Should Telltale convert to Until Dawn format?
Hey guys, wassup? So before I get into this, I just want to say that I love Telltale and I love pretty much everything they do. TFTB is quite possibly my favorite game of all time, but a common problem with almost all of Telltale's games has started to grab my attention more and more recently. My choices just don't matter...like almost at all. It's all gonna end up the same way no matter what I do, and this is starting to detract from the journey just a little. Don't get me wrong, I still love playing their games, but I think they need to find a way to correct this issue. I couldn't think of a way for them to do that, but then my friend came over a couple weeks ago and brought Until Dawn with him. He said I needed to play it, so I gave it a shot. I freaking binged played that game over the weekend, and I have never done that before. Everything I did and said in that game mattered, to varying degrees, sure, but still. It was truly all up to me to get all of these people out alive. I've never been more engaged. When I finally finished the game with all of them alive, I had never felt more accomplished. Until Dawn made my choices matter, and I believe that if Telltale converted to Until Dawn's non-episodic release format, they could do the same. Until Dawn still was broken up into episodic chunks, but it was all released at once, which means they didn't have to work around the clock making a new episode every month, which made it easier to make more branching paths. I believe that Telltale should stop doing episodic releases in order to actually deliver truly choice based gameplay. Do you agree, or do you believe that the episodic format is too much a part of Telltale for them to let it go?
Comments
It was pretty difficult. I had some help from my friend, but most of it came down to my choice-making instincts and my quick-time event skills (thank you Telltale). Also, pay attention to the totems, they really do help you figure out what to do.
No problem CAITT. And one more thing, have Matt resist going to the fire tower, then give Matt the flare gun. It will allow him to survive if you try to save Em on when the tower collapses.
Lol, who was still alive in your play through? For me it was:
Sam, Jessica, and Chris.
I don't think Telltale should give up the Episodic releases, but I do agree that they should do what Until Dawn in terms of choices and I do believe telltale are kind of learning (Game of thrones being a great example)
I assume that would be Ashley?
Walking Dead Season 3? All in one session? HELL YEAH I'D LOVE THAT!
I'd be fine either way.
i actually manged to save all of them, though in one of my gameplays matt & em died
...................... i may of cried
No. Telltale doesn't like relying on QTE's to provide different branches. They want their games to be played by anyone no matter what skill level they may have with video games. Not to mention Until Dawn isn't as massive of a game as it appears to be.
Not really, but perhaps it's time they made their choices matter a bit more and let their players interact with the game more often. An Until Dawn approach is a bit too much, but if they were to incorporate elements from the game into their games to improve it, I don't see an issue.
I can imagine crying when Matt died, but Em? I mean... Em?
I don't think Telltale would likely move away from the episodic model since it has worked well for them thus far. But games like Until Dawn, Life is Strange and the like can definitely help with trying to make the Choices and Consequences model work for them more.
???
???
????????????
Oh man, she is totally a squirrel. Never noticed that before
Yeah, Matt got killed in one of my playthroughs, he was such a nice guy, super sad.
Ashley is awesome, what's your problem with her?
I know right? It would be so awesome not to wait, especially if it lead to massive, branching paths.
Until Dawn doesn't entirely rely on QTEs to determine who lives and dies, but I see your point. Telltale games are quite accessible. But Until Dawn is quite massive in comparison to many Telltale games. In Telltale games, you save someone's life, they either die later or play a very small role. In Until Dawn, you can save them all, or they can all die. Sounds pretty massive to me.
Yeah, it's kind of their thing, and it's been working for a while, but I still think it's time for a change. And I don't think Life is Strange is a great example. It made you feel like your choices mattered, but then they presented you with two options which would both erase everything you had done so far. I loved the journey, hated the destination.
I would definitely agree that it sucked that ultimately everything came down to which ending you wanted from your final choice, especially with how well elements in the previous episodes had been crafted. I haven't played Until Dawn yet since horror's not my thing but from what I hear it does manage to do a decent job of giving consequence, even if one character is evidently meant to be the 'final girl' trope from as I've heard it.
Yeah, it was a disappointing ending to a game that could have been one of my favorites. You should play Until Dawn. I personally am not a fan of the horror genre either, but Until Dawn is the right kind of scary, not the usual scary for the sake of being scary that the horror genre has come to be. Yes, there are two characters who have to make it to the final chapter, but they can both die at the end if you mess up. Everything is up to you.
