Telltale Has Lost Their Magic Since TWD season 1
Look, this is something I've been feeling for a long time and I hope it can be a point of valid discussion here. I may come across as negative in my blog post, but I assure you it's out of frustrated love, not forced anger. Just hear me out and give this a look.
http://caesarsblogthing.blogspot.com/2015/08/telltale-think-piece.html
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Eh i think tales has been the best game they made imo
Tales has been a resounding hit and miss as far as I'm concerned, leaving the player devoid of agency with episodes that tend far over stay their welcome. I'll concede that the writing works on an 'un-interactive' sense, but frankly I never feel my existence is warranted in a game that refuses to view the player as little more than an observer most of the time. Also the constantly switching perspectives doesn't work, feels like the tv influence overtook it, as both Rhys and Fiona have to exist as character's both with and away from the player, their goals and motivations are forced on you in unnatural ways,and you have no choice but to go along with them or fell like a spoilsport as I mentioned in my blog. But I also know this is merely an opinion and have no real quarrel with those who like it.
If you're talking about overall success in terms of sales, fan reactions, awards, etc, than yes, it has gone down since Walking Dead Season 1. But, otherwise, that's just personal opinion. I prefer Game of Thrones to Walking Dead Season 1, and I know there are a lot of people here who prefer Tales or Wolf to Walking Dead Season 1 and even a handful who prefer Season 2 to Season 1
I only claim to offer an opinion, just like everyone else here, and anyone who prefers their other work. I'm not going to say the bullshit 'I get why other people like it' because if I did I would like it, but thanks for commenting, just trying to start a hopefully interesting discussion here
Oh I know it's just your opinion, I wasn't trying to start anything. But it is an interesting discussion, you're right
Also wasn't trying to start anything, just happen to have too much free time
We're people on an Internet forum discussing video games.
I think we all have too much free time
It's been years since Season 1. If you don't like Telltale anymore why are you even still here?
I think the swtiching perspective and unrealiable narrator makes the game unique and provides some of the funniest moments.
Telltale's whole philosophy changed after Walking Dead S1.
It seems like they attributed the success of WDS1 due to its 'choice and consequence' gameplay, when it was actually because Walking Dead is a popular franchise. As a result, less and less emphasis was then being put on point and click gameplay like from their earlier titles (Sam and Max, Tales of Monkey Island) up until the 'choice and consequence' gameplay seeming to be their core mechanic.
I haven't played GoT or TFtB partly because I am not a fan of those franchises, and I have little hope for Telltale's newest releases after the blunder that was Walking Dead S2. I enjoyed The Wolf Among Us because it still retained a bit of adventure gameplay and its narrative was interesting enough to make me play through all the episodes. Not even sure as to the exact reason why Walking Dead had a couple of sequels going for it. Season one could've just been a great stand-alone story.
What I'd like to see is Telltale going back to their old point and click formula for just a single game sometime in the future, but it's not going to happen. Multiple titles are already announced, including their work on the Super Show (to be honest, I'm still not even sure what that is).
Funny? Yes, suitable for interactivity it is not, IMO. I just feel too much like the choices I'm presented just give me he option between a handful of mid-tier jokes, and as far as I'm concerned the really funny things are completely devoid of my agency. I'm choosing my exposition for most of the episode and it honestly about half way through I just want it over with. 'Brevity is the soul of all wit,' and telltale just doesn't have the talent, once again IMO, to sustain often up to 3 hours of comedy.
Oh, on the contrary, I find everything telltale does, if not good, very interesting and vital to the medium. I just believe that they've gone from loss to loss as they've hastily assumed one success to mean they can just incorporate all of tv and films techniques with no regard for it's application in an interactive setting.
Eh, personally I think they've just gotten better, especially with TFTB, which I'd definitely consider my favorite game. Even though I haven't been really impressed with GOT, I know a lot of people who are enamored with it and will swear the same things up and down about the game series as I do with TFTB. But hey it's all opinions in the end.
