Now Playing: Game of Thrones

When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Or just die, in this case. Because you’re not really playing Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series – you’re just watching a scripted story play out and occasionally pressing a button to progress to the next scene. I’m going to be pretty hard on GoT in this review, not because it’s a terrible game, but because it’s so damn lazy and shoddy.

I’ve played a number of Telltale titles and enjoyed all of them to one degree or another. They’re titles that live and die primarily on the strength of their narrative and characters. They’re interactive stories which present choices to the player – choices which shape both the characters and how the narrative will progress.

I’ve never had unrealistic expectations for how divergent the narrative in Telltale titles will be. I’ve always said there’s going to be a limit to how far a plot can branch based on player choice. But it’s also an aspect to these games that I’ve wanted to see improve.

Considering that GoT was released after both The Walking Dead: Season 2 and the excellent The Wolf Among Us – not to mention the strong potential of the Game of Thrones licence – I expected far more. Instead, GoT takes a significant step back.

Graphically, GoT is shoddy, with poor environmental textures and character models. Animations are stiff and awkward. There’s also a number of visual bugs, such as characters winking in and out of existence in the background. It feels rushed, and somewhat incomplete – playing with subtitles on, it was funny to see so many lines appearing that actually had no VA.

The ‘gameplay’ segments of GoT also feel lazy and pointless to the point that they may as well not exist. You’ll be given control of many of the characters for short ‘walking’ segments where you only take five steps before it triggers another scene. The few environments you get to ‘explore’ are small and the items you can interact with entirely irrelevant.

It’s like they just didn’t know how to incorporate these gameplay segments into the title – or just couldn’t be bothered to try. Who thought having you walk slowly along The Wall lighting torches one at a time would be an engaging gameplay segment? It’s just – like nearly all of these segments – filler. It adds nothing to the experience but irritation.

Fortunately, the overall story is okay. It’s not great, but it keeps you fairly engaged. Which can’t really be said about the characters, some of whom I just found annoying to play as, and as a result, I didn’t really care about what happened to them.

Not that what happens to them is in any way under your control. This may be the most restrictive title I’ve played by Telltale as far as its ‘choices’ go. It became clear during the first episode that nothing I did or said would result in a different outcome.

Even dialogue choices don’t really change scenes, as other characters just respond with generic ‘one size fits all’ dialogue. Some of the episode ‘recaps’ even played dialogue I’d not chosen – not that it matters, but it gives you a sense of how poorly this title has been put together, when it can’t even properly keep track of your choices between episodes.

People may argue this isn’t that different to previous Telltale titles, but at some point, surely we should expect them to step up their game? And a GoT title was the perfect opportunity to create their most complex, divergent narrative yet. Instead, we get a title with practically zero narrative branching.

It’s only at the very end of the title that your choices can change things – but only in a potential sequel that may never come, and if it ever does, will probably ignore and make those choices irrelevant anyway.

And when you know your choices won’t actually change anything, you just don’t care about those choices – dialogue or otherwise. You’re not concerned about the impact your choices will have on these characters, because their fates are predetermined whatever you do.

With the GoT licence, Telltale had an opportunity to deliver their most ambitious title yet, but instead delivered a title that doesn’t even try. It’s a step back from their previous work – both graphically, technically and narratively – when it should have been a step forward.

As I said, it’s not a terrible game. The story and characters are decent enough to see you through – even if it does often feel like someone’s mediocre fan fiction. Overall, it’s a disappointing title. It’s lazy, shoddy and should have been so much better.

5/10