As with most people, I have only experienced Game of Thrones through the HBO series and not the books. The political turmoil, crazy plot twists and yes, boobs, makes the show entertaining to watch. And of course, with every great series, we sooner or later get a video game (remember the Lost game?). The first try for Cyanide (Montreal) was with Game of Thrones: Genesis, a turn-based strategy game that was ill received. This time around, Cyanide (Paris) takes a stab at Game of Thrones with an Action RPG.
Instead of following the original story, Cyanide crafted a new one, a tale that takes place before and during the first season of the HBO series. The story revolves around 2 different characters. One is Mors Westford, a Night Watch ranger that has to go on a mission to find a woman that Jon Arryn, the hand of the king, wants protected. The other is Alester Sarwyck, a red priest who comes home after many years to pay his respects to his dead father as well as to rightfully claim the throne of his home, Riverspring.
With the help of George R.R. Martin, Cyanide has created a fantastic story that is a joy to experience. Just be prepared to sit through a lot of text and dialogue. Game of Thrones has so much exposition in the beginning that it almost wore me down. So much information passed before me through my 25 hour play-through that I was wishing that I had the Cliff Notes in front of me by the end (because without complication, it’s not Game of Thrones!)
Speaking of the end, Game of Thrones just doesn’t seem to want to end when you want it to. Multiple times I thought I was at the end of the game when it just kicks into another chapter. It’s kind of frustrating when you are up at 4am thinking that you are at the end and you end up with 3 more chapters to go. Choices that you make in the game are supposed to change the outcome as you progress yet I felt that the changes were minor and never had the impact Cyanide intended them to have. The only choices that seemed to matter where the ones near the end which decided which of the 4 endings I received.
Thankfully, the story is worth it due to some good voice actors. Only two, unfortunately, are the actual actors from the HBO series. James Cosmo (Lord Commander Jeor Mormont) and Conleth Hill (Lord Varys the Spider) had me seeing them as they are in the HBO series while talking to me in the game. Of course it helps that the characters were also modeled after their HBO counterparts. I had a hard time with Alester’s voice acting. There are times when he nailed it. Too bad there are many other times where the delivery of the lines were awful. Mors, on the other hand, was amazing throughout the game. With the low, gravelly voice, you knew that he was a man best left alone.
Combat ended up being quite boring at first. Having to queue up 3 actions at any given time was unsatisfying. It only got a little better when you had more than 1 person to control to switch between and manage their attacks. I appreciated how the action slows down when you bring up the radial skills wheel. I had a few close calls with drinking a potion to stave off death. Just like the story, the good combat takes some time to get to. Once you learn that enemies with different armor types are susceptible to certain weapon proficiencies, you try to set the weapons in your 2 separate load-outs to accommodate that. You can get by with just using weapons with the proficiencies of cutting and perforating. I rarely ran across enemies that blunt weapons had a bonus effect on.
The absolute, best thing about the combat is using Mors’ skinchanger ability. With this ability, you can control your mangy mutt of a bulldog. Doing so lets you run around in first-person view as the dog! I became more wrapped up in the sneaking around, stealthily killing soldiers by ripping their throats out. It reminded me that someone needs to make a Milo & Otis game. You can sniff around for hidden treasure too but thinning out the ranks by leaping at enemies throats is really, really fun.
I see where Cyanide was going with the customization for each of your characters. Having the option to pick between 3 different battle stances for Mors or Alester will have an effect on what skills you can learn and what weapons you will be more proficient using. Late in the game you can add a second stance to add more abilities to your arsenal. None of this seems to really make an impact since most will settle on the 2 or 3 skills that are the most useful and spam them over and over ad nauseum. One thing I did find surprising is being able to pick your strengths and weaknesses. For instance, I can pick leadership as a strength and to balance that out, I would have to pick something to offset that like a weakness to fire. I would like to see this implemented in more RPG’s. More customization is not a bad thing, as long as it’s done right.
With such a vast world to use, it’s a shame to not have anything really to do in it. There are side quests to be found albeit very few of them. I wanted more to do than just the main quest and lazily exploring the world and found myself disappointed when there wasn’t a reason to do anything but the main story quests.
Still, the Music in Game of Thrones is pure bliss and worth wandering around listening to. Again, having HBO on their side helps out with some licensing and Cyanide was able to use the theme song from the TV series. I spent the whole week humming the very infectious theme. The visuals of the world and characters could have been cleaned up a bit as they are not pretty to see at times and some clipping issues are bothersome but none of it should take you out of the game as you play.
With George R.R. Martin helping craft the story, fans of the books and TV series will find enjoyment in the intertwining stories between Mors and Alester. People that love a good story in their RPG but don’t follow the book or HBO series will still find Game of Thrones interesting enough to sit through the dull moments in combat as well as the world feeling a little empty. Everyone else coming to this game on the assumptions that it will be “Game of Boobs” will be sorely unsatisfied. After 25 hours with the game, my quest to find some boobs was still unfinished.