A lack of Innovation
I won't be purchasing this game, I've had a huge amount of issues and frustrations with Telltale lately, and their complete lack of innovation or attempts at coherency and respect to the world they have created have completely ruined this for me. I was hoping that in some way, Telltale might strive for unique and interesting new forms of storytelling, but they have been consistently resting on their laurels and purchasing intellectual property rights from everything possible, forming small teams working with over a decade old game technology to create small interactive movies with minimal gameplay in any form.
Since the original Walking Dead, the amount of dialogue variation and choices has dramatically been decreasing, depending on your options, you sometimes went into completely different dialogue paths and unique variations, there was a good amount of optional content, conversations and exploration available in each episode, the dynamic inventory and interaction system were, at the time, novel concepts, and sometimes they subtlety played with player expectations by breaking the rules of their own game mechanics, or integrating choice in a novel unexpected way (A certain dialogue interruption and intense QTE come to mind).
With the limited and restrictive tech, they also managed to create some evocative and expressive facial expressions, and sometimes the animations were top notch, especially near the finale.
I have trouble describing what particularly it was about the writing and world building that felt better, but it felt like conversations were more extensive, and there was more conversations about practical things, and world design built around the choices people would make to work to survive an apocalypse. The game didn't feel the need to rush you through its intended narrative, it made it clear what would direct you to continue on, and gave you the tools to interact in miniature sandboxes that helped the narrative and characters feel more believable, instead of being high octane.
The Wolf Among Us sadly didn't flesh out the investigations or create unique puzzle solving, but it had some excellent clues and subtle bits of information that left me wondering for ages, trying to piece together info as each episode came together (I spent far to long frustratedly wondering why a knife was moved and why that wasn't explained, and I felt great when I solved the mystery without the game telling me). It also made some fantastic steps forward visually and in regards to combat, the bold art style did a far better job hiding the technical limitations than the far more lacklustre visuals in a lot of Telltales recent games (even the good ones). And, for at least the first episode, the way they allowed you to choreograph fight scenes, and the promise that people might point out dynamic injuries in the story, fascinated me.
Sadly, the combat in their games became very linear after that first promising idea, choice was reduced in that regard, and they made no effort to make it challenging, or even provide the option of making it more difficult and dynamic. They never attempted shooting mechanics similar to Episode 3 of the first game, or anything that provided free reign of movement or combat interactivity to provide a challenge.
The complete lack of challenge or interesting gameplay or puzzles to suit the storytelling has been a huge frustration of mine, with the continued flaws in their writing and the complete lack of choices provided, their games are one step away from films, but with none of the effort put into visual fidelity, cinematography, imagery, or aesthetic that film designers sometimes spend years working on. You still have objects clipping through each other, and the minute details are almost always never paid attention to, facial animations jerk out when they aren't in focus, objects are hastily grabbed or held, anti aliasing is still terrible, character animations lose detail in frames of action, things don't break apart realistically, there is horrible texture work, they still, haven't figured out how to render crowds. I mean, in a game where only a specific angle and specific scene appears on screen at any time, and only one thing needs to be rendered, Telltale should have, a far, far easier job than most developers in improving fidelity and the visual and auditory spectacle of their products. They don't have to account for player input or camera angles, the game is one step away from a series of cutscenes, and the fact so many details are glossed over and how many things are so consistently ugly, despite the experience Telltale has, and the amount of games under their belt, is far too disappointing for me to overlook.
I can not comprehend why the studio as a whole has not put the effort into one, large game, and polish it and refine it to make it the best piece gaming narrative they could make. This would not only be good game design, but it would dramatically improve their sales, reputation and profitability, as among some consumers, they consider Telltale a joke in regards to their lack of choice and engine. Writers are supposedly a huge part of Telltales design focus, but they consistently change writers for certain stories and characters, and completely remove any coherency in the plot, they also put the minimum effort into dialogue choices, making sure they all funnel into one exact dialogue path, this dramatically reduces the work the writers do, who supposedly are a big part of their development process. The fact that, after all this time, their new game still has a huge amount of technical and gameplay problems, but is one of the shortest, smallest episodes they have made with lots of details overlooked and dialogue often funnelled, is something I am tired of.
This is all without mentioning the elephant in the room, the big story flaws that I won't talk about due to spoilers, but let it be known that I am extremely frustrated and exasperated that they have completely negated the entirety of season 2, and cut of all character development potentially available, because Telltale didn't innovate in writing, or even consider allowing more freedom of choice to the player.
Hopefully what I have said makes sense, feel free to discuss it.
Comments
I'm kinda of inclined to agree. The point n' click adventure style of the first Walking Dead was novel for the time, but it deteriorated without much innovation. S2 of the WD included a few more prompts, S3 and Batman had the new engine, Minecraft might've had an interesting interface but looked the same.
And just; Borderlands, GoT, n' Wolf weren't that well. Borderlands did amazing in terms of story, and comedy, with plenty of gamey functions here or there.
But I feel we just need a few more moments. Puzzles, solutions, working things out. Or just better action prompts than mash a button, or press a button to watch an animation. Maybe rapid pressing that isn't mashing.
Also I'm kind of tired of the 'So-and-so' will remember that prompt. It's just cheap and lazy at this point especially when the longevity of these remarks don't last long, or they don't mention it. Might as well have put a trigger to some of these characters heads and put 'They will remember this.' before shooting.
Also sometimes the narrative sucks. Generally it doesn't and can perform but you have hit n' miss.
Walking Dead? Borderlands? Amazing.
Batman was pretty good imo.
