Episode 3 complaints
I feel the need to write this stuff out since, quite honestly, episode three was almost as large of a letdown as episode two was, but for different reasons.The main problem for episode two was the ridiculous delay it suffered, as well as the mediocre pacing and storyline it had to deal with. Still, it was enjoyable to get to play through it and get a shot at experiencing Bigby’s story again despite it’s flaws. And that is taking into consideration the sheer annoyance that was Beauty when it came to her repeating everything you said, word for damn word, when you picked the correct choice. Which, were also so bloody easy and yet silly at the same time, it almost felt insulting, as if the writers didn’t expect us to pick up on the multitude of hints and nudges in the whole scene and thought having Beauty be an annoying tit would be a necessary evil for us to realize the importance of the event. But that’s a complaint for another day at this point.
Getting back on track, I’ll start with what, for me personally, was the biggest issue in the episode which, funny enough, is in the best scene in the game, more precisely the entire encounter with Auntie Greenleaf and Rachel. Laura Bailey did a fantastic job in this event and it really helped carry it through to the end, regardless of the route you took, and the writer for this part deserves to get extra work put on his table in my opinion. But, it’s not without it’s flaws, some major, some minor, but mostly major, all centered around the choice of whether you should burn the tree down or not.
If you chose not to, the scene is fairly well played out, but Bigby feels too … passive, I guess, for the lack of better words that come to my mind. Burning down Auntie’s tree is basically cutting off the old woman’s one and only source of revenue, and the only thing keeping her and other Fables afloat, and Bigby is a smart enough individual to realise this. The problem here is that Snow gives up too quickly on her initial plan of having Bigby burn down the tree after he tells her she is not his boss as of yet, and the lack of an option to both tell Snow to fuck off and think more clearly about what she is telling him to do.
The burning the tree route tho’, that was bad. Real bad. Only Laura managed to somewhat save that scene, but even she couldn’t make it any less of a mess with her acting. The biggest complaint I have is that Auntie didn’t put up any real kind of resistance to Bigby burning down the tree. She’s an old woman, yes. And she is also not very famour or well known, agreed. But even so, she is a witch in the Fable universe and, to my knowledge, that means she can pack quite a punch. Not enough to stop or beat Bigby, I highly doubt that, but enough that it should give her enough confidence, coupled with adrenaline, to step up and try to delay or convince Bigby not to go through with the act.
I imagined she would get between Bigby and the tree, pushing him back while screaming, begging, him to reconsider and give her another chance, fervently defending her heirloom. At this point, several options would appear, one of them being backing off and rethinking your position on this. Another would be to push and/or shove Auntie away, either into the wall or on the couch a few times. First would result in her getting up and slapping the lighter out of your hand and being pushed away again, this time Snow intervening between you and her and letting you do the job.
Another option would be to grab her and lock her in the closet, doing the job as she screams bloody murder at you. This option would be present at all stages of the confrontation. A final option would be to actually punch and/or kick Auntie away or onto the ground for you to get past her and do the job, basically getting really physical with her. If she were to end on the ground, she would tug at Bigby’s feet, begging and crying not to do it or even pulling one last trick out of her sleeve and zapping him with some magic. The options would be to either kick her again or ignore her and finish the job, as well as the option to back down and think “No, this shit is wrong. This shit is not right. Snow, we’re not fucking doing this. You and your orders can fuck off.”
Would this be cruel as fuck and evil? Yes, but I’m both confident Bailey’s acting could of pulled through on this and it would of been a more emotional and thought provoking scene that Auntie just casually stepping aside and watching the tree burn down. You are also doing a evil as fuck act by burning down the tree anyway, since you are destroying the only means of income and livelihood of Greenleaf and other Fables who need her service to get by in life. If you want to be a dick, you gotta go the extra mile and make it as emotional as possible without resorting to killing people only because you’re too lazy to think of anything else that can be used for shock value. Not to mention this whole string of events could of been a good usage of QTE as you try to wrestle Greenleaf away from the tree.
Also, the tree burning was shit. Blue flames and all were a nice touch, but goddamn did the whole process of it burning down looked like absolute shit. But, in all fairness, the rest of the event was well played out and written. The only other minor complaint I can think of is the fact that there is no real conversation topic over the picture hang on the wall and that the scene needed more moments of Bigby realising something was up with Rachel, instead of just having it only when he discovers the glamour.