Probably not, Telltale has its own type of way of telling a story, just like how Until Dawn does.
I don't know man outside of two characters literally everyone else will die if you fuck up the QTE's.
Also
That's true, but like you mentioned as a criticism with Telltale, They play a small role. A character lives, but they don't show up till the last act with another character who lived. They get a 5 minute sequence with that character where they could live or die, and then you don't see them till the credits.
I think the Butterfly effect concept is very cool, and I like how its not easy to change the fate of a certain character, but the execution is similar to other games.
It's true, but there are at least pieces of the Until Dawn format that I believe Telltale should adopt. If Telltale is all about choice as they say they are, they should strive to improve their choice and consequence system, and if they followed Until Dawn's model, I believe they could do just that.
I guess that's true, like how she reacts to Em's bite seems a little out of character, but she's overall really nice and really cool. She really cares about Josh and Chris and helps to save Sam. She has a lot of good qualities.
Ashley, Chris, Josh and Em can all die if you make certain choices, not just by quick-time events. And the underuse thing is only the case with Matt and Jess, and that short sequence is still more divergence than most Telltale games deliver. It actually makes the game longer, it's an impressive feat in my opinion.
It sounds a lot like Heavy Rain, which for the most part had the sense that any of your 4 playable characters could die and it would impact the story greatly. Sadly Beyond: Two Souls didn't match that, so I'm hoping Detroit: Become Human will stick more to the way of the former.
Up to Episode 4 I think Life is Strange is very well done, just that it has something of a dumb last episode. If you've never seen it there's a great diagram somewhere of the dialogue tree where Max and Chloe are trying to convince Frank to help them, with all the possible impacts from previous episodes and what will and won't convince Frank to help you, leading to whether he dies, gets wounded or helps you in the end.
She only does that if you shoot her in the face as Chris! I wouldn't be too happy if someone I liked tried to shoot me either. And she has the most opportunities in the game to be nice to other people. She can be honest with Matt, honest with Em, she can show genuine remorse over the prank. Most of the other characters don't have those opportunities.
It is like Heavy Rain, only better acted lol. I totally agree that for a while, Life is Strange was very well done, but the ending is the most important part of any story in my opinion, and it really was the worst. That tree thing sounds cool, I'll check it out.
I absolutely agree, maybe a complete overhaul isn't necessary, but adopting some of the elements would definitely help.
Here's the chart here, worth a look.
http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Life-Is-Strange-Frank-flowchart.jpg
I think Heavy Rain's only big crit was inconsistent acting, whereas Beyond had great actors like Ellen Page and William Defoe but was a bit all over story wise.
Ashley - Follow the voice (DEAD) or move forward (LIVE)
Chris - Fuck up the QTE's when being chased by the wendigo (DEAD), Point the gun at Ashley (She won't open the door when your being chased = DEAD)
Josh - Find an important item (become a wendigo) or don't (DEAD)
Em - Fuck up QTE's (DEAD, LIVE or get bit), get bitten leads to a scenario where people think she'll become a wendigo, Ashley gets to make the choice (DEAD or LIVE).
As for the short sequence I'll use some scenes with Tales from the Borderlands as an example since you've played it
In episode 2 you can choose to go to Hollow Point or another area as Rhys. If you go to Hollow point, you get a scene with Rhys and Vaughn being harassed by Scooter, then you can all go to the other area together, if you go to the other area, in Hollow point Fiona actually gets to meet Janey and Athena, where you get an option to steal her shield, but you end up showing up late to the other area.
Episode 3's intro is entirely different depending on who you trusted at the end of episode 2, not to mention Vaughn being determinantly paralyzed (you miss a very nice scene with him if he's paralyzed).
There's a really good example with their Game of Thrones game, but I don't want to spoil it if you haven't played it.
Not saying Telltale is superior, but just as similar in some cases. Early Walking Dead seasons aren't the best example, but currently they are doing a great job with Batman and even their Minecraft game.
Holy crap, that is a huge chart. That is an impressive number of variables and differences. Yeah, not sure what's better, bad acting with great story, or amazing acting with confusing story.
I don't think those two have anything to do with each other.
