Telltale returns to form with Nest Of Vipers, the excellent penultimate episode of a season that is shaping up to be yet another jewel on it's interactive movie crown.
A Nest of Vipers ends on a heart-shattering note and the promise of an explosive finale. Thing are getting lively, and with quickened pacing to match the action, it's hard not to end this episode without your brain spinning in anticipation. With most prominent character arcs at their highest peaks, it's a perfect penultimate episode.
A true style of game of thrones the TV show. This episode has breathtaking moments and will leave you on the edge of your seat. this game makes me so angry that i will never decide the full outcome but that's the beauty of it. This episode has the hardest decision making and will lead up to the final episode which will be spectacular
Game of Thrones: Episode 5 - A Nest of Vipers reinforces the idea that happiness doesn't last. All of your victories in the previous episode — and the much smaller ones here — are easily reversed, and you get the feeling that the final episode will end in a Pyrrhic victory.
A couple of issues persist, such as show characters causing narrative confusion, and one or two stories not really progressing all that much, but overall fans should find themselves happy with the direction the series is going.
This episode is all at once one that offers the greatest moments of the series, a few action scenes and its brutal conclusion, and one that feels a bit rushed in terms of presentation, staging and feeling that our choices are important. Let's hope this is just a little stumble before an epic ending for the whole season.
The penultimate episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones may be A Nest of Vipers, but, though it’s consistently well-performed and presented throughout, this is looking like another series where the implied player agency lacks any real bite.
A brief episode asking no highlights. The story is weak and de-energized.
It seems as if it was too much for Telltale Games. Hopefully the new Boarder Lands episode gets better.
Even when a Telltale season is good overall, they never manage to get through a whole season without a hugely disappointing outlier (for example, episode 4 in the Wolf Among Us). Nest of Vipers falls well short of the expectations set by the previous four episodes. It's the shortest episode by far: the last four trophies will pop every five minutes. Literally. The whole thing feels improvised and hastily cobbled together. Most of the conversational depth and texture is missing.
Of course, I have to see how it all ends in episode 6, but they did a lot of damage here.
An amalgam of bad, thoughtless writing, and a lack of any meaningful consequences for all of the choices that you make.
It's also the shortest episode of the series as of yet. It feels very rushed and of low quality, perhaps a change from episodic to regular, more lengthy development is in order? I wouldn't recommend anyone to buy this game.
Don't buy it.
Game promises a lot, but fails in every aspect.
Your choices don't matter at all. What's worse, they don't even make sense. The writing is very weak, and doesn't make sense. Character who would have never done it by lore actually does break the word, you're getting punished for things nobody really would care about, explanations of the characters' actions are truly idiotic and so on and on.
It was supposed to be messy, but it wasn't supposed to be that dumb.
As the other reviewers suggested, the story is weak even compared with the other episodes. Dialogue choices and some situations are outright stupid. As usual, most choices are meaningless and you don't really have the power to change anything. This is a trait of all Telltale games and it's understandable to a point but in this game, it's handled very poorly and thus the emptiness of your choices is much more obvious than in other games by Telltale.
The game follows the TV show's and the books' trend of torturing lead characters while constantly giving the advantage to the antagonists. While it is obvious that the world of Game of Thrones is very grim and unjust, it's quite frustrating to see our characters not be able to achieve any success at all despite the player's best efforts to make the right choices in the game. Not only are you unable to take your characters to a better position by making sound decisions, but the slightest success is always followed by the antagonists gaining the upper hand again and again and again...
(SPOILERS after this)
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Episode 5 had many scenes that really frustrated me either due to the story or the ridiculous choices I had to make. Right off the bat, in the first scene, Ramsay Snow gives you a blade, moves your hand towards his throat and dares you to kill him. Obviously, the choice is an illusion and Ramsay somehow dodges a blade that is perhaps a centimeter away from his throat. Why give us such a fruitless choice, Telltale, why?
After that, you have to deal with the traitor in your house, which is the guy whom you denied being your Sentinel in the first episode. There is a choice to spare him in return for information about and ambush. Again, a meaningless choice... I recommend that you just kill him because the information changes NOTHING.
The King's Landing part was so stupid that it made me cringe. Mira is given a task by Cersei to find out who will be testifying on Tyrion's behalf. Cersei's guard takes Mira to Tyrion's dungeon cell and listens to the whole conversation in case Mira tries to betray Cersei. The most obvious thing to do would be to wink at Tyrion to imply that something's wrong but of course, that is NOT an option. After a while, Tyrion figures out that Mira is sent by Cersei and the guard comes in to tell Mira that she screwed up... in front of Tyrion... The following dialogue is absolutels ridiculous. Mira has the choice to try and persuade Tyrion even though the guard already came in and blew our cover! Seriously, a preschooler could have written a more logical scene than this...
At Meereen, Daenerys backs down from her promise to give Asher some sellswords, no matter how well you performed the mission in the previous episode. This seemed very unrealistic to me as Daenerys values her promises very much in the TV show. I immediately remembered her quote: "Why should the people trust a queen who can't keep her promises?" Anyway, depending on some choices you've made, she may reward you with a chest full of gold bars. The gold really seemed like a huge amount to me, yet it changes NOTHING. It only gives you a couple of dialogue choices when Asher is trying to recruit pit fighters. You can recruit them just fine without any gold! In the end, Asher just sails off to the North with 7-8 fighters while he could have easily afforded an ARMY of sellswords with such a huge amount of gold. So much for rewarding players...
In North of the Wall, pacing is slow as usual. A few wights show up, some disagreement in the party, bla bla bla. Still not any closer to the North Grove.
And finally, Asher makes it to Westeros. He reunites with Rodrik in the most unsatisfying way. They don't seem like they've missed each other at all, especially considering how family should be extremely important in their dire circumstances. They don't even hug and act like they've only been away for a couple weeks instead of years. They're in an abandoned Northern port, and have walked into an obvious trap. Enemy troops almost appear out of thin air and their crossbowmen start firing arrows at the Forrester's paltry force. A couple of Asher's handful of men die, including the strongest one "the Beast". In the end, just when nobody thought the Forresters could get any weaker, you have to choose between saving either Asher or Rodrik, at which point I threw my wireless mouse on the ground in absolute frustration.
The Walking Dead series also had hard choices and situations where you had to make sacrifices but it was done right! The story, the characters and their interactions were so great that I really felt emotionally engaged. When the characters had to endure hardships, I felt symphaty for them. But in Game of Thrones, thanks to the combination of bland characters, sloppy writing, slow pacing, meaningless choices and zero rewarding, all I can feel at this point is frustration...
SummaryIn this penultimate episode, the actions of every Forrester are vital to the survival of the house. Rodrik's alliance with House Glenmore, and his defiance of the Whitehills, has drawn the ire of an even greater threat: Ramsay Snow. Far across the Narrow Sea in Essos, with Meereen now a free city, Asher is close to securing the army he d...