A friend once joked that HBO's Game of Thrones show should be renamed "A Series of Meetings," given its string of recent episodes featuring more exposition and chatter than action. I'm applying this moniker to Sons of Winter, the fourth episode of

A bit about the presence of the TV show characters: Daenerys is totally out of character. She's mean and hard in ways that she isn't in the TV series; in the show she is firm and always open to listening, but Telltale has made her into a vicious would-be despot. Her scene happens early in the episode and jarred me out of the experience; she just didn't fit, her behavior so off it was harder for me to find my emotional footing for the rest of the episode.

As Telltale's Game of Thrones passes its halfway mark, it takes a bit of a dip, staging a set of scenes that feel less like something you can control and more like something you can only passively watch. There's no real sense of agency in the choices you are offered, other than spinning a conversation in a certain direction before coming full circle to a pre-determined outcome. Sons of Winter feels like more set dressing, but what happens in its last two minutes is strong enough a taster to make you hunger for Episode Five. It's a bit disappointing that the rest of the episode doesn't quite hit the dramatic bar Telltale has already set for itself.