You'll find Game of Thrones spoilers in here, so turn back if you want to experience the game fresh.
Around an hour
into Sons of Winter, Elaena Glenmore goads the broken and weary Rodrik
Forrester into action with a pressing question: "What have you got to
lose?"
I admit I
laughed at the time. Elaena's words aren't meant as such, but they come off as
sarcastic. Like the episodes before it, Sons of Winter reminds us that there's
always something to lose, even when it seems as though the situation couldn't
possibly grow more dire. Telltale's Game of Thrones series seems particularly
vicious in this regard, and it clings to the idea so tenaciously that I've come
to view every smile or muted expression of hope as an omen of awful things to
come. At times, indeed, the series seems even more heavy-handed than George
R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series or the HBO Game of Thrones series,
but to its credit, Telltale uses this tension to craft the finest episode in
the series to date.
It's a brisk,
action-oriented episode, for one, and it's largely free of the long, expository
talks that bogged down our previous peeks into the affairs of House Forrester.
Telltale knows we know who these characters are now, and it's increasingly
willing to set aside the fan service and let the Forresters be something more
than woodland versions of the Starks.
Some of the big
movers and shakers from the HBO series again make appearances here, but their
use sometimes feels a tad out of character. Daenerys Targaryen in particular
comes off as a little nuttier than she does on HBO, as she continues to throw
around words like "liar" even when confronted with almost irrefutable
proof that our heroes had seen one of her dragons flapping about. She even
mocks a character for flinching from one of the scaly beasts.
"Are you
frightened," she asks. "I thought you'd seen a dragon before."
Maybe she's fine with them snuggling her neck, but something tells me that
encountering one myself isn't going to make me want to play fetch with it and
feed it Milk-Bones from my hands.
Somewhat oddly, Sons of Winter sees
Telltale faring better when it puts the main cast behind it. The conquest of
Meereen especially gets more attention than it does on television, and Telltale
uses the sequence to reveal more backstory about Asher Forrester's warrior
buddy Beskha. One of the chapter's toughest choices pops up in the process, and
it's followed by an excellent action sequence that feels as much dependent on
light strategy as the ability to mash out QTE prompts on a gamepad or keyboard.
Sons of Winter
also allows Mira Forrester to shine in King's Landing. Mira's chapters have
frankly bored me for the most part until now, but the knowledge gleaned from
all that chitchat allows the chapter to take on an air of urgency as she tries
to sniff out information at a party. I've said before that Mira's little more
than Sansa Stark, and that was true early on, but Sons of Winter sees Mira
learning how to play "the game" in a way Sansa never did.
From there it's
up to the Wall, where Gared Tuttle again finds himself struggling to live into
his vows to the Night's Watch. Up until now, his story's almost comically
parroted that of mop-haired bastard Jon Snow, but there's a significant moment
here when said bastard turns his back on the Forrester squire. In response,
Tuttle attempts the unthinkable. The resulting sequence is a mildly poignant
reflection on the inevitability of fate and the meaning of friendship.
If there's a problem with these
approaches, it's that Telltale seems to be distancing itself from criticisms
that it's following associated tales in the show too closely by taking similar
events and pushing them into different directions. Back on the home front, for
instance, there's a scene that recalls the circumstances of the Red Wedding,
but I never felt the tension I felt I was meant to since I was all but certain
it wouldn't lead to the same conclusion. I also worry that the project's
getting away from Telltale in much the same way as the books seem to have grown
too complex for Martin. There's a lot that needs to be resolved here—a lot
more, it seems, than can be resolved in two episodes. For all her confidence,
Mira still seems politically weak, and Telltale seems intent on knocking the
Forresters down two pegs when they move up one.
We'll worry
about that later. On its own, this is a highly enjoyable episode. Scenes flow
smoothly from one to another, and the only bug I saw involved a wine glass that
mysteriously hovered in front of the action. (I imagine this is what Tyrion
Lannister's dreams look like.) Perhaps best of all, it manages to capture the
essence of Martin's world without miring itself in the same controversies
surrounding the show itself over the last two weeks, but even there, it hints
again that there's always something to lose.
INFO
You can’t buy Telltale’s adventures
one episode at a time on PC; you’re buying all six in the season for
$30/£23—so it doesn’t make much sense for us to score each one individually.
We’ll review and score the whole package when all the episodes have been released,
while individual episode reviews like this one will be recaps and unscored
critique.
Source : PC Gamer
Source : PC Gamer
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