Just How Much Did 'Game Of Thrones' 'Borrow' From Video Games?
Game Of Thrones wasn't a midwinter's night (fever) dream. It really was a thing that came out of nowhere to become the most popular show on TV, then the most unpopular, then to completely vanish from our collective hater consumer consciousness. People went hard on the show's diminishing returns from a variety of angles but seemed to ease up on calling it out for what it stole from video games – but it's there.
The last scene from the penultimate season is a shot-by-shot remake of a scene from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion of World Of Warcraft.
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Even the death of Viserion, the dragon you can see wrecking shit above (and getting wrecked below) ...
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... looks quite similar to the death of this dragon from World Of Warcraft …
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… right down to it becoming corrupted by evil.
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And sure, one can claim that WoW itself might have taken a lot of inspiration from the books whose fantasy elements inspired Game Of Thrones, such as The Lord Of The Rings Eragon. Though, at this point, the makers of GoT could just claim it was but a tradeoff, as those responsible for WoW at Activision Blizzard are seemingly copying GoT's fall from grace and having everyone leave the game. But it's not just WoW.
In the final season, fans thought they'd caught Thrones cribbing the Night King's death scene from Bollywood Aladdin (actual Bollywood Aladdin, not Disney's mistaking of the Middle East for India from 2019).
And while those look similar, we actually saw that peculiar switcheroo way earlier in Far Cry 3 …
The cream of the crop, however, is the main theme. Yeah, we're sorry for ruining the only thing from Game Of Thrones you thought you could still love because it stood apart from any sort of dubious writing …
... but we'd be remiss in not mentioning that the theme composer Ramin Djawadi threw out there sounds very similar to "Palace" from Ys I & II Chronicles -- a Japanese RPG that came out even before the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series was released ...
… and probably will be re-made twice before the last book is.
Top Image: HBO