I don't know if this post is supposed to be sarcastic or not, but if it is, the story does change according to your choices, although very little. Hopefully in season 2 there will be a lot more choices and a lot more different stories that could play out.
Lee dies anyway what is kind of sad, u can't do anything. I thought there will be many endings. And it will depend on cutting your arm too
. So i'm kind of disappointed after playing ep5.
Telltale flat out stated
there would only be one ending. Also, everyone here had already stated that amputation was too late, it is how it worked. I knew the moment the choice came up it was going to fail. It's your fault for not paying attention.
The thing that intresnts me right now is the scene after u finish the game and then after all of the credits. Not going into specifics here to avoid spoilers, but are there different scenes or is it allways the same?
The thing that intresnts me right now is the scene after u finish the game and then after all of the credits. Not going into specifics here to avoid spoilers, but are there different scenes or is it allways the same?
Always the same. I'm assuming it didn't change because it leads to season 2. Assuming.
Tailoring = making the sleeves shorter to fit better. Not adding a third sleeve.
So basicly, the details change but the general story stays the same. I prefer this kind of choice and result in game as much as the bigger kind (Like Mass Effect's choices besides the actual ending). Basicly: this follows the idea that TTG said: There is not one way to play the game that is, gameplay wise, better than the other.
Having endings where more people live, or where the main protagonist lives, basicly makes one ending better than the other. This was purposefully avoided by TTG as they themselves said in their video blogs. Heck, the one thing where they did make some feel better than others (ending of episode 4 and who goes with you) you already saw a lot of people rewinding and doing things to try and get as many people as possible with them. How to play it the 'best' way was completely analyzed and has become common knowledge on these forums already. Compare this to ME2: Where the ending where your entire crew survived also feels like the best and therefore most people strive to achieve it.
So yeah, the details of the story changed a lot depending on your choices. And it is in those details where the brilliance of this game is. Results are often subtle. And I love that.
What is the upside of the game being always the same no matter what you do again? And what is the problem in people wanting to achieve something and thus replaying the game, is that bad? I don't really get your point.
First of all IF some characters survived instead of dieing or others died instead of living, then we do still not know if that would be a good thing or not down the road.
You don't have to tell the story in a way that one end is clearly better than others, what ending you want depends on what character you play anyway. If people want to protect others then it is better if they stay alive in the end. If people hated some characters, then maybe they are happier with seeing them dead instead of having the fear that they come back and screw with you in another season.
We do not have to argue about the word tailoring. I think deep down most of us feel that the game should have adapted more to the choices, especially in the last episode, where optional loose ends are no problem, because you do not have to pick them up again if you don't want to.
there would only be one ending. Also, everyone here had already stated that amputation was too late, it is how it worked. I knew the moment the choice came up it was going to fail. It's your fault for not paying attention.
Thanks for pointing this out so that I didn't have to. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who actually understands the game.
I don't know if this post is supposed to be sarcastic or not, but if it is, the story does change according to your choices, although very little. Hopefully in season 2 there will be a lot more choices and a lot more different stories that could play out.
It does in such minor ways that you barely even notice. Best thing was
cutting off your arm. Totally pointless and a huge "fuck you" to everybody who wanted Lee to survive
It does in such minor ways that you barely even notice. Best thing was
cutting off your arm. Totally pointless and a huge "fuck you" to everybody who wanted Lee to survive
.
Aww cute. You thought Lee was going to survive, it was obvious he was screwed. Besides, it would be a "fuck you" to anyone that knew Walking Dead and knew he couldn't survive amputation.
So... aside from the fact you want to dismiss me because you think I'm "young" (which, for me to be young, you'd have to be in your 60s) out of my somewhat sarcastic description of what I think these people expected... all you could fixate on was the "high def" part to use as a counter argument?
So... aside from the fact you want to dismiss me because you think I'm "young" (which, for me to be young, you'd have to be in your 60s) out of my somewhat sarcastic description of what I think these people expected... all you could fixate on was the "high def" part to use as a counter argument?
