why is that a lot times no matter which choices you pick--you still get the same outcome
i just think thats kind of dumb because theres no point in having multiple choices when you get the same outcome. like game of throne ep 1 for example, the boy still got stabbed in the neck at the end no matter which choices i made because i rewind, replayed it and got the same results. the game developers are prob too lazy to create a diff outcome for a different decision. i guess this (below) is not so true after all. 
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you must be new then
welcome to TTG, bruh
new to what? this forum? yes. new to telltale games? no.
You're definitely new here.
The games are linear.
You will get used to the choices ..
"The games are linear." and? im not new to telltell games. iv been playing telltale games. im new this forum tho. notice how i put "a lot times" which means i have played other telltale games before. read my first post on this site. i already mention how i played a lot of telltale games already
That's TellTale games for ya, they do their best to cast that "illusion of choice" while you play through a mostly linear story. While there are some minor changes here and there, most are destined to happen regardless. Just depends on what you're okay with in the end; if you like a story-driven game then you'll have no problem, if you're wanting your choices to matter then you're better off just playing a real RPG.
Which is why choices only affect the minority of the game.
If you've played some of their other games, you'd understand. Clearly, you don't.
Its was all Dee's idea to have the illusion of choice in the telltale games.
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They have a story they want to tell. They DON'T want you deviating from that story, so the only thing that is tailered to how you play is the dialogue. It's like that for every game they've done since TWD season 1
Never specified it shouldn't be mentioned, but everyone on this forum already know how Telltale handles the choices.
Just fall in love with the story and ignore the idea that the choices effect the plot, and you'll have so much fun.
A more accurate description would be "This game's characters adapts to the choices you make. Your characters' relationships slightly change by how you play".
A good example is Mira's relationship with Tom. If you treat him badly, he complains that "nobody is worth this much trouble" while you are searching Tyrion's office, and he is not with you when you get the option to burn the decree. I wish more characters were like this. The only other example of characters that actually change their behavior depending on how you treat them in this game is Finn (maybe Beskha? I never tried treating her badly. Also no, I'm not going to talk about the traitor). Sera doesn't change much if you treat her badly; she still offers to help you anyway. Morgryn finds your bad attitude amusing. Cotter will still be your friend and will say friendly lines about how important family is regardless of what you do. Andros will still be an ass to you even if you are not really an ass to him and pick the more neutral lines.
I'm just considering recurring characters. Lyman's attitude towards Mira changes depending on how she treats him too, but he only appears on that one scene.
I'm used to it by now and the fact that the changes are not too big do not bother me so much anymore. I do not expect big changes on the story line, just on the relationships of the characters. TellTale's choices are not like "choose if Mira is going with this arranged married or not", it is more like "this is going to happen weather you like it or not, so will Mira have a good relationship with her husband or will they hate each other and get married for duty only?" (this is just an example that I think that makes everything clear. I do not expect it to actually happen).
Ugh, again?
If you think they're lazy, ask to join them then. Don't think making a game is easy. You can't have episodes released in time and have good qualitiy at the same time.
Some things can't change.
If Ramsay walks into Ironrath planning on stabbing Ethan in the neck. Well he's gonna stab Ethan in the neck, and nothing Ethan does or says is gonna change that.
You have to approach this story in that you're really only controlling 4 people in the entire world. And there are somethings that those 4 people just can't or won't do. Mira isn't going to attack the Lannister guard, Ethan isn't going to declare a rebellion against the Boltons. In the long run it might not make much of a difference what those 4 people do, beyond the lives of the people directly around them.
There is still a lot of very important decisions you can make in their lives though. For instance I'm sure Sera's marriage is the centre of her entire existence and as Mira you have total control over that.
The simple fact is it's just not logistically possible to create a video game of decent quality where the storyline can diverge greatly, especially in the early going. They can't justify creating 5 more episodes, some in which Ethan is alive and some where he isn't. It would be like creating an entire second game. They just don't have the resources.
If you really want a game where anything is possible I'd suggest you play a pen and paper RPG. If you have a decent GM who isn't married to his/her outline anything actually is possible. Of course you'll have to use your own (and your friends) collective imaginations to "see" how that works out.
The real problem isn't that the choices don't matter. They've never really mattered, so far as I can tell, and yet people shrugged it off in the past.
The real problem is that the illusion of choice has become so threadbare it's embarassing. In TWD Season 1, saving Carley or Doug resulted in a number of different interactions depending on the choice you made. Now, it's getting so they can't even be bothered to pretend your choice changes even so much as the next line of dialogue.
