Review: Telltale's Game of Thrones

G'day there guys and gals!

I have been a long time fan of Telltale Games and have long since sang the praises of many of its other work such as The Wolf Among Us and especially The Walking Dead. And with the announcement of a Game of Thrones style Telltale game, I immediately jumped on the bandwagon and prepared to have my soul destroyed.
Telltale, sticking true with the series, have retained what has made the books and show both incredibly addictive and fascinating; no character, not even the protagonist, is safe from death.

Warning! Some slight book/show/game spoilers ahead!

Without diving headfirst into spoiler territory, Telltale's Game of Thrones starts (in the show's timeline) at the end of Season 3 with the Red Wedding and ends roughly at the start of Season 5. The main focus of the story revolves House Forrester; a Northern house which resides roughly south east of Deepwood Motte. The protagonists you will be playing as are as follows: Gared Tuttle, Ethan Forrester, Mira Forrester, Rodrik Forrester and Asher Forrester. While the game does center around the North and Ironrath. the home of the Forresters, players will also see many other exotic locations such as Meereen and Essos in general, The Twins, King's Landing, The Wall and more. 
As I mentioned earlier, Telltale has perfectly captured the meaning of "no character is safe" by the ending of the first episode, however it does not stop there. Player choices can well result in the end of a character in question and choices made earlier on, even those slight ones, will have horrible results by the end of the game. Even telling you this much is well into spoiler territory so for now, that is where I'll leave the info behind.
The storyline itself is utterly fantastic, once more Telltale as written a perfect set of characters who are unique to their own attributes and morals, even siblings are vastly different yet share some similarities, even with Gared Tuttle. The inclusion of more well known characters such as Tyrion and Cercei Lannister, Jon Snow and more, while including their actors as the voice roles, was a brilliant nice touch to the series overall and added a definite air of magnitude to your actions. Bits and pieces were a tad cliche at times but is easily overlooked by how much depth of character they have by the end of their screentime.

Gameplay is, what we can now call, classic Telltale: basic point and click. However by episode 2, the gameplay is improved with well designed Quick Time Events. While ordinarily we as gamers groan at quick time events, these quick times almost always managed to bamboozle me with their speed, as they would slowly fade in or quickly appear. The constant change between these did indeed keep me on my toes, so for this, I do praise the change. Players can also experience some FPS, Hold and Move and QTE joystick movements from time to time. 
Musical score takes a nod to the show, especially by the end of Episode 6, but creates its own for the Forresters here and there, which gave their home and struggle a much more earthy, desperate feel to the game overall. Sound effects were also good, human grunts and groans do tend to be repeated oddly at times (especially in episode 1) but in the midst of an action scene, you won't notice it unless you pay close attention.

Graphics are extremely well done, especially on the character models; the detail to each character (especially in the eyes, facial expressions and hair) looks exquisite. Areas and objects during gameplay can often give off the feel of an oil painting at times, almost as if the characters you're playing as are moving inside a painting. To me, at least, I enjoyed this look overall and liked the art direction, as it truly did well to match each area of Westeros and beyond: King's Landing was colourful, bright and warm, using many bronze and gold colours, while The Wall maintained is dark blue, and faded white look, the sense of a cold place was well captured.

Finally, voice acting. In the past, we have seen many voice actors find their full careers ahead of them in previous Telltale titles and this time is no exception. The vocal cast did an absolutely beautiful job in bringing the world to life inside the world of Game of Thrones. I absolutely hated Gryff as a character, thanks to his voice actor Sasha Dhawan. The choices in every game were made easy or near impossible thanks to my love or hate for every character in this game. I will admit, Kit Harrington as Jon Snow was a teeeeeensy bit off at times (Almost as if he was reading the lines after just been woken up over the phone), but even the actors inside the show did a brilliant job in enhancing their characters through a video game, especially Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage and ESPECIALLY Iwan Rheon. I highly expect that man to go on doing more voice overs for many games in the future, as he has a definite talent for it!

Overall, it's easy to say that I am deeply impressed and enthralled by this game, but those words use too little description to how much I've come to love these characters. The ending itself teases at so much and gives so little into what we see and hear that a Season 2 is a definite must and I pray to the Old Gods and the New for a return for this series.
Once more, Telltale has made a storytelling masterpiece in a gameplay style that anyone can play, book, show or new fan alike. Bravo!

Out of 10, I give Telltale's Game of Thrones a 10/10
PERFECT SCORE!

Telltale's Game of Thrones is out now for the standard price of $30