Game Of Thrones Stars Tease A Faster-Paced Season 7

05/23/2017 02:16 pm EDT

The seventh season of Game of Thrones may be shorter than the previous seasons, but fans should expect the story to move at a much faster pace.

The increased pace of the penultimate season of Game of Thrones took even the stars off guard.

"I'm like, 'Already? Now?! What?!'" Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister on the hit HBO fantasy drama, recalls of his reaction to reading the scripts while speaking to Entertainment Weekly. "I feel like I'd been lulled into a different pace. Everything happened quicker than I'm used to … a lot of things that normally take a season now take one episode."

NEXT: George RR Martin Reveals Game Of Thrones Prequel Details

Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow, feels similarly.

"This season is really different than any other season because it's accelerating toward the end, a lot of stuff collides and happens much much quicker than you're used to seeing on Thrones … it's so different than what everybody is used to," Harington says. "It's quite exciting."

The long-running plots that have built up over the past six season of Game of Thrones are finally converging in the show's seventh season, with Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and her army finally sailing for Westeros at the same time that the Night King and his legion of wights and White Walkers are preparing to march south.

NEXT: Game Of Thrones Actor Denies Pay Raise Rumors

"For a long time we've been talking about 'the wars to come,'" showrunner David Benioff says. "Well, that war is pretty much here. So it's really about trying to find a way to make the storytelling work without feeling like we're rushing it — you still want to give characters their due, and pretty much all the characters that are now left are all important characters. Even the ones who might have started out as relatively minor characters have become significant in their own right."

"There are White Walkers and dragons and once they start to come together the story has to go where it goes," teases co-executive producer Bryan Cogman.

Based on the popular book series A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin, the hit Emmy-winning fantasy series Game of Thrones chronicles an epic struggle for power in a vast and violent kingdom.

The seventh season of Game of Thrones will see Daenerys Targaryen finally make her way from Essos to Westeros to reclaim the Iron Throne, while the Night King's White Walker army marches south, bringing winter with him.

Game of Thrones stars Emmy and Golden Globe winner Peter Dinklage, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, Emilia Clarke, Aidan Gillen, Kit Harington, Diana Rigg, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams and Jonathan Pryce. Executive producers are David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Carolyn Strauss, Frank Doelger, Bernadette Caulfield. Co-executive producers are Guymon Casady, Vince Gerardis, George R.R. Martin.

Game of Thrones Season 7 premieres July 16 on HBO.

Photo Credit: HBO

Disclosure: PopCulture. is owned by Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.