Imagine a drama in which a conversation can yield more tension than a pitched battle; in which an apparently offhand chat can be the deciding factor in who lives and who dies; in which everyone dies, all the time.
Yes: it transpires it’s possible to cherry-pick qualities from both The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones in such a way that they appear one and the same. Which suggests that the rumoured meeting of Telltale Games and George Ah-Rah’s opus is that one thing a king craves for his daughter: a good match.
The whispers come courtesy of IGN, who cite “multiple” mystery sources in claiming that a Martin adaptation is in development even now.
Official word from Telltale is predictably less lucid. Here’s Steve Allison, the studio’s SVP of publishing:
“We get these sorts of rumors about what we could be working on next cropping up all the time. Officially we have no comment.”
It’s worth noting that October found Telltale CEO Dan Connors buzzing with excitement for coming projects, which he said “definitely fall into our dream IP scenario”.
While no further details are forthcoming about the supposed production, you can bet Telltale would take the same tack as Cyanide did with their Game of Thrones RPG and remove their story by one step – replacing the key cast of the books with a new set of characters to be manipulated and murdered as they see fit.
A Song of Ice and Fire has been iffily translated to this medium to date – neither Cyanide’s RPG, nor their RTS, Genesis, managed to make an impression on players or their bank accounts. A supposed collaboration with Paradox Dev Studio, meanwhile, fell through before work ever began. And Telltale’s track record with difficult licenses isn’t spotless either: while The Walking Dead is rightfully celebrated, their Jurassic Park series is better forgotten.
Still: the developers’ recent 400 Days experiment showed them capable of telling a tale, as it were, from a number of angles and perspectives. And isn’t that what Game of Thrones is about?