Review

Game of Thrones: Episode 6: The Ice Dragon

This is it. The final episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones series has emerged after a long wait. Anticipation reached critical mass; A Nest of Vipers was an emotional roller coaster after all. Thankfully “The Ice Dragon” didn’t disappoint!

Picking up after that last episode, it seems that this may be the last stand for the Foresters. Here we see Gared finally arrive at the North Grove. While there he uncovers the secrets that lie in wait, forcing him to carefully consider his next course of action. He isn’t the only one that needs to tread softly as Mira has to explain herself to Margaery after crashing Tommen’s garden party. She’ll need to decide if her friendship with Sera is worth risking her life over. Following a nasty ambush Asher or Rodrik must head to Ironrath to defend against the Whitehill’s army and tell Elissa the terrible news. Basically, it’s about to go down!

With all these different moving parts, this episode’s pacing feels a little hectic. Each scene quickly played out as I jumped from character to character in the midst of all the action (there is no shortage of QTE’s here). With some major decisions that finally give you some closure on most of the stories, this episode was made to keep you on your toes almost the entire way. One thing I wasn’t a fan of was the increase in difficulty. There are moments where the time allowed for QTEs are almost unfair; I missed a few of them because the actions seemed to require an instant response. I’m sure the reason to shorten the window to complete the QTE’s was to give more service to the story but the results had the opposite effect. The frequent restarts due to failed attempts removed the sense of urgency that the scenes would have normally conveyed.

That’s not to say that this change ruined my overall experience. The story is always interesting and this particular episode gave way to new sights, North Grove being one of them. There were also moments of triumph and tragedy alike. There were still some things left unsaid as the credits rolled (most likely for a follow up season) but not in a bad way; there was a hint of a new playable cast.

I’m rather pleased with how things turned out. Telltale did a great job of telling an engrossing tale from beginning to end. The Ice Dragons was the bloody icing on the cake. Well…yeah…I’m sticking with that – it’s a great series that fans of the books and/or show should certainly check out!