Skyros: The Game of Thrones game we never got

 You either win or you die

So Game of Thrones was a show from approximately four or five lifetimes ago. Remember that? The breakout fantasy epic which wove unpredictable intense storytelling, an unrelenting attention to detail, dozens of great characters, oodles of technical talent, more budget then anybody knew what to do with and Kit Harington to frankly dizzying success? We're talking about an epic fantasy story which was popular in the mainstream; can you comprehend how insane of a prospect that is? People haven't cared about a fantasy world that much since the days of the Lord of the Rings movies, and after the way Game of Thrones treated them they likely never will again. Game of Thrones was such a triumph over pop culture, that even went it very clearly veered off the rails into abject mediocrity, people still stood around for it a little bit, convinced to some degree that what they had sat through wasn't total trash, like it obviously was, because it couldn't be: it was Game of Thrones and Game of Thrones meant quality. There's some special level of black magic over the entertainment world required to pull those sorts of tricks off, and at this point I can only really think of Marvel being in the same position. But my point is, bemoan the series all you want for how it ran away with itself and vomited a pathetic final season up, for a time this series was the biggest thing in the world for several legitimate reasons.

One such reason, and in my opinion a very important one, was the raw look of the show; because good lord have we never seen a fantasy realised to such dizzying vivacity. Sets, costumes, shots, editing; everything from a production stand point in the series just soared into this overdrive state where the bar of possibility kept being pushed forward every year by this series. The result was a show that looked better then any other out there and a world which many still have ingrained in their hearts despite how all of it ended. Even for me, though I've managed to purge all the important names, dates, locations, and anything of value related to this now-tainted series; I still can close my eyes and remember the iconic cityscapes, those sweeping battlefields, those beloved character moments, that music, the feeling of actually being excited about something; in many ways I miss Game of Thrones. That's Game of Thrones as it used to be within my memory, don't think I could ever actually bring myself to watch the damn thing again. No way. But all that is to explain why, despite myself, I find myself interested in the Skyros Total Conversion mod for Skyrim.

I remember when Game of Thrones first started to take off, and hearing again and again people say "Huh, that Skyrim game really looks like Game of Thrones." Even at the time that would be a comparison which would have me pinching the bridge of my nose like any insufferable socially-awkward nerd out there trying to hold back from a burst of "Just because both series' deal with 'Northener' stereotypes doesn't make them comparative. The Witcher would be a much better comparison." But this was several years before Wild Hunt so nobody wanted to hear about the mature fantasy series they were sleeping on and just preferred to make surface level comparisons between the two screens with snow in it. (Because snow makes everything exactly the same) Yet I still had to concede, yes I suppose that visually there's an undeniable similarity. In that respect, I guess that if anyone wanted to make the digital rendering for Game of Thrones that HBO was too damn stupid to commission themselves, Skyrim would make the perfect engine on which to do so.

And so we turn to the world of modding, where the feast of games become fuel in the forge of the curiosity driven. 'Total conversion' is the name of the game here, and it's used to denote a mod project which seeks to change so much about the base game that it's basically features a whole new gameplay loop. Some total conversions even go one step further and are basically just whole new games complied with the original game's engine. Someone could feasibly, with enough time and effort, sit down and make the Game of Thrones videogame that HBO should have commissioned off of Bethesda years ago. (I'm not saying that would have saved the series, but it would have softened the blow) And it looks like fans already have. Several, in fact. I've seen a few projects to transport Skyrim into the lands of Westeros now, but most just fade away as soon as it becomes apparent how much work that would really be, or they simply just lost interest after the show lost interest in itself. Skyros, however... is another project. I have no reason to believe it won't go the same way as the others. It's literally inherited from two abandoned projects. (bad omen or nowhere to go but up?)

Skyros is a prototypical case of a project where the folk have looked up at the moon and said "I can get there, just need to build a ladder". That is to say, these guys think they can just sit down and create a full blown Game of Thrones videogame and I'm over here just stewing in doubt; but I love an underdog story, thus I remain interested. As of right now the team, whoever they are, haven't shared a great many of details about what exactly it is that they're working on, but they have let one person compile a handy video for them going over an overview of what they're working on basically just reading out their mission statement. The whole 'list of features' does sort of read like a death row inmate naming the many wild and impossible dreams they'd love to achieve before the end, but you gotta shoot for the moon to hit the stars, or however the expression goes.

Creating the landmass of Westeros is only one step of this project, you see, yet even that is a grand one. The team have admitted that the limitations of current hardware (and of the aging Skyrim Creation engine, no doubt) have forced them to take creative liberties with the size of the nations they are creating, but even then you can see that they're trying to match at least the grandeur displayed from the HBO series. (Though they refer back to the book at times, it's clear that the love for this project and the conceptual eye was inspired by the series.) What's more, these madmen (and madwomen) want to create a whole narrative storyline with branching quests that cover the events of at least the war of the five kings, if not the entire book series! They've already started using racemenu and other external tools and a lot of patience to create a handful of NPCs that resemble the actors of the show to a frightening degree, all in preparation of making them voiced players in a DLC-sized quest mod that defies sensible logic.

They've already started creating individual models for the various points of interest throughout Westeros, such as the Red Keep, and the Weirwood; as well as models of every weapon that would fit within this universe, and it all looks impressive, but insane. I mean, I know I keep harping on about this but I don't really think a project of this size can exist in the modding scene like it is. I've seen mods from all across the Bethesda landscape, even dabbled a bit in them before, and this idea rivals even the most ambitious among them. Now granted, the team are looking to expand and with a property as popular as Game of Thrones guiding the project there is a decent chance of interest coming their way, but that's also the biggest weakness I can see right now. Because, and I don't mean to seem totally oblivious, but we have no idea how litigious HBO can get. I mean we know they don't understand games, given that they commissioned a browser game from some sketchy nobodies in favour of a proper RPG that could have made them hundreds of millions in royalties, so that doesn't really bode well for a fan project like this. Say it takes off, more people come to it and it starts gaining attention, and then a HBO executive takes a gander at how models are being based off of a show they own, and NPC likenesses resemble their characters. I'm just saying this is a grand and inspiring idea that already seems to have real talented people behind it, yet I can't help but think it's also a naïve idea borne for a much more innocent world.

But we've looked at a similar indie team promising grandeur far beyond what seems sensible recently, and I seemed a lot more confident in their chances, no? Well that's because 'Friday Night Funkin': The Full Ass Game' is an expansion upon something the team have already proven they can do, and whilst Skyros has a handful of supremely high-quality assets to hand, actually building that landmass, coding and writing quests for a game, especially branching questlines, atop of treading a legal tightwalk is a whole other question entirely. (Trust me at least on the branching quest writing stuff. That's literally what I'm doing for my side project right now and it's soul crushing.) And yet I applaud the passion. I applaud the effort already gone into this project and, most of all, I applaud the fact that even after nearly 10 years, the Skyrim community can turn around and blow me away with the level of their belief in the game and what they can shape out of it. If that isn't emblematic of the very spirit of modding, I don't know what is.