Creating good spin-offs can be an astonishingly difficult task. “Passion and love” are the oft-cited secret ingredients to strong reinterpretations, and though they’re undeniably integral, there’s a lot more to it than simple enthusiasm. Loving Star Wars, for example, doesn’t mean I’m capable of making KotOR.
It isn’t enough to just love something, you need to understand why the thing is loved. You need to understand what about it attracts people in the first place, and ensure that element is properly realised in the final product. At the same time, you have to make sure your product is unique and charismatic enough to be something more than a sub-par knock-off.
Thankfully we live in an age now where many licenced games aren’t the dreadful certainty they once were. Gone is the age of Superman 64 and ET, and in its place are the days of Batman: Arkham, South Park: The Stick of Truth and Alien: Isolation. We live in an era where a game “based on the acclaimed [blank]” can actually inspire hope, and Telltale Games are, at least in my mind, the masters of this art.
Telltale’s Game of Thrones is great. It’s a genuinely enjoyable adaptation that gets Game of Thrones right. It’s varied and well paced, and strikes a great balance between the familiar and the new. Though nothing could ever be on par with the source material, Telltale certainly does it justice.
But what’s the game actually about? You play as a number of different character affiliated with house Forrester. The Foresters are a Northern house unique to the game, who control Westeros’ largest proportion of Ironwood (a highly-durable timber used in the the best ships and shields). Ironwood serves as a major bargaining chip, but it also makes you a target for rival houses who want what you have.
The game kicks off during the Red Wedding, which is a pretty baller place to start. The Foresters are bannermen of the Starks, and naturally have fought alongside Rob in the War of Five Kings. Lord Forrester and his eldest son are killed almost immediately, throwing your house into disarray, and each of the PCs attempt to deal with the fallout in order to save their house from destruction.
The Foresters are clearly designed to be reminiscent of the Starks; every character you play has their analogue in the protagonists of the show. Ethan is an analogue of Bran, Mira an analogue of Sansa, and Gared a kind of mix between Gendry and Jon Snow. That said, the Foresters are distinguished from the Starks in a number of ways, and how you choose to play the characters ultimately determines their personalities.
The setting of Ironrath (the Forester stronghold) is visually distinct as well. It sits in a frostbitten forest-valley, filled with trees as broad as houses. The location is very atmospheric, and the inclusion of a setting so different from what we’ve seen in the show so far was a great decision. Though it’s cool to see familiar things like the Iron Throne or the Twins, a totally unique setting is very welcome.
Much like the show itself, the game focuses on a number of principal characters in different locations, each of their stories affecting the others to varying degrees. This allows for some nice changes in scenery and helps keep things varied, but as is always the case with these kinds of stories one plotline inevitably becomes “the boring one” through which we slog before returning to the good stuff.
So far, I’m having the most fun playing as Mira, the Forrester’s eldest daughter. She takes the role of a handmaiden to Margaery Tyrell, and her story features the kind of political intrigue I watch the show for. Personally, I don’t watch Game of Thrones to see dragons kill slavers or Theon get tortured for eleven months; my thing is the guile and duplicity. Mira mostly confronts challenges in a social way, and I’ll always find a battle of tact with the Lannisters more enjoyable than a swordfight with Bolton #3.
Ethan's story is a close second. Thrust forward as the new Lord of House Forester, Ethan must make decisions affecting the future of his house and people. These decisions concern how he treats criminals, which Lords to trust, how he should distribute supplies, etc. I chose to play Ethan as a benevolent ruler in order to maintain the support of my people, but I’m very much looking forward to an alternate playthrough where I go full-Joffrey on everyone.
The most surprising story was Asher’s, as it includes a Shakespearean love tragedy that I don’t usually associate with Game of Thrones. I don’t use the term “Shakespearean” flippantly, either; it’s like we’ve walked into Act IV of Romeo and Juliet. Asher has been exiled to Essos after an affair with the daughter of a rival house resulted in bloodshed. Not a lot has happened with Asher yet (all he’s done is stab a couple of people) so in a lot of ways his story is the grand tease of the game. Still, the game drops one or two things that are clearly going to pay off later, and I think there’s a lot to be excited for.
Gared’s story is by far the least interesting to me. It starts off promising, with Gared serving as a squire to the Neesonesquely-cool Lord Forrester and being charged with an Important Quest. But as soon as he gets back to Ironrath, it’s “fuck-off up the Wall” to follow in the footsteps of Jon Snow, and maybe that works for some people, but I find Jon Snow’s story to be one of the least interesting in the series. I care a lot less about fighting armies of savages and zombies than I do about the backstabbing in King’s Landing. The fact that Gared was going to be a Ranger didn’t exactly get me excited. Despite that, Gared himself manages to stay endearing, and there are a number of satisfying moments.
As always, Telltale games are all about the choices, and one of the things I love about adapting Game of Thrones into a video game is the ability to determine my own fate. When talking about the show, I can't count how many times I’ve said “If only Ned hadn’t warned Cersei!” or “Why didn’t Oberyn just finish him?!” Well guess what? Now you get to be the one making the stupid decisions.
An example of what I’m talking about comes early in the game when playing as Gared. You’re charged with delivering a message to your uncle, and only to your uncle. On your way to meet him, you have the opportunity to divulge your the message to a plethora of characters, two or three of whom directly ask if you were given any super-secret messages. If the same thing had happened on the show, you know straight up that Gared would have caved to at least one of them. One of the most satisfying things about the game is that you don’t have to make the stupid mistakes characters invariably make in the show.
The player often crosses paths with familiar characters from the TV series, and though I was knew this was going to be the case, I didn’t expect much more than a throw-away cameo. To my surprise, major characters like Tyrion and Margaery occupy significant roles in the game’s plot. The character models are impressive likenesses, and all of the familiar character are voiced (so far) by their television actors. We’ve been treated to Peter Dinklage, Lena Heady, Natalie Dormer, Kit Harrington and Iwan Rheon, which I think is an impressive roster. It must be said that the quality of their performances isn’t exactly on par with the six-million-dollar-per-episode TV series, but the inclusion of the original actors does a lot to build immersion.
As great as it is to have the “real thing”, there are some minor downsides. The most jarring thing about hearing these actors is that their voices come from, essentially, marionette versions of their characters. It makes you realise how much of the TV performance is physical, and while Telltale are perfectly capable of capturing the actors’ voices, the animators have a much harder time capturing their unique mannerisms. There are a couple of facial expressions that are a little too pantomime, a few turns and gestures that are a little too obviously keyframed. The quality of animation is no lower than that of the characters unique to the game, but including characters and actors from the show invites that comparison to reality, and it nudges the experience a little closer to the uncanny valley.
As I said, though, this stuff is very minor. None of it really qualifies as complaint, just novel observation; it didn’t reduce my engagement, or even really bothered me. After first noticing it, I scarcely thought about it again.
As far as visuals go, Telltale’s Game of Thrones is solid. The Telltale Tool isn’t exactly the cutting edge of graphics technology, but the developers make good use of stylisation. The game is filtered to look vaguely like an oil painting, and this forgives the slight lack of fidelity. The effect is stronger the further objects get from the camera, which I thought was a novel feature. Though it works with varying degrees of success when applied to people, it looks great when applied to backdrops and scenery, and it does a lot to help build that “epic fantasy” feeling.
Telltale Games are champions of the adventure genre, and Game of Thrones only improves their pedigree. It’s always difficult to judge two-sixths of a game, but what they’ve presented thus far is strong. As good as the first two episodes are, the plot is clearly ramping up, and I eagerly anticipate what’s yet to come.
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