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- Dec 31, 2004
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I played this game on PC but using an Xbox 360 controller on medium difficulty and unlike most reviews I have seen of this game I really enjoyed the whole experience, including the gameplay. The game is hugely flawed and I'm sure if you want to hear about the bad voice acting, inconsistent graphics and dull environments I doubt it will be hard to find people complaining about them in detail, but this is all about why I liked the game.
Gameplay
I've seen this game described more than once as having bad gameplay but a good story and I really can't agree with that. It's a game with good gameplay and a great (for a video game at least) story. Maybe more seasoned RPG players have played games with similar combat systems that were executed better. Maybe Game of Thrones come up short compared to games I've never played. Or maybe I just have low standards. In any case I found the combat rather engaging throughout my whole 25 hour or so experience.
Crowd control is really the name of the game when it comes to the combat system. The game uses a real time pause system in which you are more giving orders to your character than controlling them. Your heroes will auto attack enemies in front of them but rely on your orders to execute special attacks. You have a limited reservoir of recharging energy to use these and they're the key to the whole system. You must use your attacks at the right time, either setting up powerful combos with status effects or using well-timed blows to interrupt your enemies' special abilities (and if you're not careful enemies can interrupt you as well, wasting the energy of any special attacks you had queued up as well as any items you were in the process of using). I suppose it might be something like what playing an MMORPG is like, but I've never played an MMORPG so I have no idea what that's like.
Taking on individual enemies is a simple task but where the game becomes interesting is the crowd control. If you're in a room with four swordsmen, one with shield, and three archers you must constantly keep an eye on all participants, watching for attacks that might stun you or knock you over which can quickly turn the entire fight against you.
Of my two main characters my first, Mors, was somewhat of a tank. With a shield in one hand and a sword in the other and covered from head to toe in heavy plate he specialized in taking huge amounts of punishment while steadily dealing it out. He was somewhat lacking in the ability to keep multiple enemies suppressed (though his dog, who gets its own skill tree, did help) and archers were really his worst enemy.
My second, Alester was an archer and quite the opposite to Mors. Lightly armoured but with very powerful combos my Alester could take very little damage and needed to constantly keep enemies stun locked or otherwise away from him to survive. Early in the game the differences between the two characters gave some needed variety to the combat and after they finally team up they complemented each other extremely well, making clearing out rooms of guards both efficient and satisfying.
I think dialogue systems are as much gameplay as combat systems are so I'll finish off this section with a bit on that. The game uses simple dialogue trees that anyone who's played a WRPG will be familiar with, but differs somewhat in presentation from most others. Classic RPGs generally give you the exact text of what your character will say while a lot of more recent examples often only give you a brief or one-word description of your character's tone or general stance as your options.
Game of Thrones does something else: Many dialogue options are presented as part of your characters inner thoughts and monologue, giving you a slice of something familiar from reading the books and giving you more insight into the minds of your characters than you would normally get from a game. Some options are even just two parts of the same thought. "I don't trust him..." "...but I have no choice" are just so much more interesting as choices than "refuse" and "accept" and after a while I found myself reading them in the characters' voices much as I would when reading a book. It's a very elegant implementation of an old fashioned system that shows that actual care and thought went into this game.
Story
This is where the game really shines. It's not on the same level as the A Song of Ice and Fire series proper (it suffers from some awkward and sometimes over-expositionary dialogue and poor to atrocious delivery by the actors) but it's a solid addition to the franchise and as video games go it's terrific. There is some small branching choices as well as some sidequests but those are just the minor details in the game's main, fixed narrative (though it does sport multiple endings).
As already mentioned there are two main characters: Mors Westford is a sworn brother of the Night's Watch and a secret skinchanger who can control his dog with his mind. Alester Sarwyc is the heir of noble house who left Westeros after Robert's Rebellion and became a Red Priest. Their stories start off seemingly entirely separate, with Mors taking on a mission to protect a damsel in distress and Alester setting of to the capital in order to find his brother and claim his inheritance. As the game progresses their stories begin to converge both as you learn the connections between their current situations and their past history together.
