Title: Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series
Original Release: December 2, 2014 (Episode 1, Multiple)
Finished Release: Complete Series (PS3, 2015)
Note: I will do everything I can to keep from spoiling the first few seasons of Game of Thrones, but I'm putting a warning here just in case. So yeah. Warning.
Note 2: I know the TV series is based on a book series, but the game is based on the TV series.
Full disclosure: I am not the biggest fan of Game of Thrones. That's not to say it's no good, it's actually (usually) quite good at what it is and what it does. It's just not my cup of tea. In point of fact, watching it actually stresses me out. That said, I do occasionally watch huge swathes of the series all in one go, so that I can always be caught up to what happened... two seasons ago.
One thing I am a fan of, however, is Telltale Games. I have been ever since the release of their first Sam & Max game. Their first huge success was probably The Walking Dead game they made, and we basically have that to thank for the current trend of episodic storytelling in video games. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you, but in my experience it can be, at least, a very engaging thing, if used correctly.
So yes, the fact that Telltale made a Game of Thrones series was an exciting prospect for me. And it has one of my favorite things: new original characters you've never heard of in the main series, but are suddenly very important in the spin-off. I'm not being facetious there, that really is one of my favorite things. Maybe I'll talk about it someday.
In fact, it was my desire to play this game that eventually forced me to catch up to the show, at least to the point where the game takes place. How does it hold up? Let's find out.
The new characters in this case are the members of House Forrester, bannermen of House Stark from the TV series. The Forresters have an important job: cultivating and harvesting ironwood trees. Ironwood is really awesome wood, better than all other woods, and this job of theirs has to be where their name comes from.
Anyway, the Forresters aren't the only House around with ironwood trees. Their biggest (and apparently only) competition in this regard are the Whitehills, another banner House to the Starks. The Whitehills are also, also exclusively, awful people. So yeah, Forresters good, Whitehills bad. GoT it?
So the Forresters themselves are pretty cool, and not at all stand-ins for the Starks. /sarcasm
Okay, all kidding aside, they are generally a good bunch of characters. But let's be honest with ourselves here: Gregor is Ned; Elissa is Catelyn; Rodrik is Robb (their names even start the same); Mira is Sansa; Ethan is Bran; Talia is Arya; and Ryon is Rickon (similar names again!). No, they're not all exactly the same characters, and their fates are often quite different. But they have the exact same number of kids, in exactly the same gender order. To be fair, though, I actually can't quite remember who's older between Bran and Arya. Apparently neither could the Telltale guys, since Ethan and Talia are twins.
Also, Jon Snow is missing from that list because the situation is a bit more complicated. Asher is the second son of the Forrester family, and he's not a bastard. He is in exile, making him kind of like the opposite of Jon in some ways. He's also a lot less moody. On the other hand, we have Gared Tuttle, who isn't a member of the family at all but rather the nephew of Duncan, castellan of House Forrester. Gared also happens to be squire to Lord Gregor himself, and he's considered to be a member of House Forrester, for reasons I'm a little unclear about. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's his story that ultimately winds up being a bit more like Jon's. Hell, he even meets him!
And let's just get this out of the way right now: Gared Tuttle is, far and away, my favorite character in the series. And I mean the entire series, TV show included. Part of the reason for this is just his personality; he's just a down-to-earth dude always keeps moving forward no matter what life throws at him, because that's his duty. The other reason for this is that he's a stone cold, capital "b" Badass.
See, throughout the game, every now and then, there are sections of gameplay that essentially play out as just a long series of action commands. You know the ones: a circle (or B, whatever) shows up on the screen, you press it real quick, and you don't die. Well, if you're consistently successful with the action commands, Gared's competence rises to Batman levels. I'm dead serious here. At one point in my game he single-handedly took on five or six dudes at once. This is Game of Thrones, no one does that! Hell, there's one section where he's fighting a dude, and doing everything he can to not kill the dude, dude dies anyway.
Gared Tuttle breathes death upon his enemies.
Anyway, I could go on about Gared all day. What about the story? Well, it's hard to talk about without giving things away. Suffice it to say that it's definitely Game of Thrones. Everything starts out more or less okay before completely falling apart. And then, every time it looks like the good guys are getting ahead, the omnipresent whim of the writers shows up to slap them back down like some sort of mean-spirited Master Hand (Crazy Hand?).
I'm kidding, mostly, but there is a definite sense of futility about the game. And yes, that's true to the source, but the problem here is that you're not just watching it, you're living it. After a while every single choice or branching dialog option became a source of stress, as I rendered the in-game timer obsolete by just pausing. I would spend minutes at a time ruminating on what to say to any given character. So, at the very least, it felt like I was in Game of Thrones.
The problem is that most of it was ultimately pointless. Like Final Fantasy VI, this was a game that Rachel watched me play, and after sitting through however many hours of me mathing out every line of dialog, she finally just gave up and said "Remember, it's the illusion of choice." And that's probably my biggest complaint.
Now don't get me wrong, there are definitely very big things that can be different from one play-through to the next. Some characters live while others die, some become enemies instead of allies, and so on and so forth. I imagine, if Telltale ever actually makes a second season, these big differences will have resounding effects therein. And really this is more of a problem with me than with the game; I shouldn't have gotten so stressed over every single decision. But hey, you can't help how you feel, right?
Oh, another, more objective issue, was the game's performance. I played it on PS3 because that just happened to be what was at hand, and maybe that's why. Either way, load times took forever; slowdown was not infrequent, nor was outright freezing; in one climactic cutscene the game's audio just completely gave up and went home early for the day. Again, if I had played on a current-gen system, maybe these issues would have been mitigated, but that's not the case.
Still, Telltale's Game of Thrones is about as close as a video game can come to a perfect representation of the TV show. If you like the series, if you like story-driven games, and if you can overlook hours of stress leading up to an ultimately unsatisfying cliffhanger for a second season that may never come, well, you'll probably love it.
And best of all: Gared Tuttle.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - Graceland (Paul Simon, 1986)
Playing - Yakuza 0 (2015)
Reading - Kamen Rider Spirits (2001)
Watching - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return (2017)
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