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

[Davroth]

Okay, let's not beat around the bush. I love point and click adventures. Always have. But I also long since accepted that they are linear, and I mostly play them for the story.

But there comes The Walking Dead. For months I had listened to the praises heaped on the game, praising how the game gives you meaningful choices, choices that have profound impact on the game's outcome. But when I finally played it I quickly realized, even though the game might allow for the player to take small detours, ultimately he goes back in the plot railroad. Ultimately, the same people always day. And depending on some choices, the penultimate finale first even make sense. The game acts like you made bad choices, but it was choices you had no say in. You couldn't pull a gun in your companions and force them to leave the car and supplies alone could you? No, you couldn't. And oh, you can save one of two people early on, but no matter what you do, they end up getting shot either way.

Worse yet, the story really took a nose dive after episode 2, It became very obvious to me that basically everything is predetermined the moment that asshole father had a heart attack.

So yeah, I just don't... I don't get what all the game bloggers were talking about, really. Where's the meaningful choice I was promised?

 

[Zhukov]

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.

 

[Davroth]

I'm perfectly fine with linear games, I even said so in the OP, I just don't like being deceived. And the central motive in a Telltale's marketing was that "every choice matters" I disagree. From playing the game several times I can only conclude that every choice I make leads to the same outcome. Sometimes with the story taking slightly absurd turns to get back in the plot railroad.

To put it simple, in my opinion, the game pretends there are meaningful choices to make when there really aren't any. And that's what's bothering me.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Don't play 'The Wolf Among Us' then. An LPer I watch did an LP of it and he even did a second playthrough... which was a mistake because it showed just how meaningless your choices are. There's a scene where you can say absolutely nothing at every dialogue choice and the scene still ends exactly the same way as if you'd talked. The LPer actually went out of his way to choose something different for almost everything too.

 

[Zhukov]

...I just don't like being deceived. And the central motive in a Telltale's marketing was that "every choice matters" I disagree.

Well, yeah... it's marketing.

It's like if the commercial for a shooter says, "The most intense action of 2013!!" Then I play the game and start saying, "I've played way for intense games than that! They LIED to me!"

 

[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.

This. You people treat choice as if it is the devil's spawn if it doesn't completely changes the story of a game.

The walking dead has lots of choice with consequences that mainly play out in the relationships with Lee's companions, and some story points. That's bloody enough to get you emotionally invested, and more than just about the majority of other game's that offer choice in the narrative.

 

[odinzeus]

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.

Why don't you try movies.You can even press pause and play on the remote for "interactions".
If you don't have gameplay,choices and consequences is all that you can offer.If you fail at that or lie that you have it,your game sucks.
And choices don't have to completely change the game,just to change something - small or big in the future.

 

[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.

And choices don't have to completely change the game,just to change something - small or big in the future.

Brilliant, you'll love The Walking Dead then.

 

[Zhukov]

[snip]

If you don't have gameplay,choices and consequences is all that you can offer.

Really?

Plot, characters, dialogue, tension, etc.

Nah, fuck all that, right? Gotta be headshots or consequences! Nothing else exists!

 

[odinzeus]

[snip]

If you don't have gameplay,choices and consequences is all that you can offer.

Really?

Plot, characters, dialogue, tension, etc.

Nah, fuck all that, right? Gotta be headshots or consequences! Nothing else exists!

For books plot, characters, dialogue, tension is all you need.
For games,and even movies on a smaller scale,you need more.

 

[Zhukov]

[snip]

If you don't have gameplay,choices and consequences is all that you can offer.

Really?

Plot, characters, dialogue, tension, etc.

Nah, fuck all that, right? Gotta be headshots or consequences! Nothing else exists!

For books plot, characters, dialogue, tension is all you need.
For games,and even movies on a smaller scale,you need more.

Says who?

Need more for what exactly?

Given the reception of Telltales games, which for the sake of argument I am counting as not having consequences, you clearly don't need any more to be a successful and engaging game.

 

[Robot Number V]

I think people who make this complaint are confusing "meaningful" with "big". Just because your choice doesn't change the entire story, that doesn't make it meaningless. I just played "The Wolf Among Us" after first playing the demo, which resulted in me playing the same sequence twice. I made two different small dialog choices.

Spoiler: I will spoiler what I am talking about, even though it happens literally in the first 2 minutes of the game.

It was the first conversation with Mr. Toad. In the demo, I got the impression that while Toad didn't like being nagged about his glamor, he still got along with Bigby OK. In the full episode, the second time played it, I happened to tell him to just buy a glamor, and the price didn't matter. This seemed to touch a nerve, as after Bigby left, Toad muttered something like "Fucker. Tell me how to spend MY money." It made it seem like any time he was remotely friendly, it was just a facade, and he actually hated Bigby's guts. I also notably did NOT apologize for fucking his car up, which caused him to treat Bigby with utter contempt. Will any of this have some grand effect on the over-arching plot? No. But you know what? It's still important. Because characters and relationships MATTER.

