Game of Thrones RPG Official Site Opens, 2nd Trailer

[DragonAge93]

Picked up mine and already played an hour of it on the PS3. The story thus far is very interesting, and the combat's not that atrocious. At first it's a little clunky, but you get use to it after 5 or so minutes. The graphics are a little muddy, but I don't really care that much for graphics, so doesn't bother me that much in the slightest. It's not that bad of a game, but if you are picky about your RPGs, then I'd suggest waiting for the price to go down.

I would be playing it more, but I wanna get farther in Diablo 3, so sometime today I'll be getting farther in it. For me, the game's a 9/10.

[Teeem3000]

Ha, Bastard of Bolton. I wish I could tell you to eat crow... I'll take mine in a pie. ;)

I'll be checking the bin too, it would seem. Dragon's Dogma is out next week, so I guess its the Kingslayer as my character and the Hound as my main pawn. I'm determined to get my Asoiaf game fix in any way possible.

[Onion Smuggler]

It looks absolute awful. Spin off rubbish to make more money. The graphics look horrendous.

If you watch IGN's video review there seem to be so many glitches and bugs too.

[Teeem3000]

I saw it this afternoon at Walmart, right beside three rows of Max Payne 3. Poor game doesn't stand a chance. I wouldn't call it a cash in. Apparently, the story is excellent.

[Tyrionthebest]

Actually the story is the only thing decent in this game . Though it's to be expected since it was co-wrote with GRRM himself .

[Werthead]

I don't want to blame GRRM but he did sell the rights to this unknown company instead of someone like Bioware or Bethesda .

He actually did try to sell the rights to Bethesda. His agent sent a proposal to them and they were actually briefly tempted. However, with two massive franchises underway (Fallout and Elder Scrolls) and their own fantasy RPG series not being dissimilar to ASoIaF, they chose to pass on the project.

There are also many fans of the books at BioWare. However, their single-player division ultimately chose to create their own IP for which they would not have to pay a licence fee, and that became the Dragon Age series. They do acknowledge 'inspiration' from the ASoIaF books however. The multiplayer division also considered an ASoIaF MMORPG before LucasArts dumped several trucks full of money on their lawn to make The Old Republic instead.

George should've sold the rights to a company like Rockstar.

The rights were sold back in 2007, after I believe several years of negotiations. You don't just roll up to the biggest games company in the world (as Rockstar were at the time) and expect them to make a game for you. They have to be interested, and at the time they were not.

Now, with both the success of the TV show and also the format of Red Dead Redemption perhaps hinting at a possible interesting format for a good SoIaF game, they'd probably take a closer look. But for a few years back when the series was much more obscure, no chance.

I don't think I've seen a good licensed game other than The Warriors and maybe a couple of others but none come to mind that this moment in time

The last two Batman games (Arkham Asylum and Arkham City) were excellent. The Wheel of Time game was okay (but not brilliant). Betrayal at Krondor, set in Feist's Riftwar universe, was excellent (but also now 20 years old). Many of the Star Wars games are brilliant, especially the X-Wing, Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Knight sub-series. BioWare and Black Isle/Obsidian's Forgotten Realms and Planescape games have been superb. Relic's Warhammer 40,000 stuff has been great. The Chronicles of Riddick games - somewhat unexpectedly - were excellent. The Witcher games (also based on a popular, best-selling book series) have been great so far. The Discworld games were also pretty decent.

You can make a great tie-in game if you try, and with the GoT RPG it appears they actually nailed the most important thing, the story. However, everything else appears to have been compromised in the process. I'm hoping for a Witcher-style Enhanced Edition which fixes the most egregious problems.

[The Bastard of Bolton]

The story better be good considering they've fucked everything else up.

I really can't compute how a game can be given a 9/10 when the combat and graphics are described in the negative.

That's a blinded fan's justifications though, we wish for a certain standard and if we spend over $60 on something we will fervently focus on the good.

If the story is that good I rather deal with a novelization instead of suffering through subpar gameplay, look at half-assed graphics and feel like I am playing an inferior version of games I've already played.

So Atlas/Cyanide have already failed at the RTS, now it seems confirmed they've failed at the RPG... How many more chances do they get? Will anyone else be interested in a mistreated property, will it be reliant on the future success of the tv and book series? As of now this will put a nail in the virtual ASOIAF world.

[Evrach]

The story better be good considering they've fucked everything else up.

I really can't compute how a game can be given a 9/10 when the combat and graphics are described in the negative.

That's a blinded fan's justifications though, we wish for a certain standard and if we spend over $60 on something we will fervently focus on the good.

If the story is that good I rather deal with a novelization instead of suffering through subpar gameplay, look at half-assed graphics and feel like I am playing an inferior version of games I've already played.

