The Walking Dead Game -vs- Heavy Rain
I have read many times posts about people comparing Heavy Rain to TWD and I think it is legitimate.
If we compare the 2 games they are very similiar: both games have are heavily story driven, strong character development, minor focussed on gameplay mostly quicktime events, many choices.
Now if I compare both games I have to give telltale 1 pluspoint: I got more attached to the characters than I did in Heavy Rain. But if we compare choices, and IMPACT of choices TWD falls behind majorly. None of the choices make any difference besides some dialoguechanges or other temporary effects that are NOT "profound and lasting" (like advertised) but they have no influence on the story and no impact on the outcome whatsoever. Heavy rain on the other hand has like.... nearly 20 different endings and results depending on your choices. I think there are 17 different endings alone. This game has truly profound and lasting consequences to your choices - unlike TWD where it seems you only have "the illusion of choice".
Now, I see why that many different endings might not be possible for Telltale, as it would be near impossible and ludicrously expensive to start a 2nd season with that many endings, but at least give us 3 or so different results depending on what we did throughout our game? Or anything at all? I played this game 3 times, with 3 times totally different choices yet everything plays out the same and ends in only 1 ending.
After I played Heavy Rain I immediately played again, and the result was COMPLETELY different. My choices had MAJOR IMPACT. In fact I played it 6 or 7 times and every time it played out differently. The characters ended up totally different and the endings were completely different depending on my choices.
Now, with TWD after only my 2nd playthrough (opposite of 1st playthrough) I noticed there is no point in the choices. Everything feels so minor and temporary I have never seen a single choice that was profound and lasting.
Now, TWD was one of the better games I have played in 2012 due to story and character development. But gameplay and choices are rather poor.
Bottom Line is I wished they would take a route further down to Heavy Rain, where your choices actually altered the outcome.
Anyone with me on this?
If we compare the 2 games they are very similiar: both games have are heavily story driven, strong character development, minor focussed on gameplay mostly quicktime events, many choices.
Now if I compare both games I have to give telltale 1 pluspoint: I got more attached to the characters than I did in Heavy Rain. But if we compare choices, and IMPACT of choices TWD falls behind majorly. None of the choices make any difference besides some dialoguechanges or other temporary effects that are NOT "profound and lasting" (like advertised) but they have no influence on the story and no impact on the outcome whatsoever. Heavy rain on the other hand has like.... nearly 20 different endings and results depending on your choices. I think there are 17 different endings alone. This game has truly profound and lasting consequences to your choices - unlike TWD where it seems you only have "the illusion of choice".
Now, I see why that many different endings might not be possible for Telltale, as it would be near impossible and ludicrously expensive to start a 2nd season with that many endings, but at least give us 3 or so different results depending on what we did throughout our game? Or anything at all? I played this game 3 times, with 3 times totally different choices yet everything plays out the same and ends in only 1 ending.
After I played Heavy Rain I immediately played again, and the result was COMPLETELY different. My choices had MAJOR IMPACT. In fact I played it 6 or 7 times and every time it played out differently. The characters ended up totally different and the endings were completely different depending on my choices.
Now, with TWD after only my 2nd playthrough (opposite of 1st playthrough) I noticed there is no point in the choices. Everything feels so minor and temporary I have never seen a single choice that was profound and lasting.
Now, TWD was one of the better games I have played in 2012 due to story and character development. But gameplay and choices are rather poor.
Bottom Line is I wished they would take a route further down to Heavy Rain, where your choices actually altered the outcome.
Anyone with me on this?
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Thing is though, TWD does that similarly. The details are different along the way as well as a few minor differences in the end. It is just not 17 endings because the story itself is not entirely done at the end. The story is about Lee preparing Clementine to do what she has to do and her being ready to do that in the end.
I like that the differences are in how the things feel instead of how they occur. This is what makes you emotionally attached to the characters more and this is also why you don't feel you did it wrong because a person died (something Heavy Rain does have). There is no best way to play TWD, and this is its strength.
The ZA would still be going on regardless of what you did, and most of the people who were affected by your choices are dead, or unknown.
Exactly, this is the key here. The continuiing world may not have been affected by your choices much, but the world around you was when you were still alive. The way people lived their lives until their time was up is what you helped define.
I guess one of the themes this also gives is one of: You cannot shape the entire world around you, no matter how much you try.
Well, Telltale is an episodic game company. I feel like a final episode branching into 20 endings is an unrealistic characteristic for their game structure at the moment. :c (Maybe 5 endings could be manageable.)
