As Game of Thrones Season 7's debut approaches, HBO is ramping up its promotional efforts for the show. Today, a brief new teaser video was released, and some of the show's actors are speaking out about the pace of the upcoming season.

　　It stands to reason that the Night King will play a more prominent role on Game of Thrones with such a limited number of episodes remaining. Today's teaser video only further suggests that, as it consists of a close up of his right eye. The camera slowly pans out to reveal his face--or at least a portion of it, as much of it is masked in shadow.

　　#GoTS7 begins 7.16 on @HBO. #GameofThrones pic.twitter.com/N3L2HJuEnZ

　　— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) May 23, 2017

　　Meanwhile, Season 7 apparently stands to speed things up. "I feel like I'd been lulled into a different pace," Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) told EW. "Everything happened quicker than I'm used to … a lot of things that normally take a season now take one episode."

　　Kit Harington (Jon Snow) noticed something similar, saying, "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. It's quite exciting."

　　Showrunner David Benioff explained that this isn't due to the shortened length of this season and the final one, but simply the state of the show's world.

　　"For a long time we've been talking about 'the wars to come,'" he said. "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."

　　The new trailer comes just a day after the release of new photos from Season 7. There was unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, if you're spoiler-averse) little to glean from these, as they showed either behind-the-scenes shots or characters standing around, doing very little. We did, however, get a look at what appears to be Daenerys in a fiery field atop Drogon, who's looking bigger than ever.

　　Season 7 of Game of Thrones premieres on July 16 on HBO.