Ya know, after playing season 1, I knew Telltale was going to have a tough task on its hands by making season 2 better. The first season was so popular that it would be hard to beat.
I don't know what you guys have been playing but I've been loving the new games. The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead are both great, I don't know what you guys are talking about. I reckon if they weren't juggling as many projects and they just released this people wouldn't give it as much shit as they do right now.
Much agreed here. Telltale has handled TWD with great charm in "All That Remains," but it's all just going downhill since they began jugglin… moreg their projects. They don't need to crank out a game every month, we can wait great lengths for something as long as it's good. After an uneventful Ep2 and a grizzly unplayable Ep3, I fear for what the next chapter will (not) give us.
it wasn't the perfect game after all, sure it was fantastic, but not really hard to beat. i'm not saying it's easy, but it looks like they don't even try at least
Ya know, after playing season 1, I knew Telltale was going to have a tough task on its hands by making season 2 better. The first season was so popular that it would be hard to beat.
Yeah Season 2 is no where near as good as Season 1. The characters are a lot more boring and the choices seem to matter less. However I did like this episode. From what I hear the 400 days crew didn't matter either way though TellTell said they would. I couldn't get them to join Tavia and didn't bother going back and getting them to. I do regret not teaching Sarah survival skills though. I am not ready to write off season 2 just yet but it does need stronger characters next episode. I really like Sarah, Bonnie, Carlos, Nick, Kenny and Luke. Could care less about Sarita, Rebecca, Alivin and these other guys and go to hell. I left Alvin to die already. I have a feeling Kenny will die soon and at the end of the season if you make the right choices it will basically be down to Sarah and Clementine. That is what I am expecting to happen anyway. .
You're a hell of a mod, Sniper, all stuff good and true.
I'm not putting all that in a 'show and tell' paradigm, because both verbs belong to the storyteller's repertoire and are not among the player's possible actions. But the storytelling focus now clearly erases interactive elements left and right, and that simply doesn't need to happen. After Season 1, Jake had strongly contested the notion that Telltale's direction would be that of the "visual novel", and he had quite some arguments up his sleeve for that. With Season 2 - and that applies to TWaU as well - we see a further approximation to that kind of media, so much in fact that we could identify the visual novel as the ideal form of Telltale's "episodic story game" idea. It factually isn't the same thing, but the more streamlined it gets, the less pacing remains in the hands of the player, the more similar it will turn out to be.
[In case it needs to be said, I'm only a volunteer moderator. I am not from Telltale and my opinions are my own.]
As a result of Tellta… morele’s growth spurt from the success of Walking Dead: Season 1 in 2012, it seems that Telltale is at a crossroads in how they utilize player interaction and story pacing to create compelling interactions for players in their games – not only in the transition from their classic titles to Walking Dead: Season 1, but from Season 1 onto their newer titles. It is obvious that as a result of Walking Dead, Telltale looks towards the narrative/thematic presentation and “tailored story” gameplay mechanics of Walking Dead as their new template – not only as a testament to the game’s accessibility and mainstream success, but as Telltale’s signature now that they have established an identity for themselves with new and unique gameplay. Ideally for future titles, the tailored choice system would be the backbone of thei… [view original content]
What if I told you, there aren't anyone following you. People just do not agree with you. Isn't that more likely that someone wasting time to downvote you all the time? Who do you think you are?
[In case it needs to be said, I'm only a volunteer moderator. I am not from Telltale and my opinions are my own.]
As a result of Tellta… morele’s growth spurt from the success of Walking Dead: Season 1 in 2012, it seems that Telltale is at a crossroads in how they utilize player interaction and story pacing to create compelling interactions for players in their games – not only in the transition from their classic titles to Walking Dead: Season 1, but from Season 1 onto their newer titles. It is obvious that as a result of Walking Dead, Telltale looks towards the narrative/thematic presentation and “tailored story” gameplay mechanics of Walking Dead as their new template – not only as a testament to the game’s accessibility and mainstream success, but as Telltale’s signature now that they have established an identity for themselves with new and unique gameplay. Ideally for future titles, the tailored choice system would be the backbone of thei… [view original content]
You're a hell of a mod, Sniper, all stuff good and true.
