Advice for Telltale on how to improve their games?
I find quite a number of people are dissatisfied with certain decisions Telltale has made recently as well as the quality of their games so I thought it'd be a good idea to make a general thread where people can voice their suggestions as to how Telltale can improve their games.
Remember to be constructive and respectful. Please avoid making overly snarky comments, thank you.
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I think their games such as: The Walking Dead Season One, Tales From The Borderlands and Guardians of the Galaxy highlight allot of the best 'features' in Telltale's games.
Bring back the rewind option, some people still used that
That's all, really.
Everyone used that, I have no idea why they said barely anyone. I nearly fucked up and got Conrad killed in twd season 3 episode 4, luckily I backed out just before the checkpoint and saved him. I don't know why they removed it but it wasn't a very good idea imo.
Remove the need to sign into the account to make people who paid for their games able to actually play them - even when support has no time or is in weekend and the server is not working (those things actually DO happen). These games are available on GOG DRM-free so there is no reason to use DRM at all.
Bring back rewind option.
They brought back Hubs, sure. But so far in MCSM, they haven't brought back to talk to people. Like in earlier games, check in on everyone and you get 3 things to say and you can say all 3 of them. GotG have it, but not MCSM so far.
Like others have said, the rewind option needs to be brought back
Always make sure the dialogue choices are as specific as possible without being overly long. Avoid vague and misleading choices like "Tell him off" in A New Frontier.
Try to avoid one button press QTEs in action scenes as much as possible. Instead replace them with more interactive gameplay like the bandit shootout in Season 1 of TWD.
I had to reply that 6 times
Also fix the issue of restarting an episode and having to start from episode 1 because your choices get changed.
Don't force the games. Wait. Wait until a good writer gets and idea out of the blue. Let them develop this idea all by themselves. Have them work all by themselves, if possible. Let the inspiration come and flow on its own, don't force it. Start with a message, something to say, a metaphor, a critique, anything. As a writer, I tell you: you can't force inspiration. That only leads to bad stories. Don't say "Hey, we should do a game about X" and then start thinking about the story. Instead, say "Hey, I got this great idea for X! We should make a game about this!".
I know that it would slow down the production, and the money income. But you can see from miles away that their games are forced and lack inspiration. You can see from miles away that they're only being made to make money, and that's the lowest you can get as an artist.
How dare you, I ask you, HOW DARE YOU force inspiration to make money!? What kind of person does that!? what kind of ARTIST does that!?!? You can't make art, you're not making art. Writing is art. Stories are art. Videogames with stories are art! Or should be art, but at the end, they're not better than a pop song writen for money. Music is supposed to be art, too, but just like Justin Bieber, you're only trying to make "art" for money.
You're trying to make art for money!
You're trying to sell art! I can't even begin to explain how shameful that is! But you're not only trying to sell art, you're making art to sell it! Only that changes the whole concept, it's not art at all now. Art is not a product. In the age of postmodernism, everything is a product, but art can't exist while being a product.
Art is a part of your soul, by selling art, you're selling your soul. Whether you believe in the soul as something real or not doesn't matter. In a metaphorical sense, you are turning an invention your soul, your own heart and mind into a product with it's worth in paper bills.
I don't want you to misundertand my point, because I know how hard it is to actually out your story into words, how to translate your soul into an understable leguage, and then you ahve animators, voice actors, and probably a couple dozen photographers/graphic artist to help you with things like cinematic, framing, colours, symbolism, etc. (if you don't you should get one or two). Yeah, I'm not saying your games should be free. I mean that your main goal should not be money. If you're making art just to sell, then you're not making art at all. Why do you pretend to attempt to make art if you're just making a product?
You give too much importance to money, That's your main problem.
They should go back to the more character driven style of games, like The Walking Dead Season 1. Their current games focuses way to much on the plot and big action scenes, which results in underdeveloped characters.
Both Tales from the Borderlands and Game of Thrones had a good mix of great characters and a good plot, even though i didn't liked Game of Thrones as much as others.
You don't need action for a good narrative. You need, however, good characters to make the plot compelling.
Its simple and plain.
MAKE OUR STORIES ACTUALLY TAILORED BY HOW WE PLAY.
This is what Telltale is about from the beginning.
Should tell that to Ubisoft.
Should tell EVERY capitalist company that.
They kind of already do.
Tailoring, (if we're talking about a suit) is to make small changes, adjustments, or repairs to the suit so that it fits.
When talking about Telltale's games, tailoring would be changing small bits of the overarching narrative.
I think people take things too far when they say choices don't matter, because they do.. in a way. Telltale isn't lying when they say that their stories are "tailored" by your actions. You're slightly changing how the story plays out in what dialogue you say, what actions you perform, and what QTEs you hit/miss.
But, I must agree that having more tailoring and choices having a larger effect is appreciated.