Interesting.
yep, that confirms it, you're a retard.
nobody thought the game was open world, they expected choices and endings, like telltale promised.
not sure what high def is about, the game is always in "HD" (which just means 1280x720 anyway)
I don't even care if the choices meant nothing in the end I just wish the path of getting there would have been more diverse.
Sure. If you want 2-3 months between all episodes this would be possible. I am certain they tried with the Doug / Carley thing but it lead to longer breaks between episodes. (I personally thought they't kill them off in episode 2 which they didn't to my great surprise.) I also thought the car situation at the end of Episode 2 would have a bigger impact on Episode 3. Similar to the Doug / Carley thing but it didn't because that would basically mean making 4 episodes with every possible choice.
Episode 2 would be quite odd too. Just imagine Lee saying no to going to the farm. They could just have ended the episode at that moment. Or inserted another path but the episode was late already as it was. How much longer would that have actually taken?
What is the upside of the game being always the same no matter what you do again? And what is the problem in people wanting to achieve something and thus replaying the game, is that bad? I don't really get your point.
There is no problem in that, and I enjoy that a lot in some games as well.
It is just that TTG's TWD game was made to not be like that. It was meant to be a tailored story, not a story where you define everything that happens but where your actions do change the way things occur.
When I heard this game will not have any ending/choice which was clearly better than others, I knew I would love this game. As although your choices have less impact on the world as a whole, they have a great impact on the small things.
Choice wise it was very limited and linear but it doesn't hinder the fact that it was a phenomenal game. It was more about how Lee dealt with the circumstances at hand rather than drastically changing or altering a path.
If you want to play a game where your choices drastically alter the path of astory and leads to branching paths I suggest you play The Witcher 2 ; ), another great choice-based game
What I find funny is how people are trying to make "tailored" sound like it *isn't* about your choices. Then we get this ridiculous "it's a shirt that still has two sleeves" example.
The thing is, the story isn't tailored. Not really. Your decisions don't actually change anything. You don't change character's motivations, the tone of the story doesn't change to fit the Lee that you play...
Edit: To clarify - Kenny still fights with Lee, He still gets morose, Lilly still acts paranoid, Larry still doesn't trust you, Ben still feels guilty and wants to kill himself, Christa and Omid still want to help Clem... none of the scenes actually have a different *tone.* If you play Lee as a kind peace maker, the Stranger still accuses him of being a murderer and a monster. Larry still hates you. None of the conflict scenes play dramatically differently in their tone and most of the characters don't really show a change in personality. About the *only* time the game genuinely felt tailored was the end of episode 4. Then episode 5 pretty quickly works to force everything back towards a single uniform finish that tonally ignores pretty much everything you did.
What it does do is use smoke and mirrors to trick you into thinking the story is being tailored to fit you. Unfortunately Episode 5 then blows all of that away.
To use the tailored shirt example, it's like the tailor saying you can have a shirt and the colour and cut will be suited to you, then you get the same shirt as the other guy but yours is too tight. When you complain, the guy in the other shirt says "but your shirt is red whereas mine is scarlet. He never promised you that it would be a perfect fit."
The thing is, you're still both standing there wearing the same shirt.
oh my god its a disscussion between members from the 2008 and the 2012 who will win
I'm "from the 2010", maybe I win?:p
I read about player's choices with almost no impact and no multiple endings. I could quote here, but the thread has only two pages now, so scroll a little.
It was stated that the characters that were not Lee gave a four letter word about what decisions you made and what snappy answers you gave or how silent you were. You ever met a bunch of totally strangers and had their basic behaviour changed in a couple of months or even days?
The other big thing here was the world spinning and stuff happening, no matter what you wanted your Lee to think about that. Strangers behaviour at a much bigger scale, but let's focus on the main part: Lee's death. There's this new book by Jenny Erpenbeck, "Aller Tage Abend", in which a woman dies five times. From only days old baby to an old woman. She mades different experiences in different lifes but no matter what, she eventually dies. My PC Lee differs a lot from the one on my Xbox, but they both are dead. And both they saved little Clem. But they are completely different in character. That didn't save them. So what? The world is spinning.
Well of course Kenny is still going to act the same. Lilly is still crazy and her father is a jerk. If you wanted to impact the story of them and make them better you have to hit them before they are grown adults. A couple little extra kindnesses would not really change Kenny being so sad after losing his family. Or Lilly from trusting.