I'm not putting all that in a 'show and tell' paradigm, because both verbs be… morelong to the storyteller's repertoire and are not among the player's possible actions. But the storytelling focus now clearly erases interactive elements left and right, and that simply doesn't need to happen. After Season 1, Jake had strongly contested the notion that Telltale's direction would be that of the "visual novel", and he had quite some arguments up his sleeve for that. With Season 2 - and that applies to TWaU as well - we see a further approximation to that kind of media, so much in fact that we could identify the visual novel as the ideal form of Telltale's "episodic story game" idea. It factually isn't the same thing, but the more streamlined it gets, the less pacing remains in the hands of the player, the more similar it will turn out to be.
Tbh I was awake after episode 1 was finished and always expressed my honest opinion on the issue no matter what general reaction was.
They needed 100,000 sells to break even and sold over 21 million in s1 which means they could of expanded every feature to massive extent but no they got selfish and made cheap game with no gameplay and supposely for story branches all illusion of choice.
The only reason there not making it much better is because if they upgrade the game to much it won't work among all platforms reducing their market to sell to they had a chose make a gaming history defining game or maintain guaranteed maximum profit not worrying about quality of product. The last of us sold 6 million units that was game of the year also bioshock Infinite(4m) and their games cost millions to make and didn't even sell a 1/4 as much with a small market so not AAA title won't cut it for me.
They are making more money on each game then any other big company so for loss of quality there's no excuse.
I already feel like I wasted 5 bones on 400 days. When the tweet came out that "if you havent yet you might want to play 400 days, it plays a big role in the story, etc". I already was done with the first episode of season 2 when that tweet was posted which made me want to get 400 days for the choices. and woopty-doo none of the choices I made in 400 days transferred over... So rather than just bonnie being at Carver's everyone in 400 days was at Carvers except Russel and for all I know because of the random generation Russel could of went with Nate... DAMN YOU TTG!
If the rest of the 400 Days cast don't do anything else by the next episode...or at least the 5th episode, then I feel like I wasted $5 for nothing, tbh.
i fully agree with you, that they should hold back GOT and TFTB till season 2 and TWAU are finished
but look on the bright side, we already know nick breckon, who wrote episode 1 and 2 from season 2 will write the season finale, so we can expect something great there
I loved episode three except for some of the ways that they did scenes. The 400 days characters (Except for Bonnie and Tavia) really had NO affect on the episode. This kind of bugged me because there was all of that hype where you *really* had to play 400 days so I thought maybe they'd help you escape or something, but all we got were a few determinant dialogue bits. It's perfectly ok for them to continue working on other games but they need more staff on TWDG. They said that Game of Thrones would be a bigger game than TWDG which I call bullshit, but seriously, they need people working on the games that people care most about at the moment... which is TWDG and TWAU.
I agree with all your points but in terms of gameplay being new and unique the gameplay was a complete rip off of Heavy Rain Timed dialogue , Multiple dialogue choices , Decision changing story, QTE's, Interact with everything even meaningless objects etc, Puzzles and Cinematic etc
Even though one of my favorite games of all time find it annoying everytime hear telltale saying how they reinvented the wheel in terms of point and clicks gameplay credit where credit is due
[In case it needs to be said, I'm only a volunteer moderator. I am not from Telltale and my opinions are my own.]
As a result of Tellta… morele’s growth spurt from the success of Walking Dead: Season 1 in 2012, it seems that Telltale is at a crossroads in how they utilize player interaction and story pacing to create compelling interactions for players in their games – not only in the transition from their classic titles to Walking Dead: Season 1, but from Season 1 onto their newer titles. It is obvious that as a result of Walking Dead, Telltale looks towards the narrative/thematic presentation and “tailored story” gameplay mechanics of Walking Dead as their new template – not only as a testament to the game’s accessibility and mainstream success, but as Telltale’s signature now that they have established an identity for themselves with new and unique gameplay. Ideally for future titles, the tailored choice system would be the backbone of thei… [view original content]
They have a right to work on as many series as they want. This is a business and they want to grow, not be confined to one project because some fans arent happy that the series they prefer is not up to their standards.
