Who will survive and who will die horribly in the books Game of Thrones and TV show made from it? It was always the main question in both mediums. So perhaps I won’t spoil much by saying that surviving the complots and bloody murders are the main focus in Telltale’s latest action-adventure – even if there’s more dialogues and less action than in their previous efforts. Still, the main question remained whether Telltale succeeded to adapt George R. R. Martin’s vision in their own kind of adventure games, or not? Well, previous Game of Thrones games were pretty crap, so the stakes were high…

“Kingslayer. Oathbreaker.” – Those are the first two words, which one can hear in the first episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones. Still, we won’t guide Jaime Lannister nor any of the series well-known characters, but members of the Forrester family, who are spoken of very briefly in the fifth book of the series. Several main characters taken from the book and TV show will be still present in the game. But in the first episode we will control Garred Tuttle, a young squire to Lord Forrester, Ethan Forrester, the third-born, young son of the House and the newly appointed, teenaged head of the Forrester clan and Mira Forrester, the eldest daughter of the House, a serving handmaiden to Margaery Tyrell.

Warning: for fans only!

The game assumes you know the TV show, and brings in several of the actors and visually replicating every familiar character, to such an extent that you would be utterly lost if you were unfamiliar with the world of the Game of Thrones. I was considering to play the game together with my girlfriend but then I realised, that without knowing the series, she won’t have a clue what’s all this about. There wasn’t even any chance for her to “catch up”, since the events in the games are related to the Second Season. It’s perhaps the first time when Telltale relied to such extent to the original show. I am not entirely sure whether this was a good idea or not, since as many fans of Game of Thrones are out there, there are still people who are new to the show.

Still, perhaps this was a concession to make to be able the reach the detail of perfection of the original novels and TV shows. And while there are small hiccups in the story, Telltale has still roughly managed to reach this goal. The story of the game is pretty good, with all three characters quickly becoming sympathetic which makes those hard choices even harder.

“He/she will remind your attitude”

And boy those are hard choices this time indeed, since we are talking about lords and ladies with high power and sometimes murderous intentions so making the right decision may be crucial. The ending of the first episode is terrific and reminds you that the real value of your choices is what you feel in the moment you make them. What we say and how won’t affect main outcomes of the story, but it will influence how others will react to us later.

How much will this important or not is of course still unclear since we have just seen the first episode. We can already see the themes and some of the main characters for each episode in the main menu of the game. Can’t wait to play each of them. (Let’s hope that it won’t take so much time to make each episodes as it was for The Wolf Among Us.)

The world of R. R. Martin comes alive… and it’s a bit fade

Graphics were always less important part of Telltale’s games, and the developers used the comic book style artwork pretty well in former series. I must admit however that I was a bit underwhelmed this time with Telltale’s graphical team’s effort. It’s not that the game is ugly, far from that, but some muddled colors and textures and lack of aliasing are more present this time, than in previous games and this doesn’t represent well the splendor of the TV show.

I reviewed two versions of the game: one at 1080p on my PlayStation 4 and another at 720p on PC because I wanted to see the game in 3D on my LG television, and a bit surprisingly enough it looked better at 720p in 3D, than the image quality in 1080p.

The rest of winter cannot come soon enough!

Graphical issues aside Game of Thrones finally got the adaptation it deserves. The plot is excellent, with memorable and sympathetic characters, and a very strong ending to the first episode which is absolutely true to the spirit of the novels and TV show. We can’t wait for the second episode to come!

-BadSector-

Editor: Telltale Games

Developer: Telltale Games

Genres: adventure, action,

Publication: 2014 December