Community Critiques
This is not a negative comment. This is strictly my critique of episode 4 and I hope that for anyone that posts on this thread, that they will keep with the theme of saying what they wish could be improved on or changed for future episodes and for future series by TellTale Games. I hope that people will give constructive criticism.
I feel that this episode had a lot of elements that were great and ehh.... I feel that this episode was a great extension into the story and that I loved the sort of wrap up with the Woodsman and Bigby, at least how I played it, and that it went deeper into the characters within this world. I liked the design of the jersey devil and the action segment that was involved with him, I liked that the story showed some character development with Collin, Jack, Narissa, etc... I felt that I could really connect with these characters and that I was very selective with the choices I made. I felt that my choices carried a lot of weight with my relationships within the Fable community. I like the final scene and how it sort of left off with a huge cliffhanger; It left me emotionally longing for the next episode so I feel that the way you release your games, in a episodic schedule, is great and it makes me love your games that much more because it makes me wait for the next part. These are some of the things that I liked about the episode and that I wish to see be continued.
Now for what I think can be improved: I feel like this episode, like in episode 2, had a lack of unique choices that would lead me down a unique story line that I would only get by forcing me to make a decision at a pivotal point in the story. I feel that the choices that I did have would have a huge impact on my relationship with other fables, but would not have changed the story at all. I also feel that that although the story was very rich, that it was short: VERY short. I liked how in episode 1, with the first fight with the Woodsman, that I had a variety of choices when fighting him. I could throw him into the sink, on the bed, at the wall, and I liked that variety. There wasn't as much choice in the fight with the Jersey Devil. Overall, I would like to see more choices that would provide a more unique story line, and a little more variety in the fights.
In conclusion, I feel that this story was rich, but short and lacking in length since these episodes are released on a, optimistically, bi-monthly basis, I feel that the choices I could make were weighted heavily on my relationships with the other fables, but didn't have a huge impact on the uniqueness of the story I could have, and that during most of the fight scenes in all of the episodes were linear, and could use more variety to provide a unique experience to each player.
Comments
My complaint with the episode is that it didn't really make me feel anything at all (with the exception of the Jersey Devil encounter). It lacked intensity and hard decision making. I just felt like I was kind of coasting along easily picking up all the little details on who the Crooked Man is and what schemes he was running. None of those schemes were really surprising or unexpected.
And just when things looked like they were starting to pick up, the episode screeched to a halt.
I would give this episode a 9. I really enjoyed it.