The first season of the Game of Thrones adaptation will take place in parallel with events that occur near the end of the television show’s third season and the beginning of its fifth season, and the plot will revolve around the Forresters, vassals of House Glover of Deepwood Motte, and their seat in Ironrath.
The Forresters are a minor house in Martin’s series, only mentioned briefly in A Dance with Dragons, according to Adam Whitehead. He also points out that Telltale’s adaptation is based on the television show, and not directly on Martin’s novels, so events in the game will not influence or necessarily be influenced by Martin’s future novels. The first episode, called “Iron from Ice, after the Forresters’ words, will be released sometime before the end of the year.
Despite its impending release, there are no official screenshots, though those below recently leaked via Twitter user @Lifelower, and give us a first glance at Telltale’s take on Martin’s popular universe.
For being a minor house, the Forresters certainly role with a who’s who list of Westeros celebrities if the leaked screenshots are anything to go by, including Tyrion and Cersei Lannister, and Margaery Tyrell. Whitehead speculates that the plot of the series’ five episodes appears “to revolve around both the Forresters’ involvement in the War of the Five Kings (presumably in which they support Robb Stark) and their rivalry with House Whitehill.”
The Game of Thrones videogame will be available on PC and all major home consoles when it’s released later this year.
Brazilian artists Anderson Mahanski and Fernando Mendonça asked just that. In answer, the talented illustrators created a set of portraits imagining how six of Game of Thrones‘ most iconic characters — Jon Snow, Cersei Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, Hodor Hodor, and Daenerys Targaryen — would appear in a more family-friendly (though no less inebriated, apparently) fashion.
The results are delightful.
Click thumbnails to embiggen
More art from Mahanski and Mendonça, including some stunning line-drawn portraits, can be found by visiting their DeviantArt profiles: Mendonça/Mahanski. Beware, salaciousness awaits.
Via George R.R. Martin’s Not a Blog, we have what appears to be the final cover art for The World of Ice and Fire, a companion book to his popular A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin describes The World of Ice and Fire as “a big coffee table volume with lots and lots of stunning artwork, and tons of fake history.” HE also admits that his contribution, which was supposed to ring in at around the length of a novella grew in size. “We were supposed to provide 50,000 words of text,” he said, “but… ah… I got carried away.”
Sounds like fans have a lot to look forward to. Now, here’s hoping the artwork in the The World of Ice and Fire is of a higher quality cut than that in The World of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time and Terry Brooks’ The World of Shannara. I still have nightmares about those books.
According to an interview with the New York Times, George R.R. Martin’s former personal assistant, Ty Franck, has partnered with Telltale Games as a story consultant for the developer’s upcoming adaptation of Game of Thrones. Also notable is that, in addition to his direct work with Martin’s series, Franck is also one-half of the Hugo Award-nominated “James S.A. Corey”, a pseudonym shared by him and Daniel Abraham, under which they write The Expanse, a popular science fiction series.
“Telltale has a story consultant assigned by HBO,” The New York Times reported, “the science-fiction author Ty Corey Franck, who is the personal assistant to George R. R. Martin, the author of the books that inspired the TV series and an executive producer on the show.” Franck has experience with adaptations from both sides of the table, having recently published, as James S.A. Corey, a Star Wars Legends novel, Honor Among Thieves. Read More »
If the books and TV show seem to be revelling in the worst aspects of human nature, that’s partly because those aspects are what Westeros helps us to recognize in ourselves.
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, George R.R. Martin discussed the past, present, and future of his mega-popular series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and its television adaptation, Game of Thrones. Some of the most interesting moments in the interview concern the future of HBO series and the potential that it might catch up with Martin’s work on the novels.
“The minute you have a series [of books] and a book comes out,” Martin explained (surprising no one), “people immediately begin asking, ‘Where’s the next book?’ And the more successful the series is, the more people ask that question, and the more pressure you begin to feel.”
Martin’s struggle against that pressure is one of the most publicized and scrutinized stories to hit SFF fandom is the past decade. Here’s a creator working on a seminal work of fantasy, adored by millions of people around the world, who is also crushed under the weight of his fame, criticized for his own fannish activities (such as watching football, or attending conventions) and condemned for not writing fast enough. As if works the calibre of those he’s producing can come over night.
Prominence of this issue hit its peak when Neil Gaiman, another writer who understands the intricacies of dabbling in many mediums, wrote an open letter to Martin’s detractors. “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch,” he famously said. “This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now.
“People are not machines. Writers and artists aren’t machines.” Read More »
