was important.”

Cyanide also went out of its way to preserve the music that is so familiar to Game of Thrones fans.

Seems someone was listening, when I dropped that column about innovative gaming. Indeed it seems as if finally, a game universe derived from another medium is going to be done right. Here’s hoping. In the meantime, why don’t you check out our preview of the game, which Dean painstakingly crafted for your reading pleasure.

The Game of Thrones RPG releases May 15th, admittedly an ambitious time considering Diablo III and Torchlight 2 also release around then, but I still fancy its chances. Do you?