Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5 out of 10
Game of Thrones is a third-person episodic adventure game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4 and PS3. Game of Thrones originated in 1996 when a critically acclaimed and award winning book by George R. R. Martin titled A Game of Thrones was published. HBO adapted the story arc became a major success and a huge attraction for the HBO network with record viewing figures seemingly increasing for each of its 10 episode seasons.
The television series has spawned multiple forms of media including everything from soundtrack albums and T-shirts to even replicas of armour and jewellery worn by characters from the television series with bobblehead figures of characters by Funko. Another form of media that covered Game of Thrones is videogames which started in 2007 with an online text based RPG called Blood of Dragons followed by a real-time strategy game called A Game of Thrones: Genesis in 2011 and Game of Thrones: The Role-Playing Game in 2012 with both games developed by Cyanide and a social networking strategy game called Game of Thrones: Ascent in 2013, but can Telltale’s Game of Thrones become the most authentic videogame adaptation?
The story reflects what fans of the novels and television series would anticipate due to George R. R. Martin’s personal assistant Ty Corey Franck being brought on board as a story consultant to help shape the story in order for it to have a connection to the novels and television series. The story revolves around the fate of House Forrester which hails from a castle known as Ironrath in northern Westeros hanging in the balance due to their ongoing dispute and rivalry with House Whitehill and House Bolton as House Whitehill have served as bannermen to House Bolton for centuries with House Forrester seemingly being a top priority target due to their control over the much sought after Ironwood which has military purposes. Despite the story focusing on a house that had not been introduced into the television series at the time of release of the game; it was mentioned albeit briefly in the novel titled A Dance with Dragons, while running in parallel from the end of the third season to the beginning of the fifth season of the television series. Other families are integrated from the television series and how they become allies, remain neutral or become enemies based upon the actions of family members from House Forrester in relation to the locations they are stationed to perform their duties.
The character design is excellent as it includes faithful representations of the characters as they genuinely look like their counterparts in the form of the actors and actresses performing in the lead roles of the television series with Cersei Lannister having a striking resemblance of Lena Headey, Tyrion Lannister looking just like Peter Dinklage and Jon Snow having a likeness to Kit Harrington, while the characters who are also added to fill in the story do not look out of place.
The environment and character design are just as good as each other and it really gives the feel of immersion of being within the surroundings such characters would be anticipated to be facing with interiors of castles, palaces and general buildings including open plan rooms, personal chambers, quarters, throne rooms and exteriors consisting of paths, fields, courtyards, gardens, canyons and caves, therefore providing a real authenticity that combines perfectly with the character design.
The Codex feature is unlocked after playing through part of the first chapter of the first episode and works much in the same approach as the Book of Fables in The Wolf Among Us as more character and environment biographies are unlocked as each is encountered throughout the course of the game. Each biography includes the character or environment model, name, title and a presented back story for every major character and environment such as how Gared Tuttle rose through the ranks from being born into a family of low social status to working his way up to finally being Lord Forrester’s squire or how Ironrath came to be named, its history and the strategic advantage its location provides.
The My Choices feature is quite reminiscent to the feature found in Telltale’s previous games such as both seasons of The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands episodic games by providing an entire listing of choices including the statistical analysis regarding the percentage of players who have made the same choice for each moral decision as well as a variety of decisions that are scattered throughout the chapters of each episode such as swearing loyalty to the king, choosing punishment or mercy for Erik, who is chosen to be the new Sentinel, acceptance or refusal to kiss Lord Whitehill’s ring; with the feature being directly available from the main menu and at the end of each episode.
Until a Vita version is potentially released, remote play of the PS4 version on that medium is a consolation with the performance during remote play providing the same excellent quality of the graphics, audio and general performance of the PS4 version, while the control scheme has been appropriately optimised resulting in a comfortable control scheme as fighting actions during battles have moved from R2 to R when prompted, showing selectables has moved from L2 to L, while the rest of the controls remain exactly the same as the PS4 version, therefore resulting in a remote play experience that will keep players satisfied until a Vita version is hopefully released.
The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller with the refinements found in the control scheme from Tales from the Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us being retained in regards to providing a greater differentiation between actions, conversations and fighting. The control scheme consists of pressing X, triangle, square or O to perform actions, start a conversation or to choose a response in a conversation with the buttons being clearly marked towards the bottom of the screen, pressing R2 to run or perform fight actions when defending in a one-on-one encounter with an enemy, pressing L2 to show selectables, pressing down on the d-pad to display inventory, mashing certain face buttons such as X, triangle, square or O when attempting to fight off an enemy or using a shield to defend from a strong sword attack, attempting to walk when severely injured or preparing an arrow for a crossbow. The player can change the direction of the left analogue stick to move the character as they walk around to explore the environment, changing the direction of the right analogue stick to move the cursor around the environment allows for investigation, dodging out the way of an enemy attack and observe certain objects and items of importance as well as deciding who to start or continue a conversation with or even positioning aim when going into defensive mode and avoiding attacks from enemies, pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.
