Were we suppose to care?
What probably irked and puzzled me the most regarding A New Frontier was how Telltale insisted that we be invested in the story of Javi's family when all of his family members who survived past TTB part 1 had their selfishness played up for drama. Practically all the major tension that occurred within Javi's family happened because they refused to listen to reason when they didn't get what they wanted. I mean yeah Kenny did the same thing but at least his actions were largely motivated for the sake of the group and his family's wellbeing. Kate, Gabe and David only seemed to have cared about proving themselves in one way or another (as a lover, as a "man" and as a family man respectively) and when they failed they all decided to lash out at Javi out of wounded pride. Sure Javi might've had an obligation to look out for them, but the player doesn't, so why accentuate their flaws so significantly when we're obviously suppose to become attached to them? I don't get it.
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Yay... another a new frontier logic thread 2 years after its release. Much excitement.
SUPPOSE to, except Telltale butchered the Development.
You know what it is
To be fair, I'd say they all had(or developed) a sense of selflessness and responsibility through cooperative and/or heroic efforts at some points or others. Or at least facsimiles of such in David's case.
Really, I think it's clearly meant to describe [most of] the family as being complicated with a number of personal hangups within themselves and towards others that they have to work through in the name of finally being something resembling a happy, united family. That Kenny comparison is a very apt one considering David and to an extent Gabe in particular carry at a number of the same traits, while Kate is something of an interesting inversion, albeit one that doesn't get much time to properly develop and be appreciate.
The main problem lies in the fact that, in addition to a relatively large amount of people just kinda turning up their noses before the word go, these three are just prone to egregious moments of Idiot/Jerkass/both Ball grabbing and/or questionably executed scenes born of laziness, drama, a mix of both, or just straight up doing whatever. Poor Gabe in particular has enough screentime, proper focus, and low positioning/opinions to have dipped into most of this, though David is arguably more than even worse.
Were we? Yes.
Did we? Not as much as we should have. Although I guess the mileage varies a bit here.
I actually found myself caring about David, enough to actually consider him one of my all-time favorites from the entire series thus far. I kinda sorta felt something for Kate and Gabe, but not anywhere near the level I did to characters in the first two seasons. In fact, there's even a few characters in the Michonne miniseries I felt more attached to (well, really just Pete and Sam).
I think they had all the pieces they needed to make a compelling cast out of the Garcias, but they didn't build upon it enough. David and Gabe in particular start to get contextualized/realized as characters in episodes 4 and 5 for the most part, despite both of them being around since the first episode. I think that's a bit of a problem for what's considered to be your lead cast.
Not to say that the first two seasons didn't have a bit of difficulty with this at times either, but you got a fairly decent grasp on who the characters were relatively early on, in some cases in the very episode they were introduced. Don't know if I can say quite the same for S3's cast overall.
While these threads have been done to death there isn't anything else to talk about nowadays.
Yes Telltale games intended for you to care about the characters but, because of how many games telltale had to work on plus how they handled the characters. The game tried to get the player to dislike David and had Gabe bring out Conrad for no reason other than to bring up the choice for the sake of it. There was not much the game did to care and connect to Kate so I hope Telltale games will improve in TFS on characters.
Not for nothing, I think there are technically still things that we can talk about, if we have the intuition and energy to do so.
I don’t do threads. Someone pls do a thread that’ll make others question their own existence.
Of course we were, but with the games pace moving at a mile a minute all the characters pretty much came off like
Part of the reason I don't really mind the wait right now is the hope that we'll get longer, less all over the place episodes with more downtime for character building. I kinda left the same way I started, feeling like this family was still a bunch of strangers to me, but also all kind of douchebags in their own unique ways, and never really felt like any of the new characters friendships were earned, or even formed. They kinda just go from introductions to best friends for life after a day or so. I do think a lot of that was the result putting an emphasis on moving so fast, where it felt like the game was in such a rush to tell this grand, epic story that it sacrificed building sympathetic characters and a cohesive narrative for edge of your seat button prompts. Longer run and development time would have really helped the game expand past what it is.
I don't know why, but this actually made me laugh.
coughcoughTripp
Agreed.