So, the ending of Telltales "Game of Thrones, Episode 1" [Spoilers inside]

Zannah

New member
Jan 27, 2010
1,081
0
0
So, was that some weapon-grade bullshit or what?

I specifically anticipate this kind of thing, meet Ramsay Snow at the gate and make sure the gates are well manned, fortified and that he and Lord Whitehill are the only ones to enter. Strict orders that the gate remains shut and no one else enters.

And when the script calls for it, suddenly, without so much as the sound of fighting, two dozen people can barge into my great hall, to allow Ramsay to do his stabby-knifey-throaty, exactly as if I'd been gullible enough to let him and his men in with full courtesies.

I see my choices matter in a very Mass-Effect kind of way, Telltale. Way to go.

So yeah, anyone else pissed by that? Anyone got a different outcome or have an explanation, short of quantum teleportation (tm)?
 

Elfgore

Your friendly local nihilist
Legacy
Dec 6, 2010
5,655
24
13
Welcome to the realization! We welcome you with hugs!

Telltale games only offer the illusion of choice. Set events will happen no matter what. Their choices only really effect what people say, rarely what they do and even when it does effect their actions, it doesn't fucking matter. Then the "big" end-game choices never seem to carry over to the next game, or if they do they last like twenty minutes. Telltales "choice" system is minimum at best. I'm saying this as someone who has all of their titles past The Walking Dead. Granted, you can decide what person your character is, but a lot of games do that now.

I love their games, but that choice thing is bullshit.
 

Madkipz

New member
Apr 25, 2009
284
0
0
Zannah said:
So, was that some weapon-grade bullshit or what?

I specifically anticipate this kind of thing, meet Ramsay Snow at the gate and make sure the gates are well manned, fortified and that he and Lord Whitehill are the only ones to enter. Strict orders that the gate remains shut and no one else enters.

And when the script calls for it, suddenly, without so much as the sound of fighting, two dozen people can barge into my great hall, to allow Ramsay to do his stabby-knifey-throaty, exactly as if I'd been gullible enough to let him and his men in with full courtesies.

I see my choices matter in a very Mass-Effect kind of way, Telltale. Way to go.

So yeah, anyone else pissed by that? Anyone got a different outcome or have an explanation, short of quantum teleportation (tm)?
Your Maester is a spineless traitor.

Ever wondered why he wasn`t present in the meeting?
 

Zannah

New member
Jan 27, 2010
1,081
0
0
Madkipz said:
Your Maester is a spineless traitor.

Ever wondered why he wasn`t present in the meeting?
And he can command the guards to do things since when? o:
 

SNCommand

New member
Aug 29, 2011
283
0
0
It's quite bad when you make the choices in Bioware games seem completely organic in comparison

I played through Telltale's Game of Thrones twice, and the differences were minimal, the ending in say Dragon Age or Mass Effect is just as preset as that of Game of Thrones, but at least in the two former you could influence the road to get there
 

Story

Note to self: Prooof reed posts
Sep 4, 2013
905
0
0
Hmm so the choices didn't matter much you say? Hmm how was the story in general?
 

Mikejames

New member
Jan 26, 2012
797
0
0
I'm still interested with what they'll do with the rest of the season, but I wasn't a fan of that ending sequence either.

It'd be nice if there was some explanation about how easily Ramsay's troops got in, but it doesn't really help that he's hyped up as a main villain who's made invincible for the sake of adhering the source material.
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
1,064
0
0
Elfgore said:
Welcome to the realization! We welcome you with hugs!

Telltale games only offer the illusion of choice. Set events will happen no matter what. Their choices only really effect what people say, rarely what they do and even when it does effect their actions, it doesn't fucking matter. Then the "big" end-game choices never seem to carry over to the next game, or if they do they last like twenty minutes. Telltales "choice" system is minimum at best. I'm saying this as someone who has all of their titles past The Walking Dead. Granted, you can decide what person your character is, but a lot of games do that now.

