Game of Thrones

[PunkBillCarson]

Spoiler: This episode

So while I liked the episode, I have to say I'm a little underwhelmed with the Night King's death. For a character they've been building up for so long, what he took with him in terms of lives felt rather... it felt like they hadn't earned his death, especially not like that. That felt rather cheap to me for a character who's supposed to have been the worst thing they could possibly fight. I have to say, I'm having a hard time getting amped for what's to come knowing that Cersei couldn't possibly do HALF of what the NK is capable of. Will it be easy, no. But in terms of impact, while there were some losses, I feel like they still didn't have the impact they should have. On the other hand, they also sent 40,000 Dothraki straight to their deaths (or supposedly that was the number) so a MASSIVE part of their army is missing. I think it's ONLY for this reason alone that the battle with Cersei will be difficult, but IMO the Night King only served to nerf the fuck out of Jon/Dany's army because with all three dragons, plus the forces they had before, it would have been a wash.

 

[Seabeast2000]

Spoiler: This episode

So while I liked the episode, I have to say I'm a little underwhelmed with the Night King's death. For a character they've been building up for so long, what he took with him in terms of lives felt rather... it felt like they hadn't earned his death, especially not like that. That felt rather cheap to me for a character who's supposed to have been the worst thing they could possibly fight. I have to say, I'm having a hard time getting amped for what's to come knowing that Cersei couldn't possibly do HALF of what the NK is capable of. Will it be easy, no. But in terms of impact, while there were some losses, I feel like they still didn't have the impact they should have. On the other hand, they also sent 40,000 Dothraki straight to their deaths (or supposedly that was the number) so a MASSIVE part of their army is missing. I think it's ONLY for this reason alone that the battle with Cersei will be difficult, but IMO the Night King only served to nerf the fuck out of Jon/Dany's army because with all three dragons, plus the forces they had before, it would have been a wash.

Spoiler

I was not expecting that ending, was expecting a much larger part of this season with that fucker. I was growing tired of the sheer untouchability of the NK but then poof its over. LOL, I was also expecting the NK to kneel at Bran's feet when they met.

 

[PunkBillCarson]

Spoiler

I was not expecting that ending, was expecting a much larger part of this season with that fucker. I was growing tired of the sheer untouchability of the NK but then poof its over. LOL, I was also expecting the NK to kneel at Bran's feet when they met.

Spoiler

I didn't even mind the sheer untouchability, but it's just... this dude was a supreme fucking badass with possible Green Seer abilities... He had to have know that that was a trap, surely. I feel like they took the all powerful tactician and reduced him to an overzealous being and that just doesn't... it doesn't do it for me.

 

[wankerness]

Spoiler

Dumb episode. The ending was fine and I am ok with no more white walkers, but I hated how it was paced. Like, what the hell did we need the lengthy zombies in the library sequence for? Did the battle outside just pause? Speaking of that, what was Berric walking down the hall all slowly and stealthily for when his sword was on fucking fire?!

The action was not well filmed and the tactics frequently made no sense, making the scenes doubly frustrating. On top of that, the episode was drenched in blacks and snow clouds, two things that digital compression absolutely can’t handle without a healthy bitrate. Compression artifacts EVERYWHERE! I guess I’ll have to wait for Blu-ray to give it a better shake, but it was fatally flawed for more reasons than just that.

Could anyone tell what the hell was going on with the dragons? Like, I mean, I was sure both the undead dragon and the one Jon was riding died, but apparently neither did (well, I mean the undead one came back to menace Jon after that point, not that it was alive at the end of the episode). The latter I only found out was alive from the preview next week still showing two dragons!

Glad to see Lyanna go, that character was getting terribly overused after her great first appearance. It was dumb how no important characters died at all besides two whose arcs ended naturally anyway, but oh well, I guess they’re saving everything for the last few episodes.

