Hot off the Season 1 finale of its episodic Game of Thrones series, Telltale Games has announced that it will proceed with Season 2. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner had this to say:
"I’m pleased to officially confirm that there will be a second season of Telltale’s Game of Thrones series, and that it’s currently in development. The questions left on the table at the conclusion of season one, who survived and who didn’t, as well as all the other choices you made play a huge role in the second season. We’ve been planning the second season all along, but I really shouldn’t be revealing more than that."
When THR asked Bruner how far along Telltale was in the development of Season 2, he said that Telltale’s process resembles that of a television show, saying that a significant amount of time is spent talking in the writer’s rooms with not only the writers, but the designers, directors, and creative teams as well. “It’s not unusual for our games to exist longer on whiteboards and sticky notes and in scripts longer than they do in traditional game production.”
That unique approach is probably why Telltale Games is held in such high esteem when is comes to story-driven gaming. Before playing Telltale’s Game of Thrones offering, I was deeply enthralled with the studio’s Walking Dead game, so I knew that a Game of Thrones series from Telltale would be fantastic, and I was not disappointed.
THR also asked Bruner about the dark ending of Season 1, and how House Forrester’s story mirrors that of House Stark. Bruner mentions that there is always a price to be paid for playing the game of thrones, and that things rarely end well in this world. He also talked about the necessity for players to feel like they were familiar with the story, which is why House Forrester’s plight is so much like that of House Stark.
As for when we can expect Season 2, Bruner only mentions that the story is still on the whiteboard and sticky notes-stage. As for the question of where this game fits into Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire canon, Bruner says that Telltale has been working closely with HBO in the creation of its story, and how House Forrester came from a single line in A Dance with Dragons:
"The army covered twenty-two miles the first day, by the reckoning of the guides Lady Sybelle had given them, trackers and hunters sworn to Deepwood with clan names like Forrester and Woods, Branch and Bole."
From there, the Telltale team fleshed out House Forrester’s backstory, where it stands in the hierarchy of the harvesting and stewardship of the Ironwood forest, and as bannermen to House Stark. In regards to canon, however, Bruner says that Telltale’s story lands “somewhere in between.”