[TV/Books] Game of Thrones ***SPOILER Discussion***

[Mavick]

See my previous post when you asked this earlier on this page.

Many of your criticisms revolve around the battle itself, in some ways that's fair and in some ways it's not. I doubt either of us is a strategical expert where an army of men fighting a massively overwhelming army of undead is concerned. But I will grant at face value some of these things don't make sense. Like the Doth'raki charge at first I had trouble with myself. But then I think about things a little. Honestly what are Doth'raki good at and what have we only seen them do for the entirety of this show? Ride in full throttle on their horses, which is literally what they did again. I'm not even sure how a cavalry like that is meant to work against that undead army anyway. You can't really flank a force that is large enough to completely surround you anyway. You can't just go in and come back out because they just swarm you, which they did.

The siege weapons, to my understanding, are normally a "shock and awe" type of weapon. I doubt they expected much use of these because this isn't an enemy that you can "shock and awe". In order to get sustained use of them even you'd have to keep the enemy at a certain distance and not have your own in danger, which obviously wasn't possible. In retrospect it actually makes sense to have them ahead of the lines in order to make it easier for them to retreat back to the keep, which they had to do fairly quickly either way.

Bran's use of warging was clearly to incite the NK, which more or less succeeds as up to that point he was shown clearly to be hanging out on the periphery of the battle and not engaging personally, which in order for their plan to work relied on him getting close enough to engage directly.

I could keep going if I wanted but this gets tiring after a point. Like I said, it's fair to see things at face value and not see the sense on it, but if you try you can probably figure something out, which is to their credit honestly. Some people like to be fed every little bit of minutia, some are fine with some being left to the imagination, or piecing things together. Nothing wrong with either. But it's just lazy to just lay criticism down and not at least put some thought into it, that's all I'm saying.

[therealstegblob]

The issue isn't really the lack of important character deaths. The issue is that they kept teasing us with shots of said major characters being surrounded and overwhelmed by the undeads, only for the scene to end right before they are supposed to fight their way through or die. After a couple of minutes it's their turn in the spotlight again and surprise surprise, said major character is unharmed.

They've been doing this since like season 6. It was especially bad last season (particularly in the awful, awful Beyond the Wall episode) and it was notoriously bad in this latest episode. Like holy fucking shit. The way it was edited, it'd have you believe that Sam, Jaime and Brienne were just sort of wiggling around with wights all over them for like 20 minutes? What the fuck.

The editing in The Battle of Winterfell was just horrible. The Night King was a boring, shallow badguy and his demise was boring and shallow. I predicted years ago they'd probably fall back on some lazy "kill the Night King = his whole army dies too" bullshit, and woopo woopo look at what they did.

I wasn't very excited for season 8 but at this point I literally don't give a fuck how it ends. Probably relying on some horseshit asspull like the Iron Bank funds Dany and Jon and they buy the Golden Company out from Cersei and then Jaime kills Cersei but not after like 20 "oh my god did this character die oh wait no they were saved at the last minute" moments.

[Xilurm]

I really hope that the dead don't have that weakness where "kill this white walker = kills all the dead they raised" in the book.

There is a way to resolve the Others threat, make it realistic. They conquer Westeros, a few surviving main characters flee to Essos and that's it.

[Huehuecoyotl]

Many of your criticisms revolve around the battle itself, in some ways that's fair and in some ways it's not. I doubt either of us is a strategical expert where an army of men fighting a massively overwhelming army of undead is concerned. But I will grant at face value some of these things don't make sense. Like the Doth'raki charge at first I had trouble with myself. But then I think about things a little. Honestly what are Doth'raki good at and what have we only seen them do for the entirety of this show? Ride in full throttle on their horses, which is literally what they did again. I'm not even sure how a cavalry like that is meant to work against that undead army anyway. You can't really flank a force that is large enough to completely surround you anyway. You can't just go in and come back out because they just swarm you, which they did.

The siege weapons, to my understanding, are normally a "shock and awe" type of weapon. I doubt they expected much use of these because this isn't an enemy that you can "shock and awe". In order to get sustained use of them even you'd have to keep the enemy at a certain distance and not have your own in danger, which obviously wasn't possible. In retrospect it actually makes sense to have them ahead of the lines in order to make it easier for them to retreat back to the keep, which they had to do fairly quickly either way.

Bran's use of warging was clearly to incite the NK, which more or less succeeds as up to that point he was shown clearly to be hanging out on the periphery of the battle and not engaging personally, which in order for their plan to work relied on him getting close enough to engage directly.

