My personal, unpopular opinion on Season 2.
I'm going to flat out say it.
I and all of my friends believe that Season 2 is just on par with Season 1.
Now, with that out of the way, here's my overview of Season 2 and why I believe it is just as good as Season 1.
Now,in general one complaint I hear very often is that "Season 2 lacks a story" To which I say, "So did Season 1" Season 1 was just Lee and friends sitting around at the Motor Inn until something happened that forced them to move, and then they got to a mansion, where they fucked around until something happened to make them move. So did season 2. They sit around at the cabin, until they're forced to move, until they find a lodge, and then get sent to Camp Carver, where they escape,make it to a war memorial, and then the finale which has them constantly on the move. Now for me to talk about the episodes.
Season 2 Episode 1, All That Remains, was the best way to introduce us to this second season. Omid, the most optimistic and funniest of the group being killed off is a great tone setter for the theme of the story. Loss of hope, humanity, compassion, friends, family, all of that. Pessimism, as well. You no longer find people who look on the bright side anymore, because there's no hope for such a thing to happen anymore. And the killing of Omid is the best way for the PLAYER to feel that as well.
Another big complaint is the 16 month gap. The reason people complain about this, where it is assumed jack shit happened, and then are perfectly fine with the 3 month gap, where the crew went to an air force base, and got Mark who then got incapacitated halfway through the episode, and then doesn't show up again until he dies at the end I have no idea.
Now, let's talk about the obvious. Clementine is a lot colder of a person. No shit. She's been hanging around with Christa with the guilt of Omid and Lee's death hanging over her head for Lord knows how long.Of course she's not going to be the happy little girl from season 1.
So, then we have the introduction of the cabin group, which I feel were really interesting, and the only ones with this "Wasted potential" Were Carlos and Sarah. Everyone else got their time to shine, and we, or at least I, got to feel really attached to all of them. Even when Kenny showed up, I cared about him and everyone else equally.
A big complaint I hear is usually hear is aimed at "In Harm's way", and I'll say this. I believe that "In Harm;s Way" Was one of the best episodes of the series.
Why does Clementine have to do all of the work? Because nobody else is in any condition to do so.
Rebecca's pregnant, Carlos has his fingers broken, Luke's MIA at that point, Sarah freaks out at the smallest things, Alvin;s in the middle of being tortured, Jane doesn't give a shit what happens either way, Kenny is super protective of Sarita and probably wouldn't want her to get hurt, and it's much easier for a little girl to hide and sneak around then Kenny, Mike and Nick.
People also want to go on about how Carver is just a generic tyrant, and loses that malicious, evil genius side of him. To which I say he still acts like it.
All of his random acts of violence he commits, while horrible, he always manages to justify. He punched Carlos,because he spit in his face, he killed Walter and possibly Alvin because Kenny shot first, he slaps Clementine, because she acts disrespectful to him, he kills Reggie, because Reggie was weak, both strength and will wise, he tortures Alvin, because it's implied Alvin was disrespecting him. A very big thing with Carver, is control. He wants to keep everyone in line,and have them follow his orders. So, why does everyone stay with him, if he's such an asshole?
Simple. Carver wasn't always like that. He might've been a nice guy one time. And charmed everyone to join him. But, he eventually got power hungry. But everyone stayed, because he had food, and guns, and ammo,and as long as you stayed on his good side, and pulled your weight, he didn't bother with you. Why do you think nobody rebelled against Crawford?
Then we have Amid the Ruins, I'll say it, Amid the Ruins was the WORST episode of the series, and I will not try to defend it, however, there is one thing that I will mention.
Next time you complain about Clementine kicking a door open, remember that two years earlier, she managed to pull an unconscious, full grown man, into a jewelry store, without any walkers noticing.
And, I will leave off on this. We have people saying "Why should I care about A.J.?" Well, he's your beacon of hope. In this world of death, and horrible people, and bandits, and paranoia, you have a baby, as innocent as you can get. You have a sign of hope for the future, that perhaps all is not lost, who wouldn't want to protect it?
