The Disconnect: why I play, what I expect, what I want
I think I understand now. All the terrible things that happen, the way the story's going. You usually get the stories about people facing and overcoming obstacles, with tragedies along the way. Not the ones where the tragedies are so overwhelming it's up to interpretation at best whether the heroes pulled out a win.
GRRM doesn't want to tell a great story where the people pull out a win. He wants to tell the stories in between, the ugly bits, the stories that are often bleak. There won't be a satisfying conclusion for most watchers at the finale of the TV series. I can get behind that, for a TV show, but someone somewhere decided that it would be a good idea to take that style and put it into game format. Little did they know, it wouldn't be the same.
It really does have to be different with a game. If the bad guys are going to win at the end, you really have to tell me that. If they're going to win in the finale of the story, you're kinda expected to say so. It's why there's a drama called "tragedy". People either learned or suspected - rightly so - that there are repercussions to not informing the audience that the story is a net negative for the good guys ahead of time. When I see the bad guys win when I watch a TV show, I can force a disconnect. There's plenty enough of that in real life that you can't disconnect from, we all have our own personal tragedies. It's a big player in why people can't look away from the show when a new season starts. When I play a game, though, I'm hard pressed to be able to. I've forced a disconnect with a game franchise before, not for the same reason, but it tore my heart out and took a lot of trust in the developers along with it.
The bad guys won at the end my Game of Thrones. Some people survived, and that might matter later in a sequel, but what assurance do I have that the finale, the end of the sequel or series, will end in a conclusion I as a gamer find satisfying? I don't have that assurance, so I can't keep playing, and I sure can't recommend the game to other people. Not until I have a general idea/consensus from others that the conclusion to the possible sequel will satisfying, and I can wait. If I didn't have patience between releases of each episode, I most certainly do now for the complete release of the next episodic installment in Telltale's Game of Thrones. If there's a net positive in the end. That's why I play a game: to escape and enjoy. For for someone to be satisfied with the time they put into playing a game, in it for the story as much as the gameplay - and let's be honest, there's more story in these games than gameplay - there needs to be a satisfying conclusion to the story they can walk away from, content instead of bitter and angry - unless of course they want to be bitter and angry, that's not for me to say one way or the other. What I've come to expect from the conclusion of a game, and what I've come to want, the game Game of Thrones by Telltale Games did subvert with extreme prejudice.
Well, at least it mirrors the TV show. At least it mirrors the books. Consolation for those of you out there who saw this coming, whether you're wracked by bitterness or feeling justified. Well, depending on how you look at it, it's all harmless fun/drama.
Comments
Spot on, imho. Games just do not work the same way books and TV shows do, especially episodic games - maybe I would be okay with an 'everybody dies' kind of ending in a game that takes 20 hours to complete, but when I've been literally waiting for months (almost a year, as a matter of fact) in between episodes, I just want a satisfactory ending. This is why I feel like happy endings work best for TTG, and I'd rather Telltale did not crazy about the whole 'it's Got, so, y'know, lives are gonna be ruined'.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure it does mirror the books. The issue with this game is that, in direct contrast to the message of the books and show, it has a very polarized cast of characters. Every single antagonistic character you encounter is a complete, rotten monster. Ludd, Gryff, Andros, even Morgrynn. While Game of Thrones is a bit like that sometimes, the real beauty of it is that so many of its nominal "villains" are just as ambiguous as the nominal "heroes". I mean, look at the transformation somebody like Jamie has undergone over the course of the story. There's nobody like that in the game. No individual who is clearly against but you can't necessarily bring yourself to just hate full on, since it's hard not to at least understand their narrative.
That's why it feels so hollow and poor that the bad guys inevitably win in the end. The story of the books and show is ultimately that, in war, there's good and evil on both sides. And both sides can have extremely good and extremely evil individuals, but these are huge exceptions in a crowd of morally gray, real people. Even when the "good guys" in we're meant to root for lose in GoT, it still comes with this sense of back and forth, the endless struggle of a war, eye for eye and so on. Here, it just feels like we're getting kicked over and over again. Sure, you can kill off a few of the characters you've come to hate over the 6 episodes, but what does it matter when any prospective replacement is just as horrible and evil? Sure, it made the game easier for us morally, since we didn't have to think about the villains in any humane sense, but it also means them doing evil things come off as less impactful.