I could keep going if I wanted but this gets tiring after a point. Like I said, it's fair to see things at face value and not see the sense on it, but if you try you can probably figure something out, which is to their credit honestly. Some people like to be fed every little bit of minutia, some are fine with some being left to the imagination, or piecing things together. Nothing wrong with either. But it's just lazy to just lay criticism down and not at least put some thought into it, that's all I'm saying.

I'm sorry, but you are defending the indefensible here. You are talking about a martial land, with people being born into war and warfare. The council of people that planned that battle had a number of people with significant experience fighting large scale battles. They knew that the enemy could raise the dead, so the first plan had to be to ensure that they didn't feed any extra bodies to him. If the AotD were going to surround them, they needed to make sure that the Dothraki ended up outside the AotD, so that they could harry them. Then the NK would have to decide; leave them picking off his warriors, or send a force after them. If he sent a small group, they take it far enough away and destroy it, then come back. If they send a large enough force, keep leading them away, picking them off as you go. Any of their own that die, they burn to prevent them being brought back.

The trebs and the unsullied would have been inside the walls. The trebs could continue to fire large balls of fire as long as possible, thinning out the enemy. The unsullied with their coordination and dragon glass spears could have held those walls a long time.

Oh, and weren't there a few people in there with experience of giants knocking down gates at Winterfell? And knowledge that the AotD had at least one giant? But at no point did they think "let's make a plan for how to handle giants, otherwise our gate will be gone before we can blink". They had time to make trebuchets, but nobody thought to make a siege version of an arbalest with dragon glass tipped missiles to take out giants?

They also knew that the NK can raise the dead, and not only did they put people in the crypts, but nobody thought to burn any bodies?

There you go, that's off the top of my head. The battle plan was pathetic, and played into the strengths of the enemy while wasting their own troops. It insults the intelligence of the viewers to suggest that the experienced warriors in Winterfell would have come up with this. The writers should rightly be villified for creating this utter nonsense.

[Kellorion]

Unless im mistaken, isnt Theon the only person the Night King has killed himself?

[MakeMeLaugh]

Many of your criticisms revolve around the battle itself, in some ways that's fair and in some ways it's not. I doubt either of us is a strategical expert where an army of men fighting a massively overwhelming army of undead is concerned. But I will grant at face value some of these things don't make sense. Like the Doth'raki charge at first I had trouble with myself. But then I think about things a little. Honestly what are Doth'raki good at and what have we only seen them do for the entirety of this show? Ride in full throttle on their horses, which is literally what they did again. I'm not even sure how a cavalry like that is meant to work against that undead army anyway. You can't really flank a force that is large enough to completely surround you anyway. You can't just go in and come back out because they just swarm you, which they did.

The siege weapons, to my understanding, are normally a "shock and awe" type of weapon. I doubt they expected much use of these because this isn't an enemy that you can "shock and awe". In order to get sustained use of them even you'd have to keep the enemy at a certain distance and not have your own in danger, which obviously wasn't possible. In retrospect it actually makes sense to have them ahead of the lines in order to make it easier for them to retreat back to the keep, which they had to do fairly quickly either way.

Bran's use of warging was clearly to incite the NK, which more or less succeeds as up to that point he was shown clearly to be hanging out on the periphery of the battle and not engaging personally, which in order for their plan to work relied on him getting close enough to engage directly.

I could keep going if I wanted but this gets tiring after a point. Like I said, it's fair to see things at face value and not see the sense on it, but if you try you can probably figure something out, which is to their credit honestly. Some people like to be fed every little bit of minutia, some are fine with some being left to the imagination, or piecing things together. Nothing wrong with either. But it's just lazy to just lay criticism down and not at least put some thought into it, that's all I'm saying.

Damn, you are trying to defend the battle tactics as well. And saying Bran warging the ravens actually did something. What the hell are you smoking?

[Doctor Funkenstein]

Eh - I really think that's because Martin hasn't gotten far enough in the books to bring the 'physical' part TO Winterfell yet. Not because there's no physical ice zombie threat- because there is (in the books, also). Its not a metaphorical threat, its a real, physical, incoming, /thing/.

I'm not disagreeing.

He just isn't "in" the books in the same way he's in the show. And the most likely candidate for him has a completely different backstory than what the show gave us, to the point that the similarities are in name only.

