Please take notes from The Witcher 3, Telltale
This is a game where your decisions make big differences. They are actually meaningful. I know already people will talk about the price of the 2 games. The Witcher 3 has insanely better graphics, HUGE world, and is just a much bigger game. The cost based on decision making is probably minimal for the game.
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
Except you know, CD Projekt Red spent $40 million for Witcher 3, and I guarantee you TellTale spent far less for TWD.
apparently you didn't actually read what I posted. The Witcher 3 is a MASSIVE open world with insane graphics, and gameplay. You can be sure that the bulk of that 40 million was spent on those things.
TELLTALE DOESN´T HAVE THAT MUCH OF MONEY
If we're talking about prior to The Walking Dead Season 1, they didn't have nearly as much money as today.
Also, they're managing multiple different projects in the process.
you literally cannot compare telltale to CD Projekt Red when are people gonna understand you can't compare telltale to any AAA developer ever unless telltale themselves start making their games AAA
Telltale's production model also doesn't help in this regard
Making choices matter in a game like The Witcher that's obviously a fully-fledged and finished game is one thing, but making choices matter in an episodic series, where episodes are produced every ~2 months amounting to a total of ~10 hours playtime? Significantly more difficult.
Also the fact that they don't have as much man power as other companies would. They have numbers no doubt (they're up to ~300 employees if I recall), but those are still split across multiple games.
Then there's the fact that they're running on an archaic "engine". They're already pushing their tech to the limits just by making these newer series
Their whole model doesn't take that kindly to the requests you make. And let's be honest here: episodic games have been a lynch-pin of Telltale since the beginning. That's not going to change for the foreseeable future.
Managing to both write and interweave an entire web of consequences resulting from various choices in the time span of a month or so is not an easy task for any studio, let alone one like Telltale.
Hell, the stuff they have pulled off given all of their limitations has actually proven quite good.
And I'm still going to play the devil's advocate here: they never advertised the choices as affecting huge pieces of the story. The most they ever said was that your choices change how your story plays out; that it's tailored to your choices. On that front, they deliver as promised: the games do tailor and adapt themselves to your choices. It's not even miscommunication, it's misinterpretation and the hype machine making people expect something much more expansive than what they're getting.
They never promised a game that would change vast portions of it on the whim to cater to your specific choices. They only ever promised a narrative that adapts itself based on your choices. It's still a linear narrative, but it gives you some relative control and influence over the finer pieces of it. It gives you a good blend of agency that's within manageable bounds for the production team to capitalize upon. I'll be honest, I really want to see them strive for more meaningful choices (IE having a determinant survive and still play a role, etc). I don't want them to make some giant chain where saving one guy results in rest of the entire season and episodes being completely different, I just want them to invoke more agency and make a push to one-up themselves in the choices department.
"They never promised a game that would change vast portions of it on the whim to cater to your specific choices"... Oh yes they did! "The walking dead is a game where your choices matter. Things you say and do will have direct effects on the story that you experience, leading to numerous possible outcomes. Choose wisely, because your life and the life of those you care about will depend on your decisions
Witcher 3 is superior to TWD in every way which gets it a AAA rating. I'm not asking for Telltale to do insane things with their game engine, and give us hours upon hours of world exploring. I'm asking for decisions that actually alter the outcome of the game like they promise.
They were still clever in their wording here. 'Outcome' is a blanket term. There's no clear definition to what they mean by 'outcomes'. The game does indeed provide numerous outcomes for the various details of it; character dialogue changes, relationships between characters change (Kenny, Lilly, Carley, Ben), character arcs change (and receive different closure, IE Ben), visual aesthetics change (Clem's jacket, Lee's scar from the fight with Kenny, Lee's arm, Kenny and Ben getting small wounds if left at the mansion), scenes can end in multiple different fashions (threaten Vernon and his group or settle it peacefully), characters can live or die, story pieces can be skipped over or followed further (Molly's backstory, or smaller things like Mark working at an airforce base, or Kenny being a fisherman if you don't talk to them). Maybe they're not the outcomes you're expecting in terms of size and scope, but they are outcomes nonetheless.
They don't say that it leads to multiple different endings, conclusions, or anything extreme/specific. They just use a rather vague term to describe it all.
So no, they still never promised the game changes giant portions of itself. They said that there's numerous possible outcomes to situations and scenes. And there are.
no shit sherlock of course it is and no that is not what gets it a AAA rating
In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers.
the witcher covers all of that and that is why it is AAA
they promised that it would be tailored
tailor
make or adapt for a particular purpose or person.
notice how it says adapt not completely change
that is what they promised and by comparing it to the witcher you are basically asking them to make decisions matter as much as the witcher can telltale can't do that in the time frame they are given what do you think telltale spends the same amount of time developing their games as cd projekt has spent on the witcher? no matter what you can't compare the two because not matter how much money telltale has made they still aren't a AAA developer and comparing them to AAA developers is just completely pointless
I find the ignorance of cynical gamers who claim to know a great deal about gaming and then are unable to differentiate between apples and oranges comparisons to be deeply amusing.
