the Karstarks or Freys, and definitely
no randomly generated characters
that aren’t from the books or the
show at all. I immediately begin
scouring the mod for the most
famous people I can find.
It doesn’t take long. Right there in
Castle Black I run into Sandor
Clegane. He’s not as huge as I
expected, but I invite him to join my
small clan, which is currently so
small it consists only of me. I don’t
find anyone else of note in the castle,
apart from a guy named Charles
Foulbreath (unsurprisingly, he was
not in the books) and Commander
Jeor Mormont, who is far too
important to go running around in
the snow with me. But I at least take
the time to introduce myself.
Speaking of snow, I don’t see the
eternally sulking Jon Snow anywhere
so I take the Hound and leave.
We are immediately attacked by
looters, the weakest and yet most
common enemies in Bannerlord.
There’s only about a dozen of them,
and I figure Clegane can take on at
least ten at once while I kill the other
two. Wrong on both counts! Sandor
goes down almost immediately
despite the looters basically just
having rocks as weapons. I join him a
moment later face-down in the snow,
and we’re dragged around in chains
for a while before I manage to escape.
HAPPY LANDINGS
I head down to Winterfell where I
meet Theon Greyjoy, who is probably
just hanging out there innocently and
not planning to betray anyone. I hire
a few lowly mercenaries to ride with
me and run into a woman named
Scabby Sansa, who I assume is not
the Sansa we know from the fiction.
More looters accost us after we leave,
but this time I’m victorious, and so
begins the familiar practice of
winning fights, taking prisoners, and
selling them and their gear to make a
bit of bank. Over at the Dreadfort I
meet Ramsay Snow, who hasn’t been
made a Bolton yet, apparently, but
already seems on his way to
becoming an evil scumbag.
Growing impatient in the cold
north, I ride for the place everyone in
Westeros really wants to go: King’s
Landing. It looks great in the mod,
too, and in the tavern I find my first
real Game of Thrones A-lister: Tyrion
Lannister. I add him to my slowly
growing clan. He seems like the kind
of guy you could put in charge of just
about anything, but for now it’s nice
to just have him hanging out with me.
We take a few small jobs here and
there, and while guarding a caravan
we run into some raiders, but once
again my growing little band comes
out on top. Then, just because I’m on
a roll, I raid a village in the north,
killing and capturing a bunch of
villagers and making a whole lot of
people, including the Starks and the
Boltons, extremely angry at me.
Luckily, I’m able to outride Robb’s
warparty and decide it’s getting a bit
too hot to stick around, though I
make a quick detour back to Castle
Black to pick up Sandor again, who
managed to escape from the looters
who captured us earlier.
I flee to Essos, the less-popular
continent, and there I find my
memory a bit fuzzy when it comes to
places like Pentos. Did stuff happen
there? Important stuff? Or am I
thinking of Bravos? I really can’t
recall – it’s been years since I read
the books and after the final season of
the show I think I blocked out a lot of
it. Joanna Swyft, Boros Blount... these
names seem familiar to me but when
I meet them I draw a blank on who
they are and what they did.DRAGON LADY
Whatever. I know why I’m really in
Essos, and it’s to track down
Daenerys, who is way the hell over in
Mereen. The scale of the Realm of
Throne map really comes into focus
as we ride and ride, and ride somemore, for days, just to even get close
to Mereen. Finally, I stroll into the
throne room and meet the Mother of
Dragons, though she does not seem
to have her famous pets yet. I try to
marry her but all my gold, animals
and weapons don’t add up to enough
in the trade window to even make a
dent in her opinion of me. I can’t
even join her because I’m at war with
the North over that village I raided,so I settle for helping her out with a
quest to deliver some horses, and put
Sandor and Tyrion in charge of a
caravan to make some money.
With not much else to do in Essos
other than pine for Daenerys, I head
back to Westeros. I sell almost
everything I’ve collected from raids
and looters and prisoner sales to give
a heck of a lot of gold to the North so
I can make our little war go away,
then figure it’s time to really get into
trouble. I ride north of the Wall with
my 30 or so followers, and into
wildling and wight territory. The
wildlings aren’t particularly friendly- I can’t get into Craster’s camp, and
everyone else will only speak to me
from atop their castle walls rather
than letting me in.
WIGHT WEDDING
And then we run into some actual
wights patrolling the snowy woods.
There are... a lot of them. They’re
pretty well-spoken for the undead,
but rather than trying to negotiate I
decide to challenge them to combat.
While my clan puts up a good fight
and we kill about half the wights,
what’s left are more than enough to
wipe us out. All my progress, gone,
Clan Happyfish destroyed. It’s back
to square one, as I’m once again
dragged around the country in
chains, this time by undead ghouls.
On the plus side, I did get to see a
lot of both Westeros and Essos, and
met just about everyone I wanted to.
The mod, even in Early Access, is
absolutely playable as it is now, and
the map is massive. Any Game of
Thrones fans should find a lot here to
enjoy. Just stay south of the Wall, at
least until your warband is bigger
than Clan Happyfish.I DON’T SEE THE
ETERNALLY
SULKING JON
SNOW ANYWHEREMODS OF WAR
Game of Thrones mods for other gamesGAME OF THRONES
Crusader Kings II and the Game
of Thrones mod. There’s really no
better combination.A CLASH OF KINGS
Mount & Blade: Warband has its
own Game of Thrones mod: A
Clash of Kings. And it’s excellent.CIVILIZATION VI: A CIV OF
ICE AND FIRE
The Night King and his White
Walkers meet Sid Meier.SEVEN KINGDOMS:
TOTAL WAR
You can replace Attila with Tywin
in Seven Kingdoms: Total War.MAJOR MODS, ANALYSED
MOD SPOTLIGHT