Cyanide Studios has acquired the interactive rights for the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books by George R.R. Martin.
This is pretty big news for ASoIaF fans, but really, I’m not sure how this will be pulled off. The only type of game this could really produce is something like Civilization or maybe an RTS. There’s just not enough magic in the series for Cyanide to pull off a RPG of any kind, and the types of characters you could play would be pretty limited. A sellsword or a knight. There’s just no room for diplomats, politicians, and royalty in an RPG.
Cyanide does have a bunch of games in the vein of “Pro XXXXX Manager Series”, so the RTS option, or something similar, seems to be the best bet. There certainly are a lot of battles, historical and contemporary to the story itself, that could be played out.
Mostly, though, Cyanide will have to find a way to make the story and the characters a big part of the game, because the characters are really what make the story hold together. And no story for the characters to move in means they’re living in a vacuum. All of which leads to a game that’s no fun.
I can’t wait to see what comes of this.
I’m not terribly ecstatic one way or the other based on the studio’s track record. I don’t see any quality titles in their repertoire. What I do see are the games you’d see on the games rack at a Target or Wal-Mart, dingy and forgotten with a layer of dust on their spine since they haven’t been touched in an eternity.
Still this is a very casual, very cursory look and maybe these games are deep, hidden gems just waiting to be tapped and they’ll do great justice to the ASoIaF name. But as of this moment, color me underwhelmed.