Game of Thrones – Episode 5: “A Nest of Vipers” Review

Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones series reached a climatic point last week with the release of Episode 5: “A Nest of Vipers”. At this point the episodic saga won’t introduce anything  new since its about to reach the final stretch of the story. Despite some glaring issues that reappear in this episode, Episode 5 does a great job at setting up the stage for the final events to come at the game’s conclusion as well as revealing the fate of House Forrester.

Graphically, some of the issues from the previous games are still present. This includes twitching textures, half loaded backgrounds, and even random background characters appearing from one story line and into another. For example: a guard from Kings Landing stood inside of a den of killers and thieves in Meereen while doing a t-pose in the corner of the room. Another major problem that really made this episode take a hit is that the load times are atrocious. In every scene where there is a quick time event for a battle, the game would take no less than six seconds in between attacks. Six whole seconds is a considerably long time in the middle of a fight, long enough to be taken out of the moment. Audio and sound are a a whole lot better this time around. There are no hiccups in any of the spoken dialogue, no lines getting reread twice, or any stuttering whatsoever. Also, the music didn’t stop or suddenly cut out in the middle of the game.

As far as the story is concerned, A Nest of Vipers is alright for the most part. Episode 4 started off with the Ramsay Snow, a character from the show who we haven’t seen since the final moments back in Episode 1. After he appears and leaves, it becomes kind of slow until towards the middle-to-end of the episode. Characters are either betrayed, leave the game and/or even killed off in scores in this episode. Depending on your game, at least two characters you know will die. In my own game, however, a whopping five important characters ended up losing their lives! The events that do take place are based on the choices made by the player from as far back as the very first episode, but this time around it doesn’t seemed to be cleverly disguised enough. One event I could’ve sworn I saw coming from episodes away finally happened and I wasn’t surprised at all when it unfolded. Despite the many shortcomings in this episode, however predictable it seemed to be, I will say that the final choice that needed to be made,  as well as the closing moments that follow are the best moments in the entire series so far!

To conclude, this episode suffered from less problems the other episodes had in the past, but the problems that are there happen at the worst possible places. As far as individual character stories in this episode, Asher’s moments were pretty great except when the game lagged the combat sections. Mira’s parts are only interesting as long as there’s a Lannister sharing the same screen with her. Finally, Gared’s parts in the north seem to have been making leaps and bounds in progressing the story. As many problems and issues I had experienced while playing this game, this episode was clearly the set up for the grand finale that’s coming with the next episode. So I eagerly await the last episode of Telltale Game’s: Game of Thrones.