Telltale...we need to talk about ANF(SPOILERS)
The beginning of Episode 5....That flashback...with it's character moments...that Telltale is TWD when you try. It was personal...it was sad and funny. When Kenny and Lee and Christa and Omid are in the attic in S1 Ep5 looking to get out and to Clem....that talk they had....the banter...Christa taking a deep slug of the bottle because she was afraid for a little girl in the center of the herd...and afraid for herself and Omid...and the idea of what was going to happen to Lee. Yeah Christa...I was with you...drink deep.
It is being around a campfire in S2 with the group and talking about kissing stuff. Human moments...moments that are the heart and soul of what Makes TWD s1 a game that won so many damn awards. It is also a sign of life in your writing staff.
I will look back at ANF as a failure....I still enjoyed a lot about it. But it is so very infuriating when you watch the starts of episode 5 and 1....Episode 1 started so well. You had interesting characters....there was all this stuff going down....but you did nothing with it.
I could replace any character in this season and there would be nothing that I would miss from the replaced character. Mostly because you never gave us the chance to know these characters.
Kate...sure her marriage sucks but you never really showed it sucking...what was the straw that made Kate basically turn away from David? Javi tells people that Kate was the glue that got them safely through 4 years. Stating it...but never giving us a real example or 2.
Really you spent no time building up any characters..I like Kate....her VA does a great job of selling her...because you guys sure didn't. Tripp...here I have a question...what was his position at Prescott? Who else other than Eleanor and Conrad did we even come to know? Why should we give any shits when Prescott is destroyed? You never did the hard work in story telling. You relied on your art department to make some cool locations...and then never give us the chance to explore those locations. I bet your art department just loves the writers.
There is no consistency in your characters either....Gabe was all over the place. Clementine...surely you coulda done a better job there as well. Your Voice Actors all did a great job...if a character fails to be enjoyable...it is because of the writing...these people have no character....they are one dimensional at best.
Back to the opening of Episode 5...if your writers were so bad, then how did this solid piece of humanity come about. Somewhere in all the removed content...and stripped out story lines...I have a feeling we would have seen it. Somewhere along your production...someone gutted out story elements and ideas that would have flowed better.
Here is a tip...a committee of writers is like too many cooks in a kitchen. That flashback is a small window of what could have been.
Comments
you just a hater i love a new froniter I am so glad they dont kill CLemmy
good that kenny died, that whiny grump
Javi is so cool and charismatic like Jacob Frye
season 2 sucked cause thay killed nick off screen. ANF is much better. I cried for 5 hours when Eva died :O
3/10
You should look in the mirror. Maybe you see the real blind hater then.
OP is right and added constructive criticism.
I'm just going to assume this is sarcastic - it's hard to tell through text okay.
You assume correctly, if ever in doubt: view poster profile.
Agree. ANF has it's glorious moments, but only in the flashbacks really. The present-time plot is so shallow and does not utilize it's potential at all.
Yeah, not my best work. I'm just so sad after playing this ep. TWD means so much to me, it's sad to see it become the next Assassin's Creed.
Agree. His post captured everything that's wrong about ANF.
I think it's really obvious. Who likes Jacob Frye?
I don't even know who that is.
One of the main characters from that one Assassin's Creed.
Hopefully Season 4 or the DLC will do better.
We saw tiny fractions of true TWD in ANF.
They popped out every now and then. But they were always washed away by a stupid, lazy issue/flaw.
We can only hope that the next season will be better.
I'll watch on YouTube how they are gonna continue with their "action over brain" route and trash New Richmond the same way Telltale did with Wellington in ANF. You must have strong faith if you are still optimistic. Respect for that, can't say the same about me.
I fully agree, while the story was alright the biggest disappointment in ANF is the character development. They imply a lot of things with Kates marriage, but never actually got to show what was the tipping point in what made Kate dislike David. The Prescott residents are a bigger disappointment in this aspect. We don't know jack shit about these characters other than Tripp wanting to get inside Eleanors pants, Eleanor being a practicing doctor, and Conrad had a thing with Francine. We never got to explore Prescott fully, there was barely any moments of exploring and going at your own pace, the majority of the episodes were all cutscenes and because of this everything was moving at a fast pace without any time for us to slow down and get to know the characters. The only one that was fully developed was David but that was because we were able to get his complexity and his biggest issue with his character (that he wanted to change others because he couldn't change himself).
Anyways I really loved the flashback of episode 5. It's like you said, it was smart story telling with humor and character development. It told us so many things in such a short conversation that I was personally surprised at how smart some of the dialogue was.
Exactly...need more of those human moments.
I think more or less the game has been affected by some development trouble. Based on the interviews, how the episodes turned out and the rather long gap between Ep 1/2 to Ep 3, there must have been a lot of revisions and cut contents of the game.
It was better than season 2 at least.
Please defend the stupid garbage that was episode 4 and 5 of season 2. Wait no I think I would vomit if someone tried to say that was good.
Keep in mind saying something is better than the previous dumpster fire doesn't mean I'm saying this was amazing.
Clementine having space-visions of Ezio would almost be an improvement.
They gave zero fucks the more they were dragging this out. How embarrassing.
I'm not saying that they were perfect, but they were not as bad as the last episodes of ANF.
I disagree but that's fine let's leave it at that.
Amen to that
You people really need this spelled out? It's obvious. His personality is really hard to get along with. He's hyperaggressive, unconcerned with anyone else's needs, and very possessive. Relationships don't turn sour because of any one incident. This just didn't need to be explained via hand-holding because David's consistent character flaws made it really obvious why Kate wanted out. Not to mention her mentioning over and over throughout the season what personality traits and habits of David's she had an exact problem with. Like a zillion damaged dudes, David was likely super charming and nice at first, and then became an asshole. You don't need more than that because this isn't Bad Relationship Simulator.
I mean, come on, people. Most of the bitching that goes on this forum can be reduced to "This sucked because it's not precisely attuned to my personal tastes = bad writing!1" but this one is particularly nitpicky.
This. I wish ANF was more human oriented instead of all those bangflashboom moments, the highlights of the season were when characters actually sat down and talked to each over, not one of the too many and forgettable shootings or fighting walkers. And they were written great too, shame they got overshaddowed for action scenes.
I think one of the telling things about Kate's relationship with David is that when she broke the glass and cut her hand she was SCARED of him finding out. It's a small detail but that is evidence of an emotionally manipulative/abusive relationship right there.
Action scenes are nice...but they should never take the place of story. instead they can be used to serve the story. But yeah the action/story building is way out of balance.
The problem with the new frontier was that I hated all the characters so I became apathetic towards what happened to them. Conrad was terrible, Tripp gets angry about me killing a man who threatened to kill us and acts like an asshole. Gabe was an asshole. David was an asshole. Ava had very little presence so when she died it didn't have much impact. Jesus was barely there at all. And Eleanor was a traitor.
The cast of Season 2 was so rich. There were so many layers to them. I have no idea how the cast of Season 3 outside of the family was so terrible.
The worst part in my episode 5 was that of all the characters, even though I disliked David the story of the brothers was fascinating. And then he died off screen which was so lacklustre and made the entire core of the series pointless to me. And I can not believe they copped out on the episode 4 cliffhanger. Such weak writing.
Lastly, the season clearly didn't have any really end point or direction hence why it was so short. It was just a string of events about one settlement. Clementine's arc is pretty much the same as it was at the end of Season 2. These thoughts are very scattered because I just finished and it's so late but I can't believe how flat episode 5 was.
Episode rankings: 4>1>2>3>5