Improving the Game for Season 2
In case they're interested in specific feedback and have plans for more seasons in, here are five things TTG can incorporate into future seasons of TWD-The Game:
1) Improve the mechanics of fighting. Since the game already has some elements of a FPS, it thereby requires some coordination on the part of the player to simply advance the story, making it unnecessary to adhere to a strict, point and click format in order not to lose its audience. Further, aiming and rapid firing are more interesting skills for a game to engage than are simply mashing keys or buttons as fast as you can. Let's see the game in future call on skills more advanced than, literally, pure twitching. There's never any reason--except lack of imagination--for the latter.
2) Eliminate the worst of the key hunt aspects of the game. This was stale when it got the better of the original Half-Life over a decade ago, and is always the most sluggish part of any game. If you're going to do this, do it right. Don't have players look for batteries before looking for meds for a character that just had a heart attack, for instance. Finding a pencil in order to bring up the impressions made on a pad of paper is smart. Find a spark plug in order to break a window is silly. Breaking a window in order to increase the effective volume of tv sets and thereby misdirect walkers is smart. Not being able to break a lock with an ax if silly.
3) Be certain that choices do in fact carry over from one episode to the next. It's an essential and rudimentary aspect of game mechanices that they desperately need to get right.
4) Play down the "CHOICE!" aspect of their advertising, especially until they get number 3) right. TWD does nothing with choice that hasn't already been done in a great many games. The ad campaign should focus on those things TTG actually does do well--pose interesting moral dilemnas (without claiming a level of carryover on which they can't deliver), create engaging main characters, and tell a decent story.
5) The post-apocalyptic world is ripe for a much more detailed back story than we've been given--old newspapers, letters, memos, messages... all of these and more can intensify the story of the game world we now live in. TTG, without hardly trying, could have literally littered the world with story and information. It's the kind of thing that takes only a modest amount of work to seriously enrich the game, and many, many games have done it well.
What other concrete proposals do people have?
1) Improve the mechanics of fighting. Since the game already has some elements of a FPS, it thereby requires some coordination on the part of the player to simply advance the story, making it unnecessary to adhere to a strict, point and click format in order not to lose its audience. Further, aiming and rapid firing are more interesting skills for a game to engage than are simply mashing keys or buttons as fast as you can. Let's see the game in future call on skills more advanced than, literally, pure twitching. There's never any reason--except lack of imagination--for the latter.
2) Eliminate the worst of the key hunt aspects of the game. This was stale when it got the better of the original Half-Life over a decade ago, and is always the most sluggish part of any game. If you're going to do this, do it right. Don't have players look for batteries before looking for meds for a character that just had a heart attack, for instance. Finding a pencil in order to bring up the impressions made on a pad of paper is smart. Find a spark plug in order to break a window is silly. Breaking a window in order to increase the effective volume of tv sets and thereby misdirect walkers is smart. Not being able to break a lock with an ax if silly.
3) Be certain that choices do in fact carry over from one episode to the next. It's an essential and rudimentary aspect of game mechanices that they desperately need to get right.
4) Play down the "CHOICE!" aspect of their advertising, especially until they get number 3) right. TWD does nothing with choice that hasn't already been done in a great many games. The ad campaign should focus on those things TTG actually does do well--pose interesting moral dilemnas (without claiming a level of carryover on which they can't deliver), create engaging main characters, and tell a decent story.
5) The post-apocalyptic world is ripe for a much more detailed back story than we've been given--old newspapers, letters, memos, messages... all of these and more can intensify the story of the game world we now live in. TTG, without hardly trying, could have literally littered the world with story and information. It's the kind of thing that takes only a modest amount of work to seriously enrich the game, and many, many games have done it well.
What other concrete proposals do people have?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
imo having puzzles that are 'logical' and follow a standard normal route are actually boring, shows no imagination, the spark plug for a car window is ingenuity which when in a ZA is what you'll have to do!
nothing is straight forward or easy or logical or follows set rules...fuckign zombies walking around ?!!?!
i do agree the combat needs a bit of work as do the lip syncing and the saves etc..
other than that your post is the usuall stuff people complain about...yawn
FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIX 'EM
A clean product is all I want too.
Other than the lack of carryover, admittedly a big deal, I haven't found the game particularly buggy. There are some minor issues with clipping, but nothing bothersome to me.
Cheers,
Jack
2) If you didn't know that porcelain was inside spark plugs, and that it can shatter glass, it's your problem because I knew it. Knocking the handle off the door wouldn't have unlocked it. It'd just leave you handle-less. Go ahead, try it, go knock your door handle off see if you can unlock your door then.
Throwing rocks at a TV store across the road is good? sorry but that is dumb, it'd only take one of those walkers to notice you as you walked out into the street, then you'd be surrounded. The classic pencil shading of used paper, is kind of stupid too. The guy who drew that diagram would've had to have had that note pad firmly pressed against a surface and drew that picture down as hard as he could to leave indentations big enough for someone to be able shade it onto something readable. Again try it, you'll see how hard it actually is to get anything intelligible.
3) Choices are carrying over, every time you press a dialogue option you're getting a choice, and many of those choices have been referenced throughout, thus they matter.