Next would be the finale with Bloody Mary. I get it, it’s Bloody Mary, she kills children for fun and is, more or less, a horror story character. But bloody hell man, she is so over the goddamn top silly that she loses any form of threat or credibility in my eyes. Her entire shtick is being edgy for the sake of being edgy and dropping unfunny one liners. While I like the design of the character, I can’t really say it fits her that well, but this one is more up to personal taste that anything.
While her personality is annoying and all, the biggest issue I had with this was the lack of a “fake” fight with her, for lack of better words.
I was thinking there would be a series of challenging QTE’s, or as challenging as those things can get, with her jumping through one reflective surface and popping out of another, either absolutely pushing Bigby’s shit it or the entire fight ending on equal footing depending on how you did in the QTE, only firing the silver bullet at the end when she either got bored with toying with him and seeing he ain’t going down, or until she realizes that if she dosn’t fire the bullet, everything could go down south real fast.
But no, instead, we ignore such a potential encounter and went straight for the silver bullet into the woodsman axe which, while making a bit of sense from a story perspective, makes it completely uninteresting and lazy from a “gameplay” perspective. This was the perfect opportunity to make Mary into a credible and genuine threat after you bombed it with the script, give the episode a proper and thrilling finale, and show her off as more than a wacky self-insert.
But let’s instead waste time making a pointless QTE as she approaches Bigby with the axe. If he would at least try to get up and end up falling down again every time you succeeded, resulting in the gauge to reset to zero until she got close to you, that would've been interesting and serve a purpose, but as it stands, the current final QTE is a damn waste of time and resources.
And seriously, stop it with the pointless QTE’s. Their annoying.
Then comes the Crane segment. I’ll give props to the actor, he played the broken down Crane magnificently, but the parts where he regained his composure were entirely off the mark and disappointing. You don’t go back to being a smarmy jackass with no emotion in your voice after breaking down and crying your heart out, begging for forgiveness. I’ll put this one on the actor instead of the writers tho.
Now, on to the actual conversation piece, it’s downright bad. The only options you were presented were can be summed up in either “HES DA KILLAH SNOAW” or dead silence, which is bloody stupid since Bigby is both the Sherrif of Fabletown, which means he had first hand experience with both the evidence and the witnesses, as well as one of the smarter bastards in town, and yet he was unable to say that Crane might have not done it. Instead, you gotta sit there silently and let Snow explain to you that Crane could not have killed those women, even tho’ it was obvious as all fuck. Sure, emotions and heat of the moment, but that’s barely an excuse when he has an entire night to think about all the fact and set the story straight.
The Tweedle office encounter with Flycatcher, on the other hand, get’s a pass because it is entirely logical and in character as far as I’m concerned. The Tweedle’s have been a fuck of dicks to Bigby from day one of this story, and while they may have treated Flycatcher right, Bigby was in the right to be annoyed at them as much as Flycatcher was at defending them. It made sense there was barely an option there to say that the Tweedles aren’t dicks considering they just shot up the funeral and have been giving Bigby hell the past few days.
Another minor complaint is the Holly scene at the bar, where she is half-passed out. It was handled decently, but I feel there could have been more professional/cruel responses you could give to her instead of just treating her with the cold shoulder. Bigby is not exactly known for being one to empathize with others that freely if memory serves and just the silence option didn’t feel like it was enough.
Finally, asset recycling. This is tied in with the stupidly long wait for episodes which keep getting shorter and shorter for some damn reason. If you folk managed to either release them on a regular basis and add more episodes to a season, in order to properly tell the story, or release them sporadically but make episodes longer, this wouldn’t be much of an issue. But, as it stands, the episodes keep getting shorter by the release, the wait either stays the same or grows larger, and the quality is all over the place. This is unacceptable, especially with this level of asset recycling, examples being Rachel sharing the animations of Clementine and the constant jumping between just two or three locations. And don’t get me started on your PR department as of late, they aren’t helping the situation one bit even tho they should be one of the two main reasons why your games sell.
That's most of my complaints so far, I have yet to complete all the routes in episode three tho', and it has been a while since I played it, so there might be some things that escaped me unfortunately. If you have anything to add or anything to debate, please do.