I still find that another negative thread is getting pretty annoying. Look if you don't like Telltale that's fine, but what's not cool is projecting your negative views on a Telltale forums of all places.
I think everything after TWD S1 is still very good just not as great. If they put one game out per year it would result in games as good or even better than S1. TWAU is a game I could have easily top GOTY lists in 2014 if they had all year to work on it, add things, make choices matter and make long. They could have done the same thing with TWD S2, plus giving it a year's hype would do well for the game. I will admit TTG has made some pretty dumb decisions (2 games at once, Minecraft, bugged episodes) and wasting their money on stupid shit they don't need (Action Figures, Famous VA, etc). They're games are still good but could be superior.
I agree with some of what your stating, telltale have completely missed the point as far as, at least in my opinion, what made the walking dead special. They treat choice and consequence now like 'both are wrong and it's YOUR fault with little to no context as to why aside from dumb melodramatic reasons. Take the Whitehalls for example; Lord Whitehall essentially functions as a slap on the wrist forte player whenever he arrives. He will always contrive a reason to hate you and always will, and has been given no other characterisation other than he dislikes your family based on an old feud. (Disclaimer: I haven't played through episode 4 yet, so if this changes I'm sorry) It's interactive writing at it's laziest and reduces him to a one dimensional caricature. All recent telltale character's have felt this way. I do however disagree with TWD S1 being a success entirely on it's brands back, there's a lot of really interesting things going on their and telltale have seemingly missed all of those.
A vacuum chamber of people patting each other on the back is just as annoying. I'm just trying to have a discussion here about telltale's continued decline, in my opinion. I'm not happy with it, and I'm not going to just sit on that.
Don't discuss Telltale on Telltale's forums? Really? Well OP, I guess you have to go to Bungie's forums to discuss Telltale. God forbid you have a critical point of view that you want to share and discuss here where it's actually on-topic.
This guy is just giving his opinion in a well thought-out, polite, and respectful manner. Labeling his thread as annoying and telling him to take it elsewhere is, IMO, completely ridiculous.
Eh, whatever helps you sleep at night man.
I'm not exactly running at top performance today, so to speak, but if I'm reading this right, a fair majority of your criticisms are aimed at player agency, or more specifically, what you believe is the lack thereof, right?
I can agree with you to a point that the agency given to the player isn't as expansive as it was for TWD S1, but I don't think it's quite reached the level where the player's involvement becomes more or less as passive as you say it has. I guess an easy way to sum up how I look at it is that it's like going from being the wrestler, to being a coach, or a referee; you still play a role in the 'game' at hand, but that role is much less involved and less physical/personal than the other, but at the same time, hasn't reached the level of passiveness that is the crowd. The player is still an important component to the game, but from a more 'behind-the-scenes' kind of way where their influence isn't felt as heavily through their own personal actions, as much as it is the other characters you're pulling the figurative 'strings' of.
For the sake of example, let's look at the choice of saving Ben in S1, versus the 'choice' of Nick's fate in S2. One is direct and quite literally in the hands of the player, while the other is more advisory, where your words to Walter ultimately act as the catalyst that leads to Nick's fate.
Saving Ben is you being the wrestler, deciding what move to use on your opponent, while 'saving' Nick is more like you acting as the coach, shouting words of wisdom and inspiration to your student. You are indeed manipulating the ultimate outcome through your actions, but in a way that is distilled through the actions of another character, if that makes any sense. That being said, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing at it's base, and given the character you play in S2, it makes some narrative sense to have the game work in this fashion. But that's just me. Of course, I can't deny that they had a fair share of problems and moments that just didn't work in this format, but at the same time I don't feel like it was a lost cause by any stretch. S2 was an attempt to change up how the interaction between the player and the world worked, and if anything, ultimately proved that there are some areas in which this format just doesn't hold up to the predecessor. This is a good example of what I'm going to go into a bit further down, in that they're trying out new things a bit too liberally, and that the potential quality of their newer series are suffering from it. Quite frankly, a lot of this is the result of experimentation. They are trying to carve their own path in their side of the gaming world, but they just don't have the clearest vision on how to do that, and are stuck in a kind of transitive state between the process of innovation.
