Discussion time - The Trouble with Telltale Games (Haedox video)
SOooo some big-ish youtuber "critic" dude snarks on Telltale for a bit. It starts out fair, but then falls into a "Telltale isn't the same after walking dead" "I miss Shaun and Jake Waaaaa" and also gives us "GREAT criticisms like "Minecraft bad amirtie". There's some interesting critiques in the video for sure. I personally don't agree. He compares telltale to platinum (Fucking what). BUgs bad ahaaaaa. Yeesh. If he can't appreciate batman season 2 episode 1 dude should just give up and ignore them.
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I agreed with almost everything he said, my only real thing he said that bothered me was his complaints about Batman, due to the fact that he never played them and seemed to not actually know anything about Telltale's Batman story except for one scene he watched.
Well the comparison to Platinum had to do with them not using the exact same copy and paste design for every single one of their games, unlike Telltale.
Also, is there something wrong about complaining about all of the glitches across their games? Bioware and Ubisoft get shat on for the amount of bugs and poor optimization in games like AC Unity or ME Andromeda, but Telltale should get a free pass?
Yeah, I do have to agree that he was holding on to Jake and Vanaman a lot. While they did make a good story, they're not the only good writers in the world.
Also, he seems to complain about the bugs a lot, rather than the content of the games, but I don't agree with that. Bugs are not the be-all-end-all of a game. Some can be minor. And bugs typically depend on the person and their game. I've seen many people complain about bugs in Telltale's games, but I've been lucky so far and encountered very few. When they do happen, I don't complain as it's usually just a stutter then it's gone.
In the beginning, he mentions that he isn't fond of QTEs. That's when I noticed that this video would be pretty biased.
Also, if he is making a video about Telltale and their problems, he's obviously going to ignore some good stuff. He praises Wolf and Tales, but ignores some of the good development of the other games, and his experiences with some of them that he completely omitted. GoT had a good big choice in EP5.. while it doesn't effect the overarching plot of the show, it affects the plot of the Forresters.. He doesn't even check out Minecraft.. "because Minecraft" even though that had some cool mechanics that weren't QTE type stuff. He ignores Batman because of maybe one or two scenes he saw, but that was a great game! It had a good story and no button-mashing sequences that he'd hate.. And Guardians has some of the most impressive branching to date.
And when describing the "typical Telltale structure" it could have fit into a regular TV show. Opening sets up the characters and plot, we move on to the conflict, characters get side-tracked with "Villain of the Week" stuff, big bad appears for a showdown, the heroes prepare and defeat the big-bad.. on to the next season. The one thing that I would agree with is that it could get stale. Telltale should try their hand at elongating that conflict into more than one season, so that it gives some new twist to the structure.
Just because you don't experience bugs doesn't mean other people can't complain. No matter how good a game is if it's a buggy mess then it will suffer for it.
I guess Telltale should just get a free pass for it because they're Telltale. Same thing for any performance issues in their games.
I agree with allot of his points, however...
1) When it comes to the argument of whether or not choices matter, at the end of any game, it never does if it doesn't leave any form of impact on the player, but what people never take into account is that these decisions still leave impacts, albeit small ones throughout the game. We may have advanced technology but we've yet to have a game that is so complex as to give us an entirely different story-line based off a decision. I think Telltale does well in this aspect with most of their games despite the drawbacks.
2) The episodic story pattern that Telltale uses is not apparent in every single one of their games, he pretty much compared all the games and summed it up to the most basic form. It's like saying "All these episodes are the same because they have dialogue and plot", he doesn't criticize what's wrong with the plot points themselves, just the formula he perceives - which is a story formula that can be found in almost every piece of entertainment.
3) The hate for Minecraft: Story Mode isn't explained on his part, what was so bad about it? He kind of just sighed at the title, made a joke and then continued, not giving any reasoning to his dislike of the game itself - and he doesn't even mention the expansion of the story...
4) He's comparing Story Adventure games to games of entirely different genres...
5) Why was The Walking Dead: Michonne made? He could've found that answer by doing a bit of research... people from Telltale love Michonne's character and wanted to make a story incorporating her, and they made the game as an explanation to her absence in the comics. It's not always entirely out of money, yes they do it for money and they do have to do it for money but that's not always the main reason.
6) His blatant dislike of the current games are a little unfair in my opinion, especially when he hasn't experienced any of them for himself.
7) "Why would Bruce care about these characters?" Because he has a sense of justice and moral code, why else would he be saving citizens constantly? Not really sure why he felt he needed to ask this question after stating he knows the character of Batman/Bruce.
Additionally, I do agree that The Walking Dead is Telltale's finest, but I personally think that The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands are worthy competition for that spot.
I know he stated that the point of his video is to offer feedback for Telltale in order to improve their games, I don't think he succeeded in doing this... he explained what he disliked but did not give many examples on what could be improved in certain games, what he liked and what he thought was pointless etc.
I agree with pretty much everything he says except his stance on Batman S2E1 and how he said Minecraft was just QTE when there are obviously gameplay elements there.