An Hour of: Game of Thrones (Video Game)

So, the television series of ‘Game of Thrones’...it’s awesome. The books of ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’...admittedly I still need to read them, but the general feeling is that it’s awesome. The video game of ‘Game of Thrones’...yeah...

Starting it up we get a little cutscene which basically gives us the general background, you know, the fall of the Targaryens, Robert Baratheon’s ascendance to the throne, the Night’s Watch, etc, etc. It does give some great detail about the history of this world and a reminder for fans of the franchise, but at the same time, especially if you’re new to it or have no idea about the franchise and thought the game looked good, you learn virtually nothing from it. Who are the Targaryens? Who’s Robert Baratheon? What are Wildlings? Why is the Night’s Watch necessary? Why is it that only you have to be a volunteer, criminal, or exile to join it? Why do you have to give up your past life?

Yes these are all questions which can’t be answered straight away, but if you look at the introduction to ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, we get pretty much all the information we needed. We learn what the Darkspawn are, how they were created, the threat they possess, what an Archdemon is and what the Grey Wardens are. Here, we’re thrown in the deep end. Granted most, if not all, players will know of the franchise, but at the same time even the experienced players will be mesmerised by how the game glances over all this information.

Anyway after that bit of info, we’re introduced to Gorold, who is on the run from the main character, War from the ‘Darksiders’ franchise, voiced by Kain from the ‘Legacy of Kain’ series. Okay he’s actually called Mors Westford, but he might as well be War. Anyway, Gorold is trying to flee from the Wall and Mors is tasked to bring him back, dead or alive.

Now, it’s here that I start to waiver. The graphics, I’m not too fussed about, they’re blocky I know but they’re relatively the same as the ones in ‘Dragon Age: Origins’. By the way I keep comparing it to ‘Dragon Age’ because the game keeps reminding me of it. Anyway, yeah the graphics could have done with some improving, some objects and the movement is sharp, but other aspects pop up, like the facial features or the odd environmental object. ‘Especially the dog, ‘Dragon Age’ had a more life-like mabari hound, the ‘Game of Thrones’ dog looks like it was made out of plasticine.

But my God the voice acting. First of all, I’ll give the game makers credit for getting some of the actors from the television show to either reprise their characters or voice whoever, but most of them are just...ugh. The voice actor for Gorold I will say is pretty damn good, or at least his first line was. The rest of the dialogue sounds “Bland bland bland bland bland,” “Oh yeah? Well bland bland! Bland bland”.

That and the character of Gorold was completely and utterly pointless, as he is executed in the next five minutes, and is subsequently never mentioned again. For now anyway, remember, I’ve only played an hours’ worth.

But that’s not all, the lip-syncing is AWFUL. The mouth movements hardly match the characters speech, sometimes the mouth shuts when the character is still speaking, and other times the mouth is moving when the character has long since stopped talking. And if you look on the official website for the game (Under ‘The Game’, sub heading ‘The Production’), you’ll come across this caption; “Motion-capture, voice acting for each character and lip-sync will bring all the inhabitants of Westeros to life and will actively participate in immersing the player in a huge, mind blowing universe”. It’s like they’re saying they’re proud of the piece of crap voice acting/lip-syncing that they created. I saw better lip-syncing on the ‘Spyro the Dragon’ game for the Playstation One!

The next screen shot starts off with ‘Chapter 1: Mors’, which is a pretty good throwback to the books since the chapters were just people’s names anyway. It tells us that Mors’ crime was that he acted with integrity (I’m expecting to see Kurt Angle somewhere around here) and therefore he chose to go to the wall rather than death. The second paragraph reads “But wouldn’t death have been a far sweeter fate than a life of misery and violence?”. Well don’t ask me, I didn’t make this choice.

In fact, why didn’t I make this choice? For an RPG so much appears to have happened to the character and yet nothing has been our choice. Maybe our introduction to the game should have been what led to Mors being sent to the Wall, like killing an obnoxious but powerful political figure, then flash forward fifteen years. Heck! Give us the option to change the guys outfit at least!

I suppose we can at least choose his fighting style, attributes, abilities, skill points, and strengths and weaknesses. Okay, most of these things are standard RPG elements, like the abilities which take the form of an ability tree, something which more and more RPG games are taking into effect, such as ‘Dragon Age 2’ or ‘Mass Effect 3’. The strengths and weaknesses bit, in my opinion, is broken. It can lead to some unique playthroughs, I guess, though in all honesty I forgot that I did this.

But the main problem with it, is that the strengths and weaknesses have to balance out, and I don’t mean one weakness for every strength. The strengths, have a rating system I suppose you should call it. Like ‘Born Leader’ is worth four points, which means that you now need weaknesses which amount to four points worth. You can’t select the direct opposite, like if you selected ‘Born Leader’ you can’t be a ‘Bad Leader’, which does make sense. The problem, is that, once the opposite is gone, you’re left with weaknesses which will severely damage your gameplay, and, most of the time, you’re forced to take on more weaknesses than you have strengths.

After all that Mors returns to Castle Black with Gorold where we get some more background detail, which is basically forgettable since the voice actors don’t seem to care. We’re also introduced to I don’t care, I still don’t care, and Guy who talks but I still don’t care about. They’re not worth much. We also see how truly awful the dog looks against the ground, the ground for God’s sake!