[DeltrusDisc]

I really hope that the dead don't have that weakness where "kill this white walker = kills all the dead they raised" in the book.

There is a way to resolve the Others threat, make it realistic. They conquer Westeros, a few surviving main characters flee to Essos and that's it.

They showed that is how it works a whole season ago.

[Independent voter]

"Davos to smuggle Varys and Arya into Kingslanding.

Varys knows all the secret tunnels and passages, to get close to Cersei.

Arya kills Cersei, takes her face, surrenders and bends the knee to Daenerys."


Roll credits.

[Mavick]

I'm sorry, but you are defending the indefensible here. You are talking about a martial land, with people being born into war and warfare. The council of people that planned that battle had a number of people with significant experience fighting large scale battles. They knew that the enemy could raise the dead, so the first plan had to be to ensure that they didn't feed any extra bodies to him. If the AotD were going to surround them, they needed to make sure that the Dothraki ended up outside the AotD, so that they could harry them. Then the NK would have to decide; leave them picking off his warriors, or send a force after them. If he sent a small group, they take it far enough away and destroy it, then come back. If they send a large enough force, keep leading them away, picking them off as you go. Any of their own that die, they burn to prevent them being brought back.

The trebs and the unsullied would have been inside the walls. The trebs could continue to fire large balls of fire as long as possible, thinning out the enemy. The unsullied with their coordination and dragon glass spears could have held those walls a long time.

Oh, and weren't there a few people in there with experience of giants knocking down gates at Winterfell? And knowledge that the AotD had at least one giant? But at no point did they think "let's make a plan for how to handle giants, otherwise our gate will be gone before we can blink". They had time to make trebuchets, but nobody thought to make a siege version of an arbalest with dragon glass tipped missiles to take out giants?

They also knew that the NK can raise the dead, and not only did they put people in the crypts, but nobody thought to burn any bodies?

There you go, that's off the top of my head. The battle plan was pathetic, and played into the strengths of the enemy while wasting their own troops. It insults the intelligence of the viewers to suggest that the experienced warriors in Winterfell would have come up with this. The writers should rightly be villified for creating this utter nonsense.

I pretty clearly gave the reasoning behind what I said, in the context of one force vs another vast force of such supernatural origin. If you don't agree with that, fine. But let's not be ignorant of the fact that as anyone could see in that battle, any line of defense they had, be it Dothraki, infantry line, trebuchet's that did fuckall, even walls, were overwhelmed in minutes due to the sheer number and means in which these undead soldiers attack. No shuffling of x unit to x place was going to change the fact that they were outnumbered something like 10 to 1 by a foe who just simply doesn't stop for anything.

- - - Updated - - -

Damn, you are trying to defend the battle tactics as well. And saying Bran warging the ravens actually did something. What the hell are you smoking?

Yes, I am. Because like I just said to the other poster, sitting there trying to snipe about what made sense to you personally while ignoring everything else is stupid.

[ohiostate124]

"Davos to smuggle Varys and Arya into Kingslanding.

Varys knows all the secret tunnels and passages, to get close to Cersei.

Arya kills Cersei, takes her face, surrenders and bends the knee to Daenerys."


Roll credits.

You took that from Reddit didn’t you? I prefer the one where Bran just wargs someone in KL and kills Cersei.

- - - Updated - - -

Unless im mistaken, isnt Theon the only person the Night King has killed himself?

He killed Bloodraven but that doesn’t really count.

[Independent voter]

You took that from Reddit didn’t you? I prefer the one where Bran just wargs someone in KL and kills Cersei.

- - - Updated - - -



He killed Bloodraven but that doesn’t really count.

Quotes give it away?

If Bran kills Cersei, Cersei can't bend the knee.

[3DTyrant]

Unless im mistaken, isnt Theon the only person the Night King has killed himself?

That we know of. Unless you count old what's his face, the tree guy.

[Gorsameth]

I pretty clearly gave the reasoning behind what I said, in the context of one force vs another vast force of such supernatural origin. If you don't agree with that, fine. But let's not be ignorant of the fact that as anyone could see in that battle, any line of defense they had, be it Dothraki, infantry line, trebuchet's that did fuckall, even walls, were overwhelmed in minutes due to the sheer number and means in which these undead soldiers attack. No shuffling of x unit to x place was going to change the fact that they were outnumbered something like 10 to 1 by a foe who just simply doesn't stop for anything.

And yet all the named characters who were infront of those lines of infantry that got overwhelmed in minutes survived with barely a scratch on them.