It's more like grapes and watermelons. XD
Why can't this $20 Indie story game compete with that AAA $80 open world action adventure game that's backed by millions of dollars? C'mon Telltale!
Hmm....AAA, open world game Witcher 3 VS episodic linear game... One of these things is not like the other.
So at best telltale is misleading, and at worst outright liars.
[removed]
[removed]
Telltale make their games split up into episodes every couple of months! Witcher 3 took YEARS to be made! Don't even try to compare the two.
Yeah because Witcher started from scratch and is an enormous game. I'm asking for real choices, and decisions. Not a massive game. I seriously don't understand how you people are unable to grasp this concept.
You're right. One game has decisions that alter the game in real ways. The other does not, but claims to.
No. They promised that the game would have different outcomes based by your decisions, and that characters lives depended on you. This is copied word for word from the game manual. "leading to numerous possible outcomes. Choose wisely, because your life and the life of those you care about will depend on your decisions" ... This statement is false. Character lives do not depend on your decisions because they die either way.
[removed]
This is the problem we have though, the longer it takes the more people complain. You might be willing to wait months on end for episodes with game changing decisions, but I'm sure other people aren't. Another thing you don't understand is that the budgets are completely different, Telltale games and the Witcher games just aren't comparable in the slightest, sorry but they just aren't. It doesn't matter how much one company invests in an aspect in the game and how much another company doesn't we're talking a difference of MILLIONS of dollars.
Which is why telltale will probably fail eventually. A gaming company will eventually come along, see what I see and take advantage of it. When that happens this company is dust. They better make changes or they won't be around long.
So we both agree that you have no idea what you're talking about? Fine by me.
By the way, calling everyone else stupid for not blindly agreeing with you? Not helping your cause any.
Nothing last forever, but until it happens, I will see what games Telltale makes and it is my decision to buy their games.
You should probably start a gaming company then, since you have the right idea on how to accomplish this. If you managed to do it, then good, I will buy your game if they are appealing.
Try writing a 'choose your own adventure' story in which each choice actually impacts what will happen later on. After you do that, come back here telling us how you can accomplish writing a ~7 hour story in a few months.
Honestly I'm trying to figure out a way to do so. As I'm one person with not a lot of money behind me the chances are remote..... My best bet is to write some novels. If they are popular I could find some investors to work with me, and design a cool game. IF by some chance this does happen, I will give some sort of shout out about people saying I should do this because of my irritation with telltale. If you ever see this happen, you will know it was me lol
He's not a writer and the "Try doing x yourself and then come back here" is not a valid argument except when you're a preschooler... no, not even then. Also I don't see why it should take longer than a few months to write a "7 hour story" (like every minute of this would be actual "story"). Telltale develops game that are in fact nothing more than story, so a good flowing story that represents the way you play is not too much to ask for. OP also said he doesn't demand the typical features of an AAA title and still he is being mocked for having unrealistic demands, like you didn't even bother reading his post. Strange.
You should be banned for your comments on here. You're just calling people stupid whenever they make good points and you're acting like everyone else is the problem here.
They held their heads above water developing in a rather obscure niche for years, a niche that had long since passed as gaming evolved, and that was long before they ever started doing choice-based stuff
Nothing stopping them from expanding and testing new concepts and continuing to keep their heads held high like they have for the past 10+ years
How do you know for certain that The Witcher 3 will have all these features? Things get cut especially during long development cycles. Don't assume that everything that you've seen in the trailers and demos are going to be in the game you buy. ATM I'm not sure how big CD Projekt Red's decision designs are going to be.
even comparing the witcher choices to telltale choices and demanding they learn from then is a unrealistic demand the witcher literally changes a whole act based on choices telltale can't pull that off a more appropriate comparison would have been mass effect or something like that since the choices do make a difference but overall the main course of the game is still the same
I agree about this, the Witcher decision system is not possible for Telltale games. But you're the only one who points that out and gives another example like Mass Effect. Everyone else just says "this is no AAA, they have no money, lol, shut up". But good and innovative game mechanics that partially realise their promises about the game don't have to cost a fortune, and Telltale might be expanding, being able to afford this. His demands might be too high, but not completely absurd. I just don't get it, when people complain about complainers, it's pointless. After all a forum is there to vent and to speculate and make suggestions.
Well Witcher 1 and 2 had some good choices in it
Maybe people misunderstood the whole "this game is tailored to how you play" text that is at the beginning of every one of Telltale's recent games. I mean if you actually understand this sentence it fits the stories we play alongside the choices that are presented to us. TWD and other Telltale games are just different from other choice games like The Witcher, so deal with it or just move on.
Stop, you're making too much sense.
[removed]