A fan's few words about Episode 1 Season 2(Major Spoilers)
Well...some of you might remember how much I love Telltale,from my posts.I don't hide it,I love these guys and most of their games.
But...somehow,I gotta admit I was disappointed by the new episode.What went wrong?
For me,everything in the beginning went absolutely amazing.True to the first season.Then Omid died.But that's not the point.What disappointed me was the part following the intro.The part from the scene in the forest with Christa up to the end.Why?
Because first of all it was too darn grim.Even for a drama epic like Walking Dead,the whole atmosphere was depressing in a bad way,not in the good way we've grown to like.Clementine's voice changed.She's what...9 at the end of Season 1 and 11 or so at the beginning of Season 2 and her voice gets different.That's just a tiny thing though.The fact that both Christa and Omid vanish from the very beginning kind of annoyed me,it didn't give us time enough to feel this coziness,this connection with the previous season.
And there come the new survivors.Apart from Luce and maaaybe Pete,the rest of the bunch are uninteresting characters,very easy to dislike and just plain annoying.
We've had our Larry and we've had our Kenny in the first season who occassionaly acted like jerks and the typical "dislike-me" figures,but they were lovable in their own special way.
These guys,the news ones just....suck man.I didn't even feel that I care about any of them not for one moment.Then again,after the intro bathroom scene,I never really felt anything in this episode.Never cared,never went like "Ooooh damn!" or "Wow!" or "F**k!!!"
And this comes from a very dedicated fan of the games.The Season 2 Episode feels ridiculously sub-par compared to any episode of the first season and 400 days.
Heck,the Season 1 first episode was one epic start!!!
I also dislike the fact that Season 2 changed interface from the typical one in the previous episodes to the new one used in The Wolf Among Us.Which kind of confused me and made me think I'm lost in another game.
sigh
That's all.Hopefully someone will care about this rant and not just go "don't give a damn"
Comments
I agree. Didn't feel anything this episode, let alone feel interested. I keep telling myself "just wait for episode 2" but....
You're exactly right. I'm one of the few people who wasn't a fan of S2 E1 as I had my problems with the narrative structure, Clem's dialogues in correlation to the 16 month skip and the writing. And this is coming from a big fan of the first season.
I'm riding on the last chance that maybe S2 E2 will prove for the shortcomings in the first episode. If not, I don't think I'll continue playing the rest of the season.
I gotta disagree, I found this episode to be VERY intriguing and impactful. Playing as Clem is a WHOLE new experience. I found the episode to be riveting from beginning to end.
I will, I cared to much about the first season to quit. It's just a point of if I will be able to enjoy it as much.
^^ This.
A lot of this stuff you're feeling about the episode actually shows that it was done well. I mean seriously, a story about a jaded child in a hopeless world is depressing? What the fuck were you expecting, she's gonna find a cure in Episode 1 and save the world and then live happily ever after, the other episodes are cancelled? This apocalypse setting where you play as a jaded kid with a thousand yard stare just isn't cozy enough?
You dislike the characters? You're not even making a case for them being bad characters, you're just saying you don't like who they are. Good writing evokes emotion, it doesn't have to be positive emotion. I don't see how anyone could form a legit opinion on how the characters are written based off what little we've seen of them so far (and you didn't even try to, really); Episode 1 wasn't meant to expand much on the characters, it's meant to show us how Clementine's progressed since we last saw her.
Read a classic hero's journey or something where everyone is all nice and likeable except the big bad, where the children are always smiling and happy and everyone lives happily ever after with a bright future, I don't think this game is for you.
The part about her voice getting deeper. Are you serious? Yes, kids voices change drastically as they grow up. You're just nitpick mcgee aren't you?
Clem's voice changes in one year from 10 to 11 years-old.She's not even 14 to 15 FFS.But that's just a minor thing.