A Song of Ice and Fire is well known for putting complex protagonists on opposite sides and making the reader route for both of them at once. You can like Tyrion and Davos and want both of them to come out on top, but for each of them victory means the other will probably die. Game of Throne the RPG is a bit more clear cut with its heroes and villains (the former being the people you play as, the latter being the people you insert pointed objects into) but being the protagonists does not automatically make Mors and Alester good guys. As would be expected from any tie-in to A Song of Ice and Fire (and make no mistake, this is intended for fans of the books, not just the show) our heroes are complex characters, not white knights. While their troubles are presented sympathetically they are both men who do downright terrible things to achieve their goals and in the name of revenge.
But even so when they are being terrible together they are both doing it in different ways and for different reasons. Despite being a priest Alester is quite pragmatic and is willing to stoop as low as he needs to in order to save his house, his family and his inheritance. Mors on the other hand is fuelled by his sense of justice (a sense of justice that sees no issue in cutting down any man who stands the slightest bit in his way) and a constant rage that is almost always bubbling under the surface.
Although they come together as allies (and are old friends) Mors and Alesters motivations, world views and attitudes are very much at odds with each other. This grows more and more important as the story develops and learn about what brought each of them to the situation they are in. When these tensions come to a head it's one of the best moments in the game and the voice actors (particularly Mors's) actually manage to summon up some real emotion to their performances. It's nearly enough to make you forget the awkward and off-tone deliveries that they scatter throughout the rest of the game.
The intrigue itself is complex and slowly revealed with many twists. These are twists of the good sort; they take you off guard when they happen, but once out in the air you'll slap yourself for not having seen it coming (though admittedly some are a bit obvious or otherwise cliche). The story takes place during and just before the first book/first series of the show and although it obviously steers clear of the main plot (it would have to considering that Mors and Alester don't exist in it) it uses the details of it as a background to set off its own story. Knowledge of the source material could even be a sort of red herring in itself, in the way the schemes of the game skim off those of the books before heading in a different, but parallel, line.
There is some conflict with the source material though. Much of it can be chalked up to necessities of gameplay. The body count Mors and Alester rack up is quite absurd in a serious story, though not strange at all for a video game. The number of mazes of spacious secret tunnels with mechanical levers that lift up entire sections of wall to lift is far too high, in that it's a number that is greater than zero and in order to complete sidequests Mors seems to have the ability to travel from King's Landing to the Wall and back (a journey of several months) in the course of a single day.
I would like to take a moment out of this negativity to talk something that the game manages to avoid in translation, something that you'd almost expect to be mandatory for a game: It doesn't overly suffer from runaway fantasy inflation. In Skyrim a hundred gold septums is lose change. Thanks to the miracle of denominations in Game of Thrones I don't think I ever had more than twenty gold dragons at any point. Prices seem downright reasonable in comparison to other RPGs with fresh water costing a few coppers, a half-decent sword costing a fat purse of silver and a fresh set of plate fit for a lord costing a fistful of gold.
There are more major conflicts with the source material. One wonders how the men invented for the game passed unmentioned by the book characters, particularly those they actually meet in the game, and the idea that some of the events that occur in the game would not be considered important enough to be mentioned by characters in the book or show is borderline absurd. There is a balance to be struck in how big events in the game can grow. Too far to one side and the story starts stepping on the toes of the source material, too far to the other and we get a petty squabbles instead of an epic adventure. The game perhaps leans a bit too far in the former direction.
Even the backstory, which one would think would be easier to align with canon, is not free of issues. Both main characters are supposed to be veterans - heroes even - of Robert's Rebellion. The problem being they served under Tywin Lannister, who only joined the Rebellion when it was practically over. Without going into specifics Mors's backstory in particular just doesn't fit well with the history of the rebellion as we know it.
There are a few moments where the story falls flat in and of itself are rare enough, but they do happen unfortunately. One plot point towards the end of the game in particular is not only a monumental ass-pull but also completely unnecessary. It reeks of something that was forced in due to possibly being seen as necessary for a game tie-in with Game of Thrones.
Those missteps are the exception rather than the rule though, and stand out because they contrast the largely good writing. If this were a tie-in novella rather than a video game I would have been as glad to read it as I was happy to play this game (though I'd expect some the dialogue to be brushed up a bit).
