Blog: Does Walking Dead really tailor itself to your actions?
Telltale's the Walking Dead... Where your decisions matter... Except when they don't... All of the time...
Don't get me wrong, a brilliant emotional journey but one without any kind of consequences for your choices at all.
Save Carly? She dies anyway. Save Doug? He dies anyway. Steal from the car? Dude abducts Clementine and tries to kill you. Don't steal from the car? Dude abducts Clementine and tries to kill you. It's not a choice if both options are going to lead to the exact same outcome... Its flavour text...
I figured that we would at least get some pay-off from the epilogue... I feel kind of dissapointed.
I hope that season 2 maintains the same great level of story-telling but actually makes the choices have proper game-changing consequences.
I would not complain if you had not given me such high hopes
. Season one was good but I hope season two is great.
Don't get me wrong, a brilliant emotional journey but one without any kind of consequences for your choices at all.
Save Carly? She dies anyway. Save Doug? He dies anyway. Steal from the car? Dude abducts Clementine and tries to kill you. Don't steal from the car? Dude abducts Clementine and tries to kill you. It's not a choice if both options are going to lead to the exact same outcome... Its flavour text...
I figured that we would at least get some pay-off from the epilogue... I feel kind of dissapointed.
I hope that season 2 maintains the same great level of story-telling but actually makes the choices have proper game-changing consequences.
I would not complain if you had not given me such high hopes
. Season one was good but I hope season two is great. This discussion has been closed.
Comments
You are pretty much right. (I love this game as a movie it's a grade A movie but not as a game)
They're probably trying to keep her in play for season 2. Still a low blow if you ask me.
I didn't steal from him. I also did not like how this man was making it seem like I was intentionally getting Clementine in danger. I did what I thought was best at the time. I also told him that it wasn't the full story. She was always my primary concern.
And about the choices, I don't know... Just because the outcome is the same doesn't make the choice invalid.
If you let Ben live, yeah Kenny still dies in the alley, but his sacrifice is WAY more poignant than it is if Ben died at Crawford. It also gives Ben the chance to redeem himself, yeah he still dies, but his death at Crawford is completely different emotionally.
As for the Doug/Carley thing, I think it emulates a sort of helplessness. Yeah, you saved them first time around, but you're not superman, you can't save everyone always. People are gonna die, regardless of whether you saved them in the pharmacy or not.
The stealing from the car thing... yeah, that guy had lost it, and I do feel it was kind of a cop out that he still wants to kill you regardless.
So personally, it's not really just flavour to me. I cared about every decision I made, so much so that I would redo parts of the game even if the outcome was just the same either way.
The choices REALLY did matter to me, even if the outcomes weren't radically different to each other, they did contribute to the emotional and tonal quality of the game.
The most fucked up part is about the people going with you searching for Clem at the start of episode 5.
Doesn't matter because the boat will still be stolen even if you leave the boat with 4 guys.
The case of Kenny is pretty much the same. He finally shows his angel side.
Yeah, but if he refused to go with me at the end of Ep. 4 I wouldn't have felt bad to see him go. Him agreeing to go with me made me like him again and make up with him in the attic, so it changed how I felt about his death. Even though the end result is the same, it was still an important choice for me.
It did matter to me.
On one of my saves everyone was going with me - It felt great that everyone was banding together to go and look for Clem, that everyone was working together as a team.
The other I didn't reveal the bite and went by myself - I felt like crap after coming back and realising everyone got beaten up and the boat got stolen - with Omid's leg and Christa being pregnant, Kenny was the only one that could really do any fighting, and I left them to defend for themselves. If I was honest we would have gone together and, yeah, the boat would still be stolen, but at least I didn't abandon them and let them get beaten up.
But this game is a very personal experience, so I imagine it differs for everyone.
Letting him fall to his death in the bell tower was very satisfying to someone I know who despised Ben and had wanted him dead since Ep. 3.
But seeing him and Kenny make up and go out together was very satisfying to me who had tried to keep the group together the whole time.
So just because Ben dies regardless doesn't mean that every choice pertaining to his character was pointless, they change the way you experience the story and the emotions you feel as you play.
Exactly.
Also, in making the choice, you're defining who Lee is as a person, and the limits of what he'd do to continue surviving. That serves to strongly personalise the story for you, even if it doesn't end up changing anything.
I wouldn't mind seeing more varied consequences for our actions in Season Two, but I won't complain about the consequences that we received in Season One. They served the story well enough, and if you played through the game 'properly' (or, to not use a loaded term, on your first playthrough without reloading past savegames), you'll certainly feel like your choices are all-important.
But remember, you dont controll the fate of what individual group members think, you only controlled lee.
