WE NEED....
Better writers. The story, character development, choices and character deaths all need to be drastically changed.
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Better writers. The story, character development, choices and character deaths all need to be drastically changed.
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No, what we need is Nick Breckon to either write all the episodes of Season 3 or watch over everyone like a hawk for the episodes he's not writing. The episodes he wrote were great and had impactful choices with great development. It was the episodes he didn't write that had some problems, mainly Amid the Ruins.
^ This
And Sean Vanaman
Sean Vanaman is gone, he's not coming back, this series is now in Breckon's hands.
Sadly you're right. But the rest of the writing team could use work maybe some authors. Carver's writing in episode 3 made him look generic which was a shame
We had an author write an episode of The Walking Dead, his name was J.T. Petty and look what we got.
Like I said, Breckon is a great writer, so the series being in his hands is not a bad thing.
And this is just my opinion, but I loved the character of Carver, he represents what a ZA does to what we can assume to be a normal person before the outbreak started. He became someone who became consumed and corrupted by the power that he had, he felt he could do whatever he wants. He obviously believed in utilitarianism, he did what he thought was right to protect his people, even if it meant killing the weak (Reggie). Jeremy Bentham once said, "It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong." This sounds a lot like Carver, similar to what he said to Clem, "Killing one in order to save many is part of survival." He feels that by killing someone like Reggie, it was justified because it was meant to help the greater cause, the survival of his group. His death was the greatest good to the greatest number of people, that's why he felt it was right.
I have to disagree. I've seen so many social darwinist dictators its a dime a dozen. He slaps Clementine for looking at him but commends her on wishing her dead. Logic? I think not
Eh, Nick Breckon is part of the problem.
He commends her because, as he said, he knows that no one else out there has the guts to say something like that to him. He's instilled in his followers a fear that prevents them from sticking up to him or even trying to remove him from power. The people are afraid of him, but Clementine, for her young age, isn't, despite his efforts to try and make him afraid of her, such as hitting her. He realized it back in the cabin, but his thought was reinforced when, even after abusing her, she still stands up to him. He knows that trying to make her afraid of him won't work, that's when he tries to get her on his side by saying stuff like, "It falls to people LIKE US, to lead them to safety." He's trying to manipulate her into getting her on his side, or even to become like him. The whole point of this season was for us to shape our Clementine, to make her who we want her to be. A character like Carver is one of the people Clementine can become if you so choose, because, based on some of your decisions, you do kind of become like Carver.
Carver was just as generic in episode 2 as well
Sure, maybe he was more subtle in episode 2, but he was "crazed, brutal leader of a survivor camp" from the beginning
Look, is he better than Vanaman, no, and no one will ever top Vanaman, he was a great writer. But Breckon is a great writer as well. When you look at an episode like A House Divided, with characters like Nick getting a lot of development in that episode, you can see that he knows how to write a great episode, providing great development for all of the characters and having some great choices. It's the other writers like Stirpe and Petty that didn't do this, and to an extent Shorette, but he was a lot better at it then Stirpe and Petty were.
Nick got killed off and didn't matter in the other episodes. Petty is a trash writer who writes action games. I was talking about book authors.
Amid the ruins ruined my love for this game, I hated that piece of shit with a passion
Weakest episode of the series. Shit was so boring
Again, that's not Breckon's fault, that's Shorette's and Stirpe/Petty's fault because they were the ones who wrote those episodes. Me personally, if I was writing those episodes, I would have had Nick live into No Going Back and had him die in the shootout and not off screen like the shitty way he did in Amid the Ruins. My point being is that in the first two episodes, written by Breckon, Nick was a well crafted and written character who had some great moments, such as the relationship between him and his uncle Pete. There seems to be hostility between them, and Pete seems to give insight as to why that is, but despite this hostility, Nick shows that he does love his uncle. And Pete obviously cares for Nick because he tried to be Nick's dad before the apocalypse and he says that Nick is a good kid when he asks you to look after him. Nick was a great character when handled by Breckon, but he was pushed to the side when he wasn't the writer.
Agreed, we just didn't see it that much, but through stuff like punching/breaking Carlos' fingers, killing Walter and (determinant) Alvin, and even possibly holding an 11 year old girl hostage, you see that he is just as crazy in A House Divided as he was in In Harms Way. Carver was meant to be like this from the start.
I want to re-iterate a post I made way back whenever: the problem is not the writers themselves, it's how connected and dedicated they are to the project. Have a writing team fully dedicated to the season in particular, don't be in the middle of actively designing 3-4 games at the same time(while Wolf and S2 were ongoing, they would've also been working on episode 1 of Tales, and most likely working out the script and assets for GoT), and don't bring in some random dude to write the fourth episode for some reason.
