What if Episodes Started Out Completely Different?
I think a cool thing that Telltale could have done was to change to the way Episodes start depending on the player choices. Now they would branch back to the same situation for everyone, but I think it would give the game more variety. The closest we had to this was No Time Left and A House Divided.
For example, when I finished A House Divided, I chose to give up and surrender. Not find Kenny. A little part of me was hoping that for those who DID go to find Kenny, they would stick with Luke until the episode was over. Sadly that wasn't implemented. But it would've been cool if it was! And everybody's story goes back to being similar when Luke is found in Episode 3.
Another great idea I heard (Something that can't happen anymore) was from lapiswolf, who after listening to unused audio files, thought it would've been cool to have a final choice be to run after Sarah in the horde. I agree. Episode 4 would either start with you and the group, or you chasing Sarah through the woods.
Now I know it's probably a bit of work to do that, but do you guys think it would be cool to see things like that, even if the story comes back to being the same for everyone?
Comments
I'd love anything that could make the choices matter more, but you know Telltale...Hopefully they can do something like this in their future games.
i would personally love that, but sadly if telltale can't make the episodes longer than 90 minutes i doubt we'll get anything bigger than what we got in a house divided.
I think it would have been an interesting choice to either run after Sarah (who just saw her father die) or help Sarita (who was just bitten by a zombie). If you help Sarita, that earns you points with Kenny and she could possibly live, but Sarah might die out there or finally hit rock bottom and have no one to help her if something bad happens. If you go with Sarah, Clementine finds her and is able to have a heart to heart talk and maybe helps her learn how to survive a little, but then Sarita most probably dies. Like one of the achievements was "Learned new survival skills" or whatever - with Sarita, you cut off her arm and patch it up; with Sarah, you are teaching her the survival skills.
A House Divided's opening actually put a decent amount of work into having two different scenes play out. The scene with Nick and the scene with Pete used different settings, different characters, and somewhat different scenarios. If you're talking about starting out in different scenes that transition into more different scenes, that probably takes a lot out of the production budget, so I doubt we'll be seeing much of that.
Back when I thought we might be playing as Shel or one of the other 400 Days characters, I thought it would have been cool if the season itself could have started out in two completely different ways, possibly even meeting Clem at different times.
It's kind of like if you leave Sarita, she's going to die. And if you leave Sarah, SHE's going to die.
With that said though, I think most people would go with Sarita. She is in danger at the moment.
This is a great idea. Not only 'cause it's good but also 'cause it's possible. When people complained about not being able to stay in Hershel's farm (if you picked Shawn), it made no sense because it would give you two completely different games. In this case, all roads would lead to the same place, so as to speak. Also, it's not neccessary for the branching to be at the beggining of the episode. It could be at the middle or even the end. In fact, it would be great if it happened in ep 5 right before the ending (although the ending would stay the same if there is to be a S3).
Would have been cool to have the choice to either:
[Save Sarita]
or
[Run After Sarah]
In a nutshell
Story branching for the win
Someone had predicted a similar choice before episode 3 came out. Thank God this didn't happen...
I wish it did, it'd help more with the Pizza vs Ice Cream decision.
Save Sarita, Kenny is grateful and Luke is mad at you.
Save Sarah, Luke is grateful and Kenny is mad at you.
I find it really amusing that people are still referring to it as the "Pizza vs Ice Cream" decision based on a simple joke tweet by Job.
But anyway, that would have been a pretty cool choice to implement since only a life or death thing would be enough to get people to turn on Clem. Although I would imagine Luke being far more understanding of this than Kenny.
We're not sure if it was a joke tweet or not. I highly doubt it even is.
It seemed apparent to me that the original tweet was just intended as a tongue-in-cheek "one of these things is not like the other" joke about how things always seem to get worse and worse in The Walking Dead, so it would be funny if the last two episodes turned out to be ridiculously bright and wonderful. If you read the conversation between the Job and the Telltale devs in full it becomes obvious that it's just a few guys joking around about the game:
Job: # TheWalkingDead Season Two
Ep1: In the Shit
Ep2: Shit Hits Fan
Ep3: Shit Gets Worse
Ep4: Sunshine and Rainbows
Ep5: Pizza and Ice Cream
Eric: @jobjstauffer I can’t wait till we reveal in episode 4 that the apocalypse was an elaborate prank pulled on Clem.
Job: @ericparsons Yeah... But we STILL have to make her choose between the Pizza or the Ice Cream.
**Spoiler alert! **
YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH!
Harrison Pink: @jobjstauffer @ericparsons Please. This is the Walking Dead. You can't have either.
Oh, I get it now. It does seem like a joke.
This would be a great way to branch out the story decently! Something needs to be done, even a small thing that makes the story feel less forced and more like we as the player have gotten into these situations.