The Walking Dead Season 2-Episode 1: *UNBLOCKED SPOILERS INBOUND*

[votemarvel]

Just completed the first episode and the story was great. The stitching scene really had me cringing. Every prick of the needle had me wincing.

I'm kind of annoyed they've changed the control scheme. Manually using the inventory seems to be a waste as you still get the options presented on the selection wheel and in the first season you could use the d-pad instead of the face buttons, which I found to be far more natural.

Also just like the first season, the game is just too damn dark on the Xbox 360. Even with the brightness turned all the way up in the options I can barely see what is going on in some scenes. Sure I can change the settings on my TV but then all the other games would be too bright. Changing my TV settings each time would be somewhat of an annoyance.

I wasn't sure I was going to get the game after Telltale's lack of support for the previous season on the 360 but in the end I just couldn't resist. Hopefully this season will be free of the issues which plagued the previous one.

Omid dying early on was a shocker and I hope Christa made it away from those scavengers.

I was surprised not even the doctor could tell if it was a human bite or a dog bite. It wasn't as if any flesh had been torn away, the bite impressions were clearly visible. I confess though that I was eyeing Sam the dog with the thought "I think I'm going to be eating you soon."

Also I hope Kenny did survive. I had a feeling while exploring the house that it belonged to Kenny but perhaps that was why Telltale designed it as they did.

I think aging Clem up a bit was a good idea. She's still a vulnerable girl but is now a little more capable.

 

[Zenn3k]

So I'm not reading the thread, but I have a question for those of you playing.

Does Season 2 use any of the choices from Season 1?

I'm switching platforms to play Season 2 and wanna know if I should wait for a deal and re-buy Season 1 and play it again first before starting Season 2 or if it doesn't matter.

Please quote me so I get a notification of your reply, thank you.

 

[hazabaza1]

So I'm not reading the thread, but I have a question for those of you playing.

Does Season 2 use any of the choices from Season 1?

I'm switching platforms to play Season 2 and wanna know if I should wait for a deal and re-buy Season 1 and play it again first before starting Season 2 or if it doesn't matter.

Please quote me so I get a notification of your reply, thank you.

Yes, there's an import feature. As of yet it seems to have made not much difference to individual games, but it might do some more in the future.

 

[Legendairy314]

I cried. Only one other game has even gotten me close and that was Persona 4. FINALLY! We have reached this point in gaming! *Ahem* Anyways, other than the immense amount of feels this game also kept up with the good old walking dead formula. I LOVE the emphasis they're putting on sacrificing one's values to ensure survival. Clem didn't give a crap that she had to disobey these people to survive. For me, she was using anyone to ensure her survival but still managed to uphold some of the ideals that Lee taught her. She manages to be emotional and fracking scary all within the same minute. Seriously, that scene where she's talking to Rebecca and you can't see her face gave me chills.

I want more, so much more. They've taken what was great about the first season and bumped it up too 11. If this keeps up, I might have a new favorite "game." If you could call it that.

Choices:
Tried to save Christa (Gotta stick together)
Killed the Dog (Mercy)
I Was Friendly to Sarah (Though if only for getting the Peroxide and shutting her up)
Accepted Nick's Apology (I could understand his reasoning)
Gave Water to the Dying Man (I needed that info and it was just water I didn't have before)
Saved Nick (Pete looked like he was bit, too many variables)

 

[Spencer Petersen]

I have come to hate those games.

They lured me in with the promise of meaningful choice, but ultimately, everything always plays out the same. You can't save anyone, your choices get undone in minutes. I hate them. And Season 2 seems to be more of the same.

Honesty I don't mind that too much, so long as some choices last an episode or two before they cut off the branches rather than doing it a few minutes later (which it dose in some cases). It's more for characterization, to make you think and react and change how other characters talk to you. It would just take to much work and time to actually give you a completely different game based on your choices.

Why can Witcher 2 do it, then? They don't operate on a huge budget, being an eastern european game development studio. Yet they managed to put a true, branching storyline into their game.

Considering the choice only has any importance if you metagame it and lose out on 1/4 of the content having choices affect context rather than entire sections is more potent from a effort-to-enjoyment ratio.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

So I decided this morning that I'm actually going to run two playthroughs concurrently. One "true" playthrough, one "dark" playthrough. The "true" one being the one where Clementine will behave and react to situations as if she took Lee's mentorship to heart, still sees good in people and desires their companionship, and still believes that someday things will be better.