Also, make sure all of the writers are fully in the loop about what's going on. Not just simple overviews, but a broad knowledge of current characters, current character arcs and story points, and so forth. Season 1 had a feeling of continuity between it's episodes, like the writers really understood the characters they were taking over, and like they understood where the previous episodes left off, both in terms of where the main story left off, and where the characters and their personalities were left off. S2 feels like they were given a broad overview to work with, or they just straight up didn't understand what the other writers were going for, leading to unexplained and unfinished plot lines, unfinished character arcs, details and story bits that end up getting forgotten about, and general inconsistency in terms of characters.
I do believe that they also just spread themselves short during that cycle. It might just be me, but I felt an overall quality improvement in Tales and GoT, which I bet is in no small part thanks to them being the only two games they're actively working on at the moment.
Hell, even No Going Back felt better than previous episodes. I felt a definite improvement in terms of overall quality, which is probably in thanks to having Wolf wrapped up, leaving them a total of three games they were actively working on.
Not my perticular problem with the episode, but that is one of its issues as well, I like some downtime once in a while but the whole episode except for AJs birth felt utterly pointless.
Nick's death was an insult to the player
Clem kicking down doors Bigby style was cringy as fuck, wtf are they thinking?
Jane constantly whining about her sis and being a bad influence on Clem by trying to convince her to leave Sarah at every possible moment.
Kenny being a big asshole to Clem despite not chopping the arm off. Dude I know you're grieving but how is any part of that shit Clem's fault? Even though I love Kenny this part made me seriously wanna bitch slap him.
I've made that complaint about some of the people working on two games at once several times before as to why episodes like In Harms Way and Amid the Ruins struggled. Shorette was already working on TWAU and was in the beginning stages of TFTBL when he had to write In Harms Way and Stirpe was a designer for TWD, TWAU, and TFTBL when he had to write his episode, and as mentioned, Petty doesn't work at Telltale and wasn't involved with the project.
The problem is having guys work on multiple projects at once. I know Telltale is a small company, but they have enough employees that they don't need to be working on multiple games at once. When you have people like Stirpe and Shorette working on other games, they aren't putting their full effort into TWD. But someone like Breckon, who worked exclusively on TWD, wrote terrific episodes. You need two separate teams with little to no overlapping, and I feel Telltale knows that now because it looks like there's one team for TFTBL and one team for GOT.
The thing is, he really should have been more consistent with Carlo's and Rebecca's characters in episode 2, the differences were pretty jarring and is a fatal flaw when you're writing characters. He's not bad, I just don't think he's the No.1 guy to write this story.
I'll admit, especially in Rebecca's case, it would have been nice to see how our choices from Episode 1 and how we treated or talked to them play more of an impact on how they talk to us. Like, I blackmailed Rebecca in my game by saying, "You should probably think about being nicer to me. That's just my advice." It would have been awesome to see Rebecca hold some sort of resentment towards you for that and not automatically become your friend. But other than that, I really don't have that many complaints about that episode. And if you don't think Breckon is the right guy, do you mind me asking who you think is (and please don't say Vanaman, because he's not coming back)? Because you may not like him as much as Vanaman, but let's face it, Breckon is the best we got.
I don't really know, to be honest, Breckon probably could have made something interesting if S2 was given a bit more time to develop.
But wouldn't that fault lie with Telltale, not just on Breckon. I mean, and I've said this somewhere else on here, you had so many guys working on both TWAU and TWD at the same time such as Stirpe and Shorette that because of it, there episodes felt more rushed. Both of those episodes had potential but they didn't fully use it. But Telltale wanted the episodes of TWAU and TWD to be released on a certain schedule (TWAU one month, TWD another). Had both of these guys not been focused on two different games (as well as preparing for TFTBL) and had Telltale given TWD more time, perhaps the episodes would have been better, allowing for the choices to matter more, characters to be more fully developed, and the freaking deaths be written better.
Whatever may have happened, Telltale seems to have learned from the mistakes because it seems that GOT and TFTBL have two separate teams and not several people working on both of them at the same time.
Sean Vanaman
Lazy writing is a HUGE issue in season 2.
Especially the big slap in the face the player gets after saving a character, only have them to do nothing else and die moments later.
(Nick and Sarah).
Jane's introduction and role in the game was rushed and haulted other characters development (particularly for Luke as the game changed from Kenny VS Luke to Kenny VS Jane rather abruptly.
Michael Madsen, THEY HAD MICHAEL FREAKING MADSEN! And he was terribly under used. Carver's introduction was so great but we didn't get to spend enough time with him.
A lot of the characters that Clementine interacts with have "cannon" effects on Clementine.
There are certain characters that you have to be nice to or have to be rude to and the difference between the choices doesn't factor into the story hardly, unlike season 1 choices usually effected gameplay greatly. Especially when it came down to which character(s) would go to find Clem with Lee in the beginning of season 1, Ep 5 just as an example.
Nothing like that happened in season 2. Did fall flat in comparison to 1.