With saying that, I think the short length of the episodes and limited choices make the characters and journey memorable. It seemed like Telltale wanted to loosely tell one story where you struggled with making decisions in specific situations, rather than experimenting with 20 stories.
Also, a similar ending or consequence is useful for encouraging a specific emotion. (For example, it was hilarious to see a shared hatred for Larry on the Telltale forums after episode 1. :P ) I think multiple outcomes may take away this (awesome) phenomenon.
Of course I would love a zombie apocalypse themed game like Heavy Rain, but maybe such a game should be led by a different company so Telltale can stick to their episode structure.
I was only talking about TWD and Heavy Rain. Fahrenheit is an extremely bad example for comparison in my thread as it doesn't fullfill any of the criteria I mentioned. Thank you.
I wasn't saying it was, I was pointing out there are fixed things.
regarding this I was referring to a specific thing, where there is like a flashback, to the time you are controlling the character. (the event is supposed to be happening in the same time you're controlling the character) It's hard to explain, hopefully people who have played HR know what I'm referring to XD
...I was like..wtf? I didn't do that! At the time it went over it, because I was supposed to be the character at that time
let's hope they make it better next time and make our choices count such as your example in heavy rain.
In Heavy Rain there is no "Game over" per se. The game just continues even wheather you "failed" or not - and most of the time you don't even notice whether your choice or actions were "right" or not. You just gotta live with the consequences. messed up? Well, you continue without that person and it's contributions then. Ending? Entirely different depending on what you had done or had not done.
In terms of characters and interacting with them? TWD put real emotion behind these pixelated characters that made me love them all, which Heavy Rain just didn't have for me.
I don't see what that has to do with anything tbh. For example in EP2 when the rescued guy jumps on Katjaa, if you fail -> game over.
In Heavy Rain you "screwing up" it would have simply killed off Katjaa and continue the story without her. There are many many more situations like this. And In my opinion lasting and profound decisions like these are what is currently missing in TWD Game. That was the point of this thread.
How can it have nothing to do with it? You have more than one character, so you can still participate after 'your' character is dead. If all the characters are dead, then well...game over (story ends)(after reading about deaths, the characters cannot die until certain points either anyway), which is about the same as TWD's chars not dying until they're 'allowed' to
Harder to do with zombies though, since its hard to fail at killing zombies and not get bit...
Did you play the game? Because you definitely could die, several ways. You could die in the Warehouse, you could die by suicide (getting arrested 2x with no one helping) or by not finding Shaun and shooting yourself at home or at his grave. Or ofcourse you could do fine and live happily ever after.
None the less - your statement is false.
I did play the game - though I never died. I just either succeeded at things, just barely suceeded and felt bad, or the character just left the situation. Did those deaths lead to game overs? Or did the game continue on with that person dead?
Perhaps I should have said no game overs.
I am not a huge fan of "GAME OVER": "you didn't do what the developer wanted you to do. Now replay and do exactly as you are told to proceed."
I agree. And deaths are expensive for us to make, as well.
But take, for instance, Lee fighting the babysitter zombie in episode 1. How does that end if the player never pushes a button?
In JP, we did "clumsy successes" if the player didn't hit the button so they wouldn't die every time, but my understanding is people didn't like that at all.
If you have read my OP-post you would have noticed my understanding about how this game can not be AS considering. Due to the fact that it's not just 1 game but several episodes (even seasons). Further more I have also mentioned a typical example of how this issue could have been handled instead (the Season 2 start Katjaa issue for example). I understand we cant have 20 different results. Due to money issues we have to limit the impact of the players to a low amount, say 3. But currently it is 0 impact = 1 result
There are some situations where the procedure I mentioned could make our choices have impact. Katjaa is only 1 example. Another would be for example Brie (or Bree or whatever she is spelled). Say, we take her with us to Crawford, she dies the normal way as it is now. But now, if we leave 3+ people at our camp (any of Kenny, Ben, Christa, Omid) the Vernon group had lower chances at taking our boat (he mentioned 2 are extremely sick that need constant care so he has basically no more force).
Now if we refused to take her with us to Crawford she would go back. That way she would have survived. And later Vernon had 1 more Person to take our boat. All of this makes sense.
