Better pray to the old gods and the new that this rumor is true.
On Sunday, August 27th, on the day of the season seven finale of Game of Thrones, an unfinished listing for “Bethesda: Game of Thrones” materialized on the Target website.
Apart from the header reading, “Bethesda: Game of Thrones,” there are no details on the page other than the category labeling it as a featured product, not even a description confirming the title as a video game.
While it may be possible that Target accidentally released the title before it was officially announced, it’s also likely that the listing was an unfortunate mistake and there is no video game in the works.
Online retailers accidentally release video game titles all of the time, and sometimes mix up the upcoming titles, listing a title that doesn’t exist. And if this were the case, fans of the fantasy series would be losing the Game of Thrones video game of their dreams.
Bethesda Game Studios, known for their massive RPGs and for creating some of the best open world fantasy games, such as Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls series, would be the ideal studio to create a Game of Thrones video game. Game of Thrones has such a vast landscape filled with endless adventures and places to explore within in the Seven Kingdoms that could only be fully appreciated through an open world fantasy game similar to Skyrim.
The detail within Game of Thrones is so comprehensive that the video game could explore areas and timelines we never had the chance to explore within the TV series, making the possibilities boundless.
While the HBO TV series is a celebrated success, the video game adaptations of the series have not received the same praise. Of the Game of Thrones titles currently in existence, none of them seem to capture the essence of the show. The past video game adaptations of Game of Thrones includes Cyanide Studios and Focus Home Interactive’s RPG version released in 2012, and Telltale Games’ episodic rendition, Game of Thrones: A Telltale Game Series, which was released in 2014. Telltale is currently working on a second season.
Even though Telltale Games currently has the license to a Game of Thrones adventure game, licenses are often times split up into different genres so that multiple studios can create video games based off of the same movies or TV shows, so if Bethesda were making a Game of Thrones title, it wouldn’t be a problem.
By the end of the season seven finale on Sunday night, our hopes were dashed when there was no announcement to confirm Bethesda’s new project. There is currently no other information.
While Bethesda’s has made no comment yet on the potential leak, it’s not entirely implausible that the title exists. There was a rumor that Bethesda was creating a Game of Thrones game that didn’t have any evidence to back it up until now. Bethesda advised fans not to count on a new Elder Scrolls game being released “anytime soon,” which frees up Bethesda’s schedule for a Game of Thrones release.
“We have two larger projects that are more classically the scale of what we do, but even bigger,” said the studio director, Todd Howard, earlier this year.
Bethesda currently has five projects they’ve been keeping secret, one of which could be a Game of Thrones game.
While Bethesda has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the game, we may know more now that the season seven finale of Game of Thrones has come and gone. It does seem like the perfect timing to announce a Game of Thrones video game, especially since it was recently speculated that fans will have to wait to see the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones until the Summer or Fall of 2018, maybe even later. A Game of Thrones video game in the works may just be the news fans need to get them through the long night.
Sources:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/bethesda-game-of-thrones-project-potentially-leake/1100-6452902/
http://nerdist.com/game-of-thrones-video-game-bethesda-rumor/
