After success with The Walking Dead it’s not out of the ordinary for Telltale to catch the eye of none other than the big dogs in charge of Game of Thrones, wanting to grab a slice of that pie and have Telltale develop a successful episodic game for his series. It seems like a great idea right? Well let’s find out if this episodic choose-your-own-adventure game is the game for you.

The events within this game are canonical to the TV show’s ending of Season 3, the entire fourth season and prior to Season 5 and is split into 6 episodes. The players visit that are very familiar to fans of the series, and is played from five different point of views as members from House of Forrester; either as a direct member within the family, or a person serving for the House. Much like The Walking Dead the choices each player makes reflects other members of the House and alters which scenes shall trigger.

The gameplay is a point-click, so it doesn’t require too much complex knowledge of controls, which can be appealing to casual gamers, or people who don’t really play video games due to its simplicity.

Telltale attempts to sidestep any suggestion of fatalism with the marketing of player choice. As in their other series, players are inundated with constant reminders of the consequences of their decisions, from kissing a character to doing them a favor. Make a promise to someone and the game says, “You gave him your word.” Have mercy on someone and the game reveals, “You chose mercy.” At one point, a character openly states, “We are defined by the choices we make.” One struggles to think of another developer of adventure games that has shown this much lack of confidence in the perception of its audience, as with other games with the same gameplay elements tend to have each choice (regardless of what you chose to move forward) it always shows some sort of extreme significance with the choice you make; encouraging you to constantly keep playing to see what happens next.

Visually the game could look better, the graphics and texture’s of the characters look a little rough and given this game has been released on seventh and eighth generation home consoles it could be easily mistaken for a late sixth generation game or an early 7th generation release, however, the voice acting makes up for disappointing graphics.

The game did not appeal to me; having played The Walking Dead spinoff by the same developer what really peaked my interest and what I really enjoyed about the game was it didn’t make you feel like you had to watch the show to understand the plot of the game it was it’s own stand alone spin-off to the TV show and comics, as well as the choices you made. You actually felt that the choices you made in The Walking Dead always had some sort of big twist to move the story forward, it encouraged you to go back and play the entire season again with different choices it made you feel that each choice option was important. With Game of Thrones even though this game was suppose to be a spinoff to the TV show, the game basically demanded indirectly that I must watch the show or read the novels to understand the plot of the game, this can drive gamers who have never watched the show to not only stop playing, but also decrease any interest they might have had in watching the show because of this demand.

Lacking the more, different gameplay action, Game of Thrones is peppered with sequences that require you to tap buttons for a series of quick time events at the proper moment in order to watch yourself dodge right, dodge left, duck, push against an opposing force until that force is overcome, and so on. When you have the freedom to move a character around, you walk at an annoyingly slow pace, even when the plot specifically calls for fast action, slowing down gameplay at that particular moment.

Telltale unintentionally parodies this snail-like speed when it has you control Rodrik, who moves about as well as uninjured characters in spite of a bum leg. Time also seems wasted when inspecting unimportant items that only seem to exist for people seeking to complete the game. The fact that players can’t skip the “Next Time On” and “Previously On” segments between episodes confirms the game tries hard to mimic the attitude of the TV show it is based on.

Throughout this game the message is stated quite clear of the show: reject dignity or die. This notion is best expressed when you play as Mira Forrester, who, like Sansa Stark, navigates King’s Landing far from the reach of her family. Being as smart as you can with Mira only delays the inevitable decision between betraying a friend and marching to your death a la Ned Stark. Taking the more honorable path allows you the possibility of chanting the Forrester family motto, “Iron from ice,” but the resilience implied by this phrase comes across as limp and fatuous in Telltale’s regurgitation of the show’s “Good guys finish last” mentality. It’s tiring when the main purpose for respectful characters seems to be summoning is rather bad than good.

Overall, it is not a bad game, but it just isn’t for me. The game has great voice acting, which was the only thing that caught my eye, but again there were too many flaws that just didn’t appeal to me as much. If you are the fan of the series, whether you read the novels, watch the TV show, or both; I highly encourage you to play this game. If you have not read or watched either, do not expect this game to peak your interest in the series; as it did not for me. I just don’t believe that anyone who has no knowledge of this series will enjoy it.

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