I remember watching Telltale's staff interview on YouTube, they talked about season one's episode three...they said that middle episode is the big "Game Changer".
This episode was just...incomplete.There was missing something...but I don't know what: twists, brutal deaths, betrayals, secrets!! They could've used S1 EP3 example and added more things like hostage situations or forced choosing sides...and Carver's death in my opinion was way too early(I thought he was gonna spill the beans about the cabin group) I don't know if Telltale did that just because the fans wanted Carver dead or be killed by Kenny...Also I saw a year ago that somebody made fanart of Kenny wearing a eye patch on his left eye...I don't know if TTG did that for the fans too.
I don't know if I dare to say it but Telltale Games are losing their shine. They are way in over their heads with hype and fame with Borderlands and Game of Thrones. It seems they want to rush The Walking Dead, and The Wolf Among Us out on the market to leave room for their future projects. If this continues the results will be disastrous for our two dearest titles.
Why am I even posting this; Telltale are never going to bother reading this anyway. :/
Though I admire the alacrity of your post, I disagree that TTG has somehow 'misinterpreted" TWD Season 1's success as "solely the result of the game's cinematic presentation and choice making" and that "Telltale is only relying on “telling” stories, and as a result, misses out on all the benefits that “showing” through player interactions has outside of player choice selection". First, it seems much more deliberate and canny considering the emphasis we now see in current titles, as well as the fact that puzzles and interactivity were a major part of what TTG *used* to be about.
Second, I think there's an issue of equivocation with the word "show", because when writers show they do so by stimulating the imagination extremely well, but this is a video game where everything that can be shown is, visually - not visualized. And even though the core elements are still there, though scant, the progress and development of the narrative remains crucial, and doesn't necessarily need to rely on immersion like an open-world RPG, even if it shares some semblance of that genre. I'm not saying it's not immersive at all, either, it's just that the process is being done differently in order to distinguish themselves and the genre that TTG has taken on.
So, instead of caring about a character because you believe you're like them in real life, you're asked to care about a character who, even though they're not necessarily like you, is *as if they were you* in another world. You could say the 'direction' of feeling is changed, if that makes more sense. To elaborate, it's not just an "if I were you" scenario. It's very different because you're selecting the choices for someone who is essentially their own person with an affected history (thanks to Lee, also tailored by you) in order to drive the story forward.
Anyway, there's still potential, as you say, for other interactive elements outside of player choices to have in storytelling, but how those can be integrated may actually be better suited to other titles - specifically Tales from the Borderlands and their proverbial vaults.
[In case it needs to be said, I'm only a volunteer moderator. I am not from Telltale and my opinions are my own.]
As a result of Tellta… morele’s growth spurt from the success of Walking Dead: Season 1 in 2012, it seems that Telltale is at a crossroads in how they utilize player interaction and story pacing to create compelling interactions for players in their games – not only in the transition from their classic titles to Walking Dead: Season 1, but from Season 1 onto their newer titles. It is obvious that as a result of Walking Dead, Telltale looks towards the narrative/thematic presentation and “tailored story” gameplay mechanics of Walking Dead as their new template – not only as a testament to the game’s accessibility and mainstream success, but as Telltale’s signature now that they have established an identity for themselves with new and unique gameplay. Ideally for future titles, the tailored choice system would be the backbone of thei… [view original content]
WTF Borderlands? Who will play this?? If they were smart and wanted to make another game. Why not just make another series of the Walking Dead with other characters like perhaps Lilly as the protagonist. That have different story lines.
Working on four games at once will be their downfall. First off, Borderlands WILL fail. What core borderlands fan will play it? Its a comple… moretely different genre and story. Second, they already have trouble releasing 2 series on time. But 4? My god are you joking?
