During my second playthrough of Episode Six, I experimented by selecting the ever-present silence option every time the game wanted my input as Gared to see how differently characters would react. In Episode Three, Gared welcomes a familiar adversary to Castle Black, so I selected a dialogue option labelled “Welcome to Castle Black.” Instead, Gared said, “Welcome to the Wall, brother,” to which the other character responded, “Looking forward to it, boy.” Conversations consistently feel disjointed as Telltale’s scripts are never fully up to the task of adapting to the player’s choices. Characters aren’t having conversations with each other so much as talking at one another without much regard for what was just said. Still, even if you’re just in it for the story and OK with the idea of being funneled down a linear path rather than a unique one that truly reflects the choices you’ve made, the quality of the script suffers due to the concessions made to accommodate these choices. Even if who lives and who dies is ultimately set in stone and unaffected by your decisions, in the moment you’re never quite sure whether a given character will make it through to see the next episode encounters with infamous characters from the show like Ramsay Snow and Cersei Lannister can be genuinely nerve-wracking as a result.
Some are short-lived affairs as a swift death comes by surprise and a replacement Forrester is brought in to fill the gap. Over the course of six episodes, you’ll play as several different members of the Forrester clan as each tries to do their part to keep the family alive. All the Forresters can do in the aftermath is desperately try to stay afloat against the currents of change. Even if their fate is but a minor blip on the Westeros radar, their tale is still a harrowing one as rival House Whitehill attempts to use the event to seize control of the lucrative ironwood trade and wipe out the Forresters out for good. Telltale’s Game of Thrones focuses on the fallout of the infamous Red Wedding from the perspective of House Forrester, a little-known family that hasn’t made an appearance in the show but is mentioned briefly in the books. Plain and simple, you’re not going to get nearly the same level of quality in the storytelling here, but you do get a mildly interesting look at events not covered elsewhere. Going from playing an episode of the game to watching an episode of the show reveals a stark truth: the game is boring. Early episodes especially feel padded to the bursting point with filler. While the latter is tightly paced and gripping throughout, the former is slow, meandering and largely unexciting.
An episode of the game doesn’t feel like an episode of the show.
Well, it’s really going to depend on what you’re looking for from Game of Thrones.
#Game of thrones a telltale games series guide tv#
Maybe you’re a fan of the books or TV show who doesn’t feel like waiting until next year to get your fix, and you’re wondering whether or not the game is any good on that front. Maybe you’re fine with an experience that doesn’t diverge completely at every juncture, and just want a good story. After six episodes and dozens of hours, I had made hundreds of decisions, but only about three or four in the final two episodes truly changed anything about my experience.īut maybe that doesn’t matter to you. In the moment, it feels like you’re truly shaping the story with your influence, but one trip to YouTube to watch how else it could’ve played out is all it takes to shatter that feeling for good. They’re movies with light interactive elements in the form of dialogue options and quick-time events. Anyone who’s played one since The Walking Dead knows how they work: divergent choices funneled into convergent paths. It’s been that way with Telltale’s adventures for some time now, of course. Playing Game of Thrones feels like walking through a house of mirrors: at first glance, endless paths stretch in front of you - infinite, overwhelming possibility - but you quickly learn it’s nothing more than an illusion. That’s the question that opened my review of the first episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones series nearly a year ago and it’s the question that lingered in my mind as I played each subsequent chapter. “Is it more important that your choices in a game matter, or that they feel like they matter?”
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