GoT and Tales are largely un-tested waters in the sense of them making use of multiple player characters, which makes characterization and player agency all the more difficult to pull off efficiently, on top of them trying to make use of things they learned from TWD, all in this attempt to bring together and blend the world of television and games together into a functional and efficient hybrid, if their episodic/serial design and the new "Super Show" project/format is any indication.
It feels like instead of sticking with the formula that worked for S1 and building upon it, they're consistently changing out variables from that formula in an attempt to reinvent it entirely; trying to make another formula that can operate just as well as the first. Obviously, that isn't an exact science, and more of a 'throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks' kind. It leads to a rocky road where they can have constant ups and downs in terms of a series' quality across the board. I don't think it's a fundamentally bad choice to try to move forward rather than stick to a tried-and-true formula, but it does have some pretty risky side-effects in practice, some of which we're seeing the manifestations of, especially in their more recent titles. They have good intentions for their series, but I don't think they're always looking at the big picture. You mentioned that you feel that the implementation of elements from television and other mediums is a bit wanton or heavy-handed, and in all honesty, I think you're right. But it's not like they don't understand these concepts; they clearly do, it's just that due to their constant attempts to innovate and reinvent that they are focused more on the addition than the implementation. They're more preoccupied with putting new concepts into a game than they are at making sure said additions work with and mesh with what they are trying to accomplish. Again, all rounding back to the fact that they're trying too hard to push forward.
Another contributing factor to a lot of the problems is the management of work loads, on top of them trying to make use of the newer concepts learned from TWD. Back when they were doing TWD S1, they were much more committed to singular projects, focusing the majority of man-power into finishing one series before starting work on another. After S1, they started to do more multi-tasking, developing multiple series at a time. S2 and TWAU felt the impact of that choice the hardest, since it was their first time doing two series on a rotation, especially following TWD S1, a game which represented a pretty huge change in direction for their games. That series was the point where they jumped from point-and-click adventure games into... whatever you call TWD. And that's part of the problem, too; it's actually quite difficult to categorize TWD, at least from my perspective. It really goes against the flow of modern games in a lot of ways, and even against the flow of their older titles. Bottom line being, they had a lot of pressure going into TWAU and S2, and quite a lot riding on their backs.
I feel most of the shortcomings are again, the result of them jumping into something they aren't at all used to, and more or less winging it. Switching writers and other people around from project to project isn't the easiest thing to adjust to, especially if it's a first time thing. It also doesn't help when you are working on two projects with fairly distinctive themes, the detective noir of TWAU versus the gritty, interpersonal drama of TWD. The somewhat diminished writing quality and lack of nuance to characters is a result of multiple things: their attempt at transitioning towards this television-styled presentation, the shifting of writers, and from attempts to optimize their new schedule of juggling multiple games. The puzzles and more interactive segments of the recent series were cut down from S1 as part of experimenting with the set-up of the series, and experimentation with their current formula; they wanted to trim episodes down to shorter, bite-sized lengths that could be played in a single sitting, trying to reach out to a broader audience and reinvent what they had going for S1.
With so many restrictions and limits popping up as a result of trying out so many different things, some of the writing and design of their series took quite a bit of a hit in terms of quality and depth, partly due to some of the obvious corner-cutting they ended up having to do. Of course, after that first leap was made, they started to acclimate and figure out how to these handle new schemes more proficiently, which helped the quality of the next two games substantially improve. However, in spite of all of that, even Tales and GoT aren't fully free of the problems that the first two series faced. But I do think there is a clear improvement in the handling of Tales and GoT over the handling of S2 and TWAU, and the individual quality of both series involved. I do think they've definitely realized a fair amount of the faults in these experiments, particularly in terms of interactivity. As of Tales and GoT, and even the later episodes of TWD S2, they started to add in more interactive elements again. But they're still too keen on trying to change up the formula, so these interactive sequences also suffer quality loss due to the streamlined and modified nature of them.