I knew they were not going to arc that far off of how the main story flows. They really could not. They would have had to develop 5 times a much content if the split came late. Imagine if you have left with Lilly and had totally different story line to play.
Honestly, from what I could tell, TellTale wanted to make the choices in the game matter a lot more. Viewing episode one, there was a lot of things that could affect possible episode two. However, they gave themselves one month between each episode, forcing them to cut corners, making most all of the characters interchangeable. So, hopefully for season 2 people will be more patient and let TellTale make the game they want.
Sure. If you want 2-3 months between all episodes this would be possible. I am certain they tried with the Doug / Carley thing but it lead to longer breaks between episodes. (I personally thought they't kill them off in episode 2 which they didn't to my great surprise.) I also thought the car situation at the end of Episode 2 would have a bigger impact on Episode 3. Similar to the Doug / Carley thing but it didn't because that would basically mean making 4 episodes with every possible choice.
Episode 2 would be quite odd too. Just imagine Lee saying no to going to the farm. They could just have ended the episode at that moment. Or inserted another path but the episode was late already as it was. How much longer would that have actually taken?
I would have no problem waiting an extra 2-3 months if it would end up making the game better.
Honestly, from what I could tell, TellTale wanted to make the choices in the game matter a lot more. Viewing episode one, there was a lot of things that could affect possible episode two. However, they gave themselves one month between each episode, forcing them to cut corners, making most all of the characters interchangeable. So, hopefully for season 2 people will be more patient and let TellTale make the game they want.
That's pretty much the impression I got too.
I think they had intended for episode 5 to be much more variable, but maybe they couldn't figure out how to make it work within the time frame they had given themselves. Hopefully with Season 2 they will follow the television model and have multiple episodes already completed before publically releasing the first episode and then have more time to get things closer to their intent.
I imagine that season 1 has been a bit of a trial by fire for them with this style of storytelling - given that their previous games have been completely linear.
I hope that they will continue to build on the style that they went with in The Walking Dead for their other games too. They have the writers, I believe TTG has the skill to really meet the challenge.
The thing is, the story isn't tailored. Not really. Your decisions don't actually change anything. You don't change character's motivations, the tone of the story doesn't change to fit the Lee that you play.
The thing is, you're putting to much of your own definition of what it should be, rather than accepting what it is.
If TTG had said that the game alters and you take different paths to an ending based on your actions... you might have a point.
But they didn't.
Let's look at "The story is tailored by your choice" literally.
The story is what happened to Lee and Clem through five episodes. That's the story TTG gave us.
"Tailored by your choices" - you have choices that alter events in game. Conversations, how people react to you, who has your back and who doesn't, and even who lives and who dies at key times. Those are things you control that alter how the story is presented.
That's all they ever offered. People are just trying to find hidden meanings that aren't there.
Well this is your view. Of course there are other views as you can see here. But for me it isn't the definition of tailored that is the problem.
It wouldn't have costed nothing to have some characters say goodbye in episode 5 instead of killing them if you made the right/wrong choices beforehand. Instead they just killed off all characters that "had to die" so in season 2 every player of season 1 had exactly the same backstory. Well this makes sense if the walking dead is a movie or a comic, but in a game like the walking dead I expect that my choices do somehow influence what happens to my group at least as well as choices others in the group make. Now choices others in the group made decided over life and death of others and it mattered (kenny sacrificing himself, ben ****ing up killing others, clementine saving molly etc etc) and nothing we do and decide ever has that impact (other than game over or the character dieing shortly afterwards). And that feels bitter. I would like to see the game changed if I sacrifice a lot for the group and I would like to have it turn out differently as if I played a sociopath.
I enjoyed the game, but this really hurts replayability and to take that control away from the player seems like a strange thing to do.
Which brings us back to my original point - people are applying their own meaning to the phrase and then getting mad that it doesn't follow their own expectation of it.
You know, if they didn't even give us choices, we wouldn't even be having these conversations about the choices we make. Just be glad we even get a chance to "tailor" our experience.