So,feel free to share your thoughts, agreements, disagreements, whatever, just keep it CIVIL, please?
Comments
Agreed.
Take my fucking like.
You're not alone. S2 feels rushed. I'm almost ashamed. Its probably one of the most disappointing game sequels I've ever played.
It's rather interesting how readily everyone rips Season Two to shreds these days. I mean, various complaints were always prevalent during the making of the season, but now you could swear that no one actually enjoyed the time spent being invested in the Season. I understand being disappointed; I don't think Season Two was on par with Season One either. Season Two no doubt had it's flaws. With that said, I don't know how we have come to the point where it's almost a love-hate situation. I don't buy the fact that so many people actually did not enjoy what Season Two had to offer.
I actually like Season 2 over 1 for a number of reasons.
Wow. You've pretty much summed up every reason we I consider both Seasons equal.
I personally think this season was meh. Our choices didn't matter all that much, and we couldn't get attached to the characters because they got killed off so quickly.
I find TWD seasons 1 and 2 share a lot of similarities with the first two RAMBO movies. The first season was dirtier, grungier, and slower-paced, with an emphasis on melancholy over action. Season 2, much like RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, is where "the shit hits the fan." The action is more intense, the pacing has been accelerated, and there's a greater sense of direct confrontation over sneaking around all the time. Clementine has evolved from a vulnerable little girl to the most adorable badass who ever lived, and Kenny has metamorphosed from a working-class redneck to a grizzled mountain man.
Naturally a whole lot of fans have had problems with the different characterizations for season 2, but ironically, RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART II had the same kind of problem, where Stallone seems to be playing a completely different person from the traumatized Vietnam veteran we met in the previous instalment. Whether you're ready to go along for the ride or bail completely is up to you.
Agreed.
My biggest complaint about about this season wasn't really about the game, it was about people bitching about how Clementine wasn't innocent anymore. Like really? How is a 12 year old going to remain the same after the shit she's seen?
THIS. So much this. I can't get over how much i agree with this!. Thumbs up.
As someone who has barely any knowledge of what's considered good storytelling, never read a good book or watched a great movie, I liked Season 2 more than Season 1 because of its mediocre story, underdeveloped characters, short length and others. Omid's death in the beginning was a complete masterpiece, you say shock value? i say genius writing, kudos to Breckon for that one, I have NO idea how he came up with that.
One of the best things about Season 2 is the time skip. People say we should have seen the 16 months because of character development but that is not true. The time skip made Clementine a grown up badass, that is character development. For me this is the biggest reason that Season 2 is so much much better than Season 1.
I liked the characters in Season 2 more than the Season 1 characters because they were so interesting and unique. Yeah they died too fast but that's what made them so interesting and unique in the first place. Their deaths are so quick and unexpected and that's a lot of fun xD.
There's a lot more reasons that make Season 2 better than Season 1 but those are the biggest for me
Shut up and take my like!
Is all you do is shit on Season 2?
While I don't think that S1 is on par with S2, I will say that I enjoyed S2 much more after playing both back-to-back.
I also felt that S2 has enough there that, if more time was taken to complete it, it could/would EASILY far surpass S1 in story telling quality.
TLDR: Season 2 was as bad as Season 1. Things like Clementine dragging Lee into the store never even occurred to me, Clementine busting a lock on a door with a kick made me audibly go "Okay." I knew the second I saw that people were going to complain about it. Same with still not bitten, it was just cringeworthy without major redeeming qualities. S1 had many moments that overshadowed the poor ones, I just can't think of many shining moments in S2.
For me they were noth good and had flaws however the point is I expected season 2 to expand and grow not cut out features. It was rushed based on the episode lenght, everyone was killed of again and choices still failed to do anything bar the last five minutes.
Both seasons were good however with season 3 it needs to improve not have all those flaws
S2 failed imo...
2 things you need to make a game like this work..
S2 failed here with hodge podge mish mash of god know what and its cheap story arc of babysitting kenny for half the season, (and I LOVE kenny) S2 may as well of been called "kenny decent into madness"... awfull just awfull..
