Season 2 is really not that far of a drop from Season 1
This was initially posted on reddit, but I thought it could fit here too. Especially since there is that one post at the top saying how S3 is somehow worse than S2.
Season 1 of course is still the best season of the series. But, after playing both within the last month (and making a post about all of the plotholes in S1), I feel as though S2 was not nearly as bad as some seem to say.
I agree that the season seems to get worse from the end of episode 3 up to the end (except for the finale if you choose the Kenny endings), but overall, I think the story is good and emotionally involved. I still remember crying when Sam (the dog) was struggling while dying, and I remember crying the first time playing as I left Wellington with Kenny. The story overall is pretty good. A tier below S1, but five tiers above S3.
Of course, it does have issues though. Nick's timeline throughout the series is really disappointing. I convinced Walter that he was a good guy, so Nick lived in Episode 2...and then literally just became a shell of himself and didn't have any further story. That's just lazy! Why even give us the option to save him if he is so irrelevant for the rest of the story? Every time I had the choice to save someone else (Sarita, Sarah, Bonnie) it just felt like a waste because I knew that they'd get the "Nick" treatment. Hell, in Episode 3 I'm pretty sure there are some scenes where "everyone" is shown but Nick...just disappointing. And let's not even talk about that off screen death. Possibly the most disappointing part is how much the story kind of revolved around Nick and his issues in Episode 1 and 2, especially if you go with him instead of Pete at the end of Episode 1. I feel like his story was interesting but was just tossed aside after you saved him. At least in S1, Doug and Carley still felt like important members of the group after they could have died.
But overall, S2 was just a good game. Not stellar, not awful. Like a game that I'd suggest someone get if there is a sale. The art style improved greatly in my opinion and the game played MUCH better. It is by far the best looking out of all of the entries. I remember in S1 there were some awkward cutscenes, animations, and stuttering. But, S2 felt like a much more polished game.
Possibly the largest thing that I dislike about S2 is the lack of puzzles and hubs. I know TellTale kind of strayed from this and became more focused on the story...but the puzzles in the first season didn't take anything away and I loved the hubs where you could choose who to speak to and you could ask them some interesting questions. Or just full on ignore them. It was good for character development and I feel like S2 could have been much better with more of these.
Oh yeah and how the 400 Days characters were included. Fuck that. I liked the little surprise we got showing that the actual encampment was Carver's group, but the characters from 400 days were just shoe'd in and it just felt...cringy.
Comments
Season 2 was ok at times but i already saw a huge dip in quality from the get go like shorter episodes, a lot less hubs, not a single time in the game where you could talk to someone and be shown a list of things you can ask them (without a timer), they didn’t give enough background or development to any of the cabin crew and overall there were more cutscenes than gameplay which has only got worse in it’s latest Telltale games.
I did enjoy most of it, but it was nowhere near as good as Season 1 still, not even close for me.
I'm pretty sure it's a bigger drop than people say it is. It starts out having respect for each of its characters and then promptly drops turds and bridges on every single one of them, both in- and outside of the players' choices. The in-episode music (as in, not the credits) is largely recycled and unremarkable. Replay value is minimal unless you enjoy seeing what few differences there are (mostly in earlier episodes) or you're one of those PC players (or you play an updated version of the game after playing a previous release). It sends terrible messages about certain groups of people to the entire fanbase. Despite being a higher-budget sequel, textures are handled worse (Clem's hand at the lake where Luke drowned, resorting to a poor texture for her crying at Kenny's death scene). The premise jumped from "what kinds of people you can trust" to "which of these creator favorites do you prefer." In a meta sense, a lot of customers were tricked into buying S2 to play the Michonne DLC before it ended up being a standalone miniseries, and that certainly wasn't helped by the same thing happening with 400 Days > S2 beforehand.
I think Nick's problem from the get go was that he really didn't have that much to do with the main story arc the Season was principally about. Every other Cabin Group member had more personal interaction/correlation with Clementine and/or some complicated history with Carver to build up across the episodes. Nick didn't really have either and some might even say that his role was to help enhance/generate conflicts among the rest of the group. I personally just saw him as Pete's Nephew and Luke's Sidekick on my first playthrough.
