What if the old writers had stayed?
I'm talking about Vanaman and all the old writers from season 1. Do you think things would have turned out better? They certainly couldn't turn out worse imo.
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I'm talking about Vanaman and all the old writers from season 1. Do you think things would have turned out better? They certainly couldn't turn out worse imo.
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Yes. I heard that Vanaman is the one who created the cabin group and they were supposed to have different development. If he didn't leave, everything would have been a masterpiece over again.
Damn that actually makes me sad. They looked like colorful characters they never got the justice they deserved.
Killing them was completely unnecesary and pointless. FACT
It feels like they try to develop characters as fast as they can just so they can kill them off for shock value RATHER than giving them a proper character arc. That's just so lazy.
They do keep some characters alive in ANF but they're just not as relatable as S2 characters.
For some S2 is still a great game.
What I mean is that Luke, Nick, Pete, Carlos, Sarah, etc. They seemed like interesting characters with interesting personalities that never went anywhere. In ANF, I don't care about Tripp, Conrad, Elanor, Kate, Gabe, and Jesus left. David is the only one who's interesting and that's because the season was building him up as a generic villain, but he seems like he has depth to his character. He has a bad temper, but at the end of the day, he tries to do the right thing.
´´David has depth to his character . He has a bad temper, but at the end of the day, He tries to do the right thing.´´
meaning David is Kenny if he was in the military and was from Spain.
If the old writers had stayed Kenny and Jane would probably have a Carley/Doug depth determinant status and episodes would most likely still be 2 hours long ((And probably also have some hubs.))
Well Kenny thinks kids should receive special treatment while David thinks that everyone should be held accountable of their actions regardless of age or gender.
Oh well that s true Since Kenny Treated Ben and Arvo so well and Clem s pretty close to their age.
We can now assume David was probably right about Javier the selfish immature prick.
Javi cared more about his celebrity lifestyle and really fucked up with gambling game.
He seemed to have neglected his sick dying father, David seemed to be the responsible family man, but with a temper.
I wouldn't consider Ben and Arvo as "kids." Pretty sure Ben was in college and Arvo looked like he was a young adult. I mean actual kids like Duck and Clementine. Also believe it or not, while David may have a temper, he has never been shown to be violent when he has one of his episodes. Same can't be said about Kenny. Btw I love Kenny, but man when you piss him off it's really not fun.
he punched javi in the first episode-flashback?
pretty much^^^
Oops you're right, my bad. I almost forgot about that.
Just because it may have had Vanaman write it does not mean it would automatically be perfect. Look at what happened with Firewatch, it was a highly disappointing experience, and while it had some great characters, the story was lacking and its ending left you completely unsatisfied. S1 is a fantastic game, no doubt about that, but even if they had every single person come back and kept it the exact same team as it was before, there is absolutely no guarantee it would have been the exact same quality as the first season, and if you think that, then I'm sorry, you're setting your expectations way too high.
We will never see Sean's S2 rough draft he made for the writers... where they used 2 of his ideas in the final game.
Only 2??? What were the 2 they used?
I have no idea, he said on some stream that was posted in the Details thread.
It'd probably have gone a different direction, but I can't say whether it would've been better. Personally I feel like S1 was seriously over praised and S2 and ANF have a more interesting plot. Honestly the most interesting S1 got was in ep2.
I can't complain because I love what we have.
Maybe but he would have done better than J.T. Petty and Pierre Shorette.
Maybe, maybe not.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again-- S1 was too good for its own good. A happy accident. Why did it turn out as good as it did? I don't know, but that's how it all worked out in the end. Sometimes that's just how shit goes.
Even in a hypothetical situation where Vanaman and the rest stuck around and did S2, I'm about 99% certain it still wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the sheer amount of praise S1 did. It sure as hell wouldn't have raked in 90 game of the year awards again, that's for sure.