I'm looking forward to giving it a replay with different character classes and making some different choices and I'll probably pick up the prequel DLC at some point. It's a good game and a real diamond in the rough and I highly recommend at least trying it out if you're a fan of the franchise.
Gameplay
I've seen this game described more than once as having bad gameplay but a good story and I really can't agree with that. It's a game with good gameplay and a great (for a video game at least) story. Maybe more seasoned RPG players have played games with similar combat systems that were executed better. Maybe Game of Thrones come up short compared to games I've never played. Or maybe I just have low standards. In any case I found the combat rather engaging throughout my whole 25 hour or so experience.
Crowd control is really the name of the game when it comes to the combat system. The game uses a real time pause system in which you are more giving orders to your character than controlling them. Your heroes will auto attack enemies in front of them but rely on your orders to execute special attacks. You have a limited reservoir of recharging energy to use these and they're the key to the whole system. You must use your attacks at the right time, either setting up powerful combos with status effects or using well-timed blows to interrupt your enemies' special abilities (and if you're not careful enemies can interrupt you as well, wasting the energy of any special attacks you had queued up as well as any items you were in the process of using). I suppose it might be something like what playing an MMORPG is like, but I've never played an MMORPG so I have no idea what that's like.
Taking on individual enemies is a simple task but where the game becomes interesting is the crowd control. If you're in a room with four swordsmen, one with shield, and three archers you must constantly keep an eye on all participants, watching for attacks that might stun you or knock you over which can quickly turn the entire fight against you.
Of my two main characters my first, Mors, was somewhat of a tank. With a shield in one hand and a sword in the other and covered from head to toe in heavy plate he specialized in taking huge amounts of punishment while steadily dealing it out. He was somewhat lacking in the ability to keep multiple enemies suppressed (though his dog, who gets its own skill tree, did help) and archers were really his worst enemy.
My second, Alester was an archer and quite the opposite to Mors. Lightly armoured but with very powerful combos my Alester could take very little damage and needed to constantly keep enemies stun locked or otherwise away from him to survive. Early in the game the differences between the two characters gave some needed variety to the combat and after they finally team up they complemented each other extremely well, making clearing out rooms of guards both efficient and satisfying.
I think dialogue systems are as much gameplay as combat systems are so I'll finish off this section with a bit on that. The game uses simple dialogue trees that anyone who's played a WRPG will be familiar with, but differs somewhat in presentation from most others. Classic RPGs generally give you the exact text of what your character will say while a lot of more recent examples often only give you a brief or one-word description of your character's tone or general stance as your options.
Game of Thrones does something else: Many dialogue options are presented as part of your characters inner thoughts and monologue, giving you a slice of something familiar from reading the books and giving you more insight into the minds of your characters than you would normally get from a game. Some options are even just two parts of the same thought. "I don't trust him..." "...but I have no choice" are just so much more interesting as choices than "refuse" and "accept" and after a while I found myself reading them in the characters' voices much as I would when reading a book. It's a very elegant implementation of an old fashioned system that shows that actual care and thought went into this game.
Story
This is where the game really shines. It's not on the same level as the A Song of Ice and Fire series proper (it suffers from some awkward and sometimes over-expositionary dialogue and poor to atrocious delivery by the actors) but it's a solid addition to the franchise and as video games go it's terrific. There is some small branching choices as well as some sidequests but those are just the minor details in the game's main, fixed narrative (though it does sport multiple endings).
As already mentioned there are two main characters: Mors Westford is a sworn brother of the Night's Watch and a secret skinchanger who can control his dog with his mind. Alester Sarwyc is the heir of noble house who left Westeros after Robert's Rebellion and became a Red Priest. Their stories start off seemingly entirely separate, with Mors taking on a mission to protect a damsel in distress and Alester setting of to the capital in order to find his brother and claim his inheritance. As the game progresses their stories begin to converge both as you learn the connections between their current situations and their past history together.