Even though I really enjoyed episode 3, you do make a lot of excellent points and I agree for the most part. They either need to hire a lot more employees or just work on one game at a time and focus and put all of their energy towards that one game. I can see they are starting to become this greedy company who cares more about money than about how the fans actually feel about the quality of the game (Call of Duty devs, I'm looking at you.) And I understand that they want to make more money, who wouldn't? But if they keep working on multiple games like this, the quality of each game will suffer and less and less people will be buying their games. Quality > Quantity
Problem is, the episodes are getting more simple, but they are as linear as Season One was. Hell, they could, at least, give us some branches, huh? But we all know what will happen in the end: all determinants ends up dying
Season 1 has way more details and subtle moments. Season 2 seems to be overly obsessed with creating a big plot that they forgot to develop the characters.
In season 1, even the villains aren't that evil-The only one I can't forgive is Danny. The stranger, Andy St.John and Brenda St.John, even Vernon, still induces mixed feeling from me.
[In case it needs to be said, I'm only a volunteer moderator. I am not from Telltale and my opinions are my own.]
Although I may have phrased my post poorly, I actually do greatly advocate their new direction in concept. It's more so that I feel Telltale can go much further with their distinctive and innovative interpretation of adventure games than simply choices/QTEs, and that Telltale has a large repertoire of interactive elements from their classic games that they can retool to create equally potent and immersive interactions with their narratives that don't just have to be "tedious busy work" and can still be accessible to a mainstream audience.
it's more so while Telltale makes choice making and role playing the backbone of the game, that I hope they will manage to create unique interactive elements for a franchise beyond Quick Time Events. I've tried to focus on using "interactive elements" over "gameplay" as I do not believe Telltale needs to dip into traditional gameplay for their new style of narrative. However, I think Telltale underestimates how other forms of interaction can assist players in immersion without alienating casual players. For instance, in Wolf Among Us, I adore how the choice making is executed, but I feel that the game would benefit from some "detective" gameplay outside of clicking hotspots in hub areas. It doesn't have to be arbitrary puzzles, but I feel that an ideal Telltale experience from my perspective would make use of more tools than just QTEs and clicking on hotspots to make the narrative immersive.
Telltale's previews released for Tales from the Borderlands seem to indicate that Telltale is trying out some new interactive elements for "gunplay" from the Borderlands franchise - which of course I do not expect nor want to be full fledged Borderlands gameplay, but you know what I mean - so perhaps my point may be moot if only Wolf and Dead Season 2 rely solely on QTEs and dialogue choices as the only tools in their library to immerse players in their choice making and tailored narrative. (In case I didn't clarify; as I implied earlier, I do like the dialogue choices and am not looking down on them. Rather, it's that Telltale has heavy potential to have dialogue choices coexist with other interactive elements that do not have to serve as traditional gameplay elements.)
Though I admire the alacrity of your post, I disagree that TTG has somehow 'misinterpreted" TWD Season 1's success as "solely the result of … morethe game's cinematic presentation and choice making" and that "Telltale is only relying on “telling” stories, and as a result, misses out on all the benefits that “showing” through player interactions has outside of player choice selection". First, it seems much more deliberate and canny considering the emphasis we now see in current titles, as well as the fact that puzzles and interactivity were a major part of what TTG *used* to be about.
Second, I think there's an issue of equivocation with the word "show", because when writers show they do so by stimulating the imagination extremely well, but this is a video game where everything that can be shown is, visually - not visualized. And even though the core elements are still there, though scant, the progress and development of the narrative remains … [view original content]
why do you keep assumeing they are working on 4 games, 2 mabey but not 4. game of thrones is not even being worked on and borderlands is mo… morest likely in preproduction.
the carver thing: disk one final boss. i called this before the episode even came out. for those that don't know what this term means it is a villain set up to be the main villain but dies half way through the story.
I hope you guys know there's two episodes left, they could definitely get Carver explained and use the 400 days people within two episodes for various reasons.
First off Id like to preface this by saying you make great points about telltale's writing......but......
okay so first off: Telltale is only advertising 4 games, not developing 4. TFTB and GOT are only getting the most prelimanry screens to get the hype going early off
second: TWAU script is done and Ep 4 is on the way, so really most of the push work for TWAU Is done other than rendering/Voice acting
You do know that TFTB is done and is Coming out in the Summer right?? That will be 3 games that they will be actively working on Episode 5 of TWAU, Episode 4 and 5 of TWD, and TFTB Episode 1 and 2 Soo that's a lot of projects and lets not forget that they have people WRITING the Script for GoT.