S1, for all intents and purposes, is an anomaly; an outlier. It turned out great, and I'm starting to think Telltale-- and all the people that worked on it-- are unfortunately doomed to never managing to top it. Sometimes the world just works that way-- you make something, it turns out a thousand times better than you or anybody ever expected, and you just aren't able to hit that mark again, no matter how hard you may try.
From the different interviews and shit I've seen from Vanaman, I get the impression that S1 actually haunts him to some degree. By that, I mean it was pretty much what the public considers his crowning achievement, and no matter how hard he tries to move away from it, no matter how hard he tries to do something new, it just follows him. Almost all the time he speaks about the game, I get the impression that he just wants to move on with his life, and even though he doesn't outright say it, I think he wants the fans to do the same, in brutal honesty. He did what he wanted to do with that story, now he just wants people to look forward and acknowledge the newer stuff he's doing, like Campo Santo and Firewatch.
I think the real reason him and Rodkin left is because they didn't want to be shackled to this series-- they told the story they wanted to tell in S1, and they decided to move on while they had the chance, so they could continue doing what they wanted to do, not what everyone around them wanted. When they originally pitched the game, I doubt they even planned for a potential sequel. Why else would Lee's death form the basic foundation for the story since day one?
Why does everyone seem so sure the series would truly turn out for the better if they sticked around? Who's to say the same level of passion and enthusiasm for S1 would still be there? And more importantly, who's to say they wouldn't have been affected by the rather sub-par work culture at Telltale? If S2 was screwed up from multiple rewrites and people being thrown between projects, why are we so sure the same wouldn't have happened even if Vanaman and the rest were still around? Look what happened to the supposed rough draft Sean wrote. Imagine he stuck around for S2, and what happened to the rough draft happened to everything he had planned after episode 3. And just like that, we end up getting an Amid The Ruins not unlike the one we have now. In fact, if that did happen, I don't even want to imagine how much of a shitstorm this forum would've been.
Pierre Shorette was one of Tales From The Borderlands' main writers, as well as The Wolf Among Us though. Petty wrote Outlast 1 and its DLC.
Yeah, that shocked me because I'm a huge fan of Outlast. He is great as horror game writer but terrible as action/adventure game writer.
Yeah, but @Kennyshouladiedins1 told me some pretty good stuff about him.
I felt that Conrad became a really good character in episode 3, but otherwise a good portion of the side characters aren't too interesting (I feel David and Gabe are the only other interesting ones).
True...sometimes timing is the key to success. But if you look at S1 even now...there are real reasons why it is the gold standard for TTGs.
Characters..the key characters have so much depth to them....Lee and Kenny are very different yet believable characters. Clementine reminds you of a real child without any of the cliché child tropes that cause you to hate them so much in fiction. She is like the child you always imagined yourself having. Charming and compassionate...smart...but not too smart.
Kenny is your drinking buddy....says weird ass shit but man you just love him to death..but in large doses he has flaws...very real...just like all friends.
Lee is no saint..he has done wrong, but when the chips are down...you feel good playing as him...he has a quiet dignity about him that everyone imagines that they themselves have...even when we do not.
S1 had a very defined story it wanted to tell.
Without seeing the outline that was made...who knows how S2 would have been like?
S2 I know they had issues...the cabin group was an inherited group...in an outline there may have been a very thin idea of who these people were...from what we got in s2....the writers for s2 were not up to the task of building characters beyond a certain superficial point. This is why I think Kenny was brought in..we all know Kenny and loved Kenny in S1...and I can even see their reasoning...a hero's fall from grace..it is up to you to help redeem his actions and him or end his suffering.
It was a bad move. The cabin group was killed off in bits and pieces and because the writers had no idea how to build a character in TWD...we got a convoluted fight that basically came out of the blue as Jane had previously been a peace maker and encouraged Clem to help Kenny. The totally misused Sarah...she could have been a great character...there could have been a bond between her and Clem and Jane as Jane learned that Sarah was not her sister and she was worth the effort to save.