Maybe because all players aren't interested in combats or graphics...

Speaking fo myself, I just don't give a shit on graphics :s I play games since the 80s, I enjoyed (and still enjoy) playing to games that have graphics that today would be considered are more than the ugliest that can be. And so ? Because a few studios are capable to do magnificent graphics (with $$$$$$$$ and a team of 50), all studios are expected to do the same, even if they only have $$ and a team of 4 graphists ? Are all the movies that don't use the technology of the (so-called) movie Avatar bad because they are "late" technologiclay speaking ? Is all that is not a state-of-the-art technology obsolete and useless ?

Bullshit. You judge a game on its globality, not on an arithmetic average of arbitrary standarts.

Well. As a gamer, I enjoyed the game, took a real pleasure to play it. It's clearly not the better game I played in my life, nor the worse, but a real good game with a real good plot, and as a SOIAF fan, I really enjoyed to see GRRM's universe respected and to live a credible and interesting story in this universe and at absolutly no moment I was bothered by the graphics or things like that. OMHO, they are pretty descent, even if they're not "the best as it can be in 2012" (what the fuck the year we are can have an importance in the fun a game can provide, I wonder...).

[Talleyrand]

The last two Batman games (Arkham Asylum and Arkham City) were excellent. The Wheel of Time game was okay (but not brilliant). Betrayal at Krondor, set in Feist's Riftwar universe, was excellent (but also now 20 years old). Many of the Star Wars games are brilliant, especially the X-Wing, Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Knight sub-series. BioWare and Black Isle/Obsidian's Forgotten Realms and Planescape games have been superb. Relic's Warhammer 40,000 stuff has been great. The Chronicles of Riddick games - somewhat unexpectedly - were excellent. The Witcher games (also based on a popular, best-selling book series) have been great so far. The Discworld games were also pretty decent.

You can make a great tie-in game if you try, and with the GoT RPG it appears they actually nailed the most important thing, the story. However, everything else appears to have been compromised in the process. I'm hoping for a Witcher-style Enhanced Edition which fixes the most egregious problems.

I agree about the Witcher and Batman, all great games, not sure how I forgot about them. Though are there that many good games that are released concurrently with the thing they're licencing?

[Onions4all]

Maybe because all players aren't interested in combats or graphics...

Speaking fo myself, I just don't give a shit on graphics :s I play games since the 80s, I enjoyed (and still enjoy) playing to games that have graphics that today would be considered are more than the ugliest that can be. And so ? Because a few studios are capable to do magnificent graphics (with $$$$$$$$ and a team of 50), all studios are expected to do the same, even if they only have $$ and a team of 4 graphists ? Are all the movies that don't use the technology of the (so-called) movie Avatar bad because they are "late" technologiclay speaking ? Is all that is not a state-of-the-art technology obsolete and useless ?

Bullshit. You judge a game on its globality, not on an arithmetic average of arbitrary standarts.

Well. As a gamer, I enjoyed the game, took a real pleasure to play it. It's clearly not the better game I played in my life, nor the worse, but a real good game with a real good plot, and as a SOIAF fan, I really enjoyed to see GRRM's universe respected and to live a credible and interesting story in this universe and at absolutly no moment I was bothered by the graphics or things like that. OMHO, they are pretty descent, even if they're not "the best as it can be in 2012" (what the fuck the year we are can have an importance in the fun a game can provide, I wonder...).

You're reaching,

If the graphics alone were bad, then people wouldn't harp on it much. It's incredibly glitchy and just unpolished. It's a half assed effort, period. The other thing is the awful voice acting. It's hard to deliver a great story when the voice acting is beyond horrible. If everything EXCEPT the graphics were good, this game would have been great. you can still play plenty of classic RPGs with dated graphics (i.e. Star wars knights of the old republic, neverwinter knights) and enjoy them because they're fundamentally sound. This is just an effort by a development team that has no idea what they're doing.

[Evrach]

Haven't played in english, but the voice acting weren't bad. If they're so awful in english, put the game in french subtitled english. When I play a japanese RPG, I play it in japanese with subtitles, not in a foreign dubbing.

For the rest, I saw minor glitches, but nothing hampering my playing experience.

I think there will always be people to grumble and criticize, whatever the game/movie/book.song is.

[Werthead]

Haven't played in english, but the voice acting weren't bad. If they're so awful in english, put the game in french subtitled english. When I play a japanese RPG, I play it in japanese with subtitles, not in a foreign dubbing.

A Song of Ice and Fire is an English-language story written in English, though. Listening to Cersei and Littlefinger speak in French with subtitles would be jarring. It's also a silly solution to something that should have been sorted out long before release.

