Game of Thrones (The RPG) Thoughts.

I've been playing the Game of Thrones RPG for the last few days. I was hesitant to get it because of the horrible reviews it had received. More and more often I find myself realizing that critics are not to be trusted, and this may be the most glaring example in recent memory. Game of Thrones is without a doubt one of the best RPG's I have ever played. It is right there with Dragon Age: Origins and The Witcher 2. I have not quite finished it, I'm coming up on the grand finale now and I'm in a spot where I might not have a chance to finish it for a little while, so I wanted to give my thoughts on it so far.

Now that I've had a chance to play the game that was so maligned, I've gone back and re-read some of the more scathing critiques of it. And honestly in a lot of cases it's pretty clear that they didn't even play the damn game. For example in this Forbes article, the author states plainly that the games combat is turn based. Having spent somewhere near 10 hours now, I can say with some level of confidence, that the combat isn't even vaguely turn based. It functions similar to Dragon Age, or even MMO combat, in which you target an enemy, and your character just swings away with normal attacks while you queue up more powerful special attacks and abilities. There are no turn based elements in this game. I even double checked, thinking, maybe due to the restricted controller of the consoles as opposed to a keyboard and mouse, that the combat would have to work differently on console (as I have been playing on PC). But nope. It works exactly the same on consoles. Get your shit together, or stop writing articles when you're blind drunk.

Anyways, beyond my gripes about utterly incompetent "authors" who do their job with markedly less skill than an untrained chimp would in the same field, I'll get back to the game and why I absolutely love it.

A lot of it I think goes back to my love for Dragon Age: Origins. The combat mechanics are similar, and just as with DA:O, Game of Thrones places story on a pedestal. Don't get me wrong, there are no actually bad aspects of the game, combat may not be anything particularly special, but it's far from a hindrance. Combat actually has been pretty well crafted, if not so much in animation and such, in the tactics required. You really do need to think to survive more difficult fights. You can exploit the system in some ways. Like when playing the role of Alester (one of the two protagonists). He has an ability which knocks his enemies down, stack this with a passive ability that gives automatic critical hits against fallen enemies, and the fact that you can almost always regenerate enough energy to do it again by the time they stand up, and you get a sort of broken combo. This only works in very small conflicts though, if it's just you and 1 or 2 other guys it'll win every time. If they have a whole squad, you're going to need to think on your feet. And the "active pause" system doesn't actually stop time, it just slows it down. It gives you time to breathe, but you cant just hit pause and consider your options for hours.

The graphics as well aren't stellar. But graphics aren't a requirement for a great game. As I have said before, fantastic graphics can help draw you into a world, but it's the mark of great writing when you can be fully immersed in this fictional universe when the graphics are less impressive. That said, the graphics really aren't all that bad. Environments for the most part are well rendered, and major characters do look pretty great most of the time. The game only suffers when it comes to the random wandering NPC's and enemy combatants. They tend to be one of a very small number of recycled character models. One of the main characters, Mors, also has a dog, and the dog, well, it looks bad, it looks real bad. You wouldn't really notice, if not for the fact that you frequently get close up views of it every time you take control of it.

The voice acting ends up in the same department as the graphics. All of the major players are really spectacularly voiced, they sound real and believable, and listening to Mors gravely growl as he chastises and threatens those that get in his way really never gets old. Some side characters though are pretty bad admittedly. But again I haven't found any of them to be bad enough to take me out of the plot. Which is absolutely fantastically crafted. I know next to nothing about the Game of Thrones universe, (AKA A Song of Ice and Fire) and the game is crafted such that you don't have to. The two main characters are original to this game, so it's a stand alone title. But for fans of the series, the script went through the author of the books himself, so I'm told that it fits in perfectly with the canon.

Anyways I don't want to say much more at the moment, but I will try to update this once I've finished the game. I also have some word eating to do in regards to my comments on Bioware and Mass Effect 3, I take it back, I take it all back. Well, most of it anyways.