An open letter to Telltale
Hey Telltale.
My name's fistfulosocks (my parents were hippies, what can I say?), and this is a open letter of sorts. I don't want to sound like an entitled customer or be rude to you; having friends in IT and other developer professions I know that you get terribly rude shit flung at you for pretty much the smallest reason - though I will admit that I've cursed pretty wildly and called your company some nasty things in the last 48 hours. Hopefully any of you didn't hear any of it and take no offense.
Anyway - I really like your games. I played, and thoroughly enjoyed the likes of Sam and Max, Monkey Island and The Walking Dead. Right now I'm trying to enjoy the second season of the later mentioned game series.
It's not the story or the gameplay that bothers me (even though I do not approve of all the choices that you did in those departments during development - but that's not the point here) - rather, it's technical issues.
It all started last night when the game was unable to find my save file from the first season. That was an extreme annoyance, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt because my disc version of season one was american and the disc of season two that I had just purchased was a european one so perhaps the different regions had to do with it. I'm not happy about it, but that's not the point that I wish to take up (and knowing nothing about programming perhaps it is a bit too much to ask that you should fix this issue for the minority that I belong to who's discs are from different regions).
Soon enough I was following Clementine's journey and I enjoyed myself (even though some scenes honestly felt like they were placed in for pure shock value. I'm looking at you, Sam the dog) and then the game froze on me right as I started episode 2. "Okay," I said to myself, and took a snapchat for my friends with the caption "it's positively FREEZING in here" - I've played games for quite a few years, I've learned to deal with freezes, lag and other hiccups (if it's any comfort, I powered through Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines at launch and my game froze as soon as anyone sneezed so if my issues were only freezes I wouldn't even bother reporting this to you).
Hitting the reset button on my Playstation 3, I was soon greeted with a message that's never all that pleasant - "save data is corrupted".
Needless to say, I was quite annoyed. I took a smoke, calmed down, and powered through the episode again. Then it happened again. Then, after reaching episode 5, once again. On an unrelated note; you should really add the ability to skip dialogue, the "previously/next time on Walking Dead" and credits roll - on forced playthroughs like these it all ends up being really grating. In fact, having the ability to magically check in boxes of what choices you made in prior episodes before starting a episode would probably be for the best. It sure beats randomly generated ones anyway.
I have read that I am not the only one to have these issues, and seeing as you have no real fix for the problem at the moment except for deleting your save file and start all over again I have to say that I am honestly thoroughly disappointed in your lack of quality control.
The game itself, especially at my third attempt at playing it through, is very enjoyable. It is, though different, a very worthy follow up to one of my favorite games in... well, a very long time.
When my friends come asking me for new games to play I have recommended The Walking Dead. Many of them ended up playing through the first season and when I met them afterwards I got a knowing look of "what the fuck did you recommend to me man". Needless to say, I am not alone in my circle of friends to loved the first season - many of my friends lead busy lives and have said that they'll wait to buy the second season before they hear from me what I'll think; and it is with disappointment in my eyes that I will tell them that I can't recommend it... not because it is a bad game, but rather that it's got so many game breaking issues happening to people so randomly that it is simply not worth picking up in this state in which it was released in.
I know (and sincerely hope) that you are working on a fix for these issues. I must simply be one of million complaints being thrown at you right now - but all I ask is this: the next time you release a title of this high profile (of which all of your titles seem to somewhat be these days), please, please, please thoroughly look them through for any bugs and game breaking issues. My experience with the second season of The Walking Dead has really made me lose faith in you somewhat (though not as storytellers) something that I would never really expect to do. The state in which the disc version of the game is right now is just downright inexcusable from a company that has had more game of the year awards showered over them than any other in recent memory.
It is simply a damn, damn shame what has happened and I fear that these issues will perhaps be one of my stronger memories of what would otherwise be a fantastic game down the line.
Please Telltale - keep telling your great stories and do what you do; just for the sake of your fans and customers make sure that the technical aspects of your games are there to back it all up.
Sincerely, an entitled whiny fan whose name is fistfulosocks