Should Telltale make games with choices that matter?
Telltale has achived a huge sucess in gaming industry, and has earned milions upon milions in revenue from said games. And the games are always advertised as - The choices you make matter, and you make your own story.
But we know that is a lie. And while it could be understood at the start, I think its high time that they start making game with persistent choices, that result in widely different outcomes trough the season or seasons even.
They have the money. Voice acting should not be an issue now.
And development should not be an issue either with all the money they have.
Unfortunately, season 2 of TWD and now GoT have really emphasised how little your choices matter, and how meaningless they are.
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I really think that choices matter. There is only one story to be tell but inside the story you can make a lot of changes. The way characters treat you depends on how you treat them, some die because of you, some die because of the story needs them dead.
I definitely think it is a great game experience, and it only gets screwed if you restart over and over the game to see what could have happened.
I think the majority of people advocating 'choices need to matter more' do not understand the implications of having branching storylines. every choice basically creates a new storyline and basically becomes an entirely new game.
They cannot do it given their schedule. And correct me if I'm wrong, but are their sales anywhere near the level that AAA developers like BioWare, Activision etc. get? I know their team is about 140, which pales in comparison? Even if they are though, they sell their games at a cheaper price. Around the same price as a TV Box set. And at the moment, those 140 people are working on two series.
But yes, even if their release schedule wasn't an issue amongst the other things I mentioned, a true branching story is very hard to pull off. Not impossible, mind you, but very hard. There's a reason the Witcher 3 devs don't want to go down that route again and it's why most games, whether by AAA or indie devs, have choices only lead to minor differences. The big difference when it comes Telltale's games and those of others (for the most part as a few games do have true branching), like Bioware, in my opinion, is that it's more noticeable with Telltale's games because of their length, but they are essentially the same when it comes to choices. At least so far as 'reaching the same destination' is concerned, and 'seeing the same broad story arcs'.
Also, as Telltale's games are heavily cinematic (I don't mean great graphics etc. as people love to complain about them at times, but you know what I mean), it's especially problematic due to needing to create cutscenes, record audio and what have you.
It's the reason visual novels have an easier job really, when it comes to making choices matter more. While they do feature audio and some images/character art, they mostly rely on the text. Even a text-based branching story isn't easy at all (especially one that's not short or of a high quality). Plus it brings me back to the development cycle. They're free to take as long as they need, whereas Telltale has 4 - 8 weeks as an estimate to deliver each episode (which some people complain about as is).
And as aside, if Telltale were to create multiple stories that could occur, the quality of the individual stories 'could' suffer. Or people may not even see all of the story branches they created.
You should try make a simple text adventure game, then you understand it's not so simple to make games with different choices.
No. They should make the games how ever they want, not bend over for every person who wants an open sand box of options and choices. I'm here for the ride, not to dictate what TTG should or shouldn't do.
They have enough money that they really could offer actual divergence, it can even still follow the same plot but have meaninful differences. The changes in Season 2, TWAU and here in GOT are terrible. Ethan shouldn't have to die if I actually play it smart. Ramsey's a psycho but he's not dumb, he even agreed with half the stuff I said. Some events have to happen but at least in Season 1 they felt natural. It's clear Telltale don't listen to any feedback other than the length complaint so why bother.
I'd agree if it were anyone but Ramsay. In both the books and the show, he proves himself to be one of the most duplicitous characters in the realm. At least with people like Tywin or Littlefinger, you should know better than to trust them. But Ramsay enjoys making his prey feel safe, right until the moment he reminds them whom they're dealing sith. He is a treacherous, sadistic sociopath. I really think he could have been planning to kill Ethan all along, and be deliberately agreeing with him in order to make the moment of his betrayal that much more shocking and fear-inducing for his subjects. Things only go sour when he begins to threaten Talia, at which point he will kill Ethan no matter which choice he makes. If he remains silent, Ramsay simply calls Ethan wise instead of brave. That, and he doesn't actually take Talia along with him upon leaving. This makes me think his sole intent with her was to provoke Ethan. Whether he succeeds or not, he does what he came for.
Game of Thrones is ONE episode in, everyone needs to stop complaining. And OP - Telltale isn't a huge gaming company, so with what they have they are doing a great job. "Choice and consequence" can only go so far in a game, and Telltale is doing a fine job with that.
If people don't like what unique stuff TT has to offer, than just stop buying their games and stop complaining.
I agree with this. I mean Ramsay was planning on killing Ethan before hand. Ethan couldn't have made a choice to change Ramsay's opinion.
No.
Deal with it.
Yeah they should to be honest, they need to progress not stay the same. The series are becoming infamous for choices that dont do anything. I dont need every choice to matter but whatever
Then why are Telltale t=so bashful as to advertise that choices matter?
Hrulj, first of all, I think you made a mistake in asking this here. Ask it in a more "neutral" venue. Either on one of the gaming subs on Reddit, or even the Steam forum for this game where people are less "blinded".
In any case, having played all their games since TWD S1, the saddest thing for me personally is that Telltale have regressed continuously. TWD S1 at the very least gave you a decent amount of choices that made a difference in the short term. Saving Doug, saving Carley. All inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but they tried there at least to incorporate your choices and shake things up here and there.