You should notice that I said the characters were uninteresting.I found nothing special to them and most of them annoyed me. You don't have to lecture me on emotion,I'm a guy who played the first season 3 times and cried every single time at the end.The first season is an absolute masterpiece.I always felt involved in the decisions and the fights and the painful journey from Macon's Lee Drug Store to Savannah.I have the game in digital form and both retail versions original. I loved every bit of it.
But the new episode...is dull,is very very grim both stylistically and in the atmosphere and not the good kind of grim,it just feels remote and faceless.I love controlling Clementine and all and she's probably the only good aspect of the episode.
She goes from 9 years old to 11 years old, actually - almost 2 full years pass since the end of season 1. She also goes through a ton of shit. Even ignoring the latter there's absolutely nothing unrealistic about her voice becoming deeper.
Yes, you said the characters were uninteresting, but you didn't make any case for WHY they're uninteresting other than "I don't like them as characters!" That's them being good, effective characters, not them being poorly written. Maybe if that's not what you meant to say, you should try to actually explain why you think otherwise because you certainly didn't do that.
You're throwing out random buzzwords that remind me of people who like to describe gameplay with terms like "floaty." The entire second half of your post is utterly meaningless.
All I took from this is "I don't like this, but I'm really confused as to why I don't like it."
"Good writing evokes emotion it doesn't have to be a positive emotion." What about NO emotion?... The characters are BORING. You have a spineless wimp (stereotypical), an emotional bitch (stereotypical), a pussy (stereotypical), a "way to nice" person (stereotypical) who will obviously die to make it darker (because it always needs to be darker, right?....), the only characters who were slightly dimensional were a sheltered child (who was only interesting because she was creepy), a doctor trying to shelter his child, and a military man who died at the end of the first episode. Should the ZA be dark, scary, and gloomy? Yes. Should it become dull, pointless, and uninteresting? No. You said "I don't see how anyone could form a legit opinion on how the characters are written based off what little we've seen of them so far," and I agree... which is why we should have been shown more. An optional conversation with each after coming into the cabin would have done wonders! But, they were so obsessed with pushing out the game before christmas (I think, that or they just didn't care) that they didn't bother putting any in. The part about her voice getting deeper? You're right :P That is why I don't like the characters and find the story bland.
What are you talking about it being "too depressing"? You realize this is TWD right?
All totally fair criticisms. I agree with quite a lot of what you said. I just take issue with the OP not actually explaining what they meant.
I'm not really sure why people think this new group was so much worse than the old group we had. I didn't really find the members of the old group to be that interesting after only the first episode. Most of them became more interesting as the story went on, but none of them really wowed me immediately (except for Clem, of course). Even Kenny seemed pretty generic at first. It wasn't until Episode 2 when he started picking apart your loyalties to him that he started to become interesting to me.
In my opinion, the only unlikable, one-dimensional character so far is Rebecca and that's because Clem needed an easy target for her newfound sass. Most of the other characters are fairly nice but have one or more character flaws that we've seen. Luke panics when things go wrong, Pete likes to dish out tough love, Alvin is a henpecked pushover, Nick is pretty much an angry Ben, and Sarah is sheltered and extremely needy. The other one that most people seem to dislike is Carlos but I actually liked him. Maybe because he wasn't that big of a jerk to me since I apologized for talking his daughter into giving me his supplies.
A great video to the people who are complaining
Same here. That's why I thought I would try putting it into words... honestly turned out better than I thought it would :P
I agree a thousand times over. When we met the first group in season 1 I really didn't care about them either. It wasn't until later on that I started to like them.
I got through 11 seconds and realized I enjoy pointing out what they have done wrong as much as I like pointing out what they have done right.
Ben
Lilly
Ben...again
Carley
Actually, maybe. Remember, this is 2 years into the apocalypse. Anyone who had survived for this long has had to deal with this very shitty world for a very long time (well, except for Sarah). Getting tired of it all, thinking that everything is pointless, and becoming numb to the depressing bullshit that happens all around you is probably something that would happen.
That being said, I do agree the OP that the episode does seem a bit too desolate and drab at times, even though I think that it fits with the theme and atmosphere of the setting.