My guess is because they're overstretching their resources and tackling too many projects at once. Quantity has increased, quality has suffered.
So, tell me how you think TellTale works. Do you think the employees work on different projects on different days? Because that's not how it works.
That would be one way a project could get shafted, sure. Another way would be assigning too few people, or too few resources, or too little time to a given project. All of these could be causes of the decline in quality without Telltale operating in the way you describe.
Of course, it's also possible the writers on this series are just bad at their jobs, but I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they had much higher aspirations that have simply been cut short by the reality of the time and resources given to them.
I will explain. Telltale Games choices don't exactly shape the plot but they mean a lot when it comes to what others think of you and your overall characterization. It just makes it so the character is the way we feel he/she should be.
For example, in The Walking Dead Season 1, you can choose, as Lee, to be a good person or a bad person. You can choose how you want to present the new world to Clementine. You can either be hopeful or you can be "we're totally fucked!". "We'll find your parents in Savannah" or "Your parents are dead".
I say the best way to know how your choices have affected a certain character is that Telltale makes a playable character an NPC in the next game so that we get to see how our choices of that certain character shaped him/her. It would be nice to see Clementine as a NPC so that we can really see the effects of our choices as her. She might not trust you right away depending on what you told her as Lee.
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You know, on the GM and pen and paper front, I've never played that, but . . . do you know of Choice of the Deathless? The author, Max Gladstone (I think), wrote a post/article about how he wrote the branching story and handled the choices.In it, he discussed how a GM might handle choices. He mentioned one specific example, which involves misdirect and the illusion even in pen & paper. If you give players a choice to go left or right, they'll still end up at the intended destination because that is what the GM has planned for. Or, if you do head in one direction, they'll run into a broken bridge, meaning they still have to go in the direction intended.
Basically, I imagine there's a lot more freedom in pen and paper, plus room for more divergence in the GM's story, but he/she still needs to guide you along.
Well here's the beautiful thing, thanks to other episodic games coming out that are getting lots of attention too not from TellTale (That I won't mention to avoid the two sides warring again), this direct competition should help the change a few things so hopefully we'll see a game closer to what most keep expecting in regards to the choices. Like you, that formula of TellTale's has become so painfully obvious now to me and others that it hurts, but again with this competition like they've never had before, that'll hopefully create a better product!
Hmmm, all that may be true. I guess we'll see how their future games work out. If they're "meh" by a lot of people's standards, then your theory may just be right.
I would say its a greater number than that.
I've never played Choice of the Deathless, but it sounds very interesting.
I'm a very avid PnP player and a fair GM. And you're right as a GM you need to be able to push players a certain way without actually making the decision for them. You never want to say "You can't do that" unless the action itself would be actually impossible
My first GM was great. He'd give us tons of choices and never really said we couldn't do anything. At one point our group splintered on a key decision and he actually ended up running two campaigns. Me and one other player went one way and the majority of the group went the other. In the end the other member of my party died (and created a new player in the other group) and I was left playing a campaign by myself. After about 3 solo sessions he managed to guide me back to the rest of the group but as an antagonist bent on revenge against them. I ended up dying a pretty epic death, but it was so much fun.
I played a demo and thought it was cool
A story and plot are two different things. Your choices do shape the story. Your choices do not change the plot.
Ethan dying - Plot. He dies no matter what.
How he is remembered - Story. That's up to you to decide.
Rodrick's marriage - Plot.
Does he get it or lose it? - Story. That's up to you to decide.
Ludd threatening to kill Ryon - Plot. He does it no matter what.
Do you bow down? - Story. Your choice.
Again, you do shape the story, but the plot cannot be changed, otherwise the Whitehills would be dead by Episode 1. If you still can't tell the difference:
Little Red Riding Hood. Plot - She leaves her Mum's house with baked goods for her grandma in the forest. She meets a wolf. Wolf finds out where grandma lives and eats her. Red Riding arrives and inspects her grandma. She is then eaten by the wolf. Axeman kills wolf and both Red Riding and Grandma live.
Story - Does Red Riding eat anything? Do you talk to the wolf or keep walking? Do you go left or right? Do you notice anything out of the ordinary upon arrival? When the wolf attacks, are you armed with a knife or do you get eaten? With a knife, do you wound the wolf before being eaten?
Telltale never promised to shape the plot to your choices, only the story. So you will always arrive at the same place as other players because it is the plot. How you arrive to that point is the story.