 

[bouVIP]

Spoiler

Just wanted to say fuck Sam. God that made me so fucking angry after he even wasted time talking about how he wanted to fight with them. Also you think they'd line the walls with oil or something so they can just burn the corpses as they climb up the wall. Otherwise, I enjoyed the episode and how it ended mostly....it was both bad and good somehow.

 

[wankerness]

Yeah, he totally Saving Private Ryan’d it up. We were getting mad at him being alive too, even though I’ve generally liked him till this episode!

 

[Seabeast2000]

Spoiler

@wankerness , totally got you on the artifacting. I thought it was my friend's shitty Vizio TV for a while. It was tough to watch.

 

[wankerness]

@wankerness , totally got you on the artifacting. I thought it was my friend's shitty Vizio TV for a while. It was tough to watch.

Yeah. My friend that was over asked "why is it all melty" in reference to the blacks banding as he isn't a blu-ray nerd like me but still could tell something was wrong. It wasn't that HBO's bitrates were any worse than normal. Like, the shots of the dragons fighting out above the clouds in the moonlight looked absolutely stunning with precise detail as they didn't contain fog or blacks. A whole ton of everything else that took place outdoors, though, sheesh. Even people standing around next to torches that created a few progressively dark shades of black resulted in it looking like rings instead of smooth gradients. It was a good advertisement for why there's still going to be a place for blu-ray/4k until bandwidth increases considerably and/or ISP bandwidth caps stop being a thing, though!

 

[jaxadam]

Yeah. My friend that was over asked "why is it all melty" in reference to the blacks banding as he isn't a blu-ray nerd like me but still could tell something was wrong. It wasn't that HBO's bitrates were any worse than normal. Like, the shots of the dragons fighting out above the clouds in the moonlight looked absolutely stunning with precise detail as they didn't contain fog or blacks. A whole ton of everything else that took place outdoors, though, sheesh. Even people standing around next to torches that created a few progressively dark shades of black resulted in it looking like rings instead of smooth gradients. It was a good advertisement for why there's still going to be a place for blu-ray/4k until bandwidth increases considerably and/or ISP bandwidth caps stop being a thing, though!

I noticed it on my TV with the dark scenes and thought it was weird, because my TV can handle just about anything. It was definitely very obvious on this episode, especially in the dark clouds and fog types of scenes. Somewhat strange for this level of production.

 

[Drew]

Spoiler

Dumb episode. The ending was fine and I am ok with no more white walkers, but I hated how it was paced. Like, what the hell did we need the lengthy zombies in the library sequence for? Did the battle outside just pause? Speaking of that, what was Berric walking down the hall all slowly and stealthily for when his sword was on fucking fire?!

The action was not well filmed and the tactics frequently made no sense, making the scenes doubly frustrating. On top of that, the episode was drenched in blacks and snow clouds, two things that digital compression absolutely can’t handle without a healthy bitrate. Compression artifacts EVERYWHERE! I guess I’ll have to wait for Blu-ray to give it a better shake, but it was fatally flawed for more reasons than just that.

Could anyone tell what the hell was going on with the dragons? Like, I mean, I was sure both the undead dragon and the one Jon was riding died, but apparently neither did (well, I mean the undead one came back to menace Jon after that point, not that it was alive at the end of the episode). The latter I only found out was alive from the preview next week still showing two dragons!

Glad to see Lyanna go, that character was getting terribly overused after her great first appearance. It was dumb how no important characters died at all besides two whose arcs ended naturally anyway, but oh well, I guess they’re saving everything for the last few episodes.

Spoiler

So, the pacing was evidently by design - the directors evidently sat a large group of people down with the Hobbit/LotR movies to analyze about how long the average person could watch an unbroken epic battle scene without being completely overwhelmed and exhausted, and then used scenes like Arya in the library or the dragon dogfight to break up the unbroken carnage to preserve the action but break up the pacing. I actually liked how they balanced the macro battle with more tense close-up scenes, but I could totally see where someone might be bothered by that too, I guess.