I love their games, but that choice thing is bullshit.
I'd rather have a good game where it *feels* like your choices matter but they ultimately don't on a replay, than play a game where every choice branches off into hundreds of possible endings. The idea of having choice mattering is a really cool idea, but on closer inspection it would lead to worse games overall (for the same budget.) You'd have to not only write dozens if not hundreds of branching paths, you'd also have to animate them, voice act them, and make sure that none of them have plot holes (which is apparently hard enough with only one storyline if most games nowadays are any evidence)

Instead of one solid, well written, well paced narratives with fleshed out and complete character arcs, you'd probably get a muddled mess of interweaving plot lines and unsatisfying writing and random dead ends as failure states. And I just don't think that it would be that great.

Think of it this way: if each of the 6 episodes had 1 binary choice that branched the storyline, and that none of the storylines rejoined after they diverge, you'd have to have 64 endings. And that's only for 6 binary choices... Complexity literally grows exponentially as you add choices.

Mikejames said:
I'm still interested with what they'll do with the rest of the season, but I wasn't a fan of that ending sequence either.

It'd be nice if there was some explanation about how easily Ramsay's troops got in, but it doesn't really help that he's hyped up as a main villain who's made invincible for the sake of adhering the source material.
There is a bunch of circumstantial evidence pointing to the maester of Ironrath being a traitor and letting Ramsay's army in somehow.
 

rcs619

New member
Mar 26, 2011
627
0
0
Zannah said:
So, was that some weapon-grade bullshit or what?

I specifically anticipate this kind of thing, meet Ramsay Snow at the gate and make sure the gates are well manned, fortified and that he and Lord Whitehill are the only ones to enter. Strict orders that the gate remains shut and no one else enters.

And when the script calls for it, suddenly, without so much as the sound of fighting, two dozen people can barge into my great hall, to allow Ramsay to do his stabby-knifey-throaty, exactly as if I'd been gullible enough to let him and his men in with full courtesies.

I see my choices matter in a very Mass-Effect kind of way, Telltale. Way to go.

So yeah, anyone else pissed by that? Anyone got a different outcome or have an explanation, short of quantum teleportation (tm)?
To be fair, that's the ultimate sort of catch-22. Either you meet with Ramsay Snow respectfully and he'll probably kill you on a whim. Or you slight him, meet with him at the gate, and then he'll *definitely* kill you on principle.

I wound up trying to do the right thing and meet him in the hall, so it all actually played out in a pretty coherent manner (he double-crosses you at the end of the deal when everything seems to be going well, and the other guys barge into the hall on his orders). And I have to admit, the suddenness of the death did shock me a bit. I was worried that Telltale wouldn't "get" Game of Thrones, but that scene gave me a lot of hope. I was playing a young, slightly naive boy-lord who wanted to live up to his father's reputation of being a fair and respected lord. And I got stabbed in the neck over it. That's Game of Thrones right there. You try and do the right thing and be a decent person, and you're going to die horribly.

It just felt really good the way it played out, on my run anyway. Oh man, that meeting with Ramsay Snow though. I've read the books, I watch the show, I don't think I've been that legitimately tense interacting with a videogame NPC before. It was great :) Even managed to make Lord Whitehill look like an idiot in front of him. It was all going so well until he decided to murder me on a whim. That's Ramsay though. At least my guy saved his sister from him. Small victories.
 

Dragonlayer

Aka Corporal Yakob
Dec 5, 2013
971
0
0
Man, who'd have thought that letting a Bolton into Ironrath could possibly have ended poorly!?

*Explodes in impotent fury at the fact that after letting Ramsay and Lord Whitehill/Fat Bastard into the courtyard and closing the portcullis, the game did not allow you to kill them there and then. Surely would have invited reprisals but worth it in my opinion*

I expect that the entry of the Whitehill troops will be explained in the next episode and I suspect that whoever was passed over for Lord Sentinel (Duncan in my case) was behind it - them, or the Maester.
 

Dragonlayer

Aka Corporal Yakob
Dec 5, 2013
971
0
0
Zannah said:
Madkipz said:
Your Maester is a spineless traitor.

