Earlier this week, we reported that retailer Target might have accidentally leaked a Bethesda Game of Thrones game. A listing for “Bethesda: Game of Thrones” appeared earlier on the retailer's website. With Bethesda previously revealing it is working on two unnamed large-scale games, rumors quickly spread like wildfire; however, a Bethesda-developed Skyrim-style Game of Thrones game was ruled out after Target confirmed that its listing was simply an error.
“This is not a real product – we’re sorry for any confusion,” a Target representative told Forbes. It was not specified if the deed was done by someone as a prank. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a Bethesda-made Game of Thrones game will only exist in our imaginations for now.
Having diverse locales and various factions of Westeros alongside The Elder Scrolls’ huge, sprawling open-world and RPG mechanics seems to fit Bethesda’s alley, but it’s worth noting that before Bethesda created the critically acclaimed The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the team was offered to adapt George Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice novels into a video game, which the team politely rejected. Thereafter, the team strived to create their own world instead with Skyrim.
“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.” – Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard told EGM in 2011.
At present, the only Game of Thrones video game in development is a MMORPG browser-based game being developed by Bigpoint and Artplant titled Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms, though its release window is unknown. Meanwhile, Telltale Games still has plans to work on its narrative-driven Game of Thrones season 2, but is currently “on hold” as the team is busy working on numerous projects such as Batman: The Enemy Within, Minecraft: Story Mode - Season 2, and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series. Fans are in for an agonizingly long wait for anything Game of Thrones-related as HBO's original TV series’ seventh season just concluded.
Are you disappointed with the news? Or do you still believe in the Bethesda Game of Thrones title, with this denial being to keep it under wraps until the announcement is ready? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