IMHO...the S2 Writers were just god damn lazy.
ANF I will wait until the entire season is done before I rip into it and point out the good and bad.
He's technically from Cuba
Javier was fired from being a baseball player quite a while before his dad died, so that wasn't the reason why. He probably got sick while Javier was still a baseball player, though, and the outbreak was the reason he was late to see him die. But Javier definitely had enough time to see him every day before he did die.
There's apparently a white Lee model out there somewhere. I haven't went out looking for it yet but my friend told me there was. He told me it was concept art but it could possibly be some fan art, instead.
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I know that the original idea for the protagonist of Season 1 was Clementine's older brother, but it was scrapped because the two had a bond already. So, maybe it was the concept art for Clem's brother?
Wow I don't hear that opinion very often. Fair enough. For me Season 1 was a masterpiece and it's praise was rightfully given. The plot was brilliant, the characters were wonderful and i quickly started caring about the group. Then obviously the general gameplay and interaction was excellent. Season 2 and Season 3 just did not have the same appeal for me.
Im convinced they would have been so much better if the writers had stayed. That is if of course Telltale wouldn't have changed the way their games are now such as shorter episodes, less gameplay and hubs and hardly any character interaction etc. If they had stayed and S2 and 3 were still made the same way I don't think even their brilliant writing would save it
Both left because they were a 'package deal' in each others eyes, Rodkin left because Vanaman did. (please ignore the weird romanticisim that surrounds that sentence) Vanaman felt like S2 put a lot of weight on his shoulders to live up to the prestiege of S1. While I agree that they were shackled by the series, they were also shackled by Telltale. He claimed in a interview that he was working on projects that he didn't really enjoy that much (Dan Connors wanted a poker game, so they had to make a poker game now...).
I think he just wanted the creative freedom of a completely new start and the ability to tell stories he wanted the way he wanted, not constrained by the Telltale episodic model or whatever uninteresting project he would be assigned to.
Sean had been lead writer before, as did Rodkin as designer. I think it's silly to assume that Sean would allow an 'Amid the Ruins' to even happen in the first place. He would have stepped in and stopped it the minute the tumour started growing around episode 3 and remedied it. He might not have written a particular episode but I highly doubt they would just go ahead with whatever and not tell him what was planned for that episode.
I think the creative higher ups would have let Vanaman do whatever he wanted and stop whatever he wanted because he was largely the reason S1 was so well written in the first place. It seems to me that Nick didn't have that privilege.
Brad Kane talked a bit about the creative process on twitter:
"There are often a lot of creative stakeholders on a project like this, but the (good and necessary) friction --plays out between creative leads and studio execs, not amongst the creative team. Creative has a hierarchy, so decisions--usually get worked out along those lines."
The consequences of the gunfight being completely avoided in NGB and how he set up Nick and Sarah's arcs in AHD is all the proof you need that he planned something completely different.
What Sean had might not have been all that great but I'd bet anything that it would be better than what we ended up with.
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A lot of us lowered our expectations for season 2 (some of us didn't) and were still happy with it. Like you said, season 1 was amazing and was always gonna be hard to top. Most of us didn't do the same for season 3. There is only so much you can accept when the games keep going backwards, keep declining in quality. It's ongoing because it's happening right now. New eps keep getting released and keep disappointing. No way are the masses going to accept this kind of medicority.
I actually really liked Season 2 ((Althought i got sick of episode 1 because i replayed it too much when season 2 first came out.)
Althought i wish i could say the same For a New frontier besides the Treatment of Conrad of being the first double determinant Character in The walking dead ((Cause the honor of being the first goes to Dumpy from Borderlands.))
edit: got pissed off and took it out on an internet forum
We'd just trash them for giving up and being too spineless to finish it hahahaha.
(What the fuck does "Sunken Discussion" mean??)