Why so much hate ANF??
I personally loved this season because of the family-theme. Like choices actually did matter in the long run and even little pieces of dialogue changed because of simple things. It wasn't perfect but it was a really good work from Telltale's part. I do agree they were extremely short, but the character development (atleast for me) was really well done. Perhaps some plot holes here and there but I enjoyed it a little too much. For me this is what a telltale game should look like (story-wise) and yeah maybe it was a kind of spin-off but the fact that I had the chance to observe my Clem react to different things and not directly control her was exciting for me. I can only hope to see more of Javi's and Clem's story in future seasons. Thanks for hearing me out.
Comments
See here for my opinion on ANF.
There's a lot of reasons why ANF sucks.
I loved this season too! I agree that choices felt like they mattered more but I have to admit that Ava/Tripp should've been handled better in episode 5.
Yeah on that I can agree. It should've been handled better
Actually you do make some good points. But about what happens with Joan/Clint/AJ etc. it's obvious Telltale wants to leave some mystery and something we can look forward to. Although I agree with one thing, as much as I would like a ANF Season 2-ish feel, I think they already used the idea and should start fresh once again. Also, I think we can agree that playing as someone that was WITH Clem (I mean in a group) was atleast a little enjoyable, although I wouldn't mind playing as Clem in S4 and actually would want it. Anyways, everything else you said about the length I agree on
I really enjoyed this season despite its flaws, though I will admit it is my least favorite season in the series.
Here is my opinion on ANF: https://telltale.com/community/discussion/115008/my-last-thoughts-about-a-new-frontier-rant
It was alright, but it had lots of cons. The choices didn't matter much, the determinant characters (except Conrad, of course) have been treated like shit, it made the endings of the second season seem so pointless etc. So I don't really blame people for even reaching to the point of despising it. Hell, I kinda despise it, too.
Just alot of things that made the previous seasons great were neglected in this season. The constant QTE companied with the lack of development of characters made this season disappointing. Not only that, but they completely shafted Clementine in this season.
The thing about the S2 endings is that there were THREE. As much as I would've liked to see three different S3 Ep1 for all three different endings, it's something a little bit too difficult. We all know it always come to this, despite our choices the story can only grow in one direction, it would be impossible to branch out with every single little detail in the past seasons, considering this series is a multi-season series
That I can respect
Edit--4 endings
Well, have you ever played Heavy Rain or Until Dawn? Those games are full of outcomes.
A copy and paste from a similar thread.
1. The lies: I guess this isn't directly on ANF, but the people advertising it. They said it would be their biggest season yet...wrong. They said Clementine would be a co-playable character...while not a complete lie, it's also not true. They said no character would take a back seat...wrong. They said Ties That Bind was too big for one episode...wrong, it comes out to about 2 and 1/2 hours, which was the length of an average S1 episode. Our endings would play a big role on ANF...again, half true. There are some changes to Clem's physical appearance and actions, but largely, she's the same, and the way they resolved the endings is one of the worst things I have ever seen in a Telltale game. The original description of this game said Clem was on a journey for revenge...wrong, she was never out for revenge once throughout the game, in fact, her main arc was just trying to get AJ back, not outright revenge. God knows what else I'm forgetting.
2. Appealing to newcomers: Just why? In your 3rd main entry in your flagship series, why would you try to make it accessible to newcomers instead of outright continuing the focus you spent the previous 2 seasons working on, that being Clem. Wouldn't it have been more profitable to make an amazing 3rd season that gets people talking and can convince people to go out and buy all three seasons, instead of just buying this season and being told they don't need the first two in order to play it?
3. Too many writers: Episodes 1-4 ranged from 5-8 writers per episode. Ties That Bind Part 1 had a total of 8 writers, the first two seasons had that same amount of writers COMBINED. While it could be beneficial to have more than one writer working on games like this, that way ideas can be bounced around more effectively, it could be equally hurtful to have too many writers. It leads to inconsistencies, inefficiency, a drop in quality, and several other problems, especially when they all aren't on the same page or get brought in halfway through the project. The last episode managed to only have one writer and still wasn't all that good, but it's not like previous episodes did a lot to set it up well.
4. Obvious rewrites: By how it looks, the series went through a major overhaul from what was originally planned, and this goes all the way back to the first episode. What we know about what could have been and what we got is drastically different, you can find this evidence on the Details thread. From story threads getting dropped or changed, characters being removed, scenes getting cut to condense the length, planned flashbacks not being put into the game, and pretty much the entirety of Episodes 4 and 5.
5. Love triange: One of the cheapest ways to create drama that has ever been put in fiction. I have yet to see anyone pull off a love triangle effectively, every instance I've seen has been executed poorly, and we see that in this game between Javi, Kate, and David. This became entirely more evident in later episodes, especially in 5, when Kate can either kiss Javi right in front of David or yells at Javi saying that she couldn't believe she loved either of them. Despite my attempts to avoid anything with Kate and stay loyal to David, I couldn't do anything to avoid this fight, it was a forced conflict that could have easily been avoided.
6. It doesn't act as a continuation of Clem's story: This was clearly Javi's story and Clem was a glorified supporting character. She had no reason to be in this game at all other than for marketing reasons. Again, why would you take the focus off of the character that has been the main reason why this series has been as successful as it is? She had one reason to be in the season, and by the end of it, that purpose was never fulfilled, it just cheaply sets up the next game in the series. This leads me to my next point...