Game of Thrones? Kinda eh, interesting premise, wasted potential. Especially with kicking the player, over and over without any victory. You don't do that an entire game and make your players feel 'good', about the resolution. Especially by promising 'your choices will matter' and having none of them matter.
Wolf Among Us improved, but having to rescribble their narrative kinda fucked them over.
Walking Dead Season 2? Utter trash. Nick and Sarah....jesus. And made the whole journey feel pointless with Kenny/Jane instant death the next episode in five minutes.
Also I'm kinda of utterly tired of the cliffhanger endings. Clementine in the field, Rhys and Fiona disappearing, Bigby realizing the twist with Faith, the GoT's 'get revenge' montage ending, Batman with the Joker's threat, etc.
Can we not end off every fucking game with ambiguity. Do we really need the constant sequel hook that is you blatantly leaving things unresolved so you can milk it? Can you just build a succinct story that is self-contained? Also can we not tackle a dozen projects at the same time, if it impacts development time/ is a massive drain on resources?
Although on the above, sometimes it is done well. Borderlands, Walking Dead. Felt viable. Faith's revelation was a good twist. And there were good premises with the Joker/GoT Revenge. But it's just become the common TT staple of 'Season 2 is coming because we didn't wrap this up!'
correct
There ya go. Feeling better now that you got that long winded vent out?
it's the forums..where else should they post it
It's not going to change unfortunately. They will just tell themselves we are the vocal minority because they know they can just keep releasing content and selling it no matter what.
This is how it works with EVERYTHING now. Something new and cool comes out.....its successful like Walking Dead Season 1. We get a little period of time where things stay close to that followed by taking advantage of knowing the majority of their sales will be from randoms who don't actually care. Once the mainstream has accepted you for over a year this seems to always happen. Which is why they don't seem to care how obvious their strategy is to long time fans. I mean seriously look at how short everything feels now? Their approach to doing so much? Just making it sort.
I played ANF 1 and 2 on Xbox One. It's insane to me how even now TTG still have those laggy segments where the screen locks up. They still haven't managed to make it not run like that? Episode 2 felt like it was completely unpolished all kinds of strange visual problems going on.
Why change the character we are going to play as. Only to promote the game in a way that sort of hides this? That doesn't even make sense..
Yeah that was the spoiler I was talking about, along with the many inconsistent story issues Season 2 had in a huge amount of areas, they just completely dismissed the entire character arc and storyline of Kenny and Jane.
One of the largest story arcs in Season 2, and they dismiss it in about thirty seconds. All that backstory, all those moments, all those interactions and "heart felt" times, all completely meaningless, dismissed by completely different writers that decided to dump the entire cast and skip into the future again. Everything that we were experiencing and learning about with those characters, all ruined. The way they ruined the flawed but hopeful ending with Kenny is just more than exasperating.
Telltale has wasted four years of potential stories, and I cannot fathom or understand why, we have characters we care about and are invested in, an entirely new cast with Clementine shoe horned in is what no fan asked for. All those frustrations about the poor writing for Kenny and Jane, and the entire cast, were all negated with even worse writing. I just cannot fathom how the storytelling got this bad.
I would happily have paid for a game which has three or four different states depending on the ending, imagine how lauded it would be if Telltale designed it so these characters had meaningful impact in a new narrative, and weren't immediately dismissed, if they put in the time and effort over these past few years making the best Walking Dead game possible, instead of buying rights to every IP under the sun, that would have been incredible.
But no, they changed all the writers again, for some unfathomable reason.
They find every trite inconceivable way to make people in the apocalypse act in ridiculously villainous and illogical ways for the sake of drama, I would have much, much preferred a far more toned and grounded story with more focus on conversations and character moments, heck, maybe even with a conclusion for once.
I'm been looking at the steam spy stats for the recent Telltale games, and they have been selling dramatically less overtime, which is some positivity.
I know they sell it on a lot of platforms (I don't understand why they restrict themselves to mobile, it ruins the game on a technical level). But I am getting the impression that a lot of people are tired of the same old thing, you see a lot of gamers who never buy Telltale games at all as well.
I found that frustrating as well, turning Clementine back into an npc after we role-played her in our own way simply doesn't work, especially since her personality doesn't change depending on choices, or allow us to set a type of personality before we start the game even. So much for #MyClementine.
I have to wonder how much Gearbox was involved in Tales From the Borderlands, because it felt too well made and choreographed in comparison to TTG lately.
I think it was just a passion project. Something that everyone working on it gave their all. It feels like they had their A-team working on Tales.
A few things I'm wondering, first of all, does the Telltale staff ever look at the forums and respond to the overwhelming criticism they are receiving? Secondly, is there any other forums or places on social media where people are discussing this or critiquing it?
Thirdly, what have the original Telltale writers and creators (such as with the first Walking Dead or their other classics) been up to, what have they been working on? I'm interested in seeing what their products are.
I won't purchase any TT game untill Michonne works on my Playstation
Yes they do read the forums but don't normally respond to criticism.
I don't know about other forums but you could probably read the official Telltale Facebook page to see what people are saying https://www.facebook.com/telltalegames/?fref=ts
Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman who worked on season 1 created a new company Campo Santo and created the game Firewatch, some other ex Telltale staff also worked on the game Oxenfree.
I agree that the sequel hooks need to stop. It is ridiculous and doesn't ever make us feel that the story is over. That's not good at all. Remember the sequel hook at the end of Back to the Future with Marty ? There was no sequel and we will likely never see one ever, especially nowadays. So basically that leaves me disappointed with the ending to the point that I had to create my own for the game. I definitely agree with OP that TT needs to calm down with the multiple projects within a year. They need to hunker down and have a huge team make a single game a year.
Thank you for the info, I appreciate it.