I'm going to give the game a go (when it finally comes out in Europe, which for some reason is a fortnight after the USA despite it being made in France), but I do not hold high hopes for it. This clip linked on another thread is really awful. Amusing idea, but badly-written. And if you're going to do a GRRM cameo, at least get GRRM to do the voice.

There's also a difference between 'graphics not being top of the agenda' and 'graphics being so rubbish it's inconceivable it made it past QA'. I was playing Max Payne 2 last night (released in 2003) and the character models and animation were superior to anything in any of the clips I've seen for the GoT RPG so far, which is ridiculous. It may be old now but the Unreal 3 Engine can still produce very credible and solid work (as seen in the recent Mass Effect 3), but Cyanide seem to have actually set out to make something that was poor,

[DragonAge93]

Dragon's Dogma is out next week, so I guess its the Kingslayer as my character and the Hound as my main pawn. I'm determined to get my Asoiaf game fix in any way possible.

That's gonna be an AMAZING game. Loved the demo and wished it were longer. I'll be picking it up in June sometime (after I get a good playthrough with Diablo 3 and Game Of Thrones).

The game really isn't all that bad. I just beat Alester's first chapter, and it was great. The choices you make supposedly affect the world later on, with different endings. In Alester's chapter, you have 4 rioters lined up, and you can decide if they die, are set free, or go to the dungeons. You can also choose to kill or free several major rioters, which is pretty immersive, as it feels like you actually are making choices, something that was somewhat absent in recent RPGs like Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age.

[Teeem3000]

Can anyone compare the graphics of this game to those of Kingdom of Amalur. I think they look pretty similar, in that they're both pretty bad. Here's the graphics review for them from IGN.

Alamur got an 8 for graphics

"Beautiful environments and solid animations are marred by fairly shoddy-looking character models. I wish lip-syncing was more on-point during dialogue."

GoT got a 3.5

"The main characters have some impressive armor, but others look like little to no effort was put forth in their creation."

No mention of environments, or settings in any reviews I've read. The reviews of this game are as half-assed as the game itself seems to be.

[Tyrionthebest]

Can anyone compare the graphics of this game to those of Kingdom of Amalur. I think they look pretty similar, in that they're both pretty bad. Here's the graphics review for them from IGN.

Alamur got an 8 for graphics

"Beautiful environments and solid animations are marred by fairly shoddy-looking character models. I wish lip-syncing was more on-point during dialogue."

GoT got a 3.5

"The main characters have some impressive armor, but others look like little to no effort was put forth in their creation."

No mention of environments, or settings in any reviews I've read. The reviews of this game seem to be as half-assed as the game itself seems to be.

Well to be fair they are pretty busy with the 2 other bigger games to give a rat's ass about this one .

[Slick Mongoose]

So the graphics and voice acting are poor, but the gamplay and story are good? Sounds worth getting to me. Maybe when it's on offer.

[Teeem3000]

http://www.rpgfan.co...ones/index.html

A good one! I guess it has a fantastic ending too. These guys are better devs than Bioware :drool: .

For a b+ review, it's still pretty negative... (sigh)

[GoodGuyA]

Can anyone compare the graphics of this game to those of Kingdom of Amalur. I think they look pretty similar, in that they're both pretty bad.

There's a huge disparate distance between the two. KoA looks rather good. Not amazing, but pretty darn good. Even in the objective manner of straight up tech, KoA is better. Again, graphics don't matter so long as the art works for the consumer base, and I think both do for what they're trying to achieve.

[DragonAge93]

The environments look great, actually. In RIverspring, when you look up at the castle wall, it looks pretty damn realistic, as does the interior of the castle.

[Teeem3000]

@ DragonAge93

What about organic environs? Any wandering in the Gift, Kingswood, or Westerlands or is it just in towns? Is there any open exploration at all, or is it an urban/corridor crawl? How about the load-times, interior/exterior transitions, and architecture?

For ex... The Witcher 2, Risen, and to an extent Skyrim feature fairly sound architecture. Interiors in those games are usually of similar size in comparison to the exterior structure, or in the case of Risen, completely streaming.

Where as Dragon Age, KoA, and to an extent Skyrim can have massive interiors, that obviously take up more space then the exterior structure could actually accommodate, and dungeons and corridors are more like big containers than caves and rooms?

I've had a fascination with castles since I was a kid. I think that the fortresses of Asoiaf are one of the most important aspects of the novels. Each one has a wealth of history and each one is almost a character in it's own right. I hope Cyanide represented that aspect of the setting with as much care and authenticity as Martin did.

Thanks for the first hand opinion, by the way.