No, people have different expectations as to its meaning. We know what it means, we just don't agree with it. It's relative.
And not really relevant.
To use a crude example, if a person goes into a FPS expecting RPG gameplay, they're only going to be disappointed.
Being unhappy with a game is fine, everyone has their own likes -- but being unhappy because it didn't play the way you thought it should is a bit silly.
Which brings us back to my original point - people are applying their own meaning to the phrase and then getting mad that it doesn't follow their own expectation of it.
This, Telltale themselves were always very clear on what 'tailored' means according to them in all interviews and Playing Dead videos. They already said during the panel with the writers that the season's ending was decided before anything else. This means your choices can't have a huge impact on this.
They also said multiple times that they put extra effort into making sure no one choice felt "better" than the other. Heck, they admitted they decided not to create a real Lee-Carley romance because than the choice between Carley and Doug in Ep 1 would feel that Carley is always the better option.
This, to me at least, made it clear that choice in this game results in different things than it does in other games (like the famous series from Bioware where choice is an important aspect). Instead of defining the people around you, your choices actually define yourself more. And this is sometimes put directly into play by confronting you with Clementine and how she feels about what you did. Basicly: Instead of showing you what would happen if, in a hypothetical situation, you'd do this or that.. they basicly put a mirror in front of you for every choice you have to make.
And this shows because many, many fans feel a very strong connection to their 'first save' Lee. The one that acts like they would in this situation. And more people seem to have it than those who have a really strong connection to their first Shepard.
And that, to me, is very good storytelling in an interactive medium.
To use a crude example, if a person goes into a FPS expecting RPG gameplay, they're only going to be disappointed.
Being unhappy with a game is fine, everyone has their own likes -- but being unhappy because it didn't play the way you thought it should is a bit silly.
You seem to be misunderstanding the complaint here. The complaint isn't that we think the game should be played a certain way, but that Telltale gives you the illusion that it will.
Really, the word "tailored" in regards to how the game works based on how you play was a poor word to use. It conveys a feeling that the game is custom-made: based on the decisions you make. The fact that there are statistics at the end of every mission saying how the decisions you make matter is what really homes in that "feeling".
Honestly, I stopped believing this game would be anything but an "on-the-rails" adventure after episode 3. (Coincidentally this is when they started to clarify "tailored" in videos and such.) I started to think of it as an interactive movie. (Honestly, this is what the game boils down to. An interactive movie where you can tell the game how you'd feel in your current situation.)
Episode 3 is where crap hits the fan in terms of the whole tailored feeling going out the window. Doug/Carley die at the exact same moment in the exact same way and Lilly shoots them no matter how you feel about her or interacted with her. Then the Christa/Omir choice comes up and nothing ever becomes of who you save. The other one is saved anyway and it's never mentioned again, as far as I remember.
Episode 4 also has no important choices in the end. Clementine coming or staying at the house doesn't affect anything but the ability to let Molly get injured. (And she still leaves regardless of what happens.) No matter how much of a jerk you are to Vernon or how nice you are, he'll still steal your stuff in Episode 5. And the decision at the end, something that a lot of people claimed is what made it all matter, also didn't mean squat.
Episode 5: The decision at the end of episode 4 matters for all of 2 minutes. You meet up with all your group at the end. Did you save Ben in episode 4? Well, big surprise, he dies with Kenny! (Who also dies the exact same way regardless of if you saved him or not.) Did you lop your arm off? You still die! How does the stranger treat you? Hey, whatever you said or did throughout the game he still wants to kill you!
The Walking Dead is an interactive movie but claims it is something more. That's what ticked me off when I reached the end of Episode 3. I had assumed that my decisions mattered in the LONG RUN not just in the short term.
What does it matter that party members treat me slightly differently, or even remember what I did in the past, if it changes nothing?
Maybe it's just the language and the use of the word "tailored" at the beginning of every episode, maybe it's just the decision meters that pop up in the end, but I can assure you what ticked most people off was the game tried to tell you it was something more than it is. Frankly, a lot of the important decisions and how they do nothing and how they lack any impact feels like lazy writing. It's a good story, but I only wished I had influenced it.
