TellTale's decision to kill off most all the characters after every single game
What do you make of TellTale's decision to kill off pretty much their entire cast of characters after every single game? It's not what the show or the comic chose to do. The comic still has four characters around from the first twenty issues of the series (and they had five left until just a couple issues ago). Same with the show. The main thing that keeps people glued into the show despite getting a little tired of the story is that they are able to follow characters that have been around for seasons on end.
I do feel that the quality of the TellTale series would have stayed at a higher level if they had chosen to build their group similar to how the comic and show did instead of just killing everyone off but one and explaining that action by saying well this is just her story.
So what was the reason. Does TellTale just have very limited resources on what they can spend on games and it makes more financial sense for them to bring in new voice actors instead carrying over previous ones where they will start asking for more money to come back?
Or did they really think that continuing to kill off virtually the entire cast of characters and making people get introduced to brand new characters every single game would be better in the long run then carrying over characters that we are already attached to?
Comments
Get kill Ava and Tripp was pretty stupid, the 2 could have been a great asset in the next seasons !
I totally think that is stupid to kill every or almost characters each time ; the next episode you won't care relation with others characters because you know they will die except the less interesting
Simple. It requires less effort. Continuing to develop characters from the seasons would actually mean Telltale would have to stop being lazy, something, as of late, they've been very determined to be. Its much easier to just keep starting from scratch with a new cast each time.
Oh, and Telltale heavily rely on just using death as a means for cheap shock value to make up for an otherwise lack of creativity.
True but they poorly calculate that too, due how it is hard to create new shape new clothes style for they fit to the personality of each new characters they would have to create.
Game of thrones irked me. They killed the father, and geralt's family. They make you sacrifice asher or rodrik. Mira's options were garbage. Being some douche's plaything or being killed were horrible choices. You couldn't kill ramsay. It seemed like you were completely helpless no matter what with most of the characters you played as. I hate games where you're helpless and you can't kill the bad guys. And when people try to be a passive, do what they're told, and give people chances it doesn't work out. Most youtubers go that route in every telltale game. I want to be able to kill whoever I want and not have someone I spare and am nice to throw me under the bus and or try to kill me but if they do I want to have the option to kill them.
Totally agree !
Each time you try to let gabe be killed Javi die too
But Marianna no, her you can't save her ! tssssss
I wonder if the reasoning comes down simply to the pros and cons of having a game be interactive. Since this is a game and not a novel or comic book they want to tailor the story in a way that would appease gamers. Gamers like to have fair amount of interactivity and not just sit there and watch things unfold like they would in a book, comic, or tv show. As a result they have created a system where the gamers have some control over the fate of the characters in the game. A consequence though is that it is hard to carry characters over to following games since the player has some control over what happens to characters in the game.
Maybe it would have been better to just allow the player to get their interactivity fixes in other ways outside of the story. For instance in Last of Us the player doesn't have any control over the story but there are a lot of custom options in the gameplay.
well that s because he cant die there because he was still alive in the show and Books at that time.
And you known that telltale cannot alter the source material.
True, but we just can't compare.
The last of us was amazing from every corner.
The story, the design, the characters everything was done like a movie.
I loved it!!
But the point of telltale was to make you feel, believe that's your own story.
S1: smaller ratio of dead major characters and more impactful, paved the way for Lee's final moments
S2 onwards: shrug
The problem is Telltale doesn't do much with characters you can potentially save, although they improved upon this with Conrad this season he felt more like an ongoing achievement than an actual character by Episode 4 and 5, it like he pops up you have to save him and that's it. No rewarding payoff for it.
Let's compare that to Season 1, save Carley, Doug or Ben they are going to die no matter what you do, but by saving them you are rewarded, Doug with his awesome laser pen moments, Carley with her advice or little would be romance with Lee, and Ben with his epic rant against Kenny. Even replaying Season 1 now I'll save these characters because it has a rewarding payoff, with Season 2 onwards it feels much less like that.
Nick and Sarah for instance, save them and you get nothing, hence when they die they feel like wasted potential. Tripp and Ava are another example, you save them and they die in episode 5 with... (you guessed it) barely any rewarding payoff. Because of this their stories feel incomplete and we as players are frustrated and feel like everyone has been killed off who had that potential to be more.
So despite the fact almost all the cast was killed off in Season 1 there was less to complain about because the characters had completed their arcs, their stories were done. Season 2 onwards however detriment characters feel like wasted potential and it just feels like Telltale are killing them off for the hell of it rather than actually completing their story arcs.
Now Season 3 tried to improve on this with Kenny and Jane scenes in Episode 4 and Conrad's character, let's hope they do this better come Season 4.