Because sometimes Telltale has slacked on giving lots of branching paths. There are some, but they don't last long.
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You just reminded me, I'll not be surprised if Asher/Rodrik is killed in season 2 immediately. Because they really can't keep this up. Im not waiting four months+ for an episode. Also it can appeal to newcomers which Telltale heavily emphasises. Its knda a win win.
Basically every other Telltale game apart from perhaps The Walking Dead: Michonne and Minecraft: Story Mode were very good when to came to the story. The Wolf Among Us kept focusing on the mystery, every episode gave us more clues and answers and the plot was resolved with some good twists along the way that sparked allot of discussion, we could see Bigby's relationship with characters grow and we saw varying themes of hierarchy, vigilantism, lust and twisted truths. It was such a mature game in the way it handled it's story telling. Tales from the Borderlands did great to, it focused on finding the vault but switched the narrator throughout so we could experience both sides. Game of Thrones was also good in my personal opinion. It didn't settle the conflict but we all knew from the get go that it wouldn't happen, but at least each character had a destination they worked towards and grew in some manner, the only problem I would say is that it largely relied on tension and it was less of one overarching story and more of multiple stories (which is definitely not a bad thing), honestly I'd have to wait for Season 2 (if it ever releases) to fully see whether or not it's story is that great. Batman was my personal favorite in regards to story telling, but that's largely because I'm a big fan of Batman and I liked the way they twisted characters and backgrounds allot, it did things really well in terms of making you choose between two faces and it really exemplifies how insane people can become and yet they're some of the easier people to sympathize with.
There should be less characters like TWDS2's Sarita, Carlos and Mike, who don't really develop in any way, who we don't get to know much about if anything and who don't really play a significant role in the plot. I personally usually love the more minor and secondary characters, but these ones, I kinda forgot about them and they're usually characters I think of when it comes to discussing the game. Granted, there are other characters treated far worse, but this is just an example. I think that The Walking Dead Game (S1), The Wolf Among Us, Batman and Tales from the Borderlands did really well with most their characters.
Keep the options. How about leaving the Rewind button for people who want to see how much effort you guys put in making scenes different based on our choices? Adding more customization options like in Batman, Tales form the Borderlands and Minecraft: Story Mode did is a real plus in my opinion, plus having the Codex and presenting it as an opportunity to learn new things about characters and see how our choices affect them should be something in every future Telltale game in my opinion. Also the hubs, I'm glad we're getting more of them with the current games, we can do quite a bit of extra stuff in some of the games' hubs and it really helped make the game more enjoyable for me. The only thing I'd want returned was additional items that could be used at different points throughout the story, Minecraft: Story Mode and The Walking Dead: Season 2 were great with the extra items, I didn't even know Clementine could give the medicine to Luke or the water to Rebecca!
Make the game a story you would enjoy as a fan! I don't doubt that allot of people working at Telltale love the franchises that they're working with and I kinda hope that it's a more collaborative effort when it comes to story, characters and content. If you guys aren't already doing so, why not ask each of your staff about their opinions of a story, the choices, the characters and additional content, then get their feedback and ask them what they would add to the stories, what they would like to see a character do or become and what kind of additional content they'd love to see in the future, because your staff's opinion is just as valuable as your consumers', we're all people who make opinions and each of us will have something unique and different to say, the more people you ask, the more variety you'll have
Still, honestly I'm still faithful about Telltale, I might've been grumpy about them over The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and how they dealt with some parts of Season 2, but other than that I've come to love your games (even Minecraft: Story Mode, I actually really enjoyed it! As well as Tales from the Borderlands, I care more about Life is Strange at first but things switched later on lol). Keep working hard, use both the praise and criticism as drives to make better games! I apologize on behalf of the fans if they made personal jabs at you guys because of things they didn't like about the games and I hope you all know that most of us on here only want you guys to continue improving when we give you criticism!
Even with the games people on here generally seem to dislike, you've still got allot of people loving them.
Take it this way, most of us are really upset about a few of your games because you guys have set the bar up for quality quite high!
make everything like in TWD S1 just change the story
Thats not enough. What makes Telltale itself is this quality. Choices matter. Thats it. Making it slightly will not do any good because whole "Choices matter" thing wont matter at all. People want to see different paths in stories. Different endings are appreciated but if next season will start from the same point again, that is a problem that needs to taking caren of.
Bring some, at least vague, sense of logic into to the qte controls most of the time the promts are so random I dont even feel like im controller a character its more like doing a captcha to prove I haven't fallen asleep. A lot of the time when there is more than one character on screen its like the promts are for a situation rather than character controls and it kills immersion.
Telltale needs to improve on the length of Episodes and i hear they are doing that with Batman and Minecraft Story mode 2. They need to have good Writing and characters in their games. So yeah that's how telltale can improve for me.