And all of this is just examples. I never mentioned to make the exact same strong impact as heavy rain (read OP). I said just "SOME" more impact on the result other than everything leading to exactly and only 1 outcome. That makes me feel my decisions are useless. Sure, the different dialog mentioning my choices here and there are cool, but I would love if if you guys would go just a little twist more into impactfull choices like Heavy Rain, of course not as much as it most likely would be too expensive to develop.
but... you have to imagine telltale is very low money productions. so they limit choices that everything makes one result. i know we all want many result but then the game isnt 30 dollar but 60 dollar.. think about it.
The game has stupid sequences (e.g. the chase scene [ermahgerd chickens!], anything with those random future glasses, Ethan's trials, Shelby going into the clock store), really unnecessary shit (oh no Shelby has asthma, oh wait where did that go... oh no Ethan passes out, oh wait where did that go... oh no Madison has insomnia, oh wait where did that go...), really bad voice acting (I get it, they're French. It's just annoying and I can't take anything anyone says seriously).
It doesn't help that the only character I cared about was Shelby, every other character was pitiful, dumb, and boring. The overall plot was neat, I suppose. Meh though. The only thing Heavy Rain has over Walking Dead is how your choices effect the game. I'm fine with how Walking Dead made it though, the choices didn't effect the game, they effected me personally. Which is 100% better.
Walking Dead is way better IMO.
Lee -- Ethan
Carley -- Madison
Doug -- Norman
Campman -- Scott
Some of the things I think HR did better than TWD were:
-The action. The fighting scenes were a lot more involving because of the more advanced controls at the players' disposal. Whereas in TWD, there are only two input methods (moving the cursor and clicking, or rapidly tapping a key). I'm not saying TWD's action was bad, far from it, but HR's was better. (Fighting Mad Jack anyone? Fighting the killer with Jayden?)
-The consequences. Yeah, it had multiple endings. Characters could die, and the story would continue on. But they could only die at very specific points in the narrative. Outside of those points they had plot armour. But even with this, they managed to have a variety of different endings. (Who survived? Was Shaun saved? Was the killer caught? What relationships were formed? Did Jayden give up or give in to his drug addiction? And so on...)
In TWD, the 'consequences' meant something different. And personally I had no problem with the way it was done. Instead of having specific characters live or die almost arbitrarily, our relationship with those characters changed. The way we felt about those characters, and the story in general, is what results from our choices.
What the Walking Dead did better than Heavy Rain was engage our emotion. Heavy Rain was great, and I think it did a fine job of that too, but TWD did it better.
I'd put this down to the episodic nature and the voice acting. I had no problem with the voice acting in HR (Nahman Jayden - loved it!), but man, did the Walking Dead get some great voice actors. I'd say the only voice actor I didn't like was Duck's. He just sounded like he was doing a quiet shout into the microphone a lot of the time (prior to episode 3. In episode 3 he was good).
Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead are two of my most favourite games. They are both great in the same area and in different areas, for different reasons.
He was chasing him through a market. There were chickens there. Really not that crazy. What's wrong with the ARI glasses? They added a cool element to Jayden's character. The trials were the most important part! Ethan had to prove himself to the killer. A clock store - what's so stupid about that?
I had no problem with the voice acting. But it's a matter of taste I guess.
There were some touching moments like when Ethan was playing with his son in the park, when he helped him do his home work and when he tucked him in for bed and gave him his cough syrup when he was getting a cold.
Overal I found the experience of heavy rain more rewarding than the walking dead game, for one my choices carried over from chapter to chapter. I wasn't left with WTF moments at the end like why am I in jail, why am I poisoned or why is my son dead. Everything I chose to do had fitting consequences. In the walking dead game as much as I liked it there were times when the game said I did things I didn't do. It said I made Clem eat human meat when I didn't and said I helped kill Larry. Those are big decision choices for the game to get wrong and can leave you feeling really shitty when you did everything to make the right choice for you in your play through.
When I played heavy rain I felt much more pressure when making choices, my heart was in my mouth at times and I was shitting my self, worrying for the protagonist. I remember struggling over choices like should I swallow the poison or not. I remember feeling like shit when I couldn't go through with a tial and I backed out. The game made me feel like I didn't love my son enough, like I was selfish. But that was just realistic because cutting off your finger or drinking poison would be a hard thing for any of us to do. I remember the game resisting my attempts to cut off Ethan's finger. It was a hard mini game to complete which was a clever mechanic because it represented how hard it would be for him to will himself to do it.