One of the big themes of the game is about parenthood. Most parent know, or at least hope that their children will outlive them. What happens once their gone is out of their hands. All you can do is prepare them, give them the emotional tools they need to carry on.
That's why the after-credits scene is so note perfect. How it ends on such a huge question-mark. You don't know for certain if the figures are Christa and Omid, friendly or unfriendly, or even for sure if their not walkers (they're probably not, but that's still a 'probably'). For you, Clementine's whole future ends on a question-mark.
All you can hope for is that you did the best you could.
But it is one of the best experiences I've had this generation but obviously these are two problems that could help it become even more greater.
Yes. This.
The story was about Lee finding redemption (and, in the process, fatherhood). Once there was no more Lee, the story was over. What happens to Clem is unclear because that's a whole different story. Maybe it's Season 2's story.
Give me one example of a choice that actually changed anything... You try to save Larry... He dies... You help Kenny with Larry he dies... You help Kenny with everything except Larry... He hates your guts... You don't help Kenny with anything... He hates your guts. You don't help Shawn... He dies... You help Shawn... He dies... Ben is alive... Kenny dies... Ben is not alive... Kenny dies... You don't help Lily... She takes the RV... You help Lily at every turn... She takes the RV... You stick up for and help Larry... He hates you... You're terrible to Larry... He hates you.
All the decisions that we thought mattered like Clementine eating human flesh or whatever because "Clementine will remember that" just get completely tossed to the wayside. Did she remember it? She certainly didn't show that she remembered it. Why even have the throw-away "Clementine will remember that line?" It might as well be "Meh... This choice was meaningless... You might as well be asshole Lee for all the good it will do you... You're still going to die, Clementine will still look up to you and you'll probably be less frustrated by the other characters."
You don't say "the player's choices matter" and then give them all meaningless choices that don't change the story at all. Maybe a branching story would be hard to do where didn't characters cause different events to happen or not happen but lots of things are hard. Making the Cry Engine was hard... Creating Skyrim was hard... Just because something is hard doesn't make it worth doing. A game is the only true 'interactive' medium. If you don't tap into that then we all might as well be reading the comics.
Most of you have obviously not done a second play-through of the game.
I am fine with choices that didn't mean much or that some choices didn't have a HUGE impact. I think its easy to have every choice to have a massive weight but that makes the story flow from one suddenly dramatic event to another. The walking dead, like a good story, chooses instead to have some choices mean less or not at all. This increases the immersion of the game, makes the game more consistent, and makes it feel real.
No matter how we all played the game we all got the exact... The EXACT same ending.
That quote is the first thing you saw in every chapter you played. Apparently some people still don't know what that meant. It never meant that different choices equaled completely different outcomes. It didn't in Episode One. It didn't in Episode Two. It didn't in Episode Three. It didn't in Episode Four and it sure didn't in Episode Five.
If you thought that it did, I'm sorry but you were wrong.
That is the part that ticked me off with this game. That big of a build up for one scene that reverts back later.
Everything else however was fine. The game never once said the story would change, you guys just can't read. It said the story would be TAILORED to how you play. If you tailor a shirt, it has a personal touch, BUT IT IS STILL A SHIRT! You ever complain that your tailor made shirt doesn't have a third arm slot? No, that's stupid. Same thing here, it is still this one story, but it has your personal touch now.
I'm not sure how this affects your experience?
First off I want to clarify that Telltale is, in no way, bound to the ending we all received being canonical. Secondly and more importantly, Clementine's decisions after Lee's departure and despite any of his advice does not affect the weight of your decisions. Clementine wasn't a robot that did what you always told her. She was a person. Perhaps regardless of your final words she would always have left the city? Perhaps something happened between her leaving Lee and that cutscene we do not know about?
You received a cliffhanger cut scene. Its not canonical if Telltale so chooses and the actions in the scene are independent of Lee's decisions. Telltale did such a good job of making me feel like Lee's decisions were the decisions of the man and not "the player".
1. Immersion.
2. Consistency of Story.
3. Entertainment.
You make a decision, consciously or not, to sort these three in order of importance. In the case of Telltale they created an interactive and immersive video game where they wanted your decisions to make an impact but not at the cost of their story. Their story and entertaining you came before your desire to feel like every decisions you made affected the world after your departure.
(That being said, I bet a lot of Lee's decisions will be relevant in season 2).
Your decisions did make a difference in the experiences that Lee Everett had. Of course, whether or not you chose dialogue option 1 or 6 would have no meaningful affect on the piano about to fall on your head. Some things, despite your decisions, are beyond your control. I loved that Telltale chose to make some of my decisions irrelevant because I felt less like a player and more like a real person.
This is the message that greets the player at the beginning of every episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game. But is it true?