I struggled with the image quality too - we usually watch at a buddy's place but for various reasons were at another friend's house for this one, and his TV - either the screen itself or the buffering - was really struggling with the dark snowy blizzard scenes. The visual effect was almost as if ice crystals were rapidly forming and spreading across the screen over and over again, which I was worried was a production decision and I hope to god was the TV/streaming instead. We're going back to our usual spot next week and will re-watch this before Ep 4, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again, hopefully clearer.

Spoiler

I was not expecting that ending, was expecting a much larger part of this season with that fucker. I was growing tired of the sheer untouchability of the NK but then poof its over. LOL, I was also expecting the NK to kneel at Bran's feet when they met.

You know, honestly, I thought he might, too.

Spoiler

I fully expected him to either die this episode - the alternative would be he won and then marched on King's Landing, and honestly wiht two more dragons and another 60-70,000 walking dead, it would just be too one-sided a battle.

I don't love how they did it, though. I mean, awesome scene, well-foreshadowed (Arya sneaks up on Jon in the exact same spot, and pulls the same move on Brienne in the training yard)... But GRRM spent five books, and the creators spent seven seasons, speculating about the Azor Ahai and the Prince That Was Promised prophecies, and then the character that's been highly trained as an assassin and in any other world would be the obvious pick to assassinate someone actually goes and assassinates him after all, with nothing about flaming swords or being born amongst smoke and salt or red stars in the skies to be seen. Yeah, GRRM definitely intentionally fucks with genre conventions and maybe the whole point here is the prohpesies are all a false flag, but it just feels wrong, in ways Eddard's execution or the Red Wedding or Oberyn Martel's death didn't.

I could be accused of sour grapes, of course, but I think my theory that it was going to be Jaime would have made for a more satisfying story.

 

[wankerness]

I noticed it on my TV with the dark scenes and thought it was weird, because my TV can handle just about anything. It was definitely very obvious on this episode, especially in the dark clouds and fog types of scenes. Somewhat strange for this level of production.

It has zero to do with your TV, completely down to compression on the source. It will look fine on Blu-ray.

 

[Sumsar]

Yeah it looks like the compresison algorithm wasn't really optimized for nice blacks, since it is so evident that it is where the rendering throw a lot of data away to get it down to something streamable. I guess it makes sense since most screens can't show blacks for their life, or at least that was the case a few years ago.
But yeah someone should have thought about that when the color grading is that half the screen for 60 mins is variations of black.

Spoiler: Spoiler

I liked the episode, I thought they did a good job of not just being 60 mins of battle battle battle, as that gets old really fast.
I agree that it was a bit weird with the battle kinda stopping (why don't we still hear battle from the outside? when in the library etc) and also to me it seemed that everybody outside the wall pretty much died, next scene you see a shit ton of people fleeing into the castle with a ton of the slave soldier dudes defending them, and I was like "What? didn't you all just die?" apparently not.
Also why did they go so dumb on the strategy for the battle? Let us send all of our riders into death. Then have our catapuls placed in front of the infantry (wtf?) and generally having the infantry outside the walls? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to have all infantry in the castle and then maybe at like halfway through the battle have the cavalry charge the flank of the undead or something along those lines? while hiding on the other side of the castle for the first half?
Also also kinda disappointed about the lack of 'Boss battle' with the Night King, maybe just have him like battle Jon Snow Targaryan and then raise the undead and move on without either of them winning or something like that?
Could also had been cool with the Night King talking to either Bran or Jon, which I think would have made it more powerfull when he died?
Anyway, let us see what comes next

 

[Seabeast2000]

Hey, I didn't rewatch the series and forgot a few details. What happened to the The Vail guys? The ones who saved Jon against the Bolton army?