Comments
Your opinion, man. Your opinion....
Add yours as well mate, I'm interested to see what others found wrong/bag about this episode. Telltale, at the end of the day, is not a company that can "do no wrong" and for the model they are using to release their games, criticism is something that will help both the company and the writing department evolve.
How much did it take you to write that?
Wow, you read all of that in less than 3 minutes, digested it and then posted this riveting rebuttal? And here I thought I was quick.
I can agree on your opinion, mate. And I can agree that Telltale is not a flawless company. However, despite the flaws of the episode and the miss opportunities, I wasn't distracted by it. I never notices the flaws because I was so invested and immersed on the whole experience while playing the episode. Just like a movie, lets say the Dark Knight Rises or Star Wars, there are flaws in the movie, but you don't notices them because you are so invested in them. It is only when you witnessed something that distract you and pulls you out of the experience, you will see it as bad.
There are no such a thing as perfect. When I play the game, I don't analyze or give too much outside opinion about it, unless of course there are something that really pulls me out of it. There are no fun to be had if you keep thinking and analyzing things. It is more fun if you relax and just enjoy the game or movie for what it is.
I thought the Auntie Greenleaf thing worked so well precisely because she was passive and defenseless. The fact that she posed no threat to you or Snow made what you did feel that much more heartless. At the end of the day, she was just a feeble old woman making bootleg glamours to get by. She wasn't hurting anyone. She wasn't even breaking any laws, really. She was just trying to carve out (pun!) a living the only way she knew how. And here you come to burn down the only thing she had left in front of her. All because Snow "ordered" you to. Fuck that.
I can agree with that, and while it didn't take me out of the game completely, those things did bother me somewhat. As you said at the start tho', it does come down to opinions on such issues. Except for the delay issue, that is and will always be a problem as far as I'm concerned, especially given the circumstances.
Too long, didn't read.
To be honest, this was my favorite episode so far, but there are two things I didn't like, which you already mentioned: the scene with Crane and Bloody Mary.
I think it's almost objective that the former was incredibly stupid. Actually, I shouldn't blame the scene, but just the options you were given. Going through three sets of options that were basically "No, he's the killer/Are you sure?/How do you know?" was silly and it did make me kinda upset.
Then, I know this'll be an unpopular opinion, but I find Bloody Mary's attitude so cringe-worthy. I get that she's supposed to be a psychopath, but like you said, lines like "Hello there, Ichabod, got a stomach ache?" while holding the axe neatly on her shoulder just didn't feel... right. I think they were trying way too hard to make her seem cool and stressfree.
Despite these things, I found the episode pretty damn amazing. It contained entertainment, inside jokes ("Then I'll pick the blasted lock", Lee hint hint) and moments of pressure or despair. Hell, even during Snow's argument with Bluebeard (which wasn't really major at all) I just wanted to say "Ok, both of you just shut up for a second and let me think". I liked meeting Flycatcher, Jack (who is my favorite character after this episode) and AG, plus seeing Snow's attitude change so drastically might affect people's decisions later.
Overall, yes, the episode wasn't perfect and could have been longer, but I feel that many of your points only become valid after finishing it and thoroughly analysing some scenes. The episode felt captivating. I can't say the same thing about the second episode, however. That really felt like a mess.
This is my favourite telltale episode i have ever played and ive played both walking dead seasons and some old school games like BTTF and currently playing monkey island and i cant understand how u would have any problems with it i felt this was the longest episode as of yet and the wait for ep 3 didnt feel long at all
@Crane Scene : That was one of the best, and at the same time, worst scenes in the episodes. The actors performance when he broke down was, as I said, great, but the options kinda ruined it a bit, as well as his quick recovery afterwards. Still, was entertaining for what it was worth, but it could of been played better in the conversation topics department.
@Bloody Mary : Mary was just disappointing for me honestly. The Tweedles section of that event was fun and pretty well played out, but when she had to take the spotlight, it just went downhill for me. As you said, they were trying too hard with her, and I'm still annoyed that the fight ended both so abruptly and was one sided, silver bullets and all taken into account. I think the main problem with her is that they immediately went the "crazy and wacky" route for her psychopath personality. Don't know if it could of been played better or not with that, but in the end, for at least this episode, it was cringe inducing.