4) How fucking in depth do you want the story to be, there's zombies, you're surviving, people are arseholes. That's The Walking Dead, there is no cure (As of yet) not going to go on some heroic journey to end the plague.
5) They could put some lore in, sure, but why? Kirks doesn't worry about it so why should TTG.
My proposal) To keep doing everything the same, maybe hire some more QA and Devs for bugstomping, that's about it though, there's a reason the game is doing so well.
I'm just hoping they have a larger budget/more time for the next series, most of the issues I have with it seem like they stem from that.
1. Recycling locations has been a problem. Staying at the hotel with the most minimal protection for 3-4 months seems extremely low-stakes for a zombie apocalypse, especially by the standards of the comic book, where Rick and co can scarcely stay in one place for more than a few days unless it's meticulously well fortified (but Doug rigged up some bells and string!). The fact that they have so much time to argue over whether to stay or leave the hotel amplifies this problem to no end.
2. Clearly the main focus of the series is presenting tough moral choices, not giving the player choices that have much consequence. Problem is, you basically can't have one without the other and not feel a bit cheated. Example: Choosing whether or not to steal from the car was a good tough choice, but it was undermined by the outcome - Clem does/doesn't get a new sweater. I've sort of accepted that this is the case by now, but it would be great if they found a good way to beef up the consequences of your choices next time around (at least earlier in the series, obviously I have no idea what they have in store for 4 and 5).
3. I think most locations have done a pretty decent job of showing you what has happened there since the outbreak, so I don't completely agree with the OP's point 5, but it would be cool if you could uncover more detail through exploration. I don't mean lore, just "what's happened here/who did it happen to?" type stuff. Especially in locations where there's an encounter with walkers - it's always good to get a sense of who those things used to be.
4. And the bugs, haven't had too many issues though.
Yeah and might never be a 100 percent. Since I played so many games not just from TTG but others and bugs do pop up in every game so no game will be perfect well it might be to one person and not to another so it hard to please everyone.
That statement you made jack is a contradiction..
as others have said the spark plug is a clever idea but you'd have to know about what they are made from/with , so what your saying is 'i want the game dumbed down' so things add up.. which again brings me to my point of a zombie apoc doesn't make sense or add up
and how was i whining?
etu brute....
*Stabs Milo*
charming !
You asked for it, Caesar.
i wonder if ttg will have some proper love interests for 'lee/clem/ who ever survives'
...
...
*checks Google*
Damn it, outobscured by Milo! I will never live this down.
That's obscure? They have TV commercials with cute little Westies!
That's what season 2 needs... a dog. Rex the Zombie Killer makes a guest appearance.
Also please dont let Lee die at the end of season 1, i would like to see both him and clem back for season 2 and possibly meeting even more characters from the show/comics.
And Last but not least, I want some consequences when Im making a diffucult choice, so far, in my opinion, there has been no consequence for the choices i have been making. For example, during the scene in ep. 2 with the car with the food in it, if you didnt side with clem, she would lose trust in you and will not have your side during the next episodes which could put you or even some other surviors in danger, but if you do side with her, Your fellow surviors will not give you any supplies when you and clem desperatley need them which could put clem in trouble. I want choices like these in the next season, that would be perfect.
i think a dog would be good but i think dayz has them ? or will have them soon ?
saw it on cad comic lol so dunno if thats real or fake/just for the lolz
may edit this when / if i find em unless some one gets there first
if you cant accept zombies in a zombie game dont play the walking dead dude...its a scenario where zombies exist in the 'real world' stop nitpicking and bitching about peoples constructive criticisms, thats the real bore about these forums...
where do i complain about zombies ???
lol
Actually, on the PC I am often frustrated by how clunky and not at all intuitive the fight controls are. I think this could be tested a bit more for the PC users. There is a considerable amount of time that lapses between the time the target appears and the game tells you which command you are supposed to use. I have died a whole lot more than I think I should have as a result. Would like to see this addressed. Oh and it was flat out horrible in the last zombie scene with Clem and Lee in epi 3. It took me something like 60 tries to coordinate all that stuff. Kinda unacceptable.
I would be happy if they did that.
The problem is that the gimmick sequences have new mechanics and no warmup for them. If you've never played a shooter before, you'll die a lot on the bandit raid segment. If you've only played episode 1 once (the only other time that you had to use the scrollwheel to switch from "look" to "take"), you won't remember the mechanic for that sequence and will die a lot.
In other Telltale games, whenever mechanics change for a mini-game, there's a silly pop up and guide. Walking Dead tries to make it all seamless and immersive, but the different gameplay segments are too infrequent to be intuitive. Really, a cinematic for some would be better.
I admit I died a bunch figuring out the look/take action but then I died even more when I was waiting for the target to appear on the walker and become clickable. That was frustrating. I would get killed because I couldn't click in the 16th of a second I had left before it attacked me. Same in the bandit sequence. The crosshair of the target would lag until a split second before I could shoot. Frustrating. And yes, I generally avoid shooters...they aren't my thing
I could totally go with a cinematic instead of the big fights. Though I did enjoy smashing the first zombie with the hammer and the sneak/kill sequences at the hotel..
and emotional stories and killing off characters, making the player do unspeakable shit...