Telltale offers details about Game of Thrones adaptation

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] Telltale Games executive has gone into detail about how the upcoming video game adaptation of Game of Thrones came to fruition.

Steve Allison, Senior Vice President of Publishing, recently spoked to Polygon about the two upcoming games that Telltale Games has in store.

Announced at the Spike TV VGX Awards earlier this month, Telltale are working on a new Borderlands game, titled “Tales from the Borderlands”, and confirmed rumours that a video game adaptation of Game of Thrones TV series on HBO, which is based on George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire books.

According to the interview, the game will draw from both the HBO TV series and the books but Allison did say that certain elements will defer. He said: “Creatively, we’re going to defer to the show because we are using HBO’s license. Playing the game should feel like watching the show and we’ll be making lots of decisions the same way the showrunners do.

“We’ve talked with them about how they make their decisions and how they pace their scenes, what they do when they face a big plotline and what to keep and cut. We’re taking their expertise and applying it to the material we bring to the table.”

During several “long meetings”, Telltale developers would survey the current market, including franchises, and whatever peaked developer’s interests, they would decide to work on. After a year of negotiations with HBO, the company finally agreed. “We looked at things we wanted to work on and the most important things are what are we passionate about,” said Allison. “After that we ask, is there enough of an audience at the end of day that would play this thing?

“We want franchises that are really difficult to translate into traditional gaming, we don’t want to make another Walking Dead first-person shooter,” he added. “What works with the franchises we have it the characters, the story and drama and the relationships. We look for franchises that are huge and have all those elements.”

“We’re super happy to work with them, and we’ll be working on a lot of games for many years to come,” Allison said.

The game is currently in early stages of development.