Ben had story, we had story with Lilly, and Carley, all before the end of of the episode they were introduced in. We had no story with any of the characters in this episode (excluding Luke and Pete and Nick a tiny bit). We said hi, got put in a shed, and snuck around avoiding them. We avoided interaction with the characters, and even when we had the chance to interact with them while still sticking to the "earning trust" momentum they had going on we still had little to no interaction... We felt something for Lilly after the situation in the pharmacy with her dad nearly killing himself and then saving his life, we felt something for Carley after talking with her in the pharmacy and going to the motor inn and saving her over Doug (if you did so). We felt pity for Ben because he was abysmally pathetic. We have done nothing with the characters excluding Luke (who wasn't very dimensional) , Pete (who is already dead or soon will be) , and Nick (who is abysmally pathetic).
i think its funny theres so many more "all that remains sucks" threads then "thanks telltale for working your asses off threads" i honestly think some peolpe had overly high expectations no not because of how good season 1 was but because of something called. waiting some of us waited for a year and a half and then played for an hour and 30 minutes to have it just suddenly end. now i personally love all that remains i like it more than no time left and a new day. but some users are acting like it was bad and it seems they are more angry and sad in these threads in things i dont understand. like "this group is boring" how is it boring?? something is wrong with sarah. rebecca might be cheating on alvin. why does nick seem to flip out from time to time. why was luke mean to us, then suddenly magically nice to us? why the hell does rebecca hate us? who can i trust? i have so many questions and very few are resolved this group is mysterious and i love it.
i understand both sides, i really do. i love this episode and i think it was great but i also think it was slightly on the short side and it never felt like we had a choice to slow things down usually. it was things after things after things after things which just leads up to a sudden ending. but thats the only thing i didnt like the characters a fresh and new and its great for me. and honestly not everyone likes the same thing in life, some of you need to understand we all have different brains and thoughts on things. id recommend trying to understand both sides of this. i think both sides of this are right. yes it could have been better but at the same time some of you need to stop always complaining and actually give concrete ways it could be better.
I think that episode 1 from season 1 was kinda boring, but then again I've played it so many times but episode 2 blew me away.
it was my all time favorite episode so maybe the same thing will happen here.
One of the reasons the story for season 2 started odd is because its a different story writer, but maybe the new writer will become better as time passes.
Nick seems to flip because he is the rehashed Ben. He was mean because he saw the bite, then nice because we weren't a zombie. She hates us because she is pregnant (and more than likely just a usual bitch (until she needs us then she was wrong and we should help her)). Trust no one. Boring. "we all have different brains and thoughts on things," then why come here trying to complain about us complaining. (Complaining does as much, if not more, for a story than saying everything they do right.) I have given concrete ways it could be better.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that he's Ben already, for example no one in their right mind would ever trust Ben with a gun at all!
Very true... but he did almost accidently shoot Clem withing 30 seconds of even seeing his face.... I see a correlation there xD
Ben doesn't shoot people, he just puts them in a position to BE shot.
Like, the one time someone DID trust him with a gun. 15 minutes later everyone had been taken hostage. Including Ben.
"Here's a gun." They all died
So it's not necessarily the characters you find boring, it's the lack of interaction with them. There is a distinction there. You can spend loads of time interacting with a character like Shawn Greene or Mark from Episode 2 but they'll still be boring characters in the end. Furthermore, you can usually tell when a character is going to be boring within a few seconds of dialogue with them. I personally didn't get that sense from any of the new characters. They all seem like they have strong personalities that can make for interesting character arcs.
Onto the lack of interaction with the characters, I agree that this was a shortcoming of the episode. Again, I can see why they did it this way. Not being able to freely question everybody about their life story and what they've been through really drives home the point that you're the outsider amongst a group of people who already know each other fairly well. This makes makes it more difficult to know if you can trust them, which is the overarching theme of the season. But this does end up distancing you a bit from the characters so again, it's a case of "Yeah it fits with the theme, but it's still a problem."
