Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin is collaborating on a Japanese video game

Rumored to be working with the director of Dark Souls, the Japanese game industry’s biggest name in gritty, lore-rich fantasy.

Last weekend, Game of Thrones aired its series finale, and an extremely vocal contingent of fans made their dissatisfaction known on social media and Internet message boards. That was the pattern for just about every episode in the show’s eighth and final season, but one person who wasn’t complaining was author George R. R. Martin, whose novel series A Song of Ice and Fire serves as the basis for Game of Thrones.

Posting on his quaintly understated official blog, Martin’s tone was gracious and grateful. “I want to thank people, but there are so many,” he wrote following the finale’s airing.“But I do need to mention David Benioff, Dan Weiss, Bryan Cogman…and of course the great team at HBO, headed by Richard Plepler.” He then went on to remind fans that while Game of Thrones is ending, the careers of the people involved with it are not, including his own. In addition to working on the two remaining Song of Ice and Fire novels, Martin has a number of other projects going on, which he listed as:

“As a producer, I’ve got five shows in development at HBO (some having nothing whatsoever to do with the world of Westeros), two at Hulu, one on the History Channel. I’m involved with a number of feature projects, some based upon my own stories and books, some on material created by others. There are these short films I am hoping to make, adaptations of classic stories by one of the most brilliant, quirky, and original writers our genre has ever produced. I’ve consulted on a video game out of Japan…”

Hold up, what was the last one again?

“I’ve consulted on a video game out of Japan.”

Considering that Martin is a writer, and not a programmer or visual artist, it seems most likely that his consultation was as a scenario writer or conceptual world designer. Where the possibilities get really interesting is a report from gaming website Gematsu, which suggests that Martin’s video game collaboration is with Developer From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of the trio of hits Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro.

Citing “a person familiar with ongoings at From Software,” Gematsu says that the game is being developed under the codename “GR,” and describes it as “an open-world title” with horse-riding, which would suggest a large-scale fantasy world.

▼ Martin and Miyazaki have a shared forte: gritty sword-and-sorcery epics with copious amounts of political conflict and/or social upheaval, and a general shunning of simple “good guy defeats bad guys with his sword, everyone lives happily ever after” narratives.

Gematsu’s source claims the game will be published by Bandai Namco (publisher for the three games in the Dark Souls series), and that an official announcement is coming at this year’s E3 trade show in Los Angeles, which kicks off June 11.

While we’ll have to wait and see if Gematsu’s specific information turns out to be true, Martin himself saying he’s already worked with a Japanese developer means there’s a game of some sort on the way, and considering how awesome the results were for the anime-style covers for the Song of Ice and Fire books in Japan, odds are we can expect something awesome from the next meeting of Martin’s writing and Japanese creators.

Sources: George R. R. Martin official blog, Gematsu via Hachima Kiko
Top image: YouTube/GameofThrones
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