First off Id like to preface this by saying you make great points about telltale's writing......but......
okay so first off: Telltale i… mores only advertising 4 games, not developing 4. TFTB and GOT are only getting the most prelimanry screens to get the hype going early off
second: TWAU script is done and Ep 4 is on the way, so really most of the push work for TWAU Is done other than rendering/Voice acting
I keep having this dual reaction where, on the one hand, I really enjoyed the episode and, on the other hand, I can't help but focus relentlessly on the negative because of how much better it could have been.
You do know that TFTB is done and is Coming out in the Summer right?? That will be 3 games that they will be actively working on Episode 5 o… moref TWAU, Episode 4 and 5 of TWD, and TFTB Episode 1 and 2 Soo that's a lot of projects and lets not forget that they have people WRITING the Script for GoT.
Agree with TWAU taught I was only one who felt way. It was the only disappointing thing about TWAU for me even though it's great game bit of detective work in point and click adventure game is essential to me.
[In case it needs to be said, I'm only a volunteer moderator. I am not from Telltale and my opinions are my own.]
Although I may have p… morehrased my post poorly, I actually do greatly advocate their new direction in concept. It's more so that I feel Telltale can go much further with their distinctive and innovative interpretation of adventure games than simply choices/QTEs, and that Telltale has a large repertoire of interactive elements from their classic games that they can retool to create equally potent and immersive interactions with their narratives that don't just have to be "tedious busy work" and can still be accessible to a mainstream audience.
it's more so while Telltale makes choice making and role playing the backbone of the game, that I hope they will manage to create unique interactive elements for a franchise beyond Quick Time Events. I've tried to focus on using "interactive elements" over "gameplay" as I do not believe… [view original content]
I think at this moment, Season 2 is suffering from a lack of direction. It's one escape after another with no idea of what's coming, which, for me, is making it all feel very disconnected and lessening the effectiveness of the choices.
We're 3 episodes on from 400 Days and that seems completely irrelevant
Christa is gone and no-one seems to care
The baby mystery is forgotten
And the thing that could have connected them all, ie Carver, well that's done now. It feels like everything since the end of Season 1 has been disregarded and that is deeply unsatisfying. In my view, this game has got 2 episodes left to save itself.
Comments
I'm not putting all that in a 'show and tell' paradigm, because both verbs belong to the storyteller's repertoire and are not among the player's possible actions. But the storytelling focus now clearly erases interactive elements left and right, and that simply doesn't need to happen. After Season 1, Jake had strongly contested the notion that Telltale's direction would be that of the "visual novel", and he had quite some arguments up his sleeve for that. With Season 2 - and that applies to TWaU as well - we see a further approximation to that kind of media, so much in fact that we could identify the visual novel as the ideal form of Telltale's "episodic story game" idea. It factually isn't the same thing, but the more streamlined it gets, the less pacing remains in the hands of the player, the more similar it will turn out to be.
They needed 100,000 sells to break even and sold over 21 million in s1 which means they could of expanded every feature to massive extent but no they got selfish and made cheap game with no gameplay and supposely for story branches all illusion of choice.
The only reason there not making it much better is because if they upgrade the game to much it won't work among all platforms reducing their market to sell to they had a chose make a gaming history defining game or maintain guaranteed maximum profit not worrying about quality of product. The last of us sold 6 million units that was game of the year also bioshock Infinite(4m) and their games cost millions to make and didn't even sell a 1/4 as much with a small market so not AAA title won't cut it for me.
They are making more money on each game then any other big company so for loss of quality there's no excuse.
but look on the bright side, we already know nick breckon, who wrote episode 1 and 2 from season 2 will write the season finale, so we can expect something great there
Even though one of my favorite games of all time find it annoying everytime hear telltale saying how they reinvented the wheel in terms of point and clicks gameplay credit where credit is due
Heavy rain release 11 February 2010
The Walking Dead S1 April 24, 2012
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Rain
Thank you.
