Looking back at it now, it looks like an unfortunate move…

The TV-series based on R. R. Martin’s books became a huge success, even though the viewers now have to wait over a year for the 8th season. Meanwhile, game adaptations aren’t all memorable. Cyanide took a shot at it in 2012, Telltale has its episodic series’ second season on hold for now for at least a year or not more, and Bethesda’s leak turned out to be a fluke: Target, the site where it showed up, confirmed it wasn’t true…

Obsidian Entertainment’s CEO and co-founder, Feargus Urquhart told Eurogamer that they already turned down to make a game out of the books in 2005:

„My feeling was, understanding the IP at the time, it’s about this political intrigue, and people’s connection to the IP is to all these characters – that’s how the books are written, each chapter is a person and what’s happening to them. Other than what weird stuff is going on beyond The Wall, and the dragons, and some hint [of fantasy], there are no magic users, there are no clerics, no thieves. There are dudes with swords and armor and a little bit of mysticism, but within the mainland, there are no goblins, no kobolds,” he said.

It wouldn’t have been easy to make the plot into an RPG, and Obsidian would have had its hands tied as characters were all had fixated roles already. „So maybe there could have been something we could have done, but we were starting to think more about open-world RPGs, and we wanted our players to have agency, to be important in the world,” he added.

In case you don’t know them, they made games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout New Vegas, and South Park: The Stick of Truth…