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Game of Thrones: A Nest of Vipers (ep. 5) review- Perhaps it’s best not to dive in…

• Anson Chan
• July 22nd, 2015

(Potential spoilers ahead, skip to the end for an abridged, spoiler free verdict.)

As another month passes, another episode of the Telltale Game’s Game of Thrones game comes out. Of the six episodes that will come out, A Nest of Vipers is the 5th of the series, intended to be the last chance you get to prepare House Forrester for the upcoming war. This roughly 2 hour long episode focuses mostly on the actions of Asher and Rodrik Forrester while the former tries to recruit allies and the latter tries to keep the House together.

Unlike the other episodes though, very little time is given to Gared and Mira, with only a couple of transitions to their point of view. While this may be partially due to this episode’s relatively short length, it does give the feeling that their fates are reserved to pad out episode 6. If you expected to see more of King’s Landing and the adventures of Gared, you will simply have to wait.

Unfortunately, this episode also appears to brush all of your prior actions underneath a rug for the sake of establishing a greater conflict in episode 6. Allies that you have obtained through your actions in previous episodes, through one way or another, are essentially prevented from making an appearance in the upcoming conclusion to the series. Even actions that you have taken in A Nest of Vipers are rendered rather pointless by the end of the episode, seemingly for the sake of making episode 6 more dramatic.

Fortunately, the ending of episode 5 lets you make a major decision that will apparently have a great effect on episode 6, culminating in one of the more emotional decisions that you have to make in the series. Until the end though, the rest of the episode seems somewhat forced. Because of this, episode 5 is more of an episode that you can afford to skip. This is especially true since the episode can be summed up by simply pretending that none of the main characters managed to make any progress in their fight against House Whitehill.

(End of potential spoilers.)

Final verdict-3.5/5

While the other episodes in the Game of Thrones series puts a great emphasis on your actions, episode 5 takes a different approach, seemingly for the sake of establishing episode 6. Plus it is one of the shorter episodes, clocking in at just under 2 hours.