Late last year, it was announced that South Korean game developer Netmarble was releasing a brand new Game of Thrones video game: Game of Thrones: Kingsroad. We got our first real look at Kingsroad at the Game Awards in December, where a story trailer showed off characters like Jon Snow, Varys, and Jamie Lannister, along with a brand new player character who doesn't appear in the show or books.
But no matter how many cool nods you have to a television show, video games live or die by one thing: their gameplay. Now, we finally have a first good look at what playing Game of Thrones: Kingsroad will be like, which IGN unveiled this morning. Watch above!
Game of Thrones: Kingsroad will transport players across Westeros
All in all, the gameplay looks pretty solid! In Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, players assume the role of the new bastard heir to House Tyre, a small noble house in the North. After being elevated to a position of power within the house, they have to go around to various iconic Game of Thrones locations making allies and taking part in adventures. We see a face off with a Thenn, a meeting with Olenna Tyrell, horseback riding through gorgeous locations, and even quest boards in the cities of Winterfell and Oldtown. It seems like Kingsroad will be quite the globe-trotting affair.
The player character will choose to play as one of three classes: a Knight who specializes in longswords; a Sellsword who fights in the style of the Wildlings and Dothraki with "raw, aggressive, and destructive" moves; and a dagger-wielding assassin in the vein of the Faceless Men. Up until now, I've assumed these classes would just be transposed onto the main large, bearded warrior we saw in the previous trailer. But here we see that they look like totally different character models, which is nice!
I still don't understand why Game of Thrones: Kingsroad is a mobile game
All that said, I do still find myself scratching my head about one thing: the platforms this game will be available on. Kingsroad is a mobile game; it's currently slated to launch on Android, iOS, and Windows PC (where you can play it using the Windows Launcher). Players have wanted a big, ambitious open world Game of Thrones video game for years, but so far none have come close to scratching that itch. Kingsroad looks like the closest thing we've gotten so far, from the combat to the exploration, landscapes and recognizable cities. That kind of thing begs to be played on a larger screen, which just makes the decision to make this a mobile-first game all the more baffling.
Don't just take my word for it: just look at the influences on display here. We live in a time where lots of games borrow mechanics from other popular games, and Kingsroad is no exception. The combat is reminiscent of the more recent Assassin's Creed games, platforming through ruins recalls Horizon: Zero Dawn, and the horseback riding physics and bulletin board bounty system are strikingly similar to those found in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I don't see a lot of inspiration from mobile games on display in this trailer, but a whole lot of stylistic similarities to big, AAA multi-platform releases.
From everything we've seen so far, Kingsroad seems like it wants to be the kind of big, ambitious release on the same level as those other games I just mentioned. But so long as it remains a mobile phone game, it's hard to imagine it coming close.
But we shall see! I'd love to be proven wrong, and get to experience the first truly great open-world Game of Thrones video game. We'll find out if Kingsroad takes that title when it's released later this year.
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