There is no touch pad implementation which is surprising as the quick time events (QTEs) could have been optionally mapped to the touch pad, an alternative to the right analogue stick for dodging enemy attacks or it could have otherwise been utilised as an optional method of exploring the surrounding environments or even participating in conversations and moral choices, while the light bar could have produced green gradually fading to red as the time available to perform a QTE during a one-on-one encounter with an enemy ticks down, alongside the lack of DualShock 4 vibration which could have been utilised when a character is under attack from an enemy in battle gets into one of their many fights with enemies when they have had a heavy fall during their exhaustive exploration.
Graphically, Game of Thrones possesses authentic likenesses of the cast from the television series including Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targareyn and Iwan Rheon as Ramsay Snow combined perfectly with Telltale’s unique graphical art style that seems to have been adapted from cel shaded to bordering on more of an interactive painting at times for more real world characters and environments, while the character models move fluently and at an appropriate pace during battle and exploration.
The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, episodes, settings and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad. The background of the menus focuses upon a huge amount of characters and environments which gradually increase as the story develops throughout the course of the episodes with television style presentation to provide a preview of the next episode and recapping the key events from the previous episode, followed by an unravelling map displaying major surrounding areas before the official title of the episode is revealed.
The cast of the television series reprise their roles with exceptional performances including Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister, Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targareyn, Kit Harrington as Jon Snow, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, Iwan Rheon as Ramsay Snow and Natalie Dormer as Margaery Tyrell which are complimented by a cast of excellent voice-over artists such as Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer which is authentic to the television series. The sound effects include swords clashing together in battle, walking, running, ambience of the surroundings, while the music includes the official theme from the television series and atmospheric tones during intense scenes which will certainly appeal to fans of the television series. The lack of any DualShock 4 speaker implementation is surprising as it could have produced a further layer of audio with voice-overs for conversations, sound effects such as swords clashing in battle, ambience or music.
The trophy list includes 49 trophies with 34 bronze, 12 silver, 2 gold and 1 platinum trophy. The trophy list for all 6 episodes for the game is entirely based upon completing each chapter within each episode; resulting in a somewhat easy trophy list in regards to the fact that players will platinum the trophy list if they are able to complete the story with only a single playthrough required. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 12 to 18 hours to platinum the trophy list.
The difficulty curve certainly fluctuates throughout the game as there are some tough one-on-one encounters with enemies, while players are required to battle enemies at times and explore their surroundings at others, alongside portions of the game when urgent conversations must be had with characters to plan strategy in defence of an incoming threat from an opposing house or quickly attempting to forge an alliance to help House Forrester. When in one-on-one encounters with enemies players will be required to do some button mashing but these encounters are made harder by the buttons on occasion being randomly generated. This approach means that it is not always about memorising a certain button sequence and instead it becomes more about fast reflexes to ensure survival against such a dangerous enemy which is an appropriate design choice as it certainly adds more of a challenge to the gameplay by reducing the probability of surviving such an encounter with a battle ready enemy.
There are no local or online multiplayer features and no online leaderboards, although local and online co-operative multiplayer may have possibly worked for two players to team up as the two lead characters representing House Forrester throughout the scenes, not only conversation but also battle that venture back and forth through a variety of locations to explore the game together, but the lack of local and online multiplayer features do not detract from the experience as players would not anticipate such a component to necessarily feature in a story driven point and click focused game in a genre that is usually solely single player, while online leaderboards could have worked well by providing a competitive challenge in regards to how quickly each player had completed each chapter, each episode and the entire story. However, despite there being no online leaderboards; there is a statistical analysis of the decisions made during each episode in comparison to the decisions that everyone else who has played Game of Thrones. This is a positive design choice in the sense that it provides players with an in depth look if they have made the correct decision or were incorrect in the eyes of a certain percentage of people who have played the game. Every decision within each episode is clearly defined in the statistical analysis and it is incredibly interesting to see at the end of the final chapter of every episode what percentage of players made the same decisions as you and to also see the percentage of players that disagreed with your choices.
The replayability of Game of Thrones stems from the multiple storylines players can shape by playing the game over the course of multiple playthroughs, while experimenting with different combinations of moral choices to see which direction the decisions will ultimately guide the story regarding which characters have positive or negative perceptions of other leaders given alternative moral choices, alongside the Codex feature which delivers excellent character biographies that reward players for their progression and is something that will be especially of value to those who are fans of the books and television series.
Overall, Game of Thrones delivers the best and most authentic representation of the source material from both the television series and novels in videogame form with a story, characters and locations that will appeal to fans of both, therefore fans of anything Game of Thrones related should absolutely play this game, then immediately look forward to the second season.
Jason Bonnar
Analysis
- Title: Game of Thrones
- Developer: Telltale Games
- Publisher: Telltale Games
- System: PS4 (Version Reviewed) and PS3
- Format: Blu-Ray Disc/PSN Download
- Cross-Buy: No
- Cross-Play: No
- Players: 1
- Hard Drive Space Required: 14.17GB (Version 1.07)