So when the story advanced to the point where the group was reclaimed by Carver, with addition of Kenny&Sarita and later Bonnie, Mike, and Jane to the already kinda large dwindling cast, there really wasn't anything for his character to do besides occasionally comment on what's going on and reinforce Luke. Though considering Episode 3 and 4 had Nick Breckon leave for a while, one could speculate that he might've have tried to find something for him to do.
As for the Season itself, I agree that it definitely had the makings of being an improvement over Season 1, it ultimately couldn't keep it's directions and priorities straight enough. It says something that the story begins with Clementine feeling lost and regretful over what happened with Lee, Omid, & possibly Christa in addition to meeting the Cabin Group in the middle of dealing with & running away from their own complicated issues, only for the season to end with the big being between two characters that have relatively little to do with either of those things.
I agree. If you play one after the other, then you will notice the clear drop in quality. Season 2 had good points of it's own though - one of them being Clementine growing up and becoming stronger and more independent. Kenny's return will always be a controversial subject but that was another strong point of season 2 for me along with Jane's big sister relationship with Clementine.
Actually, there was one--Jane at the Observation Deck.
I'll let that one speak for itself.
It must've been doing something right, because it still managed to receive "Overwhelmingly Positive" (95%) Reviews on Steam, whereas A New Frontier only got "Mostly Positive" (75%) Reviews.
Season 2 wasn't as bad as it was disappointing. It certainly had it's moments and had the potential to become better than its predecessor but didn't due to shorter episodes, it's treatment if characters, a divided writing team and inconsistencies proved to be it's own downfall.
@DabigRG Oh yeah I genuinely forgot about that one, can’t blame me for not remembering though. What were the options again? Nothing very interesting i recall nor anything that would aid development etc. Didn’t Jane respond with only like one or two words too?
Either way it was an utter waste of time in their short episode.
Oh of course! I didn’t say that it didn’t do well in the reviews. I was just giving my opinion on what i thought of it.
Lack of Hubs, I get, but I didn't care much for the Puzzles. They were annoying in Season 1. I'm glad they were removed.
I don't agree. I think the quality remained consistent all throughout. If not then I didn't notice. If anything I did notice a tonal shift mostly attributable to the story reaching it's Climax in Episode 3 leading into the final act in episodes 4 and 5.
Hell, even I forgot it despite going with her first on both of my playthroughs.
It was @marcost29 's review that reinformed me of it last year.
Oh, fuck if I know. I assume it was at least something about picking the lock, how good of a location the Deck really is, and what kind of stuff might be inside.
Probably.
I know this might be stereotypical to say, but I honestly wish that menu had gone to Sarah and/or Luke, with changes depending on your relationship and choices.
Or really, for EVERYONE character to have that throughout the episode/season, but that's just wishful thinking.
...Yeah. Yeah.
Hrhrhrhrn
Episode 4 really should've more of a proper breather outside of a few scenes.
Puzzles were great, basically i’m a big fan of gameplay in games, not just sitting and watching cutcenes so the puzzle aspect was good for us as players to do something constructive, plus it made sense.
You can see Episode 4 and 5 was all over the place, it had several rewrites, they were supposed to visit a town in episode 5 that got scrapped and it was meant to be Luke vs Kenny which they had been building since episode 4, and hints back in episode 2 like who you sat at dinner with or disparaging remarks Kenny made about Luke at the start of episode 3. Instead they throw Jane in last minute.
I’m glad you enjoyed it though, i found the final 2 episodes to be largely disappointing. Your telling me not one single character from Clem’s group died in that Russian shootout? It was so stupid.
To be fair, I think that was something JT Petty, Eric Stirpe, or rather the people directing them came up with for that episode and then Nick Breckon came back and said "Nope!"
I personally found Episode 3 to be the weakest, with the last two slowly "improving."
It's a heavy drop and terrible.
Bye.