That's a great way of explaining the meaning of "choice" in a Telltale Game. Nice job!
This is actually the opposite of what we should do. i mean we wont get Choices to matter but we could get a better illusion of it if we demand it loud enough. But if we follow your post, TTG wouldnt Even try the Illusion like they did since TWDS2. It got better in TftBL but it's still Not enough. LiS for example does a Great Job of the Illusion. But these posts like "ignore the Bad things and Love it!" It's called "Fanboy Blindness". And TTG should NEVER follow the demands of the Fanboys. Btw. It's NOT Personal or something. Not Even directed to you in Particular. It's just the whole GoT fanboyism in the forums. This is why we Need to be very Critical. Because it makes the games better. Best examples: Diablo 3 2012 vs now.
And NO i don't want to Start a Complaining war about GoT. The reason why EP.6 Takes so long is because we told them what went wrong in EP.5 and they want to fix it. And if the Episode turns out to be Amazing, Then thank the Complainers. And if it turns out to be bad, we Must thank the fanboys. Still Love the Forums ;D
Ethan got stabbed b\c the story was written that way. This is a GoT, a world were bad things happen no matter what.
I think it's less fanboy and more accepting that telltale won't continuously make games like TftB or TWD Season 1. But even in these games, your choices mattering are of little effect on the plot and they more just help you connect with the characters. We just have to start seeing it from the perspective that telltale makes great stories from different comic/book universes, and the choices they include are just a way for us to feel involved in the game.
Choices will matter, y'all see. Remember how Rodrik had the choice to have Whitehill soldiers starved or drunk. Well just you wait. Whitehill soldiers will show up shit faced or too hung over to even carry a sword. Easy victory. It was all in the making fellas.
My Point is that they don't need choices to matter, but they should At least get the Illusion Right. None of the choices in TWD or TftBL matters, but the Illusion is there. And in TftBL it was Handled good with the Jackapedia entrys. Or Loaderbot who likes or Dislikes you if you destroy or evacuate him. The little details makes the Illusion Perfekt. They tried it in got with that guy you could kill in EP. 1 As gared And if you let him live, you could find him on the Wall in EP. 2. but His Placing on the Wall was just unfortunate. I didnt saw him in my 1st playthrough. I just Hope TTG gets the solution for the last choice in EP. 5 right. It would be the first Time i'd be Satisfied with Determinant Characters.
Well, the demo can be found here (or on Steam), just scroll down a bit:
https://www.choiceofgames.com/category/our-games/
Regarding the blog post/article:
http://www.tor.com/2013/12/20/brain-tug-of-war-how-i-learned-to-love-writing-interactive-stories/
It's in the first four paragraphs, but the entire read was quite a good one.
(And another post from him: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/01/07/interactive-fiction-and-how-i-learned-to-stop-grumbling-and-for-gods-sake-outline-once-in-a-while-by-max-gladstone/)
Myself, the closest I've come to pen and paper is playing Neverwinter Nights online.
I am, however, going to run into this 'choices don't matter' problem, provided I can finish what I'm working on. So far, it's not going so well. Using Choicescript, the same as Choice of the Deathless.
What you said about your GM is cool too. Not sure everyone would do that, but it's good your GM did that. You had a special one it seems. But yeah, I was basically just trying to point out that I imagine many GMs have things planned out before the gaming session begins. So, while there's a lot more freedom involved, true freedom of choice is still . . . kind of not possible, or at least it isn't away from pen and paper (if the GM is as good as the one you had and I imagine many aren't). Because if a choice was made that the GM hadn't accounted for, derailing absolutely everything or whatever, the GM might be lost and making things up on the spot, leading to a lot of wasted planning on his/her end and the possibility that the direction the GM's leading the game in isn't that good. Add those complications to something pre-designed where the designers can't account for everything and such, it's easy to see why.
There is, unfortunately, no easy answer.
That is a completely arbitrary way of defining what plot and story mean. You are just taking what is always happening and call it plot and what can be changed and call it story with no good way to tell what is what a priori. For example:
You could also say "Ludd killing Ryon - Plot, He does it no matter what. Do you console your mother or are you a dick - Story. Your choice.
or
"Ludd threatening to kill Ryon - Plot. He does it no matter what. Do you save him? Story. Your choice.
You can define whatever you want as plot or story. How about TT doing more story and less plot? Some minor differences in relationship between the characters are pretty boring if they don't amount to anything.