Live to Fight Another Day | Game of Thrones: Episode Two – The Lost Lords Review

After the experiencing the climax of the season premiere of Telltale’s Game of Thrones, I couldn’t have been anticipating the second episode more. The decisions I’d mostly found to be easy conclusions for myself suddenly were more difficult and left me with much more doubt than Telltale’s previous offerings, and I loved the uncomfortable atmosphere that was established in the first episode. It established – especially with the shocking ending – that anything can happen, and anyone is fair game.

While I still quite enjoyed The Lost Lords as a whole, it seemed like more of a filler episode, and while interesting encounters occur, they don’t leave me begging for more as much as the first episode had done so brilliantly.

Without spoiling too much from the last episode, the Forrester house has been pushed to the brink of desperation, sending one of the family’s uncles to find one of the eldest sons, Asher, and bring him back to lead his family and defend their walls. This brings us across the sea to Essos, and we meet up with Asher and his companion, Beskha, as the try and turn in a bounty.

I didn’t care much for Mira Forrester’s sections in the first episode, but Telltale finally gave her some more interesting sections, and she’s become a much more complex character in the process. Needless to say, one action you can choose to do late in the episode certainly will bring Mira to a compromising position, especially in the walls of King’s Landing.

The story for the most part introduced interesting new plot threads, and I really enjoyed the new playable characters as well as their companions, but there just wasn’t as much of an impact as the first episode had. Of course not every episode needs a cliffhanger or a major plot twist, but The Lost Lords seems to go out with a fizzle more than a bang.

There weren’t many puzzle sections in the first combat heavy episode, and there really aren’t much more this time around. It seems Telltale is focusing on their Game of Thrones games to be more about the character interactions and combat than puzzles, but just hanging with these two notes can grow a little stale when the story doesn’t deliver as much.

Jon Snow makes his debut in The Lost Lords, and his interaction, as well as the other TV character appearances, feel more natural this time around rather than forced for popularity’s sake. I especially enjoyed the interactions of Jon with Gared and Tyrion with Mira, as Jon gave Gared advice he had learned, and Tyrion helped Mira understand “the game” more and how to be more careful.

The odd water-color art style from the first episode obviously is back, and it’s become even more obnoxious than I thought it was. Some scenes don’t look bad, and the character models are hit and miss, but there are certain sections where background or little details reminisced a high school art project rather than professional art. This unfortunately looks like something that will plague the remainder of the season, but I still have hope they can polish it up so it isn’t as noticeable.

It isn’t have as much of an impact as the first episode, but The Lost Lords carries along the story and introduces new engaging characters to keep interest in the rest of the season. While there weren’t any shocking events this time around, the seeds left leave me more than interested to see what will happen to the Forrester clan in such a dire world.

This review is based on a retail copy of the PlayStation 4 version of Telltale’s Game of Thrones Season 1: Episode Two – The Lost Lords by Telltale Games.