I don't really understand. it's like... people are expecting S2E1 to be as good as the ENTIRITY of S1. When you look at it, ALL the complaints up until now are basically the same and have no real validity since there's only 1 episode out.
Complaining about "bad" characters when barely any of them had more than 3minutes worth of speech in all the episode, really ?
Complaining about "poor story-writing", after having seen barely a fifth of the story, it's like complaining the movie is crap when you've only seen the trailers coming before it. I can give you many movies off the top of my head that were crap until the VERY LAST MINUTE, then after that it all turned out fantastic.
Complaining about how Clem changed too much. About 2 years in the ZA, you can bet that anyone will feel tired of all the shit he's seen/lived. If Clementine still had her cheerful/joyous tone from S1 I'd have called THAT bad writing. Right now she feels empty after losing so many people dear to her, don't you think that'd be a normal reaction, considering ?
I reserve my final judgement until all the episodes are out because it's completely useless until then. In the end in my humble opinion this episode lacked only one thing. That is, one of those "free-roam the camp" phase when you can talk to people and get to know them, like S1E1 had, it would've been easy to fit into, right before going out with Nick and Pete to be honest.
There is a distinction, having conversations with a character can reveal them as a boring character, but never having conversations automatically makes them boring. So yes, they are boring. It has nothing to do with the theme, the entire idea of the game is interaction. For instance, lets consider Allen... little to no conversation, even if we had had an interaction where we tried to start a conversation with him and he walked away it would have been more productive to the story. Even an interation where the outcome is complete silence is better than skipping to the next day with no interaction. Boring.
You mean Alvin? You can totally have a conversation with him. He even gives you a juice box.
That juice box! With all it's juicy goodness!
Alright bad example. Replace his name with Rebecca. Or Nick... Or Luke, or Pete, or Carlos, or Sarah, or Cybog-Lee.
But you have conversations with all of those people....(well, except Cyborg-Lee...for now) They weren't super-extensive conversations, but there was enough there to get a feel for their personalities, which were mostly well-defined and interesting. The only exceptions are Rebecca and maybe Luke, who's still about as interesting as Carley from Episode 1.
"well-defined and interesting." By your stanards perhaps. Not to mention the conversations with all these characters were, as you said short, but also forced and extremely basic. (Excluding Luke)
im not saying you didnt. its just some users arent.
Good points and I agree with you about what the ep was missing.
I found the ep to be very exciting and while I hardly fell in love with any of the new characters and it would have been nice to learn more about them, I really felt like it wasn't meant to be about them, it was meant to be about Clem.
Well. my standards going into this were the characters from Episode 1 of Season.1. So yeah. By my standards.
I don't see how personalities in the old group were any more interesting than the personalities in the new group, at least after the first episode. Kenny wasn't that interesting before things started getting desperate in Episode 2. Larry didn't have any depth to him other than "wanting to keep dangers away from his daughter," which makes him just like any other dad, except he's also an asshole. Lilly flip-flopped from "why the fuck did you help these people, they're probably dangerous" to "oh my god please help my daddy, thank you so much." Carley was just a nice hot chick with a gun and Doug was just "the nerd." And then there's Katjaa and Duck. If you wanted to talk about boring and annoying characters, they should be where you start.
I will leave you with this.. if the baseline for your assessment that these characters are anything more than stagnant pisspoor placeholders is the crew from S1E1 I highly suggest you go play it again, because you're missing out.
This pretty much hits the nail on the head.
If their intention for S2 was to capture the atmosphere of the comics, well, then they did a very good job. But is this really such a good thing? Personally, I prefer Season 1 over Kirkman's trashy comics any day.
Still love the art design and most of the voice acting, though.
It might be realistic. But this is also a video game, you know. If you eliminate every gleam of hope right from the beginning, don't give the player a proper task and make the whole thing nothing but numb and depressing, some players won't be that motivated to play the whole game.
I think they should have saved these kind of emotions for the later episodes, like they did in S1.
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