House of the Dragon’s title designer explains the key difference with Game of Thrones theme

House of the Dragon‘s second episode revealed the show’s main title credits for the first time, and viewers were quick to remark that it borrows greatly from the original Game of Thrones series. While it’s not surprising that House of the Dragon’s credits feature a similar animation technique, the music is. The prequel show’s title designer recently opened up about the subtle changes they made to the opening intro compared to Game of Thrones.

Shaping up House of the Dragon’s opening intro

The series’ title designer Kirk Shintani told Deadline, “Originally, we tried to find a balance between the story we needed to tell but we also had to be really aware that it needed to have some tie to the original show. The concept boiled down to the family tree and how we show the relationships between the different members of the warring families.”

“There is a big thing that maybe people don’t consciously think about as Game of Thrones,” he said. “There is a specific language that we’ve built with these flyover cameras, moving from place to place, and that’s something we definitely wanted to keep in the show.”

How House of the Dragon’s theme is different from Game of Thrones’

Shintani explained, “The world map was very much intentional of showing people where you are in each episode. Whereas for this one, the world’s already been defined and the key locators that we’re trying to explain aren’t locations, it’s the people’s positions in the family line.”

“One of the things that we really want to emphasize with our main titles, specifically speaking about House of the Dragon,” he said, “is that we wanted to be able to lean on the idea that the title changes every episode and gives the viewers something else to look forward to. We really wanted to add to the narrative of the show in our own little way.”

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