I think the magic of TWD S1 is still there, they just haven't figured out how to properly utilize it to it's potential yet. They're moving forward so fast that they aren't really giving themselves the time they need to acclimate to new territory, to figure out how that magic works and can be utilized with their newer projects. Simply put, I think most of their series would fare much better if they just slowed down a little, and let themselves catch their breath.
Hopefully some of that novella I just typed up there makes enough sense. I'm pretty good at writing overly long things, but not so good at having them actually make sense
And as a final note, I'd like to say that I appreciate seeing a post like this. Your piece on Telltale is thought out, insightful, and full of valid reasoning for why you feel the way you do. It's refreshing, to say the least. I'd like to see threads like these to pop up more often.
I just hope TellTale doesn't turn into Ubisoft and give us the same game with a new title every year or so cough Assassin's Creed cough, and ignore their fans in the process. The Wolf Among Us Season 2, anybody? Still no word... And how else is TellTale supposed to know what fans want to see improved if no one voices their opinions? If companies are willing to believe the good people say about them, they better be willing to believe some of the bad, too. Bioware is a great example of a company listening to its fans, but not becoming slaves to them. So keep voicing your opinions.
Let me be the first to say... HOLY.SHIT
I fucking love you Deltino. Awesome, just what I was looking for when I started this. I think 'throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks' is simple but perfect, I'm kicking myself for not thinking of writing it down. Also "I'm pretty good at writing overly long things, but not so good at having them actually make sense," right there with you (hopefully, that was really good stuff you wrote just there).
In response to your coach/player analogy, I feel like it's good, but also doesn't quite sum up my frustration with the games. On your example with Clem vs. Lee and how they deal with respective deaths of Nick and Ben, I fell that Nick's death falls flat because Nick himself is flat. I can't even remember who Nick was, what his overall goal was or why I should even care. Sans episode 4 and Kenny's ending season 2 was a massive thud IMO. Also some players make the coaches life very difficult, and some just feel like they never listen, if am to use the analogy to make a point.
On your comment on agency, I don't necessarily believe it's that TWD was more expansive with it's agency that made it work moe than other telltale games, it was how it used it. Very simple example of this was in episode 2, wherein upon re-entering the kitchen of the St. John's your given several choices as to how to deal with the situation. Long story short, the game called my bluff on my second playthrough, I thought all options would lead to me and everyone else getting knocked out and Clemintine not eating the meat, so I just picked a different one of the choices, i forget which one. Turns out, they filled in the possibility space of her eating the mat if you don't directly tell her to not eat it. It's clever in that it makes the players failing so obvious and so clearly avoidable. It reinforces the player's agency in the events that are happening, and while in reality her eating the meat only equates to a couple extra lines of dialogue, it's endless powerful because I feel responsible. I tensed up, I felt right back to where I was playing for the first time, unsure what I said would lead to something I could have and should have thought of and stopped. It engages with you on a level that frankly no other telltale game does because of this. Agency is always an illusion in games, just some e.g. TWD, do a much better job of it.
Seriously though, awesome work
My comment about Ben and Nick wasn't really aimed at how Clem/Lee dealt with the deaths, but more at the role the player had in the deaths, going along with the idea of player agency. The choice regarding Ben is direct; you have him in your hands, and you're choosing, in that moment, whether he lives or dies. In the case of Nick, you play a more indirect role in his death; whatever you say to Walter at the ski lodge is what ultimately leads to Walter making the ultimate call on whether or not to save his life. The player has agency in both of these deaths, in the sense that they contribute to them, but in two different ways. One of them has a bit less agency than the other, but it's not at a non-existent or entirely passive level.
