Playing the Game of Thrones

I don't consider myself a gamer, as I only play a selected variety of games to which I am familiar with - some of them I've been playing for good 15 years now, without ever getting tired. Therefore, I'm not that familiar with this kind of gaming experience by Telltale, but I can say that I'm really enjoying their new release, based on the story of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Something that I immediately loved about this game is that we follow and control a Westerosi family that is unknown even for book readers, the Forresters of Ironrath. They were vassals of house Stark and supported King Robb during the War of the Five Kings. Oh, my blood ran cold when I saw that the beginning of the story takes place in the night of the Red Wedding... the Forresters lost their lord and his oldest son on this night, and even though we work very hard to make things better for them, the sense of doom is always lingering. To make matters worse, Ramsay Snow appears later in the story, and all you wanna do is to yell for the remaining Forresters to run for their lives.

Another great thing in this game is that we have the Point of View of the less powerful members of the family - we don't get the great lord (after all, he is killed within five minutes after pressing "Play") nor any of the other strong people around; we control the squire, the daughter in King's Landing, and the small kid who suddenly has to deal with ruling this house in despair. Also, the focus is far from being in fighting or killing, it's all about the choices you make - the fate of the characters depend on what you choose to do or to ignore; on what you choose to say, or on what you decide to conceal. Relationships, connections and important decisions are influenced by the paths you take, and I really loved it.

My choices

However... according to some comments I've been reading, it doesn't matter how different are the choices you make, as the main plot doesn't change as much as it should. That thing happens to him in the end of the episode despite how well the meeting goes, and that person is not able to do that other thing anyway. I may be wrong, but apparently there are no alternative endings, and knowing this was very disappointing to me... still, there are 5 episodes left, and a lot of things are yet to be developed. I do hope that we can tell more than one story with this game.

I'm still very excited about it! Already planning to play it again very soon; I want to see what changes if I answer differently and do something else in certain scenes. And I admit that I still have a bit of hope to change that desperate ending...