After finishing the final episode last night, I resisted the call of the pillow and had a bit of a dig around some spoiler-heavy threads on the game’s official forum. Like me, most people had really enjoyed the experience, but there was one recurring negative response. In essence:
“The decisions I make don’t actually change anything! Everything’s the same at the end! Telltale are liars!”
Read more: http://digitalspiritguide.com/how-telltales-the-walking-dead-tricks-us-into-feeling/
It does. 100%.
I gave up at Ep. 1 because I already knew what was going to happen, and the start was kind of slow. And yes, again. It does.
The reason for TellTale games making it so Lee dies no matter what, is because there are several accounts of replayers. The ones who just replay the game, the chapter, that one moment, just to get the perfect ending. Because he's attacked by surprise. There is no way not to get scratched after you pick up Clementine's hat. And it's just not of his personality to deny picking up the hat. NO ONE wouldn't pick up the hat. Unless you don't have feelings, or you were making the wrong choices on purpose.
Another reason is because there'd be too many endings. And, they already had an ending in plan. It'll resolve around Season 1, and there was no way for that ending to happen without Lee dying. The ending would be 100% different with Lee alive, and it's really hard to script. Really. YOU try scripting that. It already takes a month to make each episode.
An example of things that can change based on your decisions.
1. Doug or Lilly/Carley?
2. Give her the gun or don't?
3. Kill Duck or have Kenny kill him?
4. Who is your team?
These are all based on how people feel about you based on your choices. And can most likely effect Season 2 (this has been confirmed)
Well if people actually knew what "tailor made" meant, they wouldn't be complaining.
Tailor made does NOT mean changing things wildly, never did, never will. If you have a shirt tailor-made for you, it means the sleeves are shorter or longer to match you. It doesn't have a 3rd sleeve for you. Same for this game, it's tailor-made for you, characters will think differently about you based on your actions, it WON'T change the story for you.
How hard is it for people to figure this out?
While true people can take things differently, that will happen no matter what. There are people that took what telltale said of BTTF and thought it would be GTA. You can't just let them off the hook because they interpreted things differently. When tailor made was said, people shouldn't expect "EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE FOR YOU", and complain about it. And then when things DO change, they just go "well Lee still died! Well Carly still died!" and completely ignore all that has changed.
And did we not? I had to live with knowing I stabbed a man with a pitchfork, that Lilly got away with our car after killing my friend, that I saved Ben's life and arguably gave him a worse death, and that I willingly let an 9 year old girl go to a place that could've potentially have people that would shoot her on sight.
Sounds like living to my actions to me.
In the preorder forum they actually said that when i asked them so no need to feel robed on my part. The only thing i was a bit sad about was that the ending of episode 4 did not change to much of episode 5s beginning while being called "changing the experience drastic" in the last talking dead episode.
1. Whatever... They Die at the same moment...
2. What effect does it have?
3. Same as 2.
4. Team... it doesn't change anything... Just possibility to cut your arm by other person...
+1.
So much +1.
I don't care how good the story is. If you say the consequences are going to matter and then they matter about as much as deciding whether to wear the blue tie or the red tie to work then you have failed to make the game you set out to make :rolleyes:. I'm not saying it's not a good game but it's certainly not the game that they said it was going to be.
If you sell someone a waffle iron that can't make waffles, but ends up making a pretty good paperweight people are going to be pissed that the thing they bought to make waffles is failing to make waffles.
I can understand people liking the game but if you truly like it and consider yourself a fan then you should want it to get better and if you want it to get better you have to be honest with it. Did it do what it set out to do? Not really... Was it a terrible piece of crap? Certainly not. How could it be improved? By making the decisions more consequential in Season 2 and delivering a better final payoff.
I still cannot get my head around how people can get to a place where they are angry that a video game does not respond to their every action and whim. Short of being actual real-life, computer programming is limited because AI is just that: Artificial.
I think sometimes that some people must believe that they deserve to have a constantly thinking and growing cyber intelligence for a PC/gaming console that is capable of generating new dialogue depending on what the player is thinking about at any given time.
Or perhaps people understand the whole limitations of computer games and instead just want the illusion to be handled better.
I am not an accountant or resource manager at TTG so I have no idea how big or small their budget for this game was, but I would argue that in Season 2 they actually address a way to paper over the cracks and make the illusion of choice greater in the next season. Their story-telling is already spot-on. I was blubbing throughout TWD and had a range of emotional responses to the situations I (as Lee) was placed in.
You were given choices, but choices don't mean they change anything in the end. Say you're driving somewhere, you can take several different routes to get there -- they may go in different directions but in the end they all take you to your destination.
The journey is more important than the end.