The Current Crop of Telltale Games
For a couple of years now, I've been pre-ordering most of what Telltale puts out. Law & Order slipped under my radar somehow. But starting from Back to the Future, it seems that Telltale has been gearing their design toward fans of the properties they've been licensing rather than toward the core adventure game fans they used to cater to.
I didn't mind that Back to the Future was more of a kind of interactive story than a puzzle-solving game. But then Jurassic Park turns out to be mostly a series of quicktime events. The video for Law & Order made it sound like it was even more dumbed down for the non-hardcore crowd. But I bought it anyway, though I haven't had time to play it, because I'm sure it'll be, you know, pretty good (and because when I finish one Telltale game I often jones for another, so I keep one in reserve for when it gets me real bad). And now I've gone and pre-ordered Walking Dead, but again they're reaching out to fans who aren't necessarily adventure game fans, and I suspect it won't have that remarkable balance of difficulty short of frustration that they had achieved in all their pre-BTTF titles.
Recently, in a discussion of the Double Fine adventure game, I was rebuked for failing to mention that someone, Telltale, was already producing classic point-and-click adventures. And it's true, but I hesitated to bring them up because I do increasingly get the sense that Telltale is getting out of the adventure game business. They're now doing interactive casual cinematic games. It's nice, but only a couple of years ago I could have automatically said that of course someone has already revived the adventure genre. Now, I don't know if anything they're working on is really going to fit the category.
I didn't mind that Back to the Future was more of a kind of interactive story than a puzzle-solving game. But then Jurassic Park turns out to be mostly a series of quicktime events. The video for Law & Order made it sound like it was even more dumbed down for the non-hardcore crowd. But I bought it anyway, though I haven't had time to play it, because I'm sure it'll be, you know, pretty good (and because when I finish one Telltale game I often jones for another, so I keep one in reserve for when it gets me real bad). And now I've gone and pre-ordered Walking Dead, but again they're reaching out to fans who aren't necessarily adventure game fans, and I suspect it won't have that remarkable balance of difficulty short of frustration that they had achieved in all their pre-BTTF titles.
Recently, in a discussion of the Double Fine adventure game, I was rebuked for failing to mention that someone, Telltale, was already producing classic point-and-click adventures. And it's true, but I hesitated to bring them up because I do increasingly get the sense that Telltale is getting out of the adventure game business. They're now doing interactive casual cinematic games. It's nice, but only a couple of years ago I could have automatically said that of course someone has already revived the adventure genre. Now, I don't know if anything they're working on is really going to fit the category.
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This is exactly my problem with the company right now. Why am I here in these forums? For the people. No longer for the things they call games, that used to be games but aren't any more.
^
This.
I certainly don't frequent this forum for the TellTale "games". In fact, I only browse and post within the General thread.
Oh yeah, I'm just hoping its due to what telltale's licenses have been, I mean Fables and Kings Quest are left after WD and the only way Kings Quest would attract its old audience IS it being a proper hard adventure game(from what I've seen), so it could be a dry patch, but so far....
If they screw up King's Quest with QuickTimeCrap I am gone.
Press X to not die is not what I want to see in King's Quest. I'd rather die.
Yeah QTE's are almost always bad, I hope Walking Dead keeps them to a minimum.
...what? I like saying that.
Yeah, I'm here for the people as well. This is a fun little community, it's always interesting to see what other people have to say about stuff. Plus, I actually enjoy doing the Steam Sales thread, so that helps too.
But I agree, Telltale's "casual adventure" angle needs to stop. Not only is it pushing away adventure fans, but for the most part it's failing at attracting any casual gamers. Every single discussion of The Walking Dead game I've seen (outside of these forums, of course) has been almost completely negative, mostly because of people complaining that they hate the idea of an adventure game and want a game all about killing zombies. I'm not really sure why you'd complain about it not being a zombie-killing game when you have roughly eleventy-billion games filling that niche already, but whatever.
If there's one thing I've learned from my experiences as a writer, it's that being the most popular doesn't always mean being the best. If you care about making a quality product, you shouldn't try appealing to as many people as possible because, if I may be blunt, most people just want to be fed shit.
If not for you interesting people, I would have been long gone.
(Plus I probably have some kind of light OCD where everytime I'm on a PC I have to check the exact same sites for updates, even when I'm working!)
Exactly. However, Walking Dead so far hasn't looked bad, but I mainly like the idea of making decisions and it effecting my game along with a walking dead story, god knows how easy the puzzles themselves are.
You just explained the success of the latest Call Of Duty games on the PC.
you have a huge crossair that highlights everything in 50 cm radius from it's centre. That makes everything easy enough. And then there are the QTEs. Horrible, horrible QTEs.
Huge crossair confirmed to be removable. QTEs.... yeah.
EDIT:Oh also add that you can't use every item on every object, if you have a key, you can only use it on things such as doors, that's... not good.
Use lockpick on nose is not possible? To hell with this. I want to pick my nose like in the old days.
How is that not good? That's pretty logical.
Part of the fun of adventure games is exploring and experimenting - even deliberately doing the wrong thing just to see what happens. Personally I prefer not to be artificially limited in terms of what inventory items I can use on which parts of the environment.
I guess I like using everything on everything, perhaps there its kinda obvious, but in another scenario, it could just narrow the options down.
