At least they think the story is decent. I still might get this. We aren't going to be getting a better SOIAF game in the near future (maybe ever), and I like the series enough to put up with crappy gameplay.
Damn... just 15 to 20 hours? With all of those stats and stuff? I don't imagine you'll get the chance to see anything interesting with such a short length. It even looks like the vast majority of the game consists of cutscenes with stiff animation and poor voice acting.
I think I might wait for a sale on this one despite my love of ASOIAF. I got fooled by the strategy game, which felt nothing like ASOIAF, and honestly this game doesn't particularly give off the same aura as the books and show from what I've seen in this stream.
The review seems entirely accurate in regards to the bombardment of cutscenes... This stream has literally been a continuation of short cutscenes split up by 5 seconds of walking forward or a minute or two of combat.
Lol... wtf? Mors got shot up with arrows at the end of chapter 1 and fainted, and now he just gets up and starts running around with no arrows to be seen?
Did the developers/writers just forget about all that?
I played many games that got 6 and 7's that I liked a lot, but can't think of any that got 4's so this is depressing so far, hopefully it isn't that bad. We likely won't see another GOT game for several years.
As much as I'm starting to despise EA again, I'm almost sad that they did not do anything with the franchise when they had the rights for it, at least they had the studios and the budget for it.
It has always been the way of video games. The better the source material, the worse the game. Judging by the more recent books in the series, a really good game could still be on the way.
Ah well. Guess it's time for some more Witcher 2 and Tactics Ogre to get my dark medieval fantasy w/ heavy political intrigue elements fix. I was hoping that Cyanide would do well considering I love Bloodbowl, but
It has always been the way of video games. The better the source material, the worse the game. Judging by the more recent books in the series, a really good game could still be on the way.
Because they were fans of the books, watched a lead make bad decisions left and right, wanting to be like big titles but having neither the money, the experience, or vision to back it and were working in a studio where the ego wars tarnished the direction of a game they wanted good. They were pretty depressed really.
To illustrate that last point, there were 5 or 6 people in charge of making the levels and one guy wanted to be butt licked so much he saboted the others guys'work.
French videogame industry, everyone.
They lack vision. It's not really surprising that you won't find any very good French game not under the direction of true creators like Michel Ancel or Eric Chahi.
Yeah, I hear the same things from Cyanide too. And having worked with a LOT of French people here in Montreal, I can tell you that a lot of the shit mentality they had in France echoes here too.
A lot of people wanting to be "recognized" for their achievements and stuff, being just horrible people to the folks under them, etc. It's typical of the French videogame industry (from what I heard, most of the French corporate world is the same, though). It seems the asshat to normal person ratio is screwed up
No, no, I don't mean to PLAY as the characters. Just for a decent selection of them featured as non-playables. But if it's only Cersei and Verys, etc....not the most exciting cast.
So, I spent an hour or so with it last night. Some early impressions:
- I'm playing on PS3.
- Mandatory install. I popped the disc in my system, knowing I only had about 1.5 hours to play, and ended up having to wait 20+ minutes before I even saw the title screen. Definitely not a great start to the experience.
- The graphics are pretty dire. While the art direction is decent at times (if a little over-the-top for Martin's generally reserved world), the first environment (
Castle Black
) is bland and lifeless. Textures are poor, characters animate awkwardly and the faces are almost as bad as an Elder Scrolls game. Framerate is junky and there's a noticeable amount of tearing. But, whatever. It's an RPG and I'm not a graphics junkie. It looks better than Dragon Age at least, so that's good enough for me.
- The interface is alright. Not garish like The Witcher or too modern and clean like Skyrim. Inventory management is also decent. Everything is a bit too small, even on my 720p HDTV.
- Battle seems fun. You can queue up to three attacks at a time (depending on how much "energy" you have), or just auto-attack. So far, the battles have been simple and I've not needed to take over and control any of the other characters who fight in my party. I'll comment more on battle once I've played a bit more, I expect.
- Lots of loot.
- The skill/character progression systems is deep and slightly overwhelming. I was asked to make a lot of decisions about my character before learning any of the systems or even starting the game. I felt like a fish out of water, even though I play a lot of RPGs.
- My favourite of the skill systems was the "perks" (or whatever they call them), which grant the player bonuses (5% increase in attack speed, 15% increase in potion effectiveness, etc...) but requires the player to balance those out with an equal amount of "disabilities" (poison effects last 3 seconds longer, 20% more damage from fire, etc...) You can choose to take a handful of these, balanced by negatives, take one or two, or take none. It adds some nice variety to building a character.
- Fan service is in full effect. It's fun to find a sword that belonged to Brynden Rivers, or hear random brothers at The Wall talking about Benjen Stark. Still, some of it feels a bit much sometimes.
- Spoiler for the first mission:
The first mission involves hunting down a long-standing member of the Night's Watch for raping and murdering a young boy. Okay, fine. They're trying to keep up with Martin and his often brutal world. The problem comes when Mors, the player's character, gathers up several other brothers (at Mormont's command), to hunt down the "bad guy," anticipating that they might have to fight through some of the other member's of the Night's Watch to get to him. The idea that the Night's Watch would fight each other in a pitched battle like this was so absurd,
goes against everything that's been established in Martin's books, that it tore me right out of the story, reminding me that this all little more than fan-fic.
- Similarily, the dialogue and writing just seems off. The characters seem gritty for the sake of being gritty. The men of the Night's Watch are a hard bunch, but Martin provides them with tremendous depth to their characters, showing that even the hardest of Westeros' men are real people. There's none of the levity that Martin injects into these characters.
- Dialogue choices abound, but they don't really seem to have an effect on how the plot plays out. Just whether you want to be a hardass, a badass, or a kiss ass.
- The voice acting is poor. James Cosmo, who plays Jeor Mormont on the show, does a good job with what he's given, but Conleth Hill, who plays Varys, phoned in his performance for the opening scene.
- There's a lot of goofy exposition, both through dialogue and walls of text. Poor storytelling.
- The overall story seems like it might be vaguely interesting, but I don't like how it re-writes some history for major characters (
Robert Baratheon has an important bastard child with some girl named Jeyne?
).
I'll continue to give it a shot, especially if it's only 15-20 hours, as has been reported, but, so far, I wouldn't really recommend dropping $60 on it, as much as I love Martin's work and the HBO show.
Thanks for the impressions, Aidan. Sounds like it could be interesting for a $30 game, but definitely not $60. I'll return my copy and buy it again when it's at least half price.
I'm actually pretty disappointed, but not surprised.
I admit, I haven't played a lot of the newer games, but I liked the look of the demo a lot. The armor is battered, the weapons are scarred, and the towns looked muddy and lived in.
Cyanide's vision for Game of Thrones is ambitious, but the studio's end product has buckled under the weight of its intricate design document. Despite some ideas I've fallen in love with, it's a buggy and ugly mess of a video game. Even for its story and brushes with the franchise's fiction, it's difficult to recommend to either series vets or role-playing fans.
Game of Thrones lacks the absorbing gameplay and polished presentation thatd help set it among the 360s finer RPGs. But those already committed to the realm wont regret the couple dozen hours theyll spend under its narrative spell.
+ Elaborate and affecting core tale of intertwined fates makes up for introductory doldrums.
+ Plenty of choices that yield sometimes surprising consequences much later in the game.
Combat is complex and challenging, but also tedious; often ugly graphics.
? Why dont mirrors reflect Mors or Alester?