In TWD S2 and TWAU, the went a step back. There were choices, yes, I'm not saying there weren't any. But nothing that was central to the story like TWD S1. The choices mattered less as well, and you could call them "gimmicky". I mean they even say your TWD S1 choices will affect you S2 playthrough, but that was one big blatant lie.
They managed to please their ardent supporters with inconsequential choices. Like for example, in TWAU, you can save Prince Charming. Yet, he never played any appreciable role in the story thereafter. He was a mere prop. The TTG loyalists however lapped this up and said that your choices matter more (cause previously whoever was saved would die regardless in TWD S1), when in true fact it was a mere gimmick.
Another one is the ending of TWD S2. This is again another favourite of said loyalists. But the truth is, the ending of TWD S2 is ONLY affected by the choices you make in the final 10 mins of the game. The choices made in the first 98% of the season have no bearing on the ending! And you must be kidding yourself if you think Telltale will start off S3 with branching paths based on your S2 ending!
Tales from the Borderlands and Game of Thrones are even worse choice wise, being ever the more railroaded, especially in the case of Game of Thrones. Yes, they are only one episode in each, but compared to even just the season premieres of the first 3 games, choices are more limited.
I laugh when I read the gaming news sites reviewing TFTB and GOT and saying how difficult and meaningful the choices were.
It is not unreasonable to think that with massive financial and critical success, and experience in crafting games like this, Telltale would be able to incorporate more meaningful, long lasting and complex choice-consequence components into their games as time goes by. But sadly, what we have here is a company that refuses to innovate, and is resting on its laurels.
This is only made worse by the fact that it is THEM who raised our hopes and expectations with regards to the impact of our choices while playing their games. They advertise it on all store pages of their games, but it is, alas, nothing but false advertisement.
I really don’t know if they should make their games this way (I, personally, would prefer, but that’s not the point). This depends on their own resources and materials, and also on their will to do it.
But what TT should really do is to not use the “The choices you make matter” slogan. You can say that the choices influence the story, that the story is tailored by player choices,… but if the outcome cannot be changed in any way, the “choices matters” is a lie from the point of view of the story. This is a problem that come from TWD season 1.
They can definitely be more expressive, and offer stronger illusions of choice.
I don't think asking them to have massively insanely branching stories is realistic. But having every determinant character just get killed off 1 episode later is a major drag. They can be better at compartmentalizing some of our choices. So saving someone doesn't feel pointless from a meta perspective, because you know they'll die next episode.
Think about something like the Virmire Survivor in ME3. Two entirely separate mutually exclusive party members. I don't think they have the same budget, but I know they can write around determinant characters without lazily killing them off in a lot of cases. They've gotten better at it in TWD2 and AWAU. Determinant characters are never a huge deal after their possible death scene, and they generally still get killed off.
But still, it wasn't as blatant as it was in TWD1. I just hope they get better at that. With the holy grail, determinant characters signficantly coloring major story events. Not changing them, but still feeling like major characters, and getting a biggest important seeming moment after their possible death scene.
Because the choices do matter. We get different dialogue depending on what we say.
I'd prefer (at the very least) stand-alone seasons in which your decisions DON'T have to match up in order for the next season to make sense. I don't want Clementine in Season 3 of the Walking Dead because it just wouldn't make sense/ be feasible. And since we probably won't see Clementine again, her story could've had a few sharp turns that were actually branching.
P.S. Totally should've been able to abandon you-know-who (for if you didn't finish S2). I wouldn't have personally, but I can still see Clementine raised in a certain way doing it.
There is no need to bring up walking dead. Yes the choices didnt really matter, but Telltale didnt matter either. The money, and fame, and experience that came after it, is the reason why threads like this are opened.
But to have things like:
I want X to go get X in esos.
No I dont want to do that, you will not do that.
As you say
Next episode trailer:
X went to Esos to get X
Your choice didnt matter at all
Should you do everything you can to please Ramsey?
Well why would you, it ends all the same.
They sold close to 10 000 000 copies of TWD by 2013
If a copy is just 10$ that is 100 000 000$
And we know we didnt pay 10$ for the game
So talking about "money limits" is sily. If they have problems with time, then expand.
Am I saying this because I hate Telltale?
No, I am saying it because I like it. I dont want them to fail. But they will fail if they continue with false adds.
If 100's of milions in profits, dont make you a big company, tell me what does
Had a different post typed up, but found this link, so I'll just leave this here:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/telltales-the-walking-dead-sells-85-million-episodes/1100-6402072/
Title: Telltale's The Walking Dead sells 8.5 million episodes
Introductory paragraph reads: 'Five-chapter series generates over $40 million in sales for developer Telltale; mobile sales account for 25 per cent of total.'
That was from January, 2013.
Edit: Ah, just found this http://www.techtimes.com/articles/11417/20140728/walking-dead-video-game-telltale-games.htm
Claims 28 million episodes sold, and it was published in July of this year, I believe.
They're honestly not a big company. They certainly are increasing their profits and size with working with big names like HBO and Gearbox, but at the end of the day they aren't one of the biggest gaming companies out there. With what they have, I think they are giving a very unique style to gaming that's not common and people need to stop bitching about it.
100s of millions of profits? Do you have figures to back up that number? Lol