Yeah, this is a problem that persists through the games. Season 1, at the very least, ended with much of the main cast dead or presumed to be because it made sense for the story's direction. And as a consolation, it still had certain characters simply leave the story, allowing them to continue existing offscreen until they get a potential revisit in the future. But with the following installments, there seemed to be an over-reliance on wiping most of the cast out purely for the sake in making things feel tense by the final episode of the game, which typically leaves an average of 5 characters alive each time even when some of them could've easily survived and removed from prominence in another way.
With determinant characters, it's somewhat understandable given that those characters may not exist in later scenes. With that said however, the determinant character curse became a thing because there was increasingly little effort being put into doing anything with them. And the absolute apex of that is Sarah in Season 2, who becomes determinant in the 1st act of the penultimate episode only to be abruptly axed off in the climax of the same episode with little to nothing being done with her despite her constant presence in a central hub area, her connection to major plot elements, and being one of the only characters with a persisting determinate relationship with Clementine. And while Conrad was a definite improvement on that, it's still very notable that most the other determinant characters either get killed off not too long after they reappear(Ava) or disappear from the story altogether(Joan).
Another trend I notice is the death of characters that could've easily been handled another way. Like, some characters like Katjaa or Carlos needed to be out of the way for the story to be told in a certain way, but others are literally only killed off because potatoes. This includes Chuck, Bonnie, Mike(originally, debatable), Jane(originally), Edith, Gabe, and any kid/youth character that's not named Clementine. I mean, what exactly does these deaths accomplish besides a temporary moment of "feels"?
And honestly, I think I'm finally at a point where I just don't care much anymore because of this, much like a lot of people apparently were already. Like, why should I continue to stick around with any overt sense of investment when many of the characters I like or at least see potential in tend to get killed off even when it's not really necessary?
Perfect comment. To complement, the constant practice of lazy writing, due to the innumerable holes of script and its low quality after Season 1.
They do this decision in order to eliminate any carrying over of relationships so that their work for next season will be easier since they can establish new characters with choices that didn't affect the previous seasons. Javier, ANF group, Prescott's group to be examples of this.
The more people you keep around, the more work is required. This is especially the case for trying to keep multiple determinant characters within the group for an acceptable length of time, which has never been done properly in The Walking Dead Game (or any other game I can imagine to date with the exception of possibly Mass Effect). They will be forced to leave the group or to be killed because of the difficulty of continuing it. To have something like this and to keep carrying over for seasons to come and to also remember their relationships of your character, you need to have time, a plan ahead of time and those who can make the choice tree for X character to keep existing.
For example, imagine a situation where X survivor can live or die. If X survivor lives in one play-through but X survivor dies in another play-through, both paths need to be considered. Especially the one where the survivor is alive as they continue to exist. Now in a multiple choice game such as the Walking Dead, this becomes incredibly difficult. It's not like a normal story where you go through one option and that's it, here you are given two options. If X survivor continues to live for enough time that someone else has the option to live or die, now you have two determinate. Does anyone notice that once a character is determinant they seem to talk far less or are less apparent on-screen? Take Conrad for example. Carley and Doug were probably the best determinants even if they only lasted two episodes, it's just that they had far more dialogue than what the present determinant characters seem to have.
And if they do get to the ending, what happens then? If they continue for some but are killed off by others, you have to factor the ones that kept him alive. What exactly would that character do and how would they help in X situation compared to if protagonist is not present with them? How would their opinions factor in? For having so many endings in Season 2 of Episode 5, you can see why this would be a problem. It would require far more than only having two-three years in development for something like this to work. You'd need to split the paths from then on and if you didn't, you'd have to make this extremely disgusting one linear path again, the developers choose the latter and did NOT experiment.
As for those that aren't determinant, it confuses me as to why they'd get rid of some of their characters, like Christa. But I'd assume that because they wanted to start with a new group who uhm... all died anyway... Shit. Here is where we have a problem and with Season 1 too. Killing off most/all your characters and expecting it to continue from season to season DOES NOT leave much in the way for choices carrying over in a choices game. Most of the people didn't want the ANF story line. They wanted their story to continue as soon as Season 2 of Episode 5 ended. If they could've made all these paths, it would've truely established the choices mattering. You simply do not make an ending like this and prepare for it to be short-shallowed. I immediately knew from S2E5 endings that it was either choices mattering or not mattering based on what path they went with. Unfortunely for every one of us here, they choose the scummy route. I say scummy because the ending is basically like clickbait for the next season.
I still would've liked the option to mortally wound him. He ticks me off. Along with that guy who expected to be served salt and bread.
