Telltale's promise of meaningful choices in The Walking Dead (Spoilers)

[veloper]

Always the excuses.
Some major C&C where different NPCs could survive and follow the PC around would have been monumental in a game like this and nobody really expected that.

Now a couple large branches and a couple different endings that logically follow from the sum of choices the player made would have been very impressive still and well within the realm of possibility.

What we got instead was the illusion of choice and one single branch (nerd or chick) that I would call big. Not impressed.

The quick-time events and poor shooting galleries didn't help. The first episode still held some promise with a couple puzzles that could have been harder, but after that the game degenerated into an interactive movie. I would have been content with only mediocre gameplay to go with the decent story, but I draw the line at QTEs.

 

[Directionless]

I'll never understand this constant obsession with choices having to completely change the game. Seems to come up every fucking time a game offers any choice at all.

I enjoyed the story and appreciated the fact that I had enough choice to flavour the interactions. That's all I really require.

It is because a choice that does not alter an outcome isn't a choice.

Well the choices do alter the outcomes, don't they? You're just being disingenuous now.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I'll never understand this constant obsession with choices having to completely change the game. Seems to come up every fucking time a game offers any choice at all.

I enjoyed the story and appreciated the fact that I had enough choice to flavour the interactions. That's all I really require.

It is because a choice that does not alter an outcome isn't a choice.

Well the choices do alter the outcomes, don't they? You're just being disingenuous now.

The problem, I think, lies in the fact that for a choice to be a choice, something has to change. In the walking dead, little of substantial note changes in terms of broad story strokes - an outcome caused no doubt by the simple reality that it simply isn't possible to make such sweeping changes matter in the long run. But those details that inform you about the characters themselves do change. People who decry such a move as "Disregarding their choices" (see, for example, Mass Effect) overlook these differences in spite of the fact that in any other medium such alterations would prove hugely significant.

In effect, I agree with you because I consider such alterations meaningful enough to matter. Many, however, would not.

 

[Raikas]

Again, my disappointment stems from one thing and one thing only: Their whole marketing, and even in game text, claims that your choices have consequences for the entirety of the game. Yet, at the beginning of episodes, they are all too keen on getting back to a blank slate as soon as possible, just killing off the person you saved last episode, for example. And you can treat your companions like shit every piece of the way to the finale, and yet it changes not at all what they do. The same people stand by you, the same people sacrifice themselves for you. It's hollow, it's deceptive, and I had to play through it twice to truly understand the scope of my disappointment.

The whole tone and personalities you interact with do change even if the plot itself does not. You mention TW2, but that game did the same thing in the opposite way: the story changed, but the people stayed pretty much the same. Personally, I thought that both games were solid, but I very much felt more broadly engaged with TWD - but then tone shifts are probably more important to me than they are to you.

It may not be your cup of tea, but that doesn't make it hollow or deceptive - it just focused the elements of change on different elements than you'd hoped.

 

[MoeMints]

The problem with me is that the illusion of choice wasn't even consistent within the world itself.
Characters would create dishonest accusations and inconsistent attitudes from you going more diplomatic and situation based. Choices would get Mass Effect bad randomly where a assertive or passive choice would sound way out of nowhere from Lee.

I wouldn't have minded if they skipped over a good amount of the "They'll remember that" consequences, and made the overall story gain a different tone.

Spoiler

Like the "Did Lee actually do it?" subplot felt like it was dropped halfway in. I would have been impressed it went Silent Hill style where the context and intent changes. Like Lee having a flashback where's he's a honest man taken too far, a irrational fool who's events to that point redeemed him, and such but the overall results stay the same.

I don't see how Japanese erotica filled games can do this with less budget, license power, and staff to work with but Telltale can't.

I'm a fan of Telltale, and not just post-Walking Dead like...well lets be honest, most.
Anyway, but that doesn't mean the episodic angle they've been doing previously is the optimal thing to do to me right now.

Now they're doing three major licenses at once. Its getting to the point they're the adventure game Wayforward and will possibly burn out quality wise.