The "dark" one being the one where she blames herself for the deaths of Lee, Kenny, Ben, Omid, and possibly Christa and spirals into deep depression. One where she perverts Lee's lessons and becomes more of a hardened survivalist, not trusting anyone and not wanting to get close to anyone so that she won't feel loss when they die. She'll be a lot quieter in conversation and not divulge anything about her feelings or intentions to others, opportunistically use words to manipulate people for her own survival (like getting the bandages from Alvin, feigning friendship with Sarah, and blackmailing Rebecca), and take any item potentially useful to her survival regardless of anyone else's needs (took the watch for use later, refused to give water to the dying bandit).

Mostly I'm just doing it to see how much, if at all, the game changes this time around if I pick more-or-less opposite things in the two playthroughs.

also "I thought you were dead" Christa or Kenny?

Plot Twist! It's Sam the dog!

 

[Comic Sans]

So I decided this morning that I'm actually going to run two playthroughs concurrently. One "true" playthrough, one "dark" playthrough. The "true" one being the one where Clementine will behave and react to situations as if she took Lee's mentorship to heart, still sees good in people and desires their companionship, and still believes that someday things will be better.

The "dark" one being the one where she blames herself for the deaths of Lee, Kenny, Ben, Omid, and possibly Christa and spirals into deep depression. One where she perverts Lee's lessons and becomes more of a hardened survivalist, not trusting anyone and not wanting to get close to anyone so that she won't feel loss when they die. She'll be a lot quieter in conversation and not divulge anything about her feelings or intentions to others, opportunistically use words to manipulate people for her own survival (like getting the bandages from Alvin, feigning friendship with Sarah, and blackmailing Rebecca), and take any item potentially useful to her survival regardless of anyone else's needs (took the watch for use later, refused to give water to the dying bandit).

Mostly I'm just doing it to see how much, if at all, the game changes this time around if I pick more-or-less opposite things in the two playthroughs.

also "I thought you were dead" Christa or Kenny?

Plot Twist! It's Sam the dog!

I would wait until after you've completed the whole game to do another run. For me personally, seeing how little the decisions I made actually mattered in most circumstances kind of killed the first game for me. I stopped caring because I knew the game would find some way to put me on the same track as if I made the other choice. Seeing the other outcomes ruins the illusion of choice, and thus urgency and immersion.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I would wait until after you've completed the whole game to do another run. For me personally, seeing how little the decisions I made actually mattered in most circumstances kind of killed the first game for me. I stopped caring because I knew the game would find some way to put me on the same track as if I made the other choice. Seeing the other outcomes ruins the illusion of choice, and thus urgency and immersion.

I already know that the game is likely to have the same outcome either way. It's more about the character interactions than the conclusions to me. Using the first game as an example, it's like the way Lee and Kenny interacted. If you covered his back, he'd cover yours. But if you didn't like the guy and helped other people instead, he wouldn't hesitate to express his resentment. Even though his overall fate doesn't change much, the journey to that fate is different.

And that's kinda what I'm looking to see. I doubt I can do anything to change the end fates for any of the people in this new group, but I'm curious to see how differently they'd react between an optimistic Clementine that cautiously trusts them and a pessimistic Clementine that doesn't trust them at all and is only there because they're temporarily useful to her.

 

[Zenn3k]

So I'm not reading the thread, but I have a question for those of you playing.

Does Season 2 use any of the choices from Season 1?

I'm switching platforms to play Season 2 and wanna know if I should wait for a deal and re-buy Season 1 and play it again first before starting Season 2 or if it doesn't matter.

Please quote me so I get a notification of your reply, thank you.

Yes, there's an import feature. As of yet it seems to have made not much difference to individual games, but it might do some more in the future.

Thank you very much for answering my question.

This line is just so I don't get auto-flagged for "low content"

 

[Davroth]

The lack of "meaningful choices" is also a thing I find very realistic in TWD, since most of the time all the choices we make are meanigless in the grand scale of things. You, like Lee or Clemmie, are just one person in the world with no large powers to change the mind or actions of others. For the most part, all you can do is change how you yourself react to those actions.

