“Beautifully inconsistent.” Those are the words that I can use to describe this outing from Telltales games in its latest in string of episodes with the Game of Thrones series. Don’t get me wrong, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time with episode three, but I felt the game had some pacing issues between its grand sweeping story segments. This seems to be an issue with regards to the shift away from the Game of Thrones core cast, that has up until now been heavily featured, and House Forrester that finally gets the story almost entirely placed on its shoulders. While I’m glad that the game is finally striking out on its own, away from the shackles of the Game of Thrones cannon, I do feel that it was a bit of a shaky start.
You see, while the past episodes have featured some heavy narrative and exposition about the ailing House Forrester, episode three gets right into things with them as action takers. This is great, but with two episodes of fandom kissing already before it, episode three almost feels like a new beginning to the series and because of that lingers too much on things we already know. One of the problems of trying to tie into the connected world of Game of Thrones is that you run the risk of being less interesting that the show itself.
Sure, House Forrester and its far-flung family is interesting as a concept, but fans of the show will feel conflicted with this outing. You can’t have the Game of Thrones cast so intertwined in the adventure to all of a sudden make them take a back seat (which they should have done originally) because no matter how good the voice work or writing is in this episode, it still pales to the work of the show. I’m not knocking the game for what it’s doing, I just wish the last two episodes would have relied less on the TV cast than it did. I know that it was a way to bring in fans of the show, but it’s now episode three and House Forrester is finally stepping forward into the lead position.
What is impressive as in most of these Telltale adventures is how the game bookends each episode. You are going to get a pretty engaging and exciting opening with Asher and company dealing with a dragon, something the series took forever to get to even get showing on-screen, and a closing battle on the Wall between “old” friends. It finally hits at some action beats that require you to swing your blade while making tense choices in the heat of it all. It’s refreshing to have some control over events instead of clicking dialogue boxes that don’t feel like they carry much weight. For a moment while playing I almost felt like I was taking part in a grander adventure with action segments along the lines of a Dragon Age game.
The ending section that takes place on The Wall and sees Tuttle dealing with an old enemy. This also provides some much-needed action which I like, but it’s the middle chunk where things peter off a bit. This is the first instance in the series, or any Telltale series for that matter, that I felt long stretches of boredom while playing. The game jumps around quite a bit more than previous episodes, but it just doesn’t feel like things are going anywhere for much of it. There were many times where the game plodded along and left me looking at my watch. Like I said, it really feels like this is the beginning of a much grander adventure for House Forrester, but I just wish it would have begun sooner.
The writing is good, but it just seems to suffer from treading old ground at many points, calling back events or issues that we have already seen and dealt with. More of House Forrester being subjugated by a new Whitehill family member that acts and deals with the family in much the same way all the others have, more of Kings Landing with Mira still fighting between her loyalties while just out of sight Joffery is choking to death on his drink, and Asher once again being mostly left out of doing much of anything after his dragon encounter. Yes, the game does build tension nicely when it’s leading up to some of the episodes major choices, but the answers and consequences to said choices come far too quickly.
Before, major choices would play into scenes much later in an episode, or well into following episodes. The problem in episode three is that the resolution, or consequence, often comes a few scenes later. There are just too many little choices this time around that don’t have any weight to them in the bigger picture. And while the game does end on a big reveal, it doesn’t leave us with any tension or anticipation to a resolution as in other episodes, because the game does not give the player some grand choice to make that will impact the next episode. If you are a fan of Game of Thrones and have followed the show, you’ll probably have a good idea where things are going, because while the game features a new narrative in House Forrester, it also sticks pretty close to the formula that we’ve already seen in the show.
In the end Game of Thrones: Episode Three – The Sword in the Darkness is a good start to the House Forester story, I just wish it would have broken away from the cannon that is Game of Thrones a bit sooner. This episode lacks the impact that we saw in previous installments, but the production value is still incredibly high and it does set up an interesting story that we will hopefully get to see and play, and not just hear about in episode four.
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