// PC GAMER — GAMING
Game of Thrones: War for Westeros isn't even out yet and it already feels ancient
A by-the-numbers RTS based on a TV show that ended seven years ago.
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"But why?" That's the question I kept asking myself as I played through a few skirmishes of Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, an RTS based on HBO's TV show. It's a competent, workmanlike creation that nonetheless fails to capture any of what made the show and the books that inspired it such a phenomenon.
It just feels so ill-timed, too. It's not due out until 2027, but Game of Thrones concluded in 2019, with a final season that even GoT defenders such as myself had to acknowledge was a bit of a dud. These days, HBO is busy with its prequels: the plodding but still entertaining House of the Dragon, and the delightful, brisk A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Instead of giving us something new, or even current, War for Westeros returns us to the fight for the Iron Throne. You can command a tiny Kit Harrington, listen to narration from Charles Dance, or enjoy a rendition of The Rains of Castamere while you build another mine. These touchpoints are too recent to engender feelings of nostalgia, but not recent enough that they elicit much excitement.
Now, don't get me wrong. GoT provided us with some of the greatest battles to ever grace our TVs. Even as the story went off the rails, the muddy brawls were a sight to behold. There's plenty for an RTS to take advantage of—but this style of RTS fails to play to the strengths of the source material.
GoT's gargantuan pitched battles call to mind the epic scale of Total War—it's no surprise that there are several GoT Total War mods. War for Westeros, meanwhile, has been fashioned in the mould of Age of Empires, or its fantasy cousin, The Battle for Middle-earth 2.
You plonk down buildings that generate resources, which you can spend at other buildings that spit out troops or let you research upgrades, and then you send your army to capture territory or boldly torch your opponent's HQ. You can build fortifications and siege engines, but most of your conflicts will be between generic soldiers, sometimes led by heroes drawn from the show's roster of important folk.
It's fine, I guess. There are certainly worse GoT games—most of them on mobile. But War for Westeros is so straightforward and plain that I probably would have had more fun with something uniquely awful. A bawdy brothel management game with Littlefinger, perhaps?
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