I find it pretty damn unrealistic that every time you had a choice to save one or the other, the outcome always stays the same. Oh, I saved Doug, oh look, he's dead now anyway. Good thing I saved one of them.

The choices you have are very streamlined at best anyway. Especially for the time sensitive ones. I could think of so many alternatives off the top of my head, and I was taken out of the game several times when the game forced me to be heroic. The first episode actually has a prefect example of that, where you have the choice to help either Duck or the farmer's son. Nothing you do there matters, at all. The son dies anyway, Duck's fate is predetermine, the farmer is grief stricken either way. One could say that Kenny's view of you changes, but does it really? His actions are always the same, so obviously you don't earn his respect when you try to do something he doesn't like. He kills the old man with the salt stone anyway. I find that pretty damn unrealistic.

If you subscribe to the idea of fate, yes, I could see why this might see realistic to you, but I firmly believe that everyone forges their own path. And my path through TWD was forged for me. From the very start. I felt like mere audience.

 

[DementedSheep]

I have come to hate those games.

They lured me in with the promise of meaningful choice, but ultimately, everything always plays out the same. You can't save anyone, your choices get undone in minutes. I hate them. And Season 2 seems to be more of the same.

Honesty I don't mind that too much, so long as some choices last an episode or two before they cut off the branches rather than doing it a few minutes later (which it dose in some cases). It's more for characterization, to make you think and react and change how other characters talk to you. It would just take to much work and time to actually give you a completely different game based on your choices.

Why can Witcher 2 do it, then? They don't operate on a huge budget, being an eastern european game development studio. Yet they managed to put a true, branching story line into their game.

I bet their budget was still bigger than telltales. The only really major branching choices they have is Iroveth or Roche which dose have a substantial effect on the second a third chapter (though chapter 3 is short an unpolished) and whether you go Iorveth/Roche or save triss which is near the end anyway. It would have taken a lot of resources to do that and I think more than two major branching point is going to cause issues or leave you with a short game because most of the content is locked unless you do X and you have to repeat parts you already done multiple times to reach it.

They still end up in roughly the same place at the end and there are less choices that actually effect anything than the walking dead has. It just the effect in the walking dead is largely dialogue.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

I'm not too happy about the choices. It turns out I was in the majority of +90% for all of them.

Walking Dead's decision making shouldn't be such that there is clearly a "right" and "wrong" choice.

I could have snuck away and left Christa to those bandits and I could have left the dog to die horribly but really, whose going to do those things unless they're purposely trying to be a dick?

 

[senordesol]

I love the narrative of the Walking Dead Games...but I hate the choice system. I hate how the easiest and most obvious solutions always seem to be denied to you.

The whole bus stop bathroom thing for instance...was everyone taking crazy pills!? Why split up and go into different bathrooms? What does that accomplish beside 1) increase your chance of ambush by 100%? and 2) weaken your ability to deal with threats?

Why couldn't I grab the gun BEFORE grabbing the water bottle? I was literally trying to click on the gun to pick it up because doing anything in this universe without at least one weapon in arm's reach doesn't make sense to me.

Why couldn't I use the frisbee at the camp site as a doggie dish? Again, I didn't know a damn thing about where the story was going to go; but I knew that trading a can of beans with a hungry dog was a bad idea.

Why is Uncle Pete horrible at making decisions? Did we really need to leave ballcap behind in the woods? I know he was only taking a leak; but what if a walker had snuck up on him (as they seem to have the preternatural ability to do for creatures incapable of subterfuge)? Or what if he got bit by a snake? Why did we divide our team so much when we knew that we were low on ammo?

Anyway...

1. I tried to ditch Christa. I wasn't aware of the enemy numbers, and without any weapons; there wouldn't be much I could do for her anyway. I figured, best case scenario: they tie her up and drag her back to their camp where I can stage a rescue at the time of my choosing. Worst case: we don't both get killed.

2. Killed the dog. The attack was more Clem's fault than the dog and there was no need to allow it to suffer. On the plus side: fresh meat. Though she didn't even take a leg with her (once again, the game doesn't let you make the most obvious and easiest decisions).

3. I was chummy with Sarah. Anything that didn't put a smile on her face was counter-productive when lurking in a house full of people who would otherwise kill me on the spot. I poured whatever honeyed words needed to be poured to complete my task.