I can see y'all's points... and yes, I do agree "tailored" isn't the best word.
To be honest, I only threw my iron in the fire because some people felt "tailored" meant wildly divergent paths and multiple endings or some such - which never seemed to the be what TTG had offered.
Though, I have to admit, after episode one (Carley/Doug) I did expect a bit more.... options in gameplay.
While I won't say I'm disappointed that it didn't continue that way through 2-5 - I do see it as a missed opportunity.
Comments
Telltale flat out stated
Always the same. I'm assuming it didn't change because it leads to season 2. Assuming.
Tailoring = making the sleeves shorter to fit better. Not adding a third sleeve.
So basicly, the details change but the general story stays the same. I prefer this kind of choice and result in game as much as the bigger kind (Like Mass Effect's choices besides the actual ending). Basicly: this follows the idea that TTG said: There is not one way to play the game that is, gameplay wise, better than the other.
Having endings where more people live, or where the main protagonist lives, basicly makes one ending better than the other. This was purposefully avoided by TTG as they themselves said in their video blogs. Heck, the one thing where they did make some feel better than others (ending of episode 4 and who goes with you) you already saw a lot of people rewinding and doing things to try and get as many people as possible with them. How to play it the 'best' way was completely analyzed and has become common knowledge on these forums already. Compare this to ME2: Where the ending where your entire crew survived also feels like the best and therefore most people strive to achieve it.
So yeah, the details of the story changed a lot depending on your choices. And it is in those details where the brilliance of this game is. Results are often subtle. And I love that.
First of all IF some characters survived instead of dieing or others died instead of living, then we do still not know if that would be a good thing or not down the road.
You don't have to tell the story in a way that one end is clearly better than others, what ending you want depends on what character you play anyway. If people want to protect others then it is better if they stay alive in the end. If people hated some characters, then maybe they are happier with seeing them dead instead of having the fear that they come back and screw with you in another season.
We do not have to argue about the word tailoring. I think deep down most of us feel that the game should have adapted more to the choices, especially in the last episode, where optional loose ends are no problem, because you do not have to pick them up again if you don't want to.
It does in such minor ways that you barely even notice. Best thing was
Aww cute. You thought Lee was going to survive, it was obvious he was screwed. Besides, it would be a "fuck you" to anyone that knew Walking Dead and knew he couldn't survive amputation.
What does this have to do with resolution? WTF are you talking about?
You must be young, wtf are you talking about high def? People are talking about choices having no impact
Interesting.
yep, that confirms it, you're a retard.
nobody thought the game was open world, they expected choices and endings, like telltale promised.
not sure what high def is about, the game is always in "HD" (which just means 1280x720 anyway)
Well, I'm glad you think so. My life is now complete.
Also, I don't think you understand what TTG "promised" - so that said, I think you and I are done.
Sure. If you want 2-3 months between all episodes this would be possible. I am certain they tried with the Doug / Carley thing but it lead to longer breaks between episodes. (I personally thought they't kill them off in episode 2 which they didn't to my great surprise.) I also thought the car situation at the end of Episode 2 would have a bigger impact on Episode 3. Similar to the Doug / Carley thing but it didn't because that would basically mean making 4 episodes with every possible choice.
Episode 2 would be quite odd too. Just imagine Lee saying no to going to the farm. They could just have ended the episode at that moment. Or inserted another path but the episode was late already as it was. How much longer would that have actually taken?
There is no problem in that, and I enjoy that a lot in some games as well.
It is just that TTG's TWD game was made to not be like that. It was meant to be a tailored story, not a story where you define everything that happens but where your actions do change the way things occur.
When I heard this game will not have any ending/choice which was clearly better than others, I knew I would love this game. As although your choices have less impact on the world as a whole, they have a great impact on the small things.
And I appreciate TTG for that subtlety.
If you want to play a game where your choices drastically alter the path of astory and leads to branching paths I suggest you play The Witcher 2 ; ), another great choice-based game
The thing is, the story isn't tailored. Not really. Your decisions don't actually change anything. You don't change character's motivations, the tone of the story doesn't change to fit the Lee that you play...
