#which I'm sure was annoying as hell for everyone who'd developed their vision of it before the games

[voluptuarian]

God, I hate undergoing the agonies of having a favorite series adapted because even if its a good adaptation, it'll cement a "vision" of the setting, aesthetic, characters, etc that may not even be a good fit, let alone what I had in my head, and that just becomes "the" associated visual-- i.e. if I want to represent Ned Stark visually and recognizably it has to be GOT's Ned. It's a fucking prison, and the only freedom from it is

a. Lord of the Rings effect, where the books had been out for so long and illustrated so many times by so many people even before it started being considered for film that there are just Myriads of visual representations to choose from, so even if one adaptation's version becomes more recognizable, it's far from the Only Correct Image (especially if it's BAD-- it can easily be rejected for another version)

or b. Witcher effect, where there wasn't a strong visual before it was adapted, but it's been done so many times now (and so distinctly each time) that even people who've never interacted with the source material still all have a different visual version of it rattling around in their head which may have nothing to do with the newest incarnation at all, so you can just start throwing any of the versions out there, everyone'll get it, they'll all be equally dissatisfied, and thus, all somewhat content