A Song of Ice and Fire is well known for putting complex protagonists on opposite sides and making the reader route for both of them at once. You can like Tyrion and Davos and want both of them to come out on top, but for each of them victory means the other will probably die. Game of Throne the RPG is a bit more clear cut with its heroes and villains (the former being the people you play as, the latter being the people you insert pointed objects into) but being the protagonists does not automatically make Mors and Alester good guys. As would be expected from any tie-in to A Song of Ice and Fire (and make no mistake, this is intended for fans of the books, not just the show) our heroes are complex characters, not white knights. While their troubles are presented sympathetically they are both men who do downright terrible things to achieve their goals and in the name of revenge.
But even so when they are being terrible together they are both doing it in different ways and for different reasons. Despite being a priest Alester is quite pragmatic and is willing to stoop as low as he needs to in order to save his house, his family and his inheritance. Mors on the other hand is fuelled by his sense of justice (a sense of justice that sees no issue in cutting down any man who stands the slightest bit in his way) and a constant rage that is almost always bubbling under the surface.
Although they come together as allies (and are old friends) Mors and Alesters motivations, world views and attitudes are very much at odds with each other. This grows more and more important as the story develops and learn about what brought each of them to the situation they are in. When these tensions come to a head it's one of the best moments in the game and the voice actors (particularly Mors's) actually manage to summon up some real emotion to their performances. It's nearly enough to make you forget the awkward and off-tone deliveries that they scatter throughout the rest of the game.
The intrigue itself is complex and slowly revealed with many twists. These are twists of the good sort; they take you off guard when they happen, but once out in the air you'll slap yourself for not having seen it coming (though admittedly some are a bit obvious or otherwise cliche). The story takes place during and just before the first book/first series of the show and although it obviously steers clear of the main plot (it would have to considering that Mors and Alester don't exist in it) it uses the details of it as a background to set off its own story. Knowledge of the source material could even be a sort of red herring in itself, in the way the schemes of the game skim off those of the books before heading in a different, but parallel, line.
There is some conflict with the source material though. Much of it can be chalked up to necessities of gameplay. The body count Mors and Alester rack up is quite absurd in a serious story, though not strange at all for a video game. The number of mazes of spacious secret tunnels with mechanical levers that lift up entire sections of wall to lift is far too high, in that it's a number that is greater than zero and in order to complete sidequests Mors seems to have the ability to travel from King's Landing to the Wall and back (a journey of several months) in the course of a single day.
I would like to take a moment out of this negativity to talk something that the game manages to avoid in translation, something that you'd almost expect to be mandatory for a game: It doesn't overly suffer from runaway fantasy inflation. In Skyrim a hundred gold septums is lose change. Thanks to the miracle of denominations in Game of Thrones I don't think I ever had more than twenty gold dragons at any point. Prices seem downright reasonable in comparison to other RPGs with fresh water costing a few coppers, a half-decent sword costing a fat purse of silver and a fresh set of plate fit for a lord costing a fistful of gold.
There are more major conflicts with the source material. One wonders how the men invented for the game passed unmentioned by the book characters, particularly those they actually meet in the game, and the idea that some of the events that occur in the game would not be considered important enough to be mentioned by characters in the book or show is borderline absurd. There is a balance to be struck in how big events in the game can grow. Too far to one side and the story starts stepping on the toes of the source material, too far to the other and we get a petty squabbles instead of an epic adventure. The game perhaps leans a bit too far in the former direction.
Even the backstory, which one would think would be easier to align with canon, is not free of issues. Both main characters are supposed to be veterans - heroes even - of Robert's Rebellion. The problem being they served under Tywin Lannister, who only joined the Rebellion when it was practically over. Without going into specifics Mors's backstory in particular just doesn't fit well with the history of the rebellion as we know it.
There are a few moments where the story falls flat in and of itself are rare enough, but they do happen unfortunately. One plot point towards the end of the game in particular is not only a monumental ass-pull but also completely unnecessary. It reeks of something that was forced in due to possibly being seen as necessary for a game tie-in with Game of Thrones.
Those missteps are the exception rather than the rule though, and stand out because they contrast the largely good writing. If this were a tie-in novella rather than a video game I would have been as glad to read it as I was happy to play this game (though I'd expect some the dialogue to be brushed up a bit).
I'm looking forward to giving it a replay with different character classes and making some different choices and I'll probably pick up the prequel DLC at some point. It's a good game and a real diamond in the rough and I highly recommend at least trying it out if you're a fan of the franchise.