Ever wondered why he wasn`t present in the meeting?
And he can command the guards to do things since when? o:
He could have simply arrived at the gatehouse and told them he was under orders from the new Lord Forrestor to let the troops in, claiming that negotiations were going well; I doubt the (few) soldiers there would have questioned the wise and trusted advisor.

Maybe I'm just paranoid because of the universe, but the Maester seems *too* trustworthy....and he did advise simply giving the Boltons the precious trees....
 

Dragonlayer

Aka Corporal Yakob
Dec 5, 2013
971
0
0
Elfgore said:
Welcome to the realization! We welcome you with hugs!

Telltale games only offer the illusion of choice. Set events will happen no matter what. Their choices only really effect what people say, rarely what they do and even when it does effect their actions, it doesn't fucking matter. Then the "big" end-game choices never seem to carry over to the next game, or if they do they last like twenty minutes. Telltales "choice" system is minimum at best. I'm saying this as someone who has all of their titles past The Walking Dead. Granted, you can decide what person your character is, but a lot of games do that now.

I love their games, but that choice thing is bullshit.
To be fair, Game of Thrones is the perfect setting for a game that gives you the illusion of choice, only for everything to end in unrepentant misery and horror.
 

Zannah

New member
Jan 27, 2010
1,081
0
0
Sight Unseen said:
snipped for space
See, I strongly disagree. The entirety of the gameplay is already set on rails, specifically to allow for coherent narrative. Having a binary choice at the end of each game, with one choice being a non-standard game-over and the other being progress would be perfectly valid, and it would take the game a whole lot closer to being what it boasted about.

I mean - "Ramsay gets pissed if disrespected, cut to Kings Landing where whatsherface receives the last letter from her brother, detailing how Ironrath is besieged and falling, with some fade-throughs of random fighting or named characters getting killed - would that really have been too much work and bankcrupted the company?

rcs619 said:
I was playing a young, slightly naive boy-lord who wanted to live up to his father's reputation of being a fair and respected lord. And I got stabbed in the neck over it. That's Game of Thrones right there. You try and do the right thing and be a decent person, and you're going to die horribly.
And I was playing a much more cautious young lord, who still got stabbed because deus ex script. If you can't follow up on it, don't include the option. :/

(Though I was surprised how low the percentage of people taking that route was).
 

Cowabungaa

New member
Feb 10, 2008
10,806
0
0
It's glaringly obvious when a choice in a Telltale game ends up really mattering at one point down the line:

Does a choice have a time limit?
If yes: the choice isn't going to have a large impact.
If no: the choice will have at least some kind of proper story impact.

But either way, certain set pieces can't be avoided. It's still a relatively railroaded game, yup. But I don't mind that, what matters to me more is that I feel very involved in Telltale's stories. I really feel like I, the player, am a part of that world, and frankly it does roleplaying better than most actual RPG's. I end up caring for the characters, I care about what happens. And that to me makes the Telltale games I've played so far a more compelling experience than most other games.

Now fingers crossed that episode 2 comes out soon enough. And I gotta say, I laughed at the goofy looking attempt to copy the show's intro. It looks so low-fi compared to the actual one.
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
1,064
0
0
Zannah said:
Sight Unseen said:
snipped for space
See, I strongly disagree. The entirety of the gameplay is already set on rails, specifically to allow for coherent narrative. Having a binary choice at the end of each game, with one choice being a non-standard game-over and the other being progress would be perfectly valid, and it would take the game a whole lot closer to being what it boasted about.

I mean - "Ramsay gets pissed if disrespected, cut to Kings Landing where whatsherface receives the last letter from her brother, detailing how Ironrath is besieged and falling, with some fade-throughs of random fighting or named characters getting killed - would that really have been too much work and bankcrupted the company?

rcs619 said:
I was playing a young, slightly naive boy-lord who wanted to live up to his father's reputation of being a fair and respected lord. And I got stabbed in the neck over it. That's Game of Thrones right there. You try and do the right thing and be a decent person, and you're going to die horribly.
And I was playing a much more cautious young lord, who still got stabbed because deus ex script. If you can't follow up on it, don't include the option. :/

(Though I was surprised how low the percentage of people taking that route was).
I don't think that people would be pleased to be given a game over after having played 2-3 hours of game. That would be extremely unsatisfying to me and I'm sure many others. That may have worked in the 90's when games were all more brutal, but now I just want a good narrative and no have to replay the entire episode because I made the wrong guess on a multiple choice question. This is especially bad because Telltale doesn't allow quicksaving. So no, I don't think that would be better.