@Snow vs Bluebeard : Their bickering was entertaining, and the ability to choose between three places also helped tremendously. Since the stats aren't so one sided when it comes to that choice, I do hope they will do more choices that involve either just A or B, and keep expanding on this. It gives you a sense of urgency, I believe is the word, when you get presented with more choices than you have time to deal with and adds a lot more replay value to the game instead of just rewinding the game to see what Bigby says when you choose the different dialogue line and then just quit the game after that.
@Last paragraph : Some of them become valid after you finish the game and think back on it, I'll give you that. Burning down the tree is one of those mostly because, again, Laura's performance for it. Others, like the fight with Mary, are more obvious at first glance, at least that's how I feel about it.
This one will come down to individual taste I suppose. It was still a heartless and evil action to take, agreed, but it could of been safely taken to the next step I believe. On the bright side, we at least get to see Snow being a cunt like in the comics again.
The wait between episode one and episode two of the game was approximately two months. The wait between episode two and three was another two months when a lot of assets were reused and the writing was mostly completed. If they had to create a lot of new stuff from the ground up, I could see it taking around two months, but not when you have a lot of the resources already at your disposal. Episode three was, if I'm not mistaken, the shortest episode released from Telltale, with only the finale of TWD overshadowing it in terms of smallest length. Compare it to BTTF where the episodes were a lot longer, even accounting for the time spent trying to figure out puzzles and whatnot. Their PR department sprouting their stolen catchphrase from Blizzard isn't helping either.
Hell, I kinda wish they would do more in the vein of the fourth episode of BTTF, just a lot more dystopian and without Marty and Doc Brown.
The only thing that disappointed me is that apparently you are always 14 minutes late regardless of whether you needed to visit all of the places or only two.
S1 Episode 1 of TWD was good but disappointed some with its lack of action. Episode 2 made up for that, and more so. TWAU Episode 1 was good, but Episode 2 was undoubtedly disappointing. But Episode 3 here made up for that, mostly at least. I liked Ep 3 a lot, just like Ep 1. I'd say that I can understand how you were disappointed with the fight not happening between Aunty Greenleaf and Bloody Mary however. But for the sake of story I can see why they didn't let us fight the Witch. It's to demonstrate how far we're willing to go out of our way to really get our objective done, making you feel like more of a monster.
With Bloody Mary I was actually disappointed, it felt a bit rushed, just like the fight with Beast in Ep 2. They had a great chance to show off how much of a challenge Bloody Mary would be to fight, but i understand why we should have lost. But a fight where we are destined to lose the first time and win the next is 10 times better than a fight where we are just killed off so easily. Doing that I felt like Bloody Mary was kind of denied her own personality, as she should have actually fought directly and tried to cause as much pain as possible rather than just end the fight right away like a coward.
It's sad how TellTale is seemingly wasting the fights with Beast and Bloody Mary so quickly and barely letting them leave any impact or expectations for the future episodes. The only things I've been looking forward to are when Bigby finally loses it and goes on a massacre destroying all who get in his way, and when we finally fight the Crooked Man. But I honestly wouldn't be surprised if some bullcrap replaces those 2 events.
actually episode 3 of TWAU took 2 hours to complete so it was very nice in lenght and the wait betewn ep 1 and 2 was like 3 months not 2. Ep 1 was released mid september and ep 2 in first week of february and even if its the shortest does it make it bad? The season finale of TWD was also very short however the community loved it for what it was . God after the walking dead ended the community just got so fucked up with fans not being happy for what they get when they anounced a 400 days DLC evryone was asking about Lee and clementine and didnt even give them a change to make something besides Lee and clementine and TWD fans that dont play wolf among us got so mad that TWAU was getting ep 2 first and they couldnt realise that telltale isnt a one game company. Telltale has some of the PR out there most companies dont actually anounce that you can expect release dates soon or anything like that they dont even help their costumers with technical issues like bugs and glitches but telltale have a section of the forum dedicated to it you should shut up and realize that telltale tries their damn hardest to bring out good content and they succeed almost evry damn time , sure they might make one episode that isnt as great but no company is perfect.
Sorry for my rant but it had to be done maybe some of that isnt directed towards you so just ignore those parts but i just had give out my opinion abut this community because im getting fucking tired
P.S: Im not checking for grammar errors because im lazy and enlgish isnt my first language so fuck it