Granted we do get some character development from Mors, namely that while he was tasked to hunt down Gorold and calls him a traitor, Mors still has a sense of respect for Gorold, defending him against the three who I do not care about. But, again, why weren’t we given a choice here? To either defend or allow these nameless morons to attack Gorold? That would enable the player to feel/have more control over the character they’re suppose to characterise.

The next scene we get to meet Lord Commander Jeor Mormont, voiced by his television counterpart James Cosmo, where he tells us that one of the recruits isn’t there because he was assaulted. It’s in this scene that we can finally select a dialogue option for Mors, who is failing to decide which side he wants to put whichever hand on (Seriously he puts his right hand on his right side, then his left hand on his left, then his right again! Then he puts his arms at his sides again a second later! What was the point in animating that?). The dialogue option, meanwhile, is kind of a paragon or renegade choice I suppose. We can finally start to shape Mors’ personality in the way that we want.

Gorold then says “The brat certainly was a pretty boy...What a pity I never managed to corner him”. Okay, did Gorold just say he wanted to rape this new recruit? Did he insinuate that the new recruit WAS raped? Well, that’s great, I was just starting to find this guy interesting and likeable, now I want him to die like the rest. Wait a minute...this is a new recruit, who just took his vow...how does Gorold know what he looks like? I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the television series, I’ll have to get Season One, see if that answers my question.

So after the Lord Commander tells the recruits stuff that I’m sure they’ve already been told at the ceremony where they took their oaths, Gorold is finally executed. As said he was getting interesting, I’d have liked to have learned more about him. Then he said he wanted to rape new guy so I no longer care. We do see the immense respect Mors and Gorold have for each other, which was a good touch, I’ll admit it.

We then finally get to control Mors, and are told to meet the recruits at another part of the castle grounds to start training. And while looking at the map in the top right corner, I see that there are door icons and objective marker...which both look a lot similar to each other which lead to me getting lost quite easily. Great start.

Once I finally found the training area, I got to try out the combat controls. It’s...bad. I mean, for ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, all you have to do is press a button and your character will just continuously use the same basic move, unless you press another button. For ‘Dragon Age 2’ you have to keep pressing buttons, it makes you feel like you’re doing more. ‘Game of Thrones’...it’s a combination of both. You have to keep pressing buttons, but only three at a time for the attack queue.

That and the movements are soooooo slooooooow. I had gotten bored by the time Mors had defeated the first recruit, and I got the impression he was meant to beat them with ease. Another ‘Dragon Age’ comparison, while in that game you can select up to six moves which you can easily select in combat, in ‘Game of Thrones’ in order to select more moves, you need to press the shoulder button and then select a move, all of which feels like it’s taking forever (Even though it’ll probably take a minute in order to actually use the attack).

In its defence it’s probably because I went with the two handed weapons stance and put most of my points into strength and endurance rather than agility, but still, the combat is slow.

By the way, the recruits we’re introduced to are Ronnet Hill, who has a voice so frustratingly annoying you want to punch him, Terrence Celtigar, who in all fairness isn’t that bad a character, and Patrek and Poddy, two people who aren’t really introduced or that memorable (Especially since Patrek isn’t even with us on the first proper mission).

The Lord Commander then turns up to say that the fifth recruit has died of his injuries from the hands of Cregan, who the Lord Commander pointlessly says is “one of ours”. Seriously, we already knew that it was another member of the Night’s Watch who did this, why repeat it like it was new information?

Anyway, we set off to Icemark, Cregan’s destination, however Wildling’s have attacked  Cregan and his men. After slashing our way through some Wildling’s, we come across Cregan who is dying of his wounds. Cregan, before he dies, says he lured some of the Wildling’s away so that his men could attempt to escape. Moving on we come across more Wildlings who are burning an unlucky prisoner on a stake. After killing them and finding another body further ahead, I attempted to go through a door, where two Wildling’s burst through and kill one of my men already.

And it’s here I got really frustrated. I was doing this on normal difficulty, maybe it was a poor selection of strengths and weaknesses, maybe I didn’t allocate my skill and attribute points right, but it took me FIVE attempts to kill these two Wildlings. FIVE! What the Hell did I do wrong?! I even ran away from them at one point so I could recover, but Mors then suddenly dropped dead for what appeared to be no reason! IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THIS HARD!

After FINALLY defeating them, Mors interrogates one of the dying Wildlings, and here we can either go renegade or paragon again, either offering the gentle mercy killing (I think), or prolonging his suffering and causing more pain. I liked that, it made the gameplay more interesting. I went with the prolonging the suffering option.

We learn that the Wildling’s leader, whose name escapes me, has somehow found a way to get through the Wall and into the Kingdom. How? I dunno. For two reasons, one; the Wildling dies. Two; my hour was up.

So, final thoughts on the game? Well................it’s not a bad game. Some of the graphics are okayish and a few characters can be compelling. That being said it isn’t a good game. While most of the graphics are okayish most of them are lacklustre, the lip-sync is a pile of crap, the voice acting sounds like they’re giving the bare minimum, and the combat system is just underwhelming.

The plot appeared to have been getting interesting at the point where I left it, but I felt like I was forcing myself to get to the hour mark, Hell I felt like I was forcing myself to get to the ten minute mark. The only good parts of this game feel like low rated rip-offs of other RPG games and you don’t get a lot of choices in the game which you’d think an RPG would offer.

Overall, it appears game developers haven’t learnt their mistake from ‘Naughty Bear’; execution. The game is just bland and a really big disappointment. Stick with the television series. And the books.