4. Accepted Ballcap's apology. He was just following protocol and while I can't say I'd do what he did; his reasoning was sound. Can't fault him for that, nor will holding a grudge be productive in the long run.

5. Gave water. The man was in a bad way and some small comfort might have made him more talkative...didn't work out that way, of course.

6. Threw my lot in with ballcap. He had a superior position (closest to help) and plentiful ammunition (which would be helpful as -for some reason- I had no weapon). If I had gone with Uncle Pete; we'd have both been over-extended and vulnerable.

 

[Darks63]

It looks like from the first episode that Telltale bent to some of the complaints about the lack of action in the first episode and made ep 2 alot more action packed. I especially loved the sneaking segment, I spent it making Metal Gear Clementine Tactical Zombie Espionage jokes to myself.

Speaking of that that girl i meant was definitely unstable and i'm concerned about how my agreeing to be friends with her will end up going south on me in following episode.

One problem i had aside from the bug i encountered was the so called doctor just leaving the bite untreated. His explanation of if you have a fever tomorrow your walker/lurker bit if not it was a dog. I was like really idiot? even i know any untreat large wound like she had if infected could cause a fever and mimic the early Z bite symptoms. Hell even a bite from a uninfected person could cause a fatal infection if not treated immediately.


As far as the choices I helped Crista from the looters, Killed the dog(which sucked due to my own dog having visited my 10 minutes before due to hearing the dog in the game), Befriended Sarah, Forgave the Ballcap dude, Gave water, and Ran to ballcap due to the other dude likely being bit despite him being the nicest to me.

 

[Boogie Knight]

Arguably, the choices don't "matter" in the sense that they don't change the trajectory of the story, but this also isn't Mass Effect or Dragon Age where you are told your choices will shape the world because you're Captain Thunderdick. In The Walking Dead you play vulnerable, fallible mere mortals caught up in something bigger than themselves which brought the whole world to its knees. Realistically, the most you can "choose" to do is offer a little decency to the poor souls you meet (who will not last) and stay alive as long as you can. That said, I feel like TWD offers way better leeway in roleplay and character building than most games which bill themselves as "role playing games." It's rare to have a character you choose dialogue options for have any kind of charisma or nuance. I also think the way dialogue options are selected in real time also makes the conversations flow better and actually feel like dialogue.

I'm gonna wager that in Episode 2 of the new season Lilly is the character who makes a return. For starters, she's one of the few characters we did not see die or find the dead body of. Second, her experiences with the survivors in the first season would offer the new cast a different perspective on Lee, Clementine, and all the crazy things which transpired (granted, there was nothing to hint antagonism between Lilly and Clementine in the first season, but how Lee treated/mistreated her might influence how she acts around Clementine). Lilly makes more sense to me than Kenny at this point, though the second most likely character would be Christa.

As for the lopsided nature of the choices, not every chapter is going to have ambiguous options and sometimes it's not going to be clear that you are making a choice. Hopefully, as we get more tough situations thrown at us there will be more even divisions.

By the way, did anybody steal the watch from that drawer? I know adventure game logic trains us to grab everything that isn't nailed down, but I had the sneaking suspicion that grabbing the watch would just alienate the people I wanted to try to get along with.

 

[Darks63]

By the way, did anybody steal the watch from that drawer? I know adventure game logic trains us to grab everything that isn't nailed down, but I had the sneaking suspicion that grabbing the watch would just alienate the people I wanted to try to get along with.

I left the watch there myself for two reasons. One it has no value anymore other than as a timepiece, but then again what the point of telling time anymore anyway? Two I was trying to get stuff to fix my arm not loot. Also I knew if i took it i would have a harder time convincing people i was not a bad person.

 

[Creator002]

Also, that teaser at the end. "I thought you were dead." I'm 99% sure Clem is talking about Christa, but goddamnit, my mind jumped immediately to Kenny. Telltale is really milking "OMG GUYS, KENNY MIGHT COME BACK" for all it's worth.

I'm 99% sure it's going to be Lily (I chose to leave her behind. I don't know if that dialog changes if you let her take the RV). If it's Christa, I think Clem would react with happiness rather than (what seemed to me like) shock. As for Kenny, I don't think she was told what happened, so she might not have thought that much about him being dead, probably choosing to think he got seperated or something.