While it had its issues and was overall a drop from Season 1, Season 2 was enjoyable and still made me emotional by the end.
agree OP, S2 is a fine game with great moments,(the reunion with Kenny,the adventure feel with the cabin group,the atmosphere,likeable characters,ski lodge) unfortunately as it reaches it's climax it goes haywire and doesn't stay true to it's story,Characters like Luke and Kenny turn into different people /(Kenny with AJ/Luke with Jane,Clem slapping Sarah/nick turning into a clown,Jane TT ,and of course we couldn't forget the mysterious magic russians with magical shotguns that turn into handguns... good game totally let down at the end
And I'd argue that what occurred with Nick exposes a fundamental flaw in the way TellTale creates (or at least the way they created them 4 years ago) their games. It is well known that TellTale develops a main story arc and kind of creates the gist of the story before actually doing any work creating the game itself. Then they create the episodes one by one and release them without having any of the others completed. This allows them to change where the story goes based on fan feedback and allows TellTale to make some money on the game before it is actually completed...but this can lead to rewrites, major inconsistencies and plotholes, and characters kind of being left in the dark like Nick. Don't know if you were around this community when TWDG S1 first released, but the wait between episodes was promised to be about a month each. Well...after the release of the first episode it took over two months for the next one to come out. And that trend continued. The major reason for this was major rewrites of each episode took place after the previous one had already been released. Meaning they were basically making the story up as they went. Interestingly, S1E2 had probably the most changed content out of any TWDG episode, but was certainly the best.
So,TellTale most likely had no idea what the last two episodes would really be like when coming up with S2's overarching plot. But they probably thought Nick would be a more important character in the last few episodes than he actually ended up being. This caused TellTale to pay a lot of attention to him in the beginning, but then when they actually figured out where they wanted the story to go, they realized Nick didn't fit in too much and just kinda shat him out of the story.
I'm not sure what disappointed me more, their handling of Nicks death or of Carver in general during episode 3. They really did a good job building Carver up in episode 2, despite his seemingly friendly demeanor when he showed up at the cabin he just carried this feeling of menace, it's hard to describe. I didn't like where they went with him at all. The cliffhanger at the end of episode 4 and it's resolution in episode 5? Man lol. Otherwise, there were a few things that sat wrong with my but I agree you on the season itself. I thoroughly enjoyed it during my first and subsequent play throughs. Critically and among fans it wasn't the drop off a few people here and on reddit say it was. It did well commercially, it's reviews were not far behind S1, and it's currently rated just slightly lower than S1 on steams fan reviews. I had no problem paying full price for it as each episode released, and then again when I bought a next gen system and wanted to have a save file for whenever S3 released.
The real problem with S2 is that no depth was given to any character, primary or secondary. Add to that the lack of interesting hubs and the insistent focus on a distraught Kenny and shit was made.
Not to mention that one of the options of this hub, not to steal the remedies, had no relevance in the unfolding of the plot...
The treatment given to Nick after his introduction is a clear example of how not to develop a character, especially in a game like TWD.
Re-written, which really destroyed the credibility of A New Frontier.
Eh, define depth.
Your definition, anyway.
What a line.
Mind explaining this particular example?
With depth quiz say character development, as in most of Season 1.
With what now?
Replaying all the seasons before TFS comes out. Just started S2 and as a dog owner I already started crying when Clementine pets the dog and it starts whining sadly. Also the scene that you mention made me burst into tears.
Season 2 is great.
Gonna go ahead and link this if you want and/or feel the need to use it.
Great was the Season 1. Season 2 was just a "good" game.
Overall i think S2 is good but i dislike how uninportant the cabin group feels in the end. It's like their story just get dropped halfway through the season after Carver dies. Feels like they were just there so Clem would end up with AJ and to introduce Carver (Who i also think should have been a bigger part of the season).
Season 2 doesn't compare to Season 1 for me but it had its own style and atmosphere, some intriguing characters and plot twists and in the end it managed to wake a lot of emotions in me. The ending might be questionable but certainly leaves an impact.
I still think that's where TWD should've ended.
Because ANF was so terribly bad, right?
S2 was good even tho it has its flaws. ANF is the one that kinda ruined the series. S2 continued Clems story while ANF didnt give a shit about previous seasons by throwing the S2 endings into the garbage and not focusing on Clem but forcing her into a story with a bunch of randoms.
Agreed, dammit.
If you ask me, the Season ultimately used Carver as motivation for the Cabin Group. Underdeveloped motivation, mind, but Carver himself wasn't that important despite attempts to make him seem so.
Season 1 = fantastic
Season 2 = great
Season 3 = good
400 Days = good
Michonne = good