The Ice Dragon begins with Gared Tuttle reaching his destination of the North Grove, whom is welcomed by a grizzly encounter.  Of course who is with you as you arrive at the North Grove depends on your actions prior, but all is not what Gared expected and his path may now take a darker turn that was set upon him by his deceased Lord; Gregor Forrester.  His tale in this finale can seemingly go one of two ways and much depends on a questionable moral choice that is presented before you.  Either way, if you thought for one second that Gared was going to take a backseat in the Forrester family, then think again.

For Mira, located in the heart of King’s Landing, events keep going from bad to worse for the Handmaiden of Lady Margaery and she desperately does what she can to ensure her families safety from afar.  Mira has had to make some very difficult choices, testing the boundaries of her friendships and loyalty on both sides of the barbed wire fence.  Though depending on what choices you made, Mira’s ultimate drive has been to help her Forrester family far from Kings Landing, but no matter what the goal, some choices may carry too much of a burden for Mira to carry.

Gared tree

The final player in this season is (for me at least) Asher Forrester, as he brings back warriors to fight against Ramsey Snow and the Whitehills to reclaim his family’s house.  I won’t go too much into spoiler territory here (but to be fair, if you’re reading this when not finishing episode 4, then you only have yourself to blame), but depending on who you chose to leave behind in the final fight of EPISODE NAME, will dramatically effect who takes centre stage in this finale.

For me that man was Asher and it’s now up to him to lead the fight against the Whitehills.  Asher may lack the diplomatic skills of his older brother Rodrick, but he more than makes up for it in his warrior instincts.  But no fight will test Asher more than it does here. He has some very tough choices to make and it seems no matter what happens, blood will be shed.  Whose blood will spill is the question at hand and is Asher ready to take charge of House Forrester and what price is he willing to pay for the sake of his family’s name and survival?

Whitehill army

By the time The Ice Dragon had concluded, I was on the edge of my seat, screaming at the TV and the tension reached an all-time high in the season.  This is the kind of reaction I expect to have from a Telltale Games/HBO hybrid.  After all, Telltale Games has set such high standards from the likes of The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and more recently Tales from the Borderlands.  At times, with so many playable characters, it’s been hard developing an emotional attachment similar to that of Lee Everett and Clementine, but by the time the final credits hit, I was feeling the emotion that I had not felt from a Telltale game since the ending of season 2 from The Walking Dead.  That has been the key aspect missing from this adaptation of Game of Thrones up until now;  raw emotion with characters and a story that you can sink your teeth into.

While there have been some great moments during this first season of Game of Thrones, it’s been somewhat up and down, certainly not at the consistent high level that we’ve come to expect from the developers.  That said, I’ve still very much enjoyed every episode this season and it’s fair to say that they’ve left the best till last with The Ice Dragon.  This is every bit of an epic conclusion that fans have hoped for as it kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.  With season 2 already confirmed, I am looking forward to the next outing just as much as any other series from Telltale Games.  Why did I ever doubt them?



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