Abubakar Salim, the actor who portrays House of the Dragon’s Alyn of Tull and the creative mind behind one of the year’s most heartfelt video games, is coming clean. The admission in question? Sneaking in a line from a recent episode of the Game Of Thrones spin-off into his critically acclaimed indie debut.
In a tweet published Tuesday, Salim admitted to lifting a particularly powerful line he read in the script of HBO’s popular fantasy adaptation.
“While I was filming House of the Dragon, I was writing and developing Tales Of Kenzera,” Salim said. “There was a line from episode 6 that I ‘borrowed’ and put in the game because I thought it was so good.”
He didn’t spill all of the beans though, as he told followers, “Good luck finding it.”
While the internet has yet to find the specific line as of this writing, it’s only a matter of time before they do. And whenever they inevitably discover it, we recommend avoiding this factoid if you’re not totally caught up on the excellent Game Of Thrones spinoff. Salim did not immediately respond to Inverse’s requests for comment.
For House of the Dragon fans unfamiliar with Salim’s work outside of film and television, the British-born is a big-time gamer. He most famously played Bayek of Siwa, the dynamic lead character in 2017’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
The BAFTA-winner then recently founded his own game studio named Surgent Studios. Earlier this year, Salim and his team released Tales Of Kenzera: ZAU. The game is a side-scrolling action-adventure game about a young African shaman in the throes of grief looking to revive his deceased father through supernatural means.
The game was heavily inspired by Salim’s own journey of grief following the passing of his father. Salim spoke candidly about the role his father had in his love and appreciation of gaming around the time of the game’s launch, and how it led to the creation of Tales Of Kenzera and its intricate universe of myth and Afrofuturism.
Surgent Studio’s debut effort is one of 2024’s best, most evocative games. Inverse called it a perfect example of “the medium’s ability to evoke very real, and above all very human, emotional experiences.”
For those interested in checking out Tales Of Kenzera: ZAU, you may be able to play it completely free of charge if you have access to a PlayStation 5. The game is free to PlayStation Plus subscribers, and it's definitely worth checking out.
