Developers Predicted Majority Choices?

Johnny Jones

While thinking back on the stats screen that pops up at the end of every episode, showing off the major decisions within it and comparing your choices to everyone else's, I started imagining the developers for the Walking Dead anticipating what choices the majority of players are going to choose while developing the first season.

The decisions that came to mind were deciding to bash Larry, abandon Lilly, and to drop Ben. While the majority of players decided to do the "moral" thing (attempt to revive Larry, allow Lilly back in, and save Ben), I feel like the developers expected us to favor the more pragmatic route.

Also, I believe the developers expected Carly to be saved over Doug in many playthroughs (for obvious reasons).


What do you guys think?

dubesor

they knew. and some choices are set up so the huge majority always goes a certain route. for example "losing temper with kenny" in the attic isn't really a choice between losing or keeping temper. it's a choice between clicking something or being afk-idle. The result that the majority would do rather something than nothing was obvious. there are more choices like that within the game.

Rock114

Actually, TT thought the stats on Doug and Carley would be more equal. Gary Whitta even told them that most people would choose the hot chick with the gun, but they thought it would at least be around 60/40. Or something.

Jaded X Gamer

Rock114 wrote: »

Actually, TT thought the stats on Doug and Carley would be more equal. Gary Whitta even told them that most people would choose the hot chick with the gun, but they thought it would at least be around 60/40. Or something.

Really? I thought they figured most people would pick her based on the fact poor Doug doesn't get much to do in the first episode. He's the only character you can't even give an energy bar to. (You can even try and give Glenn one during the short time he's back at the pharmacy.) Plus anything with a gun is pretty valuable in a Zombie Apocalypse, something that's multiplied by the fact that at the time Carley was the only one in the group who even had a gun. They even put her on the cover of the episode!





Seriously, the only major reasons they give you for possibly wanting to get rid of her is she doesn't know how batteries work and she's know Lee's secret. The later of which kind of endured me to her because she's very direct and fair with Lee when she confronts him about it. It eventually even has a pretty big story pay off when she asks you start telling people about it.

Anyways, about the topic at hand, I think Telltale were mostly just aiming to mess with people's expectations. I know in one of the playing dead videos they said the Larry thing was thought up when they started getting fans talking how much they wanted how to kill Larry. So they were like "Here you go! "

I watched a Let's Play where somebody chose to help Kenny but during the actual act wanted to back out because of how horrible it was having to pull Lilly off her dad. He actually just let go of the keyboard hoping he could change his mind but the game wouldn't continue until he went through with it.

Same thing with Ben. Lot of people talked about how badly they wanted to kill him. So they served him up to you on a silver platter BEGGING you to just let him die. For a bleeding heart "no one gets left behind!" type like myself the Lilly thing was the hardest choice. I really wanted to just kill her then and the timer almost ran out before I finally decided she could come, rationalizing it as we could use her as Walker bait or something.

I think I've heard someone from Telltale say that when the split is close to 50/50 they've done a good job, so I think they were banking on making situations that are hard to predict actually.

Viner16

Doug barely got half as much screentime in Ep 1 as Carley.

TTG wonders why majority does not pick Doug.