 

[Drew]

Yeah it looks like the compresison algorithm wasn't really optimized for nice blacks, since it is so evident that it is where the rendering throw a lot of data away to get it down to something streamable. I guess it makes sense since most screens can't show blacks for their life, or at least that was the case a few years ago.
But yeah someone should have thought about that when the color grading is that half the screen for 60 mins is variations of black.

Spoiler: Spoiler

I liked the episode, I thought they did a good job of not just being 60 mins of battle battle battle, as that gets old really fast.
I agree that it was a bit weird with the battle kinda stopping (why don't we still hear battle from the outside? when in the library etc) and also to me it seemed that everybody outside the wall pretty much died, next scene you see a shit ton of people fleeing into the castle with a ton of the slave soldier dudes defending them, and I was like "What? didn't you all just die?" apparently not.
Also why did they go so dumb on the strategy for the battle? Let us send all of our riders into death. Then have our catapuls placed in front of the infantry (wtf?) and generally having the infantry outside the walls? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to have all infantry in the castle and then maybe at like halfway through the battle have the cavalry charge the flank of the undead or something along those lines? while hiding on the other side of the castle for the first half?
Also also kinda disappointed about the lack of 'Boss battle' with the Night King, maybe just have him like battle Jon Snow Targaryan and then raise the undead and move on without either of them winning or something like that?
Could also had been cool with the Night King talking to either Bran or Jon, which I think would have made it more powerfull when he died?
Anyway, let us see what comes next

Spoiler

Honestly, a giant "boss fight" pitting Jon against the Night King is the kind of fantasy trope that GRRM has pretty consistently tried to subvert. I'd have been more surprised had it happened, than that it didn't, at the end there.

I think the biggest issue I have with how the Night King died was I fully expected whoever killed him to die in the process, and it feels a little like a gimmie that Arya survived. Though even then... Melisandre starts by saying she sees a darkness inside her, and in that darkness eyes that she will shut. It could be Arya's training as a Faceless Man... But it could be the very act of killing the Night King also changed or cursed her in some manner, in which case we're not out of the woods yet. That seems a stretch... but I think the darkness is important, somehow.

 

[Drew]

Hey, I didn't rewatch the series and forgot a few details. What happened to the The Vail guys? The ones who saved Jon against the Bolton army?

Well, by elimination, they were either fighting for Winterfell, or fighting for the Night's King, if they were anywhere in the area.

 

[mongey]

I have allot of thoughts on it but def need to watch it again to really solidify it. I liked things and found some things weird.

One thing for sure. The Dothraki should have never crossed the sea.

I thought we just got a shitty stream here in Australia with the picture quality. But looks like it was same for everyone. I found a few parts bordering on un watchable.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Spoiler

glad to see I'm not the only one that hard a really difficult time telling what the hell was going on for parts of the battle sequence. Between the literal blur of zombies smashing into people and the abuse of black/storms to obscure rendering the battlefield I was getting pretty frustrated. Their battle plan was unbelievably stupid tbh. If you know you're going to get besieged, then why the hell would you want to engage the enemy in open battle? Jon and some of the others have fought wights before, so they should know better than to bother fighting them that way, as you just get overrun (ie Hardhome/The Wall). The whole dragon fight in the skies was very difficult to follow. I'm kind of pissed that Sam managed to survive somehow, that made no sense considering how many more competent fighters were dying. Yay Plot armor. Same goes with Jaime. He got surrounded and overrun multiple times, but somehow managed to survive. At least in Brienne's case it makes sense, but Jaime was running around with one hand..
I honestly thought the body count would be far higher considering how many secondary and tertiary characters were in winterfell. Also, am I crazy or did gilly get killed by the wights in the crypt? I thought it was her they showed being dragged off but it wasn't super obvious.
I wasn't expecting them to be able to deal with the NK in one episode, that was pretty anticlimactic tbh. I'm basically meh on the episode overall. It had some great moments and some not so great ones.