So, you'd rather Telltale not put effort into making those choices matter, regardless of how long you'd have to wait?
You'd rather be mad at them for screwing us over than congratulate them for giving us what we want?
Right.
I meant when talking about their "tailored story" slogan, it's justified.
But If we're talking about Telltale employees who continually say "choices really matter and will change this game in ways you won't believe" then yes, there is something not right with that. They take a lot of things out of proportion (for marketing purposes, of course).
More endings
Let the graphics stay within their "comicbook" style. The moment they try too hard to make more details and make it more 3d (I bet its really tempting for artists) is the moment they loose their unique touch. (like Guardians of the galaxy. TNF also had this) what we like to see is basic colors on characters, but NOT enough depth or shadowing as to make it look realistic. Thick lines around the face for missing details or shapes, but that's it.
More endings. I wanna feel like my choices really matter. That's why I am playing it after all, that's what makes this company pop up from the rest.
Complex, deep stories. Don't be afraid to add more than one antagonist, or more than one "neutral" character.
Yup. I play Telltale for the story and couldn't care less if choices had minor differences. Guess we play differently.
Can the guys stick to like one or two writers per season? I feel like a huge issue is different episodes have characters treated differently or are differently paced and it may be due to have four/five people working on one season. I'd prefer just like maybe three at most?
Wait, so are you saying that you're fine if our choices get retconned like they did in ANF, because you only care about the story?
Clarify for me here, I'm getting confused. I'm not sure if you want Telltale to kill Rodrik/Asher or not.
One feature of The Walking Dead Season One that I really enjoyed is that you could get to know the characters around you and even Lee on a personal level. I feel that is a crucial component in what made Season One so good. That you got to form a relationship with a character and form your opinion on them based on their actions and words. I do wish that this will return in The Final Season and that the Season will be a rollercoaster of emotions similar to Season One. I know that the whole game shouldn't be all talking and no action but Season One had a good mix of both and made you actually try to make the decision you believed was right.
Another thing!
Get rid of "X will remember that." It was iconic and now it's a joke.
But don't get rid of it altogether, just change it.
So for example in The Walking Dead, let's say Clementine is talking to a character and the player chooses to say: "Stick close to me, but don't use your gun. We don't want to attract walkers."
If they don't actually use a gun in the next scene THEN say: X will remember that.
Why? Well because it's more rare, it'll make what we say a LOT more impactful. Like in real life, we don't know what we say or what we don't say will have the most impact on somebody. The odd compliment may lift someone's day or have them smile and go on about their life.
That insult when you were angry might ruin someone's self esteem or have them shrug it off and ignore it.
That's just what happens and so if we actually say something we may regret in the heat of the moment and it comes up with the (now rare) "X will remember that." Do you know what we'll be thinking?
"Oh damn, how is this going to effect me? Are they gonna turn on me or are they gonna let me die? Maybe they'll just bring it up later or this could be really bad." And obviously different if we do something good. It keeps us on our toes and wary about what we say.
BUT - there's something else. Now since "X will remember that" will be rare, you should add some more things just to give us the illusion of choice and little tidbits you can't express in the scene (without it sounding forced like a character coming up in an action scene and thanking a character before the scene continues and their mood switches to what is required of them).
So for example say you defend a character against a rumour.
Instead of "X will remember that" when you know they likely won't, instead say "X appreciates that"
That is so much better because regardless of them actually saying something, we immediately feel gratitude and the effect of that choice without needing to put the extra work in having the VO have another line and putting in a scene where they say it to the character and modifying the script so it works.
And have other things to, you could do so much with this!
Think of it like Dragon Age, where you have approval and whatnot.
So say you're addressing your group of survivors that you are leading in The Walking Dead, and you say something like: "We need to start thinking about stricter rations."
You can have three things pop up on screen like:
just for context
X is your character's best friend
Y is a mother with a 10 year old son in your group
Z is just an adult in your group
X likes your leadership
Y is worried about strict rations
Z disliked what you said
If they want to go further they can have a sort of "Approval/Relationship" bar and tell us on the side what we said/choices which positively/negatively affected what that character thinks of us.
-Plan to release multiple seasons for each game (including the older games).
I say this mostly because games like Game of Thrones are going to be difficult to bring back because of how many possible endings they gave us. People would be upset if they pulled a New Frontier on us again, so my suggestion here is to plan ahead and make it a bit simpler so that we don't end up playing the first season with a need for another season.
-Make longer episodes.
I'm not sure why they stopped making longer episodes. I thought that the GOT episodes were a little too long sometimes, but I'd prefer more content than not enough. You're also getting more bang for your buck if you're getting more game per episode.
-Find a target audience and stick to it.