7. Story and character arcs: Other than for Javi, none of the story or character arcs had a satisfying conclusion, some didn't even have a conclusion. You wanted to stop Joan/Clint, well too bad, they're gone and nowhere to be found. Gabe said he would step up and become more of a man, well he does nothing to prove himself throughout the game, never learns from his mistakes, and dies in an "emotional" death that has some people saying he proved himself. You were looking to resolve things with your brother, well if you and Clem went with Kate first, then David just dies. Again, Clem is out looking for AJ and serves as her whole purpose for being in this game, well she doesn't succeed and Telltale expects us to come back for the sequel in order to resolve it.
8. Episode 5: One of the worst, if not the worst, episodes Telltale has ever made, this was a mess from start to finish. Outside of a couple of moments, it was just going from one scene to the next, with little to no substance in those scenes. Character motivations and mentalities change on a dime. The pacing was awful, again, it goes from one place to another and you never have a moment to just take a breath and take everything that just happened in. You see that best with Ava's determinant death, David goes from "Shit, Ava!" to "Let's keep going," after mourning for like 10 seconds. This is the same person that, if you tried to save Ava in the previous episode and go along with Clint's plan, attacks Clint and holds a gun to his head over her death. It makes this episode feel like a jumbled, unfocused mess. Most of my other problems with this episode are summed up by my previous points (unsatisfying conclusion to character/story arcs, obvious rewrites, forced conflicts).
9. Treatment of our S2 endings: Do I really need to say anything about this, we all know they sucked.
10. Episode lengths: Episodes 1 and 2 were 70 minutes, and Episode 5 was 75 minutes. Only Episodes 3 and 4 reach S2's average episode length, and S2 got plenty of complaints about episode lengths. When will Telltale learn that we like longer episodes. It looked like they were going to do that with TFTBL and GOT (hell, even Minecraft had decent length episodes), but this showed us that we were wrong. Now GOTG has good episode lengths again, but I'm not getting my hopes up that we'll see it in TWD.
11. Romance: I touched on it with the love triangle point, but now this is covering the romance stuff as a whole, absolutely none of it was good. Tripp and Eleanor was one sided and, honestly, borderline creepy. Kate is incredibly selfish and tries to hop on Javi's dick before she even thinks of talking to David. And Gabe and Clem was just, to quote Clem, "Gross." These characters knew each other for 3 days, and the extent of their romantic development was through other characters saying things about them (Eleanor saying they might hit it off, Kate saying Gabe has a crush on Clem, blah blah blah). And the fact is that it took up a huge amount of screen time throughout the series is why it's such a huge thing the series did wrong. If you're going to have romantic subplots like this, make it fucking good.
12. Lack of hubs and exploration: S2 got a lot of shit for this, and it doesn't look like Telltale got the fucking message for ANF. Look at Episode 3, except for the part where we have to fins a way into the building, we don't actually have any control of Javi throughout the episode. And even in the other episodes, there wasn't a hell of a lot of this type of stuff, which can help develop characters and make the game a more enjoyable experience.
13. Characters: So many of these characters are one dimensional or have little to no character to them at all. And the reason why is because we never really had the time to get to know them, which could have easily been fixed by adding more hubs. And a lot of the time, they change motivations on the dime and act very inconsistently. One episode, Kate wants to leave Richmond, two episodes later, for no reason, she wants to save it. David didn't want to leave Richmond, but in Episode 5, he wants to get the hell out. The game offers some form of motivation to it (Kate feels guilty, David looking out for his family), but even then it doesn't add up. Kate has always been very selfish throughout the game, and David talks about how he's a soldier and not a family man. As a soldier, who looks and sees a battlefield, want to stay and fight to try and save the people trapped there? God it doesn't make sense. Joan is one of the worst villains I can remember, Badger is this game's version of Troy from S2, Clint just goes along with Joan's plan with little persuasion, and characters like Tripp and Eleanor are just so forgettable. Characters like Kate and Gabe, who do actually go through some development, are just so unlikable that you just can't bring yourself to care for them.
14. Dialogue: Some of the dialogue in this game reach LiS levels of cringe. These are professional writers, right? LiS has the excuse that they were French writers trying to write American teens, what the hell is the excuse for the ANF writers?
15. No next time segments: I guess I can also put this under rewrites, but I'll give it its own point. None of the episodes featured a next time segment, this is probably the biggest indicator that Telltale had no fucking idea what they were doing and heavily changing/rewrote most of the game. And if it's not, then I would very much like to know what their logic was not putting them in. Every other series has them (except for penultimate episodes, but that at least makes sense), so why not include them?
God knows how many other problems I'm leaving out, but these are the ones off the top of my head.
All is said here !
It is exactly the problems in that season.
I tried same keep the bound between the brother but NAH still the fight at the end because that rat Kate I oush her away since the begining.
I don't think the writers have brothers
Of course because they have no sequel, means there is nothing that the writers have to worry about once the game is done since basically those choices don't "carry out" to other games. There just there and nothing. And yes I've played both Heavy Rain and Until Dawn, good games both
Yeah about the brothers thing, they were clearly going for the dysfunctional-type relationship. Thay was seen clearly
It sucks, just like all the Telltale games since TWAU ended (with the exception of Borderlands)
Five-seven, actually. But the endings were being treated like complete bullshite. They should've least kept Kenny, Jane and Edith alive (depending on your ending, of course) even for at least an episode or two, so they could make at least a bit of an impact on the story. Keep it the same, but actually keep the characters alive. But no, they had to kill them in a flashback, cause Telltale was being too lazy.
I mean, they could've at least put some effort to make like our choice actually matters (you know, the whole illusion of choice thing). But the thing is; they didn't even bother for that.
This sums up pretty much everything that I found wrong with ANF. I couldn't say these better myself.
Leave some mystery that once again will not matter. GREAT.
Why? Because it's trash THAT'S WHY.