And while I can understand your comment about Nick being a flat character, I personally have disagree about that (Nick is my 5th favorite character from the series overall, so yeah, I'm a bit biased)
Interestingly enough, I see this as a double-edged sword of sorts. You have the obvious downside of characters that just don't listen to you or make things difficult, but that is just as much a strength as it is a weakness. Simply put, this is something that can make or break a scene or sequence in an episode. If done right, it can make a good scene into a great scene. If done wrong, it can become a low-point of an episode, and at worst, completely ruin any momentum or tension that a scene had going for it. Unfortunately, Telltale developed a bit of a habit of using this trick too often, and as expected, the trick starts to lose effectiveness the more times it's used. Going back to the character you play as in S2, it makes sense to have moments where characters just won't listen to what you have to say, and when used correctly, can make a scene turn out for the better, especially if said scene is meant to invoke the feeling of helplessness, dread, tension, etc. The stand-off at the end of Amid the Ruins, or the Kenny/Jane fight are, in my opinion, good examples of this. They're situations where it makes more sense that the player isn't able to stop it, because that's the exact feeling both scenes are going for: they're supposed to leave you feeling helpless, and to build up the dread and realization that neither conflict is going to end peacefully.
I think it's more of a combination of both. I think that the player is afforded a lot more agency in their choices and interactions in TWD S1 than in the other Telltale series so far. Being able to tell the group about your past if you saved Carley, being able to convince Omid to jump off the bridge, pushing him off, or having him push you off, or even cosmetic choices, like choosing a weapon in Long Road Ahead (spanner, monkey wrench, or spike remover) and having that carry over across the rest of the episode 3 and episode 4. Those are moments that afford agency to the player, and makes them feel like they're playing a bigger role in the world as a whole. Think about those examples for a minute, then think about the other Telltale series. There's not many of those types of moments popping up anymore, which is a shame. They're not huge, and they don't have a huge difference in how the rest of the story plays out, but they give all the more satisfaction to the player, as it helps give these choices weight, which in turn makes them feel far more consequential than they really are.
I disagree, I think they've improved in most aspects since TWD S1.
i get the feeling that it is the passion and personal investment behind each game that give it it's quality, i don't think season two of TWD was made by people who obsessed over every aspect of the game until it was perfect, unlike season one.
i don't think it was just the popularity of TWD franchise that made it so popular and critically acclaimed, that may have gotten people interested, but you can tell from interviews that player agency and story were incredibly important to the people who made it, and they would constantly go back and forth trying to get the balance perfect, now i am not saying that the people who made season two didn't care about that, but i think the level of personal investment and passion wasn't at the same level.
TFTB is an entirely different genre, but i honestly think there has been a lot of excitement from the people making it and that shows in the game.
i think the only way season 3 of TWDG will be a success is if they just take a step back and aim for perfection and take their time, i think season two suffered a bit from how quickly it was put together, obviously time and aiming high doesn't equal passion, but more thinking time and mulling it over can add to the quality and breed passion, and therefore a better game.
season 2 was a massive let down, wolf among us was pretty good but i thought the last 2 episodes were meh. tales from the borderlands is def there best game so far, i did like game of thrones more but not anymore.
"My comment about Ben and Nick wasn't really aimed at how Clem/Lee dealt with the deaths, but more at the role the player had in the deaths, going along with the idea of player agency," and my comment was disagreeing with that criticism by saying that my issue with Nick scenes was down to a writing failure, not the failure of agency that time.
Sections 2 and 3 have some really good stuff, agree with pretty much all of it even if I hadn't made that clear due to errors of omission in previous comments. It's impossible to include everything, but yeah, I've been thinking basically along the same lines of both of those sections for a long time. Great stuff, keep it up!