Edit: To clarify - Kenny still fights with Lee, He still gets morose, Lilly still acts paranoid, Larry still doesn't trust you, Ben still feels guilty and wants to kill himself, Christa and Omid still want to help Clem... none of the scenes actually have a different *tone.* If you play Lee as a kind peace maker, the Stranger still accuses him of being a murderer and a monster. Larry still hates you. None of the conflict scenes play dramatically differently in their tone and most of the characters don't really show a change in personality. About the *only* time the game genuinely felt tailored was the end of episode 4. Then episode 5 pretty quickly works to force everything back towards a single uniform finish that tonally ignores pretty much everything you did.
What it does do is use smoke and mirrors to trick you into thinking the story is being tailored to fit you. Unfortunately Episode 5 then blows all of that away.
To use the tailored shirt example, it's like the tailor saying you can have a shirt and the colour and cut will be suited to you, then you get the same shirt as the other guy but yours is too tight. When you complain, the guy in the other shirt says "but your shirt is red whereas mine is scarlet. He never promised you that it would be a perfect fit."
The thing is, you're still both standing there wearing the same shirt.
I'm "from the 2010", maybe I win?:p
I read about player's choices with almost no impact and no multiple endings. I could quote here, but the thread has only two pages now, so scroll a little.
It was stated that the characters that were not Lee gave a four letter word about what decisions you made and what snappy answers you gave or how silent you were. You ever met a bunch of totally strangers and had their basic behaviour changed in a couple of months or even days?
The other big thing here was the world spinning and stuff happening, no matter what you wanted your Lee to think about that. Strangers behaviour at a much bigger scale, but let's focus on the main part: Lee's death. There's this new book by Jenny Erpenbeck, "Aller Tage Abend", in which a woman dies five times. From only days old baby to an old woman. She mades different experiences in different lifes but no matter what, she eventually dies. My PC Lee differs a lot from the one on my Xbox, but they both are dead. And both they saved little Clem. But they are completely different in character. That didn't save them. So what? The world is spinning.
I knew they were not going to arc that far off of how the main story flows. They really could not. They would have had to develop 5 times a much content if the split came late. Imagine if you have left with Lilly and had totally different story line to play.
That's pretty much the impression I got too.
I think they had intended for episode 5 to be much more variable, but maybe they couldn't figure out how to make it work within the time frame they had given themselves. Hopefully with Season 2 they will follow the television model and have multiple episodes already completed before publically releasing the first episode and then have more time to get things closer to their intent.
I imagine that season 1 has been a bit of a trial by fire for them with this style of storytelling - given that their previous games have been completely linear.
I hope that they will continue to build on the style that they went with in The Walking Dead for their other games too. They have the writers, I believe TTG has the skill to really meet the challenge.
The thing is, you're putting to much of your own definition of what it should be, rather than accepting what it is.
If TTG had said that the game alters and you take different paths to an ending based on your actions... you might have a point.
But they didn't.
Let's look at "The story is tailored by your choice" literally.
The story is what happened to Lee and Clem through five episodes. That's the story TTG gave us.
"Tailored by your choices" - you have choices that alter events in game. Conversations, how people react to you, who has your back and who doesn't, and even who lives and who dies at key times. Those are things you control that alter how the story is presented.
That's all they ever offered. People are just trying to find hidden meanings that aren't there.
It wouldn't have costed nothing to have some characters say goodbye in episode 5 instead of killing them if you made the right/wrong choices beforehand. Instead they just killed off all characters that "had to die" so in season 2 every player of season 1 had exactly the same backstory. Well this makes sense if the walking dead is a movie or a comic, but in a game like the walking dead I expect that my choices do somehow influence what happens to my group at least as well as choices others in the group make. Now choices others in the group made decided over life and death of others and it mattered (kenny sacrificing himself, ben ****ing up killing others, clementine saving molly etc etc) and nothing we do and decide ever has that impact (other than game over or the character dieing shortly afterwards). And that feels bitter. I would like to see the game changed if I sacrifice a lot for the group and I would like to have it turn out differently as if I played a sociopath.
I enjoyed the game, but this really hurts replayability and to take that control away from the player seems like a strange thing to do.
