Bethesda Considered A Song Of Ice And Fire Game

Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda Softworks almost made a video game based on A Song of Ice and Fire. In a new interview, Bethesda's Todd Howard said they were in discussions to adapt the novel series into video games before they started work on Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

"With A Song of Ice and Fire, we went ‘We want to do that!’ People in our studio liked it, and it seeped in a bit to what we were doing,” Howard told EGM. “We were actually asked a while ago to turn those books into games.”

Howard says that Bethesda turned down the opportunity so they could focus on Elder Scrolls.

"We wanted to do our own world. That’s where we wanted to put out time into. Before we were even making Skyrim, there was a conversation with George R.R. Martin’s people. They thought it would be a good match—and so did we, actually—but then we thought about if that was where we wanted to spend our time. It was tempting, though."

While the thought of Bethesda making a Song game does produce a screaming nerdgasm, it does make sense for them to decline. They've already got their own medieval fantasy series. Developing a Song game feels sort of redundant for them. Furthermore, they're the sort of studio that focuses on one big game at a time, so inserting a Song adaptation into their schedule would've probably pushed back any sequels in the Fallout or Elder Scrolls series.

Development duties for A Song of Ice and Fire's ultimately went to Cyanide. They've created a real-time strategy game based on the series, A Game Of Thrones - Genesis, due at the end of this month.