I'm so peeved that gabe got to live but sarah didn't even when you save her. And I'm disappointed that they killed off mariana. Them killing ava in that pathetically lazy way was so cringe. They put more effort into gabe's death than the other kids. How can they kill the good kids but leave the most obnoxious and cringe inducing one alive? gabe's death is determinant but mariana's wasn't. You'd think mariana's death would be determinant too but nope.
Yes it's silly but they stopped putting much effort into these games in nearly every way. Soon as they knew they could ride off the success of the first game knowing fans will buy for lower quality work simply because the product says The Walking Dead dead or had Clementine depicted on it.
I don't like it much, specially because I think in games like TTG's TWD, building relationships with the characters is way more interesting than have your average Community vs Group twd plot, but it's a shame that there are so many wasted characters (not only dead ones, but also characters that are left unknown like Christa, Lilly, Molly, Mike, Arvo and many others)
Also deaths in S1 seemed way better in terms of emotion. Katjaa and Duck, Kenny, Ben and Lee made me extremely sad.
Then don't try and get Gabe killed.
When I was playing the first episode, all I could think about was how Mariana had already become my favorite character above the rest of the group (Gabe and Kate). Killing her in the first episode is probably the most unfair death I've seen in any TWD media.
And Ava's death was pathetic, it honestly seemed like I was watching a comedy show
They were always planning to kill Mariana off early on when they starting building past the basic concept. Not quite sure why she had to die if they were just gonna nerf Kate immediately afterward, but whatever.
And honestly, you probably shouldn't hold Gabe's unnecessary determinant status against them since most of them weren't around then, though the ones who were shouldn't have done what they did to Sarah in the first place.
The whole cast of season 2 is dead or never coming back expect for Clem, Telltale are 10x more blood hungry then GRRM and Robert K combined.
same. Telltale had to try so hard to make people like gabe and by doing that and in such a rushful and unbelievable way it made me not like him even more and it told me that they cared more about gabe than any other kid in the franchise and that's a shame. It also shows that them keeping gabe alive but killing off jane and kenny that they choose poorly. Telltale making clem crush on someone who was trash, had a lot of problems and wasn't likable for 5 episodes straight proves their writing quality was horrendous. Clem being a side character, not being the mc and being involved in someone else's story and not her own was a horrible decision. You could only control her feelings and actions in short flashbacks. Everything in the present time was telltale forcing clem to act the way they wanted her too. It was like she was a character that you never played as. To me she was a complete stranger. It felt like you as the player were meeting her for the first time. I wouldn't be so serious about it if you didn't spend the entire season one teaching her about survival, taking care of her, and relinquishing the torch to her. Which she carried throughout the entire second season with the player being the one in control of her choices and actions and the player controlling her feelings as they saw fit.
Well Ludd can die in the final episode so atleast there s that .
True but them killing off one and making the other determinant was stupid. And sarah's death had a false sense of determinant status which was bogus.
I think that the way they tried desperately to make Gabe relevant and likeable made him even more annoying. I mean, everytime there was a scene with Gabe I was like "oh, Gabe is a nice kid, I'm starting to like him" only for him to, in a way completely unbeliavable and forced by the plot, screw you up in some way 5 seconds later, be it by jumping on the guy in the armory, by becoming mad after you don't let him help remove Kate's bullet or by telling everyone you shot Conrad.
That's what I've been saying. This is why Season 4 will be a failure.
I think when they run out of ideas for a given character they kill them or in some cases realise certain characters need to be out of the way for their idea to work because they didn't have the conflict planned out in a logical way.
I believe it worked perfectly that way with Season 1, but in Season 2 and onward they should have kept some people around.
Season 1 didn't really kill all the cast. A good number of them were alive or at least unknown.
So true
Give examples. Note I'm trying to talk from a season to season perspective. Not just them staying in one season.If there are any characters that have a potential to coming back, speak your mind.
From a perspective before Season 2, there is a lot of potential. Omid and Christa were basically confirmed, Kenny could have returned(he did) and heck even Lilly. 400 days characters seemed a bit interesting(some more than others). Compare this to season 2 where no one lives to anf. The characters are complete garbage in ANF so I couldn't care less if they survive.
I think the only 'child death' that was necessary was Duck. He needed to die for Kenny's character to go in the direction it needed to go.
And that's why Season 1 was the best. It did things that were necessary with characters that, if we're being honest here, were pretty simple and/or weren't that important to begin iwth.
That's my beef with both Mariana's existence and From the Gallows.
True.
I never really cared when I find out season 1 determined characters had to die, I think you hit it on the nail, on why it pisses me off now when it didn't back then.
I never really cared when I find out season 1 determined characters had to die, I think you hit it on the nail, on why it pisses me off now when it didn't back then.