........ errrrr no... the only person we had any connection with was kenny and that was piggybacking off of S1... weather that connection be good or bad...
They destroyed probably the best portrayal of a minor (child) in any game to date.. just because they make the decision to make her protag a season to early..
Because of the lack of connection to any of the characters none of the scenes provided anxiety/fear, it was 5 episodes of button bashing cut a long story short...
S1 worked because we had clem to protect, its that simple.... every decision, every scene was for clem.... a little girl that somehow TT created that EVERYONE loved and cared for.... thats the reason S1 worked so well...
I didnt care that Sarah was being her usual retarded self, rot in the van for me, I kmow nothing about you to even care... she was only there to show how badd ass clem was which only worked if you are of a certain age demographic, in reality it just highlighted the fact that clem was made into some super demigod.
Rebecca... shes a bitch and then the game tries to tell me latter on we are best of buddies and I shoukd care.... well I didnt..
Luke... gets cut from all the action scenes (I mean where did he keep disappearing to?) Keeps looking at me with sad eyes everytime I disagree with him.... why should I care damnit, I know nothing about you, we have had no bonding time apart from the moment you dropped me on the fecking floor... Then they decide to give us 5 mins of character development wnd kill him 10 mins latter... my 4 yr old could have done better and im not joking.
Nick was the only person who we had any kind of link with after the episode in the shed/garage. And they hang him off a fence, they didnt even give him a screen death!..
They cannibalise clem to fit the role of protagonist, forcing her character to be treated like shes a 32yr old badass... shes 12... yes shes grown up in a za.. yes she knows how to kill and navigate walkers.. but jesus on a bike..... a 12 yr old being chosen over a group of adults, asked to do everything while while grown men do feck all.... some of the stuff they had her do still makes me hang my head... terrible...
I can imagine S2 being fun if your very young yourself AND love the idea of a young kid making adults look dumb and saving the day, but to anyone in reality this just doesnt cut it...
S2 failed at its primary job, its story was cheap and cliché.... and no connection to the cast.
So while I value and respect your opinion, NO S2 couldn't hold a light next to S1... it was a huge let down, 5 episodes of button bashing and a bunch of characters I didnt give a shit about..
If S3 gives us nothing to care for or about im dropping it like a hot plate, im not paying to bash buttons for another 5 episodes...
Because you could obviously create a storyline for 5 episodes with enough character development with the amount of characters involved.
It'd be much more of a optimistic forum if people didn't shit on and hate the Season 2 that they watch/play anyway.
Your jesting right?
Good storytelling in your opinion is leaving out months of the story?
You have no idea how they came up with the idea of killing off omid?....
Season 1 had under developed characters compared to S2? Jesus... now I can see why some people like S2...
Don't get me wrong I enjoyed Season Two, despite it's obvious flaws and plot holes. I can't agree that it's on par with Season One, no way. Reason being, just on the mistakes alone.
I don't have a problem with Clementine being older or kicking doors. Nor do I have a problem with Kenny returning. What I have a problem with, was the re-write that was done. I understand that games, books and films have re-writes, but they are supposed to be for the better. Not make it worse as it did for Harms way and Amid the Ruins.
Those two episodes were so inconsistent with what went before, it ended up being ridiculous.
There were some good bits in those two episodes, not saying it was all bad. But the writers ought to have looked at what was already established and carried on. Not make certain characters completely different.
I also liked the final episode and me, I went with Kenny at the end as I couldn't stand Jane, but that's a different argument.
No, I can see where you're coming from and you're obviously entitled to your opinion. I'm just telling you how I saw Season Two.
When all is said and done, there is no doubt I am looking forward to Season Three. Can't come quick enough for me if im honest. I bet the vast majority here are the same. So yes there were some mistakes, flaws and general cock ups with Season Two, but overall I believe the good outweighed the bad.
Well, as a fan of great books, and a writer in my spare time, I perfectly understood from a writing perspective Omid had to die.
In fact, if you want to get symbolic, Omid is the Persian word for "Hope", so the death of Omid symbolizes the death of hope itself. Might not be subtle, but it seemed clever to me.