I'm not saying they can't venture out like they did with Minecraft, which is a more family-friendly game- but when you switch teams so quickly, it leaves your current audience desiring more. They're very smart to give us a new season of Wolf Among Us. Hopefully, it will return the games to the glory days and not further prove the next point.
-Quality Content
For me personally, the quality of their recent games has been significantly dropping with every release. Minecraft was the biggest disappointment for me personally, but I also feel that GOTG and Batman are not up to par with the old WD seasons, TWAU, GOT, or TFTB. I'm not sure what happened here but it seems like a mutual feeling across the board on most cases.
-Look for inspiration.
I know someone is going to attack me on this, but I feel that there are people currently beating them at their own game right now. Maybe taking inspiration from games like Life is Strange (graphics, story) or Overwatch (story, characters, graphics, deeply thought out original idea, large target audience- Yes, I realize it's a different style game but I think it's a fair point). I feel that the games they're producing currently don't have a lot of heart. They used to. Also, please don't spew more superhero games at us. This is just my personal opinion, but superheroes have been shoved down our throats for years on end and they're the same characters over and over again just slightly different. They might make you a lot of money, but that's not what this is all about. Things like Fables or TWD or Borderlands or GOT are more unique things to pull from that are still money-making stories, especially TWD and GOT.
-Glitching Problems
I think that in the rush to release new games and make more money, they've been opting to push the game into the public as quickly as possible. This is a big mistake. I wasn't even able to finish Minecraft because the menu was so glitchy and awful that it wouldn't let me. When you have people complaining that they killed a character off and for some reason he shows back up in the last episode due to nothing more than something that might have been easily fixable... Don't think I need to go too far into it.
-Take the hint.
Listen to your audience. I'm sure you do this somewhat, since we just got TWAU after begging for three years, but try to really listen. Even if the opinions or thoughts of the fans are just plain weird, maybe that will spark an idea. Maybe it will inspire someone to make a different choice when creating the game and try something new. It's worth the risk. What have you got to lose?
I wouldn't play the second season if they killed them off like that. That's just plain lazy. I doubt we're getting a season two because of that and also the possible Mira death as well.
This.
I pretty much like everything, BUT there's still some stuff I would really love to see.
1- I'm a huge fan of TWD Series and especially Clem, so i would love you to make her lesbian(yeah, that's important) (A lot of people probably hating me now)
2- Longer episodes, missing those sweet long episodes from TWD S1
3 - More endings
P.S - So sad that S4 is the last Season
Edit: If you'll get rid of Clem, you will get more hate and less money.
I support this statement.
Hey mods would it be okay if we tag Telltale staff in this thread? I think some of the stuff here could be something Telltale would be interested in looking into.
Here is what you really need to do. These simple steps will lift your company to new heights. And to be honest it's extremely obvious if you have actually played any tell tale games. It sometimes seems like you don't which is crazy so maybe being in development blinds you to simple things to keep gamers happy.
In every tell tale series, there is the obvious binary choice that will emerge where it forces you to pick between two difficult choices, for instance, Harvey and Catwoman in Batman, which to save. This is fine if the choice arises naturally and the players choices have forced the situation. but it will happen no matter what. You must pick between the two brothers in GoT at the end no matter what. all these endings and choices RUIN everything about the games. There needs to be a way for players to avoid them, if somoene does everything right then they should be rewarded, whats the point in playing if all im doing is picking from the same two endings every time? What i'm trying to say is choices need actual story remifications that are more than odd dialogue and chagning a scene slightly. I mean entire plot points are changed, skipped or new ones emerge depending on what you've done. I don't see how you are making a video game with so little content that you can't have multiple arcs that the player can take in your stories.
Rewind option, I don't care about it but a lot of people do so couldn't hurt. people that like to live with their choices will do it anyway. and sometimes a random QT event ruins something and that is just annoying also some dialogue choices come out wrong and weren't what the player wanted to say.
To be honest there isn't a third point it pretty much all is about player choice. Your niche in the market is story driven player choice. and you are missing the player choice. You might as well make movies. We need REAL choices that make branches that have later rewards or downsides and that we can see the link to. when it says "X will remember that" 99% of the time it NEVER comes up again, so I have no idea what that's doing there. charming the right people and creating natural allies and enemies should be rewarding and have real consequences.
Please work on this otherwise TellTale will die. I promise you. You are being outdone by Hollywood right now not any game studio because you aren't even in the same competition at the moment.
I actually really like this new approach they're using in Minecraft and having almost full fledged battle moments where you have to dodge attacks, get to the creatures you're fighting and keep an eye on your stamina. Adds a bit more of a challenge and feels a bit more refreshing than just QTE-ing every fight scene.
I loved the first person shoot outs in TWD season one especially when ben abandons Clementine and she's surround by walkers and I'm just like super focused trying to land headshots on all of the walkers. Damn I really hope telltale makes a come back, Batman season 2 is really good so far though in my opinion.