Nor am I, just providing a perspective on why you might consider that a bad thing.
But see Telltale are trying to get away from forcing people to think too hard.
They are on the easy side.
The hardest part I think is to make good choices, having a frame of mind of what's your purpouse and how you'll get it.
Let's call it "behaviour" difficulty.
I feel Telltale is sperimenting new formulas. And I love that.
It's logic that if you try new things they can be good, or they can be bad.
But sperimenting is always good.
To me JP is better than BTTF. Because JP is trying to do something different, where BTTF is just like the other Telltale games - or even worse.
The day customers will force Telltale to have only "standard" adventures, Telltale will end its artistic course to be the McDonald's of the episodic games.
I understand the feeling to raise the difficulty bar a little, though.
But I'm way more excited of The Walking Dead than a Sam&Max4.
If you think that in old adventures you can do it, you're wrong: if you use an unusual object combination usually the character says some standard line like "Mmmm..No.".
You just get the illusion you can do it, but programmers already made the choice.
Dute i respect ur opinions but just because Telltale changed the way the game is ''played'' does not mean it was a good way to play.
As i already said before that i actally like Jurassic Park but still as one of the games made by Telltale i was really disapointed since there was only quick time events with a fast puzzle in between them.
Personally, I think there's something to be said for the interactive cinema model represented by Jurassic Park. But I'm an adventure gamer from back in the Infocom days. I try to support Telltale even now, but mostly on the basis of what I know they could do based on Sam & Max. In a world in which Kickstarter gives the old grognards who complain about how everything is different now a place to put their money where their mouths are, should I really be spending my money on Telltale's efforts to break away from exactly won me over to them?
On the other hand, nobody else is doing interactive cinematic games. It's a great idea. But as a consumer, it's not worth as much money to me as a full-blown adventure game. Okay, maybe if they did Buckaroo Banzai. Otherwise, I think Walking Dead will be my last automatic pre-order.
You do realize he said that right? He said the change was bad, but he applauds telltale for trying something new, and BTW it is still played, you don't act like you don't play the game.
I think it's an accessibility issue, since most adventure games tend to have parts that are...extremely unfriendly to people who don't understand the genre (and even most people who do). Someone who's never played an adventure game in his life would be able to get into Back to the Future a lot better than King's Quest, for example.
But the thing is, Telltale's never done absurd difficulty in the past. In fact, one thing I like about their pre-BttF games is that they figured out how to be challenging while avoiding those insane throw-pie-at-yeti moments. I got a guy who knew nothing about adventure games to play Sam and Max and SBCG4AP, and he had no problem.
I'd say that if a consumer played Sam and Max or Monkey Island and found it too difficult or frustrating to enjoy, and didn't want to take the time to either figure it out or look up a walkthrough, then I doubt they are going to like adventure games period. Those are probably the most accessible adventure games that have ever existed. It just seems like TTG is trying to appeal to a market that doesn't exist, with the only result being that they are angering their once-loyal fans in the process.
I'm pretty sure the most accessible adventure games ever were Humongous' "Junior Adventure" line. (Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, Putt-Putt, etc.) But Ron Gilbert made them, so they were still fun.
But yeah, you hit the nail on the head. The "casual adventure fan" Telltale seems to be catering to at this point exists in negligible amounts, if at all. If Telltale really wants mainstream appeal so badly, they'd have to change...almost everything about what they're doing. And I don't recommend that.
I don't see many of them stepping up from there.
(Especially since they can get their fix for free/relatively cheap)
EDIT: Trust me, I've tried to coax them into some more complicated stuff!!
They just don't "get" it, as it were.
(I love how my mum can say my games are just as simplistic as hers! I would absolutely LOVE to see her try to play Monster Hunter! XD)
But here's the thing.
There was a market of 50,000 people who paid money just to to see a cow appear every six hours. Then they paid more money to see the cow more often. Most people are content with simple feedback rewards. Everyone arguing that there isn't a market, apparently didn't pay attention to cow clicker. Considering some of the branding on games like BttF, Telltale probably does well with a low threshold game with big name appeal.
When I say Telltale's trying to appeal to casuals, I sort of mean Call of Duty casuals more than Farmville casuals. People who play a handful of mass-marketed mainstream games (but on real systems) and very little else.
Then again, Telltale did make Totally-Not-Bejeweled on Facebook to promote BttF...
Also, if Telltale does decide to try creating a casual/adventure hybrid again, they'd do well to study the Humongous Entertainment games. I had more fun with Putt Putt Travels Through Time than I did with Back to the Future, and that's not a joke or an insult. This is going to sound even more like an insult, but I promise I'm being sincere: the ability to click random backgound objects and have silly animations play automatically (that is, not necessarily Marty interacting with them, just the objects being activated) could have added a lot to the moment-to-moment entertainment value of Back to the Future. I loved those animations in Putt Putt, and seeing how many different animations I could get to play simultaneously was a recurring bit of mindless fun.
I'd call The Walking Dead obscure if Telltale was making the game a few years ago when it was a comic and only a comic. Non-superhero comics in general are pretty obscure in the grand scheme of things. However, The Walking Dead is now a TV show too, and a fairly popular one at that, so it falls under "mainstream" as far as I'm concerned.
Fables is obscure too, though. Maybe there's hope there too.
If you say so, but I had never heard of it before the game was being considered.