It’s the home straight for Telltale Games’ take on the Game of Thrones franchise, with only two episodes left, including this one; we’re heading into setting up the final conclusions on what’s been quite a promising series so far. Much like the previous episodes beforehand, we’ll be given some time with each of the four characters, Asher, Rodrik, Mira and Gared in their respective locations.
Asher, following his encounter with Daenerys and her so called promise, has to accept a fairly disheartening let-down due to the Targaryen’s need for all of her soldiers. What starts as a reasonably uncharacteristic change of heart from the Dragon Queen, quickly turns into a moment of opportunity with the gifting of a chest brimming with gold. From here, it’s up to Asher, with of course help from Beskha, to recruit some help in the form of unruly pit fighters in order to try and help save House Forrester from the inevitable onslaught.
Once in ‘the pit’ you’ll have to win over your potential new comrades with not only some tough talk, but you’ll also have to strut your stuff in possibly the longest QTE fight I’ve come across in a Telltale game. As you progress through the episode, it’ll become clear that A Nest of Vipers is quite action heavy in comparison to the others.
Rodrik has his fair share of woes to overcome once again with the ever maniacal Ramsay Snow leaving more than just a mark on one of the ancillary characters. His initial sequence is fairly short, yet he returns later on in order for you to make some reasonably tough and drastic decisions that I won’t spoil here.
Mira, having been given plenty of screen time in the previous few episodes in order to build her characters’ importance and influence up, once again plays into the archetypal location of Kings Landing. Depending on what you chose for her last outing, she’ll be forced into some tricky political situations and be forced to deceive, manipulate and even straight up lie to former allies in hopes of quashing the prospect of a Whitehall army. Once again, you’ll converse with intrinsic characters from the show who’ll attempt to play you against the other; yet no matter which way you side, you can’t help but somehow feel a fall is coming soon afterwards.
Following Mr. Tuttle’s exploits in the previous chapter, Gared is now beyond the wall and not looking back. After a seemingly unavoidable scuffle with some of the natives, you’ll come across a new character with some potential revelations of their own. After a few more QTE sections, involving white walkers, fire and a precariously icy lake complete with rabid bear, our young friend finally makes it to his goal; to avoid spoilers, let’s just say things get off to a frosty start…
Rodrik, in his usual fashion, rounds the episode off well with some dramatic and tense dialogue options, however (at least) one of them can result in a game over state, which to be honest was quite disappointing. Therein lies the problem with a few of the scenarios, if you include characters that are alive and well in the books and TV show, then don’t include the ‘choice’ to try and kill them off, especially when it results in a retry. The whole point of Telltale Games’ choice driven gameplay style, is that you never know if an action or decision could be fatal to one of your characters; and as soon as you make it obvious that it can’t happen, it instantaneously pulls you out of the experience.
‘A Nest of Vipers’ is probably the most action orientated chapter so far; given it being the penultimate episode this shouldn’t come as too much of a shock however. As of right now, the final part in the series has quite a lot of loose ends to tie up in order for the journey to feel worthwhile, let’s hope it does.
