REVIEW – While “humiliation” was the keyword of Episode 3, in Episode 4 you can have finally the upper hand for various characters of the Game of Thrones series. Almost every characters will have the choice to “defy” their enemies – one way or another. The story in episode 4 is clever and dynamic at the same time.

Don’t lose your head, Garred! Well… we mean that in a literal sense. Just surviving is the goal of one the heroes of Game of Thrones series, and while others are not in such a mortal danger, we must make once again tough decisions for every one of them.

Action

This episode also picks up the pace a bit after the last one having tough decisions but little action. Gared finally embarks on his journey north, Rodrik takes serious action against the Whitehills and Asher needs to do some covert action as well with his mercenary mates for Daenerys Targaryen.

The story is still very good, perhaps the only implausible part was how the Night’s Watch is overreacting Garred’s “murder” (which was actually pretty much self-defence) of Brett, the former Bolton soldier who’d murdered his family. I hope I won’t spoil much the story by telling, that Garred will be saved one way or another are will began his journey with some of his “friends”.

Reaction

It’s a bit strange though, that two important and well liked characters are acting pretty harsh while conversing with our heroes: Daenerys Targaryen is unusually angry, and Jon Snow won’t leave a finger to save Garred. (Perhaps it was due to my choice of sentences.)

The writers didn’t quite catch the character of Daenerys Targaryen, who may be strong sometimes, but almost always kind and caring. Here she’s somewhat out of her usual character.

Otherwise we can learn some Beskha’s backstory, who – being a bit of boring mercenary chick – became a very complex and interesting character with a dark past. Their relationship with Asher develops quite a bit.

Mira’s schemes, Rodrik’s chance to strike back

Mira is once again playing a very dangerous game in King’s Landing: she only speaks with various characters this time, but because of her schemes she’s having more and more enemies. Those scenes with Mira are not too long, but some of the dialogues are pretty funny, since we can meet some interesting characters.

After getting severely humiliated in the previous episode, we have finally to occasion to strike back with Rodrik Forrester. There are some tense scenes between Griff Whitehall and later his father. Still, I am not sure, whether I made good choices with him, but hey, that’s how this game works, isn’t it?

It looks old once again

Unfortunately there’s isn’t much update regarding the graphics. I understand that the game is using a specific engine, but that’s unfortunate, that graphical glitches and imperfections couldn’t be eradicated. Playing on a big HD TV screen the game looks old. Game of Thrones looks almost exactly the same on PS3 and PS4 (and on other platforms as well, including Android) and it’s a shame that it cannot at least partially use PS4’s capabilities.

That said the game isn’t ugly, far from that, it just looks dated and still have glitches like shadows not looking nor good or realistic and aliasing jaggy as hell.

Satisfying but short

Sons of Winter is an episode satisfying, yet a bit short. You can finish it in a matter of few hours as the other ones. However the story is still excellent and it still worth the time and money of every Game of Thrones fan.

-BadSector-

Publisher: Telltale Games

Developer: Telltale Games

Genres: adventure, action,

Release date: May 27 2015