Did Season 2's cast have no development? I could write another post for an hour detailing each character's personality and scenes of character development if you want me to.
Haven't really got much to add, except I had no problem with Season 2, other than . . . yes, here it comes, wishing choices mattered more. But I understand perfectly well why things can't branch much. In other words, I'm pretty much in agreement with the OP. Though I'm not sure 'on par with' is the phrase I'd use. It's certainly not very far behind in my view, however.
So, I'll just leave this here, though it's not representative of everyone obviously:
Season 1
Steam, 18,358 reviews, 97% positive http://store.steampowered.com/app/207610/
Metacritic user score, 1841 ratings, 8.6 http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-walking-dead-a-telltale-games-series
Season 2
11,565 reviews, 96% positive. http://store.steampowered.com/app/261030/
Metacritic user score, 100 ratings, 8.3 http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-walking-dead-season-two---a-telltale-games-series
A bit off-topic, but on Steam, Wolf is at 98% positive with 9,720 reviews.
Borderlands is off to a good start as well, though GoT doesn't seem to be doing as good unfortunately, which is a shame. Still, for any other game company, the % rating is still high.
As for why people seem to like hating on Season 2? I can't really explain it. The only thing that really springs to mind is that people had unrealistic expectations or it was different than they thought it would be. (This is simply touching on story and such, not gameplay complaints) But yeah, that's the only reasoning I can think of from a writing and story perspective. It's pretty well-known as well that some sequels aren't as well received. Not sure how that applies to 'seasons' though.
Of course, there's also the possibility they just didn't like season 2's story, which is fine, but it doesn't automatically make it bad. Just means it's not for that person.
And yeah, as Snake alluded to above me, nothing's ever perfect really. I can predict what's going to be said in response to that though, if anything.
Season 1.
I agree with almost everything you said, I couldn't have said it any better myself. I've been saying most of that for a while now, AJ is a sign of hope, how Season 2 is meant to have a darker tone and that's why they killed Omid (even if it was also for shock value), In Harms Way is a great episode, and Carver is a great villain. Honestly, I've playd A House Divided and In Harms Way several times and seen several play throughs of it, I'm not seeing that change in character that others are saying.
Is there any good reason whatsoever that you had to be a complete passive-aggressive dickhead in response to this guy's opinion
Is it solely because he likes Season 2 and therefore is a complete heathen that is deserving of death or what
i mean jesus fucking christ
I've seen people have better ideas of S2 written on this forum. That shouldn't happen.
This guy is praising Season 2, not bashing it.
Yes, I agree. Most people that complain probably thought it's gonna be much better than Season 2 and when some things happened, they were dissapointed.
My only complaint was the length of the episodes, I fucking hated that, but Telltale improved that now. I'm happy.
Well remember, the first episode of The Wolf Among Us was about 2 hours long, but every episode released after that was an hour and a half, the last one was like an hour. The first episode could be two hours and the next few be an hour and a half. I hope they don't do tht, we will just have to wait and see.
Are you serious?
Your going to defend S2 writing Storyline? OK
I wouldn't say it lacks a story. The story in my opinion was easily predictable and average. The story has/had so many unrealistic points I know its pointless to bitch about reality in a ZA game, but it still has to have some basis to reality. If not just give Clementine Superpowers and make into a joke game like Saints Row.
You brought him up. His death was extremely wasted, it felt cheap and pointless. Now its a joke, like how Kenny survived in the alleyway, and their explanation was what again?
Lucky, Very Lucky. Great Writing!
They were just tying up loose ends from the last season so they could start Season 2 Kenny Khronicles.
The cabin group
Great Development for the Cabin Folks.
Now your just making stuff up.
Now its my turn.
Oh man where do i start,
Season 2 was a great failure imo. They write Carlos to be this crazy, mean guy in the first episode. In the second episode he changes a little but still a bad ass where he spits in Carver's face and tells people to shoot him when he has a knife to his throat. Next episode his character does a 180, and becomes passive. That made absolutely no sense, why would they rewrite his personality mid season, they didn't know what to do with him, IMO i believe he was originally going to have Kenny's role as the villain of S2, however to please the fanboys they gave Kenny more and more character development. They kicked Carlos out of episode 3, then killed him off.