Also, there was a pretty considerable difference between my and my roommate's experience in The Walking Dead. Kenny and I were essentially good friends, but to my roommate, Kenny was more like a rival, someone he had to "deal with". I think that's an important difference, even if the same stuff still happened.

[snip]

If you don't have gameplay,choices and consequences is all that you can offer.

Really?

Plot, characters, dialogue, tension, etc.

Nah, fuck all that, right? Gotta be headshots or consequences! Nothing else exists!

For books plot, characters, dialogue, tension is all you need.
For games,and even movies on a smaller scale,you need more.

Sorry, I don't buy that. As long as you can tell an engaging story, then any choice offered in the matter is just a bonus. Sure Telltale's games are essentially just interactive movies, but why is that automatically a BAD thing? If the story is good, then who cares? (PS: What are you saying movies need to be good? If games "need" to have player-driven consequence, that what do movies "need"?)

 

[Vausch]

It's called illusion of choice.

While your choices do have some very noticeable effects on the path the game takes, ultimately there is no way to control everything. There are forces outside of your control, you can't make everybody happy and some decisions will ultimately alter everything along the way but come to a similar outcome.

You can save certain characters at certain times, their decisions will alter the story in some way down the line. That's pretty much it.

I mean you can't honestly say that the old-school point and clicks were that different, can you? You could take alternate paths to reach the ending(s), but in the end either you or some characters die and the game ends, they die but the game is able to continue, or they stay alive and the game ends.

 

[Remag]

"Meaningful" is a relative term. What's meaningful to some might not be to others.

However, what ultimately makes a choice meaningful to a person is how much they're willing to invest themselves into their decisions. The player who owns the decisions and consequences he makes as Commander Shepard in Mass Effect or as the Chosen One in Fallout is ultimately going to get more meaning out of the experience than the player who games those morality systems for mechanical gain or story exploration.

If you couldn't find it in yourself to care about the story or the characters in The Walking Dead, then the game failed you.

If, however, you couldn't find it in yourself to care about the story or the characters in The Walking Dead because of your obsession with rooting out exactly how mechanically or narratively significant your choices are in game, then you failed the game

 

[Davroth]

So I love how almost everyone here seems super interested in ignoring the part where I said that I don't have a problem with linear games.

Why exactly does video marketing get a free pass here? I can't fill water in tetrapaks and label it milk and then say "It's marketing, dude. You should know that it can't be milk, because milk is far too expansive to produce."

Though I do find it mildly amusing that no one really tries to argue that your choices is TWD have meaningful consequences for the outcome of the game.

Dude, I understand where you're coming from. However, if a game developer tries to branch out an entire narrative based on the player's choices, he would've had to go over-budget as a result. It's why instead of choice, we have the illusion of choice, which doesn't dramatically impact a game's narrative, but does acknowledge the player's choices, anyway.

That's nothing but a lazy excuse for the developers. Especially nowadays. The engine is already ready, the character models are rigged, all they needed to do was record more dialogue. Even if you didn't change the story beats, you could have fairly easily changed who survives and makes it to the end with very little effort on the programmer's part. Ever played Witcher 2? That game's second act and finale is profoundly different based on your choices in the first act, and they are some eastern european studio, so they are not exactly rolling in cash.

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.

 

[Zhukov]

Why exactly does video marketing get a free pass here? I can't fill water in tetrapaks and label it milk and then say "It's marketing, dude. You should know that it can't be milk, because milk is far too expansive to produce."

Because they didn't say that.

"Meaningful" is a relative term, unlike "milk". You can say it about damn near anything and you won't be provably wrong. That's probably why marketers use those kind of words. They get something of a free pass because they're expected to talk up their products. Otherwise they'd be fired.

Though I do find it mildly amusing that no one really tries to argue that your choices is TWD have meaningful consequences for the outcome of the game.

Why would we say that? It wouldn't be true.

The game's outcome is more or less the same regardless of what choice you make. You're apparently very upset with this. However, it bothers me not in the slightest.

 

[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. Choose your own adventure books, for example, have the reader take many divergent paths yet in most books all it means is you come to a bad, often grisly, end.

Now, it could be easily argued that player choice ought not have an impact most of the time. In Mass Effect, not shooting Wrex on Virmire simply means your character didn't shoot Wrex on Virmire. Had Wrex then gone and gotten himself killed sometime later, does that undermine the original decision? I'd argue that it does not as your decision as a player helps inform and define the character under your command and thus your choice still stands. Only in a game where you play as someone who is truly an arbiter of fate (and I can only think of one off hand) would it be reasonable to assume the player's choices are sacrosanct.