"Oedipus didn't have any choices! Story sucks!"
Never understood it.
And not really relevant.
To use a crude example, if a person goes into a FPS expecting RPG gameplay, they're only going to be disappointed.
Being unhappy with a game is fine, everyone has their own likes -- but being unhappy because it didn't play the way you thought it should is a bit silly.
This, Telltale themselves were always very clear on what 'tailored' means according to them in all interviews and Playing Dead videos. They already said during the panel with the writers that the season's ending was decided before anything else. This means your choices can't have a huge impact on this.
They also said multiple times that they put extra effort into making sure no one choice felt "better" than the other. Heck, they admitted they decided not to create a real Lee-Carley romance because than the choice between Carley and Doug in Ep 1 would feel that Carley is always the better option.
This, to me at least, made it clear that choice in this game results in different things than it does in other games (like the famous series from Bioware where choice is an important aspect). Instead of defining the people around you, your choices actually define yourself more. And this is sometimes put directly into play by confronting you with Clementine and how she feels about what you did. Basicly: Instead of showing you what would happen if, in a hypothetical situation, you'd do this or that.. they basicly put a mirror in front of you for every choice you have to make.
And this shows because many, many fans feel a very strong connection to their 'first save' Lee. The one that acts like they would in this situation. And more people seem to have it than those who have a really strong connection to their first Shepard.
And that, to me, is very good storytelling in an interactive medium.
You seem to be misunderstanding the complaint here. The complaint isn't that we think the game should be played a certain way, but that Telltale gives you the illusion that it will.
Really, the word "tailored" in regards to how the game works based on how you play was a poor word to use. It conveys a feeling that the game is custom-made: based on the decisions you make. The fact that there are statistics at the end of every mission saying how the decisions you make matter is what really homes in that "feeling".
Honestly, I stopped believing this game would be anything but an "on-the-rails" adventure after episode 3. (Coincidentally this is when they started to clarify "tailored" in videos and such.) I started to think of it as an interactive movie. (Honestly, this is what the game boils down to. An interactive movie where you can tell the game how you'd feel in your current situation.)
Episode 3 is where crap hits the fan in terms of the whole tailored feeling going out the window. Doug/Carley die at the exact same moment in the exact same way and Lilly shoots them no matter how you feel about her or interacted with her. Then the Christa/Omir choice comes up and nothing ever becomes of who you save. The other one is saved anyway and it's never mentioned again, as far as I remember.
Episode 4 also has no important choices in the end. Clementine coming or staying at the house doesn't affect anything but the ability to let Molly get injured. (And she still leaves regardless of what happens.) No matter how much of a jerk you are to Vernon or how nice you are, he'll still steal your stuff in Episode 5. And the decision at the end, something that a lot of people claimed is what made it all matter, also didn't mean squat.
Episode 5: The decision at the end of episode 4 matters for all of 2 minutes. You meet up with all your group at the end. Did you save Ben in episode 4? Well, big surprise, he dies with Kenny! (Who also dies the exact same way regardless of if you saved him or not.) Did you lop your arm off? You still die! How does the stranger treat you? Hey, whatever you said or did throughout the game he still wants to kill you!
The Walking Dead is an interactive movie but claims it is something more. That's what ticked me off when I reached the end of Episode 3. I had assumed that my decisions mattered in the LONG RUN not just in the short term.
What does it matter that party members treat me slightly differently, or even remember what I did in the past, if it changes nothing?
Maybe it's just the language and the use of the word "tailored" at the beginning of every episode, maybe it's just the decision meters that pop up in the end, but I can assure you what ticked most people off was the game tried to tell you it was something more than it is. Frankly, a lot of the important decisions and how they do nothing and how they lack any impact feels like lazy writing. It's a good story, but I only wished I had influenced it.
To be honest, I only threw my iron in the fire because some people felt "tailored" meant wildly divergent paths and multiple endings or some such - which never seemed to the be what TTG had offered.
Though, I have to admit, after episode one (Carley/Doug) I did expect a bit more.... options in gameplay.
While I won't say I'm disappointed that it didn't continue that way through 2-5 - I do see it as a missed opportunity.