Game of Thrones - A Telltale Game Series

This is a game that rekindled the fire within me for episodic games after what I can only describe as 'Telltale fatigue' caused by playing the first and second seasons of 'The Walking Dead' videogame and 'The World Among Us'.

As I'm sure you have already inferred this is a game that was developed and published by Telltale Games based on the now near universal cultural touch point that is George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. As has become standard with all Telltale Games, you can find it on both the current and past generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft as well as android and iOS mobile platforms.

Let me start off with the bad, or at least what I thought was bad about the game. Graphically, the Telltale games have never been at the cutting edge of realism and that was totally fine when it only trying to render smaller buildings and scenes. With this game though it was as if the proverbial shit had hit the fan since the game was attempting this massive set pieces and backgrounds that were already successful done in other mediums and totally came up short in comparison. The biggest example for this was having a functioning foreground in the scene and background that was very clearly a still hand drawn image that felt really out of place. A great example of this can be seen in the below image from a scene on 'The Wall'.

 

This isn't to say that this game looks any worse than any of the other Telltale games, the problem is that looks exactly the same. Its been a few years since the first Telltale game has come out and their rendering engine has not evolved since despite their desire to take on much more visually challenging games and it clearly showed that they are not up to it on a technical side. Even on the minor points it was clear that corners were being cut from scene to scene with character injuries disappearing entirely with no mention as to why or the individual in question looking pristine compared to their earlier appearance a few seconds ago. It was just a sloppy performance all around on both the large and small details.

That is what just happened to the chances of you reading on if you consider yourself a fan boy of the series.

Aside from that though, I really enjoyed the game and it gave me an experience just as intense as the 'Walking Dead' games but not in an exactly similar way. The narrative in my opinion was fantastic for the most part, there were a couple of scenes and action of some characters in the game that were predetermined as opposed to a natural evolution in the story and character development.

The game itself has you playing with a number of characters from the canonical northern house Forrester who are mentioned in the books, they are vassals of House Glover and loyal bannermen of the Starks of Winterfell. This was a wonderful choice for me since it threw me right into a world I both recognized and didn't at the same time and it allowed me to explore some of doings the more minor homes in Westeros.

Dinklage just as compelling regardless of the medium.

The choice to break up the narrative and player experience by playing with multiple characters all over the 'Game of Thrones' universe was brilliant. It not only allowed them to quickly build a large expanded world that allowed them to showcase a large number of settings from all over the world and naturally tie in some of the more popular characters from the books and shows. Granted, a few of the scenes in King's Landing were quite useless to overall narrative and were just there so that they could get more screen time from some of the most popular characters from the show.

The actual divergences that the narrative could take in the game were also the largest compared to any other Telltale games. Not that there isn't a fair share of Telltale go fuck yourself things that happen to keep the narrative on a specific trajectory, which I genuinely hated since some of it actually removes the impact your choices were supposed to have. That being said, the narrative really was satisfying and the game had some of the most satisfying scenes and actions I've experienced in any Telltale game.

Me if I mention spoilers about the game.

I really want to go into the game more but I can't do that without ruining it completely due to the potential spoilers. Despite me not being a big fan of the unimpressive visual display of the game, the narrative is definitely the best constructed out of any Telltale game. What I feared would be a disjointed mess turned out to be a really well put together expansive experience despite there being some traditional Telltale flaws.