Can I just throw something out there, what makes Tales from the borderlands so special. I love comedy, but just feel the entire thing so far has been pretty meh. Is it something other than the comedy that I'm not seeing or is it just my more Irish (exaggerated anecdotes) and British (dry wit) sensibilities dampening an American comedy (for reference I find shows like modern family and arrested development really tedious)
You're not the only one who doesn't get the hype. I personally prefer GOT. TFTB seems average to me . I don't find anything funny about it's type of humor and the Borderlands concept has literally no appeal to me whatsoever
It's not just the comedy that makes me love it, though that is a huge part of it. It's really how likeable and interesting the characters are and how the story has been progressing. I've laughed every episode, so I don't know if culture somehow dampens the comedy.
I know that some people also really like how choices are handled in it (at least compared to other Telltale titles), I've never really cared about choices "mattering" so long as the story and its characters kept me engaged. Because Tales is somewhat of an over the top comedy it makes it a lot easier to have your choices make more of an impact because they can lead to some outrageous situations.
For me, it's just been the complete package, and I hope the series continues to push the envolope.
Outside of the comedy aspect, I think people are enjoying that this may be the first Telltale game to have significant impacts in terms of story direction based on your choices. Personally, that doesn't matter to me. It's more about the overall story.
Which brings me to say that I feel the same way. I love the original Borderlands games and I was initially very excited to get a full story based game set in the universe, but I personally feel like Telltale fell short with it. The story has been very meh, none of the characters except for the reoccuring Borderlands characters and Gortys excite me. Plus, like you said, the comedy isn't very good. It's really hit or miss, even more so than the original Borderlands games.
Making something comedy based, in all honesty, is pretty hard. Comedy is arguably one of the most subjective things out there. Making something sad isn't that difficult if you know what you're doing and know how to elicit emotions out of people, and not to mention that there are some things that people more or less find universally sad/depressing. But making something that makes people laugh is even harder, because there's no universal gauge for what makes people laugh in the first place. It's an emotion that is almost too difficult to properly gauge, or even pin down, since there's such a large variance between people, with next to nothing that any majority of people can universally agree with to be 'funny'
In fact, that's probably part of why there's so few comedy-based games around
Nope, completely disagree I love every single one of their games (post Walking dead season 1) Game of Thrones easily being my favourite.
This is why I dont like when people ask "Why do you like this, why do you find this funny?" How could I even explain why this game tickled my funny bones and not yours? Its such a personal thing. I personally like silly humor as much as I like sophisticated humor, but I couldnt tell you why. You just respond to whatever you respond to, and I found Tales to just be such a blast to play, especially after the dreariness of TWD series.
Ok...? I just said I didn't find the comedy to be that funny. It's clearly my personal opinion, if you do then great for you
Not saying I agree with the thought that you shouldn't post anything negative, but I think where Freelancepolicefan11 was coming from is that there's 'enough negativity' here, so we don't need more. Kind of need more positive threads to balance the negative, you know?
Anyhow, like I said, I don't necessarily agree that you shouldn't have posted, but I can understand where freelance is getting from. It does get tiresome afterall.
Regarding the actual thread, I don't think they've hit a story as emotionally affecting as TWD S1, with a large part of what makes it so good coming right at the very end in my view. But honestly, really good works are hard to top. I've enjoyed all their products.
(Btw, not saying I only enjoyed the ending of TWD S1, I enjoyed all of it.
Just saying I think it's the ending that makes it hard to top, though it being at the start of the apocalypse helped with other bits of the writing. You know, normal people thrust into an apocalyptic scenario and we see how they adjust? With TWD S2, there was no adjustment and people were already hardened, which perhaps lends to the feeling of little character development and such, because I know in a world full of death and sadness, it would likely gnaw on you a lot. At least it would with some people.)
TWD S1 handled choice pretty similarly as well, I think? In terms of there being few 'right' choices. Been a long time since I played through it, though I'd like to go through it again sometime soon.