Game of Thrones A Telltale Games Series Episode 4 – Sons of Winter is the most powerful episode yet, but is it enough to justify the wait from a middling episode 3?
I love Telltale games and what they have been doing to not only keep the adventure game genre alive, but to make it thrive. That being said, I do take issue with the sporadic release dates between each episode of this, and their other series. Telltale have been taking a book from television with how they present all their series, but unlike television, where we get weekly episodes, the wait between game episodes is almost too much to bear. You see, on television you can leave people with a cliffhanger and keep the momentum building until the following week. People can talk about what they saw with friends and coworkers, and those that missed that weeks show can snag it on their DVR or via a service like Hulu. It all works well because we don’t have to sit on our hands with anticipation for too long.
The problem with Game of Thrones A Telltale Games Series isn’t that it isn’t spectacular, –it is– but with the torturous amount of time between each episode. While I didn’t think the world of episode three, I still enjoyed my time with it, but in the intervening time since that episode dropped I have sort of forgotten about the series. That’s just the thing, you can only wait so long with baited breath before something else takes away your attention and your forget what the hell is going on in the world of Westeros. Capcom, for all their issues, I think got it right with the latest Resident Evil, bringing out episodes on a weekly schedule that better follows the television formula, and gave us sold release dates to keep fans excited. So, after the wait does episode 4 hold its own against a series that has already set the bar pretty damn high? You bet your bottom dollar it does.
Not since episode 1 has this series grabbed me as much as this this did. There are a number of reason for this, but I think it mostly comes down to finally taking a stand as a player. Sure, this all might come back to bite me in the ass, –it wouldn’t be Game of Thrones if it didn’t– but I was done taking orders, trying to play it safe, and trying to be the diplomatic one as I would be in other adventure games. Episode 4 did something that few games ever get the chance to do to me; it made me change as a player. It did this not because I had to to fit the story/world that a game was trying to pigeonhole me into, but because deep down I was angry with not only the characters in play, but with myself.
The world of Game of Thrones isn’t for the weak and timid, and so I had to adapt to it or live with the heaviness of taking the safe choices and waiting in vain for reason to win out. I came into episode four expecting good things, but I never thought that I’d leave feeling like I grew a little as a person, even if that growth was only in the digital realm. A review at this point in the series is going to be difficult because by now many of us playing will be on wildly different paths as we head into the penultimate episode, but more so because we are so deep into the story most anything would spoil new players. just know that things are heating up all across the seven kingdoms, and that this series is knee-deep into the territory that the television show tread last season. Telltale have done a masterful job injecting these new characters smoothly into the world of Game of Thrones, and I for one would love to see them cameo, even if only in word only, later on in the television series -if any survive that long of course.
If you love Game of Thrones in any capacity you need to do yourself a favor and pick up this series ASAP. Still, for those that want a complete adventure and don’t have friends that spoil things, you may want to wait until it all comes to a close. But even then, you may be waiting a few months to see the last two episodes at this rate. I only hope they can keep this momentum going and not peter out because of the long wait.
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