An important point, I hope: Game Of Thrones the game existed and was in active development before Game Of Thrones the show did the whole sexy Tolkien thing on our TV screens. While this is of course no guarantee that it is more Stark than Frey, it does mean we don’t need to worry that it’s been rushed to market to capitalise on Dinklagemania. The TV show came about early enough that developers Cyanide were able to redesign their takes on characters including Cersei (she bones her brother!), Lord Mormont (he hates his son but he’s a good sort otherwise!) and Varys (he’s got no goolies!) to use their respective actors’ likeness and voices, but we’re told that, for the most part, the game was designed closely around the books.

“When we showed George Martin The Wall,” says lead designer Sylvain Sechi of introducing the books’ author to the giant, miles-long icy structure/metaphor that protects the land of Westeros from the wildlings (and worse) that lurk up north, “he says ‘that’s a very, very big wall.” Upon their explaining to him that they’d made it to scale according to his description, he replied that “I wrote it too big!”(more…)