Then episode four hits. We established Team Kenny last episode, but now we have to build Team Jane! Team Jane takes the entire episode, and it was easily my most hated episodes the entire TWDG experience. Jane steals the entire episode, Nick dies off screen, we get maybe a sentence or two about him.
Sarah dies in the same episode, doesn't matter what choice you make. Why even have choices in this game if they don't matter what you do? Did any choices in this Season even matter? I can't think of any choice that mattered other than Kenny/Jane choice. Why give us the choice to save Sarah? It makes absolutely no sense, then for her to die ten minutes later.
Her lasts words were "Lets all go back to the cabin when my dad comes back." Then when she dies, Clementines response for her death was LOL bad.
"Luke" Are you ok.
Choices
Seriously?
I could go on and on and on, about the reasons why i think it was average. Its all been said before.
Was the whole season really that bad, or was it specific episodes (namely 3 and 4 for most people) that were the bad apples that soured the batch?
It seems like everyone claims the whole of Season 2 is bad, yet I barely see people criticize that much from the first two episodes nowadays, outside of Omid's death, the time skip, and Kenny's return, really. The majority of all criticism seems to be aimed at episodes 3 and 4 in particular, citing them being the ones where most characters experienced shifts in personality, the story seemingly took a sudden turn in direction, characters started receiving little to no development at all, Kenny and Jane hogged the episodes respectively, when choices began lose impact to the point where you save a character only to have them die literally 30 minutes later (Sarah), and where the cheap deaths and shock value moments became readily apparent. I think the season started off fine, then began to take a dive at the midpoint, hit its low point at episode 4, leaving episode 5 to make an attempt to salvage what it could.
I meant his point on the negative aspects.
Episode four was so bad they should of paid me to play it. I hated Episode four.
Crat, Clem_is_awesome is the most avid hater of season 2 (with him/her only liking Kenny, which I don't personally understand) and takes any chance to bash the game, this is sarcasm.
TED season 2 ep1 and ep2 where both excellent and then it went downhill from there. Everything that was established before became irrelevant, like whatever the cabin group trusts you or not, Christa and her baby never even got mentioned while there was a perfect opportunity with Rebecca, what was the point of Sarah pinky swear or teaching her to shoot, what did Alvin do to George and why, why was Rebecca afraid of Alvin not being the father (he seemed like a nice dude), how did Rebecca and Carver end up together as it didn't seemed like it was some sexual assault, 400 days made practically no point at all, what was up with the Russians as they never where explained and the accent just sucked. Those are just the few things, many other problems with season 2 have already been mentioned, like determinant character problems. I actually didn't dislike ep4 that much it was meh but it had its moments but I really hated ep3 and ep5, they made no sense and ruined the experiance for me.
I liked season 2 for the way that it was. The complaints that you've mentioned I see are not that big of a deal. People will find an excuse to hate on this game, but just like you it's only their opinion of what they thought went wrong despite how many claim it as a fact. I just like to think of all the good moments season 2 has and it completely over lapses some of the problems that took place. I believe season 2 has the same quality as season 1, but that doesn't mean they both didn't have issues, still enjoyed the hell out of em!
Dang! Im usually first to spot sarcasm
..
*****Walks off hagging head in shame*****
You say he's not alone (in liking S2), then go on to say its disappointing and that you're almost ashamed
what
Everyone on earth woke up one morning and thought "Boy, I sure hate Season 2"
Season two was just as good as season one, I don't know how people are already tired of Clementine and want a new protagonist.
I completely agree with you except the part where you said episode 3 was the best episode. It was a great episode but it should of had more potential b/c it made most of the decisions in the 400 day DLC pointless (Most of the characters except Bonnie only had a cameo role). Having me said that Season 2 in my opinion was one of the most unique narratives I have ever experienced. Since when had any one else played a super violent game where you played as a 11 year old girl? That concept is genius because it gives you a higher sense of vulnerability unlike in other zombie video games.