And just so you know, some choices in Telltale games DO change the outcome of the plot, at least for some time. There are a few characters who have survived the Telltale choice mechanic
(Tweedle Dee and Bonnie, both of whom you can get killed but dont die if you don't make that choice)

Other times, the person you just saved will survive a bit longer and make a more meaningful impact on the plot and then die later to some narratively coherent reason. I'd prefer a mostly linear plot that has a few branches that rejoin the main plot after a while but leads to a well plotted narrative than be given arbitrary game over screens for making the wrong choice.
 

Just Ebola

Literally Hitler
Jan 7, 2015
250
0
0
I've never seen Game of Thrones (I hear it's kind of a big deal though) but it seems to me that TellTale is just being true to their source material. Apparently having main characters die abruptly and unexpectedly is their bread and salt, so can you really say you were surprised? If you want all of your choices to have a significant impact, I'm afraid table-top games are your only recourse.

Besides, it's only episode one, which is generally reserved for exposition, world-building and such. The choices that really matter are generally reserved for the later episodes, once you've had a chance to get invested a bit.
 

IceStar100

New member
Jan 5, 2009
1,172
0
0
To me I quit wasting money on them. At this point I just look at the wiki and move on. It's not even up to the choose your own adventure books they wish they where.
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
1,064
0
0
Ebola_chan said:
Apparently having main characters die abruptly and unexpectedly is their bread and salt, so can you really say you were surprised?
Considering you have never experienced Game of Thrones, i find it really funny that you used that expression, because bread and salt plays a gigantic role in one of the most pivotal moments of the series :p
 

Just Ebola

Literally Hitler
Jan 7, 2015
250
0
0
Sight Unseen said:
Ebola_chan said:
Apparently having main characters die abruptly and unexpectedly is their bread and salt, so can you really say you were surprised?
Considering you have never experienced Game of Thrones, i find it really funny that you used that expression, because bread and salt plays a gigantic role in one of the most pivotal moments of the series :p
I've only seen a playthrough of the one episode, but all the characters seemed pretty keen to offer bread and salt to one another. I was going to type 'bread and butter' but decided to clever at the last second :D
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
1,064
0
0
Ebola_chan said:
Sight Unseen said:
Ebola_chan said:
Apparently having main characters die abruptly and unexpectedly is their bread and salt, so can you really say you were surprised?
Considering you have never experienced Game of Thrones, i find it really funny that you used that expression, because bread and salt plays a gigantic role in one of the most pivotal moments of the series :p
I've only seen a playthrough of the one episode, but all the characters seemed pretty keen to offer bread and salt to one another. I was going to type 'bread and butter' but decided to clever at the last second :D
If you'd like the context for that (with no spoilers), it's that bread and salt is a traditional offering given by a host to his guests (this is true in real life medieval history as well) which signifies that the guest is now under the host's protection within his halls. It is a custom known as Guest Right and it is sacred in most cultures of Westeros. While under protection of the host, neither the guest nor the host can harm the other. To do so is to be cursed. There is even a legend told about the rat cook who didn't like the king, so he killed the king's son while under his protection and fed him to the king in a pie. He got cursed by the gods and turned into a rat who could only eat his own young for sustenance because he broke guest right.

Ramsay denying the gift of bread and salt meant that he hadn't initiated guest right, and wasn't forbidden from harming anyone there because he wasn't technically a guest.

For an extra bit of custom if you're interested, if you are a host and want to make it clear that you are NOT issuing guest right when someone enters your hall, the traditional gesture is to have your sword drawn and laid across your legs while sitting on your throne. It signifies that the guest's presence is not wanted and that he is not strictly under the host's protection (say for example if a rival comes to your hall to contest something or such)