Well they still have to make the full game, dividing it into episodes or releasing it all at once doesn't make a difference, right?
i love em tho
I wrote this in another thread a while back, also has relevance here:
"I've never cared about the 'choices don't matter'. It's about the journey that gets you there, and how you interact with characters along the way. I imagine it as a start point and an end point, but in between, you, the player, get to decide how it all works out. Tiny, insignificant choices end up deciding whether you agree with Kenny or hate him, or whether you can forgive Ben, treat him like shit, or just not care about him and so on. Sure, it all turns out the same in the end, but you've gone through the game with an ENTIRELY different experience than anyone else. This is why The Walking Dead forums has so many divisive topics and I think that's a great thing.
If Telltale started making their games with too many outcomes I think we'd lose a sense of that, and it would harm how great their narrative is."
Let me also add,that epecially in consecutive seasons, we will never see an Until Dawn 2 where choices transferred unless they wanted to spend 10 years making a new game with outcomes for each life and death that happened. TellTale avoids this problem while also making an excellent and involving narrative.
I didn't even know that Vaughn could avoid being paralysed, awesome! Will have to try that out!
Best example I can think for a good choice with a long term change is Minecraft where in Episode 1 you have to choose between rescuing Gabriel or Petra from the Wither. Until I played through a second time I was amazed to find it had a bigger impact on the next few episodes than I figured it would - you have the person you saved in your party for Episode 2, 3 and 4 with a growing sickness, and then the one you didn't at the end of episode 3 with no memory and a fairly big role in Episode 4. Which means different dialogue and situations for both of them. I saved Petra first time and whilst I think Episode 3's conclusion works way better with Gabriel (his 'Who's Gabriel? delivery was much better and made a great shocker, plus the Walking Dead nod is a nice touch in Episode 4) it was great learning much more about him with more interaction over Episodes 2 and 3, and having different reactions with a memoryless Petra in Episode 4. And yes everything is resolved by end of Episode 4 (outside a reference by Petra to her previous situation in Episode 5) but it was still a nice long term choice impact to me. There's also the big choice of Magnus vs Ellegard changing the first third of Episode 2 completely, but that really doesn't impact things as much long term. The fact that episodes 5-8 really didn't impact each other made the second half of MC: SM a tad disappointing.
I also gather the Two Face/Harvey material in Episode 3 is pretty different depending on if you saved him or not in Episode 2, though I've only played it as having saved him thus far, so I have had paranoid Harvey instead of aggressive Harvey.
I'm kind of torn between them too but I think Heavy Rain wins because I think it's well crafted, and whilst the actors for Norman and Ethan are pretty terrible Maddison and Scott's are much better. And the number of endings are far greater and require more work to unlock. With Beyond it's basically... are you alive or dead? Alive? Here's four choices to pick from, but you can totally reload your save and see them all without effort. Dead I gather had two endings, though I didn't see any of them.
I think this why maybe self contained games or seasons work best, in the sense that you can have a much greater array of choices/consequences and resulting endings if you're not having to pick up on a future season. Case in point... S3 of Walking Dead and Mass Effect: Andromeda.
In the former case S2 ended with five possible outcomes for Clem, but since we have a time jump and a second POV character it looks like it's running the risk of glossing over all of them because it's two and a bit years on and 'lots of stuff which was totally different but you won't see' happened. TT could manage to avoid that, but I feel like that's not going to happen, which is disappointing.
With Mass Effect Andromeda, whilst it will no doubt be a great game and a new start for the series, the fate is it can ignore the final fate of Earth and the war with the Reapers with destruction, control or synethic options, and all the little things you did over three games in the universe, simply because we left five minutes before the Reapers showed up and now we're in a totally different galaxy six hundred years on, so no long distance to check. Again, likely to disappoint some fans.
Yes, TFTB is absolutely the exception, that's why it's my favorite. It has moments where your choices will truly affect the story, and that's why I love it. And I already know about the Rodrik, Asher thing unfortunately. That's another good example. As for Minecraft, literally none of your choices have impact. All the characters you affected in the first half either disappear in the second half, or don't really bring up the first half again and none of your choices in the second half matter at all. Batman could go either way. If they deliver on the Two-Face choice in the end, then it will be really impressive. Until Dawn is the only one so far where you can actually change the outcome with more then your very last choice (TWD s2).