 

[gunshow86de]

Spoiler

It seemed pretty obvious that Arya was going to be the one that killed the Knight King. My main gripe is that they chose to make her a dumb super hero. Instead of using the skills she would have learned training with the most legendary assassin guild on their planet. I was rooting for her to figure out how to change faces with a white walker or something to get close enough to kill him. Instead a 5 foot tall teenage girl goes 1 vs 30 on super zombies, then later just straight suicide rushes in to the Big Show NK's chokeslam and drops the blade to her other hand and stabs him.

 

[Drew]

Only thing I'll say on the Dothraki...

Spoiler

What else do you do with them? They're cavalry trained to, and extremely good at, fighting on horseback in the open ground. You can't exactly tell them to man the battlements, and holding them back in the hopes the unsullied are able to deal with the army of the dead seems, well... rather optimistic. Having them charge blind at the army of the dead is dumb too - honestly, couldn't they light a few bonfires out there just for visibility? - but they're kind of a square peg in a round hole anyway, when you're talking about basically a siege. They at least looked fucking awesome charging, so.... yay?

That's not to say there weren't a whole bunch of tactical blunders made, but they're the sort you would expect of an army not used to fighting the undead. Not too many living men will lay down on a fiery trench to form a bridge for their companions, not too many living men will swarm the walls of a castle World War Z style to build a human ramp for their buddies to clamber up. Putting Bran in the Godswood surrounded by a bunch of archers, yeah I get the idea but couldn't you get a few guys with swords in there too?

Really though... Plenty of bad decisions, but I'm not sure what you WOULD do with the Dothraki there. Maybe make the perimeter trench bigger and taller, use it to funnel the army of the dead into a narrow corridor, and then sweep them up with the Dothraki as they come through? That'd ahve to be a huge wall though and that would likely have been overrun too same as the smaller one, so it wouldn't have really done much. I think the bigger problem is cavalry are just a shitty asset for seige warfare.

 

[PunkBillCarson]

Spoiler

glad to see I'm not the only one that hard a really difficult time telling what the hell was going on for parts of the battle sequence. Between the literal blur of zombies smashing into people and the abuse of black/storms to obscure rendering the battlefield I was getting pretty frustrated. Their battle plan was unbelievably stupid tbh. If you know you're going to get besieged, then why the hell would you want to engage the enemy in open battle? Jon and some of the others have fought wights before, so they should know better than to bother fighting them that way, as you just get overrun (ie Hardhome/The Wall). The whole dragon fight in the skies was very difficult to follow. I'm kind of pissed that Sam managed to survive somehow, that made no sense considering how many more competent fighters were dying. Yay Plot armor. Same goes with Jaime. He got surrounded and overrun multiple times, but somehow managed to survive. At least in Brienne's case it makes sense, but Jaime was running around with one hand..
I honestly thought the body count would be far higher considering how many secondary and tertiary characters were in winterfell. Also, am I crazy or did gilly get killed by the wights in the crypt? I thought it was her they showed being dragged off but it wasn't super obvious.
I wasn't expecting them to be able to deal with the NK in one episode, that was pretty anticlimactic tbh. I'm basically meh on the episode overall. It had some great moments and some not so great ones.

Spoiler: Agreed

with most of this, actually. I felt like for them to take down someone like the NK, not NEARLY enough was lost. I must sure, we lost the Dothraki, but I mean... we lost some good ones, but not nearly enough a sacrifice to take down someone as powerful as the Night King was presented. Also, how much credibility does it really give the whole Azor Ahai prophecy? I feel like they think we have short memories because all that shit only for NK to be killed by a surprise attack. I'll put it this way, I wouldn't have had a problem with him dying like that if taking him down actually meant something and something was lost besides what was on the battlefield. But agree. Good moments, but certainly they didn't earn what they got. As I said before, they essentially used NK to nerf Jon/Dany for Cersei which they'll probably still win, just not as easy this time.