This episode was just...incomplete.There was missing something...but I don't know what: twists, brutal deaths, betrayals, secrets!! They could've used S1 EP3 example and added more things like hostage situations or forced choosing sides...and Carver's death in my opinion was way too early(I thought he was gonna spill the beans about the cabin group) I don't know if Telltale did that just because the fans wanted Carver dead or be killed by Kenny...Also I saw a year ago that somebody made fanart of Kenny wearing a eye patch on his left eye...I don't know if TTG did that for the fans too.
This episode feels rushed...
Why am I even posting this; Telltale are never going to bother reading this anyway. :/
Second, I think there's an issue of equivocation with the word "show", because when writers show they do so by stimulating the imagination extremely well, but this is a video game where everything that can be shown is, visually - not visualized. And even though the core elements are still there, though scant, the progress and development of the narrative remains crucial, and doesn't necessarily need to rely on immersion like an open-world RPG, even if it shares some semblance of that genre. I'm not saying it's not immersive at all, either, it's just that the process is being done differently in order to distinguish themselves and the genre that TTG has taken on.
So, instead of caring about a character because you believe you're like them in real life, you're asked to care about a character who, even though they're not necessarily like you, is *as if they were you* in another world. You could say the 'direction' of feeling is changed, if that makes more sense. To elaborate, it's not just an "if I were you" scenario. It's very different because you're selecting the choices for someone who is essentially their own person with an affected history (thanks to Lee, also tailored by you) in order to drive the story forward.
Anyway, there's still potential, as you say, for other interactive elements outside of player choices to have in storytelling, but how those can be integrated may actually be better suited to other titles - specifically Tales from the Borderlands and their proverbial vaults.
I would CSI this in a heartbeat.
In season 1, even the villains aren't that evil-The only one I can't forgive is Danny. The stranger, Andy St.John and Brenda St.John, even Vernon, still induces mixed feeling from me.
Although I may have phrased my post poorly, I actually do greatly advocate their new direction in concept. It's more so that I feel Telltale can go much further with their distinctive and innovative interpretation of adventure games than simply choices/QTEs, and that Telltale has a large repertoire of interactive elements from their classic games that they can retool to create equally potent and immersive interactions with their narratives that don't just have to be "tedious busy work" and can still be accessible to a mainstream audience.
it's more so while Telltale makes choice making and role playing the backbone of the game, that I hope they will manage to create unique interactive elements for a franchise beyond Quick Time Events. I've tried to focus on using "interactive elements" over "gameplay" as I do not believe Telltale needs to dip into traditional gameplay for their new style of narrative. However, I think Telltale underestimates how other forms of interaction can assist players in immersion without alienating casual players. For instance, in Wolf Among Us, I adore how the choice making is executed, but I feel that the game would benefit from some "detective" gameplay outside of clicking hotspots in hub areas. It doesn't have to be arbitrary puzzles, but I feel that an ideal Telltale experience from my perspective would make use of more tools than just QTEs and clicking on hotspots to make the narrative immersive.
Telltale's previews released for Tales from the Borderlands seem to indicate that Telltale is trying out some new interactive elements for "gunplay" from the Borderlands franchise - which of course I do not expect nor want to be full fledged Borderlands gameplay, but you know what I mean - so perhaps my point may be moot if only Wolf and Dead Season 2 rely solely on QTEs and dialogue choices as the only tools in their library to immerse players in their choice making and tailored narrative. (In case I didn't clarify; as I implied earlier, I do like the dialogue choices and am not looking down on them. Rather, it's that Telltale has heavy potential to have dialogue choices coexist with other interactive elements that do not have to serve as traditional gameplay elements.)
okay so first off: Telltale is only advertising 4 games, not developing 4. TFTB and GOT are only getting the most prelimanry screens to get the hype going early off
second: TWAU script is done and Ep 4 is on the way, so really most of the push work for TWAU Is done other than rendering/Voice acting
Yea it comes out this Summer...
We're 3 episodes on from 400 Days and that seems completely irrelevant
Christa is gone and no-one seems to care
The baby mystery is forgotten
And the thing that could have connected them all, ie Carver, well that's done now. It feels like everything since the end of Season 1 has been disregarded and that is deeply unsatisfying. In my view, this game has got 2 episodes left to save itself.