How lucky for them.

[Mavick]

And yet all the named characters who were infront of those lines of infantry that got overwhelmed in minutes survived with barely a scratch on them.

How lucky for them.

Edd didn't. Besides I'm not sure they were actually in front of anyone. I recall there being a section of Unsullied and pretty sure the other units were on their own flanks, with the Dothraki spread in front of everyone, and with the Unsullied holding the areas of the trench that could be crossed back over via the collapsible bridge. Which makes sense as with their spears, shields and training they were probably best equipped to withstand the swarm longer than anyone. People also tend to say "without a scratch" while performing more selective ignorance of how many of them took stabs via the undead's well documented tactics of just blindly stabbing anywhere and everywhere, not always hitting a mortal blow.

[Gorsameth]

Edd didn't. Besides I'm not sure they were actually in front of anyone. I recall there being a section of Unsullied and pretty sure the other units were on their own flanks, with the Dothraki spread in front of everyone, and with the Unsullied holding the areas of the trench that could be crossed back over via the collapsible bridge. Which makes sense as with their spears, shields and training they were probably best equipped to withstand the swarm longer than anyone. People also tend to say "without a scratch" while performing more selective ignorance of how many of them took stabs via the undead's well documented tactics of just blindly stabbing anywhere and everywhere, not always hitting a mortal blow.

I actually had to google who Edd is. Yeah your right, 1 named guy that no one cared about and had 0 things to do in the story got stabbed.
wow.

Also we see Jaime, Brienne and Tormund stand at the front of the lines and see them got buried under a wall of undead in the opening seconds of the actual fight.

[Mavick]

I actually had to google who Edd is. Yeah your right, 1 named guy that no one cared about and had 0 things to do in the story got stabbed.
wow.

Also we see Jaime, Brienne and Tormund stand at the front of the lines and see them got buried under a wall of undead in the opening seconds of the actual fight.

Edd was always an enjoyable character to me, so /shrug

These were some of the better fighters in Westeros, they very nearly bit it several times in the episode. You can be mad all you want that they survived, but again, don't ignore the fact that they very nearly didn't, several times over. And personally I'm glad that we'll get to see them continue for at least another episode because a show without characters I like starts to become a boring show (reference my earlier comparison of TWD).

[eschatological]

You've done nothing but mis-reference thing after thing in this thread. In some alternative world where the obvious is right in front of you but you'd rather say "we never saw Arya, a trained assassin, stealthily advance on a target so it shouldn't be possible", you might be right. This isn't the world I come from, however, so just saying something like "I've posted misinterpretations that seem easy for other people to grasp but I posted anyway, so I have a point" doesn't really do anything for me.

Again, the Faceless Men are never known for stealth. Not once. That's literally the point of them stealing faces and being "no one." Both missions Arya has been on during her training, the time the waif tried to kill Arya, even when Jaqen used his post as a guard in Harrenhal to kill the guards to free Arya - none of it was done with stealth. You're conflating assassin (which the FM surely are) with some sort of WoW rogue skill set. There are many ways to assassinate people, and the FM use essentially magical disguises and "being seen but not seen" as their tools. And your excuse for this is, "Well, we didn't see ALL of her training, so she must have done it offscreen!"

That seems like you're the one mis-representing what we've actually observed.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Edd didn't. Besides I'm not sure they were actually in front of anyone. I recall there being a section of Unsullied and pretty sure the other units were on their own flanks, with the Dothraki spread in front of everyone, and with the Unsullied holding the areas of the trench that could be crossed back over via the collapsible bridge. Which makes sense as with their spears, shields and training they were probably best equipped to withstand the swarm longer than anyone. People also tend to say "without a scratch" while performing more selective ignorance of how many of them took stabs via the undead's well documented tactics of just blindly stabbing anywhere and everywhere, not always hitting a mortal blow.

They were in front and Edd actually survived the wave. He got killed when he tried to help Sam. Taking stabs is the same as "almost dying", we already discussed this, cheap tool to create an illusion of danger, since no one that mattered actually got killed.

[Razzako]

They should have put their generals manning the walls like literally every single competent army in history. Greyworm being behind the lines actually made sense, why didn't they do the same for the rest is beyond me. Tormund is the only one I could buy being on the front lines and surviving that initial charge from the wight.

The unsullied seem to be inspired by the Greek phalanx because of their long spears and considering the phalanx not working against that charge just makes me scream bullshit that all characters survived that.