Developer: Cyanide Studios
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Rrp: £10.99 (Steam)
Released: June 7th 2012
Available on: Steam
Played Using: An Xbox 360 Control Pad
A Song of Ice and Fire, otherwise known as Game of Thrones, has become something of a hit, in case you somehow couldn’t tell. It’s everywhere, TV, books, graphic novels, mugs, necklaces all sorts of things and now it has not just one, but TWO video games. Just so you know this isn’t a review of the TellTale game of Game of Thrones but the game that came before.
Game of Thones is an RPG in which you play as two characters, Mors and Alester. Mors is a Ranger in the Nights Watch and a hardened warrior. Alester is a priest of the god R’hllor and while he is able to hold his own in combat is more of a diplomat. The story revolves around these two and the character you control changes depending on which chapter you’re on.
Being very much an RPG in the traditional sense you get to assign points to attributes, choose a class, pick skills to acquire and quite a bit more. The skills that are available to you are dependent upon the class that you choose when on the character creation screen. Of course its not character creation like in an Elder Scrolls game, you don’t get to choose the name or look of the character, that’s already been set. In this case its more deciding on the fighting style, and skills.
Interestingly this game does something many games don’t in the character creation, and that’s allow you to give your characters positive and negative traits. These traits add or take away small parts of the stats and have to be balance before you can leave the character creation screen. The entire thing is entirely optional because if you don’t choose any traits then there’s nothing to balance out.
Dialogue is the heart and soul of any good RPG, and with a IP like Game of Thrones you can expect some of the best… Sadly that isn’t quite what you get. At times the dialogue feels quite stunted, almost as if the actors weren’t sure of how to deliver the lines they had in front of them.
There were lines that felt like they should have been said with a more harsh edge (especially when given the type of show it is) that instead have a muted and hushed tone that didn’t fit. Also speaking as a Brit, some of the imitations of British accents are almost painful to hear. I really hope no one actually thinks we actually sound like these characters.
Griping about accents aside, conversations are handled via a wheel at the bottom of the screen similar to that of the Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Actually a couple of mechanics seem to be borrowed from various Bioware games throughout this title, not that I’m complaining, they’ve been proven to do the job and fit well with the game.
As I mentioned previously there are a few mechanics that have been borrowed from Bioware, one such system is the combat. When you enter combat instead of you having direct control you instead line up attacks and abilities (to a maximum of three at a time). I have only seen a system like this before in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games.
With exception of the basic attack and the recovery move, all skills and abilities that are used in combat deplete your energy. The recovery move can only be used every so often as it has quite a long cool down.
You sometimes get other characters who join your party and you can switch between them. This is especially useful in combat where you can have one party member stun a enemy and another perform a heavy attack.
There are quite a lot of invisible walls, some in places that really needn’t have them at all. It’s one of many things that indicate that this game is what I would call a ‘middle market’ title. Meaning that corners are cut but there is still something of a solid game in there.
Yet another indicator of this game being a middle market title are the character models and animations. Even for 2012 the models are very blocky looking with the hands on the characters looking almost comically large. The animations sadly fair no better as they are looped far too frequently and look rough. Had this game had sequels I’m sure this would be something that would have been smoothed out like it was in the Mass Effect series, which itself started as a middle market game.
In a way its the very setting of the game that’s one of the hindering factors, at least when it comes to the plot. It was released on PC while the first season of Game of Thrones was being aired and as such couldn’t go too far ahead for fear of spoilers. At the same time it can’t go too far back because of the TV series and books continuity. This limited what the creators could do, throw in that they can’t have the major characters of the series/books doing anything that contradict the show or books (like dying) and you have a game where its hard to feel any suspense. This means that they could only write from the point of view of somebody who could be considered inconsequential to the overall universe. In some ways that can be quite freeing but I feel that the creators of this game didn’t manage to take advantage of that opportunity.
It’s strange that more money wasn’t put into this game, especially considering the license this developer had to work with. Perhaps it was because at the time of its release the TV series hadn’t become the titan of television that is has now become and it was considered too much of a gamble to really sink money into. Which is a real shame because the actual plot of the game is actually quite good, its just everything else that surrounds it that feels… average.
And that’s exactly it, this game is average, its not great but its not terrible either. I’d say this is one for the more die hard fan than a more casual watcher.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
The Mass Effect Series
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
The Witcher Series