I find it surprising that you found heavy rain a joke but you had no problem with the concept of a guy travelling all the way from Macon to Savannah in a ZA and risking his life to get revenge on Lee for choosing to save Carly over Doug who he didn't even know, or for taking her to a dairy farm which Lee/the player didn't actually have a choice over. Do people even have the luxury or time for things like revenge in the ZA?(and before anyone refers to Michonne she was already in Woodbury when she got her revenge) I use these examples because that was what I was persicuted for by the kidnapper at the hotel. He said I was putting Clem at risk, but wait a minute the only choice I made that he disagreed with was saving Carly over Doug. Then there is the fact that sometimes your choices don't carry over at all. In one of my play throughs the game said I made Clem eat meat and I helped kill Larry. Two serious, big choices in the game that were both wrong. I say this to say that both games have there share of problems but I found the kidnapper's motivation far more laughable than anything I saw in Heavy Rain.
The guy is in a car, doesn't know Lee is going to Savannah until Clementine confirms it on the train ride, yet he gets there first. So we are expected to believe he was getting out of his car along the
Interstate Highway or roads and mannually moving the cars in front of him by himself with roaming zombies around him all so he can punish Lee for things that he did to other people if Lee didn't steal from him e.g leaving Doug to get pulled threw a window into the night, leaving a helpless woman stranded etc. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
When I played Heavy Rain I thought the game was epic. But we can't all like the same stuff can we.
There's just so much more at stake in the Walking Dead than in Heavy Rain. With Heavy Rain, you're pretty much dealing with one threat, one single killer. Even if you don't catch this guy, the rest of the world will live on. The characters are willingly putting themselves in danger to rescue the child(not disrespecting that, of course) and can back down from it anytime if they so choose.
With the Walking Dead, no one has that luxury. Everyone everywhere you go can die anywhere at anytime. No one has a choice to just walk away, everyone is forced to fight for their lives and struggle to survive every single day. They don't just lose their children, they lose their entire family and their friends, sometimes even being forced to kill those loved ones that they failed to protect. They suffer tragedy every waking moment of their lives. You can't sit back and relax, you can't play at the park with your family or friends, you're never in a fully safe environment. You'll instead spend all of your time wondering who's going to die next. And that made me care for the characters and their struggles more than Heavy Rain.
Imagine a scene where a father of two watches as his first born son rips the intestines out of his second son, then they both rise and kill his wife, and then him. That would be devastating...
In the walking dead the characters were awesome, and every death felt hard on me, even Larry's, even the Stranger's, though I hated him. Why? Because they felt so real, due to the top notch voice acting, and great writing, great job TellTale! Only the limited impact my decisions had were one little thing I didn't like, but I understand why it had to be that way, nonetheless, to me The Walking Dead is the "better" game, depends on people's preferences though.
I don't care for the different endings that HR had, I just liked the multiple quick timed action scenes in it. It had you press different buttons while turning the analog stick in a unique way, as opposed to WD's quick time events, which had you continuously tap a button, and then press another random button after.
As for characters, I cared for HR's lineup the same I did for TWD.
WD was definitely the better adventure game between the two, as it had you take different options to explore the environment: (Look at axe, take axe, etc.) In HR, you could only perform one function with the objects in the environment. But I'm more of an action game fan than an adventure game one.
Both games had a dark narrative and story tone, as well as depressing endings (If you screw up in HR). The bad endings in HR still give me the chills every time I see them.
We must not have played the same game.
We did. You just cared for the characters in TWD a lot more than HR, which is pretty much just like everyone else on this forum. That's cool with me.
I said this before and I'll say it again, I didn't like Heavy Rain as much as I should have. Plot was good, problem was the characters. Every single character I felt nothing towards besides complete indifference. Ethan in particular, the main fucking protagonist was just kind of... there. He felt more so like a bag of meat that the player uses to get around in rather than an actual character. I get it, the game tries to make you feel sorry for him but just doesn't work out because he feels fake and wasn't developed as a character (or at least not enough to make me actually care about him).
Meanwhile in The Walking Dead every single character I liked. Literally every character. They all felt real, and I actually loved / hated pretty much everyone. I didn't feel any indifference. Only character I remotely liked in Heavy Rain was Shelby... Until that very confusing, out of nowhere plot twist. You know the one. "He's doing it because like his shitty brother died or something," just give me a fucking break.
I've read that Quantic Dream were forced to cut some parts of the game out due to release pressure or something, and i have seen some of the footage that didn't make the cut. It seems to expand on Ethan's troubles, so maybe that's part of why he seems so flat.
I cannot remember playing Heavy Rain.
I remember playing the Walking Dead every day.
That is the difference.