This "piece of shit" was still good episode for some people, calm yourself a little.
We need people to think rationally and reduce their exorbitant expectations for the next season.
people need to stop jumping on this as a way to make everything better. A team of writer write the story and there is one head writer an epiosde. people seem to think that one guy writes the whole episode with no assitence, season 1 was the same way with three different writers. True its the head writers final call but still.
Also this guy isnt the best, the characters do sound and talk like they should but he has a tendency to make people have 180 character changes
Carlos, Rebecca, Kenny, Bonnie, Mike, Arvo, Jane.
Furthermore my main issue is that he tends to make characters determinant a lot for little to no reason, Alvin was fine but Bonnie and Nick what was the point of that? It just made the next episodes jobs harder to include them. I love when the story branches but there should eb a plan for the characters and seeing as Nick was relegated to doing nothing and Bonnie was one of the characters we actully knew plenty about it was weird to just kill them off by making them determinant, the other writers were poorer overall but some of the character stuff was fine.
I think the character interaction (what little we got) was consistently good however the whole season just requires more direction it was never clear what we were doing.
Nate and Eddie.
I liked it.
I don't give a fuck, at least it was better than "No Going Back."
What a joke that episode was.
"No Going Back" was pretty average for me. My personal favourite is "In Harm's Way", still considered the worst this season for a large group of people.
And if you bothered to copy the rest of what I said, you would have noticed that I said that he just needs to watch over the other writers like a hawk. As the head writer, he needs to know what is going on and what the other writers are doing, that's what Vanaman did. And yes, I know Season 1 wasn't written by one guy, it was Vanaman, Darin, and Whitta who wrote Season 1, but Vanaman was more involved with the episodes he didn't write than Breckon was in the ones he didn't. That's what I'm saying he needs to do in Season 3, be more aware of what's going on and make sure everyone is on the same page. As you said, the season requires more direction because the others weren't clear on where we were going, and that's what I'm saying as well, Breckon needs to make sure the other writers are in the loop more than they were in S2.
I strongly dislike that episode, the tension needed just wasn't there.
But, "No Going Back" was a farce. The episode beginnings with everyone being ok... after a Mexican standoff. I just started pouring alcohol right there. And throughout the episode Clementine dies like three times, but she's somehow ok? The dream sequence was a lame attempt at pandering to the Lee crowd and was completely unnecessary filler forced into the plot.
The final conflict was hilariously underwhelming. An unlikable woman with not much dirty history or an unlikable man with a history as dirty as a landfill.
I could go on and on, but I'll stop here. I just found it to be lacking on all fronts, and I do mean ALL fronts.
What I really disliked in Season Finale was the town which magically disapeared from the main story of Episode 4. It wasn't even a single attempt to explain it. And instead of going to the town full of (optional) supplies located literally a few steps away, the group has started their journey to misty Wellington, with a newborn and two wounded men.
I don't think the Lee dream was filler, to you it was because you don't care about Jane and Kenny, but for those that do, it definitely had a purpose. Lee tells Clem, "Part of growing up is doing what's bestfor the people you care about, even if sometimes that means hurting someone else." This does foreshadow the choice you have to make between Kenny and Jane (that is if you cared for either of them) because, to either protect Jane or Kenny, you have to hurt the other one. You also see it in the Jane ending where you tell the family to fuck off, Clem says what dream Lee told her to Jane. To do what's best for the people she cared about (Jane and AJ) she had to hurt someone else (the family).
Yep. Never playing that again.
Well we got less than what we deserved seeing how great Season 1 was and how bad Season 2 was. Going any lower would really set the bar at an all time low for interactive storytelling
A time machine would be better, so all the wrongs of S2 can be undone!
Oh and some other things in the world could be changed in that time too.
I don't know. I wasn't really fond of BTTF
I agree, I think 'No Going Back' was extremely overrated and overall an underwhelming experience, which was especially shitty considering this was what they came up with for the finale. The endings were lackluster, the scene with Bonnie, Mike, and Arvo trying to leave was so obviously forced in there to get them out of the plot and all the conversations we had to have with Kenny and Jane were boring as hell and really nothing I didn't already know about them. I wanted to talk to Luke more, get like one conversation in with Arvo, (But he needed to shoot her to lead into the dream sequence so of course getting to find anything out about him was not allowed because if you did, he would have forgiven her because his reason for hating her was so dumb in the first place. They didn't even try. 8luh.) etc. At the end, all I felt we got to really decide was where Clementine physically ended up (Alone, Wellington, or Howe's.) instead of who she actually became, idk. (I'd have to really compare Kenny and Jane here to elaborate on this and I don't have the time.) I hated the last episode. I'm sure for people who weren't already sick of Jane or Kenny, it was swell. But I didn't like it at all.
I thought 'A House Divided' was pretty good though, in comparison to the rest of the episodes.