Reviews VideoGame / The Walking Dead Telltale

I completely agree but I would say that watching youtube won't be nearly as powerful as playing it. It#s the difference between watching someone pull the trigger and pulling the trigger yourself

Personally, I couldn't disagree more with the review. Sure, the choices may not affect the story all that much - but they affect you. How you see the characters, what you feel when they're inevitably lost. That I tried so hard to find some inroad through Larry's antagonism and attempted to save his life meant that when Kenny killed him, I personally was both absolutely crushed and furious at Kenny. I imagine a player who hadn't put in that effort (maybe deducing, the way I failed to, that Larry just wasn't going to stop being suspicious of Lee) wouldn't have had the same conflicted and despairing internal struggle. It's very difficult to plan for every single path a story may take and program them all in. It's fascinating to see a story take the route of inspiring change in the player instead. That's partly what makes the statistics at the end of the episodes so intriguing - you see what different responses were inspired by the same circumstances.

That said, I would avoid telling someone who had yet to play the game the "trick". And watching Youtube playthroughs of games is like drinking tomato sauce out of the bottle (or, as above, the difference between firing a gun and witnessing someone firing a gun).

Well, you can become attached to a character on a tv show, and you don't have to take actions in the show for it to happen. The statistics are intriguing, but no more than a survey. When I found out the "trick," I went to an LP and got a lot more out of it. The game played out like a t.v. show, and, though there was an interactive element, I didn't feel it was ever my choice. It felt like the game asked "what should Lee do, x or y?" with some superficial results. I still enjoyed the story, just wasn't really effected like the above.

I went through the exact same process, and felt disappointed that the endings didn't vary. But I also feel that, as Nano Moose said, the "false-choices" are more about how they affect you.

The choices there aren't really so much about influencing the story, but they are there to help feel the all important sense of immersion. The choices let the protagonist make the most sense to you, makes you feel responsible for what goes on, and so ultimately increases the catharsis of events as they transpire. It is entirely about creating immersion, and not about creating a "choose your own adventure". I didn't like the sacrifice of genuine choices and lasting consequences, but I liked the strong focus, made possible by keeping all paths in the same direction. The illusion of choice gets broken on seeing other playthroughs, but I don't mind, knowing I had that single, incredible experience the first time around.

To further elaborate on my point (the 400 word limit is way to short for anyone to make a proper review), the game is by no means bad or anything. And I do agree that the greatest strength of the game is that you get personally connected to the characters of the story in a way that few games managed to achieve (And it did so without the extensive use of emotionally manipulative music, just purely through the character's interactions with each other, which is masterful story writing at it's finest and deserving of praise.

However, it suffers from the same problem as classical point-and-click games such as Kings Quest or Space Quest, in that once you have beaten the game, there really isn't any point in re-playing it ever again. And unlike the classic Sierra titles mentioned above, the gameplay element from TWD is minimum without any puzzle solving or real exploration (Which isn's really a bad thing, considering how forced the 'putting batteries in radio' puzzle felt. Developers themselves seem to realized this and lampshaded it in the later episodes). Therefore, the main point of TWD is it's story, and again, I will agree that it is very emotionally powerful... for the first time. If you do any subsequent playthrough, it will be only a matter of time until you realize that 'Hey! Nothing I do matters at all!'. And that really makes the emotional impact of the story a lot less powerful with that knowledge in mind.

When designing the second season, I hope that the developers will take notes from another classical point-and-click game, Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis. In that game, although it railroad you into doing certain things in order to advance the story, how you go about accomplishing those goals is totally up to you. For example, you can get into a theatre by talking your way in by befriending the doorman, fighting the doorman and knocking him out, or climb in through the back window. These variations not only gives the players incentive to replay the game in order to find out what the other approaches were available, but also adds to the characterization of the protagonist and strengthen the story.

As it now stands, TWD is well worth it's prices and offers one of the best storytelling experience in this console generation. However, that experience is only available for a single time. Afterwards there will be little reason to replay the story again.

When I first bought Episode 1 and played it at my friend's house, we both loved it so much that we immediately went out and got a PSN card from walmart so we could buy the season pass for the whole first season and immediately played up to episode three, which was as far as they'd gotten at that point.

Then, since we had nothing else to do, we switched out and I let my friend play episodes one through three to see how his decisions would affect the story differently from mine... This was a huge, HUGE mistake, as the answer was "not very differently". The linearity of it devastated us and neither of us has had any desire to continue playing the game after. I still haven't played episode four, even though the full game has been released for months now and I could play it whenever I wanted.

I honestly agree with the review. Adventure games like this I enjoy more on Youtube than in my console.

(The OP) Overall, my suggestion to everyone that is considering to purchase this game is simple: Buy it, and enjoy one of the best and most emotionally powerful story telling experience in video game history. However, whatever you do, resist the temptation and DON'T start another play though with the intention of seeing what impact you decisions will have on the story or watch someone else do it on a YouTube Let's Play video. Otherwise, the music of the game will be completely destroyed.

Actually, I think that the decisions that you make in season 1 of the first game have more of an impact when you play season 2 of the second game. I am not sure if this was the game developer's intention to make the second game more interactive because of the complaints of the first game, but I really think that the choices made in season 1 have more of an effect on what happens in season 2. It's like the game developers where trying to make the choices made by the player as Lee in the first game have a strong effect later on when they made the second game with the player playing as Clem. So the decisions that you make as a player do matter in season 1. You just don't get to see the effects of it until you play season 2.

Making a video game is hard. Making one video game branch off into ten or more paths based on choices takes a lot of time; they're already taking their time putting out Season 3's episodes. Any longer would be too long. Does that diminish the enjoyment? To me, it doesn't.

I played the first season with my whole family, and a bunch more times with just my younger sister, my pops and I. We played it for the first time as a whole family, and everyone made decisions. That was a ton of fun.

When we wanted to try out different decisions, it became clear from the interface that certain decisions have more gravity, and will subtly change things down the line. But at no point did any of us think that the entire game would change. It's just not feasible for an episode-based game to do so without taking an immense amount of time.

I think of this game as being locked to fate. Lee's and Clem's fate is sealed from the beginning, but we can change what happens to others. It's all about your own moral compass. And seeing how the characters react to one another. You can't think of this game as just like real life, or else it WILL ruin it for you. You are playing a game that is one journey, and it's how you go about that journey that matters. It's how you treat people along the way, and what type of person you make Lee in the end. Or Clementine. And how all your decisions and others' reactions makes you feel.

They've done all these animations for different choices, recorded all these reactions, animated all this content. Just because you are aware of their fate doesn't mean it's totally lost to play again. Especially in season two. Things change, and some things are locked in fate.

I am so disappointed that people disliked the game for this reason. It is so unfortunate. But I guess I'm used to playing the same story in vastly different ways thanks to all the RP Gs I play. Gosh, I don't even know what to say anymore. It's just unfortunate I guess.

Maybe one day there'll be a game with vast choices and consequences. One not text based. But expect it to take a looooong time.

Alpha Protocol, the Witcher 2, Koto R 1, Koto R 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Baldur's Gate 2...

The Walking Dead Season 1, missed some real opportunities to bring a better feeling of choice to their game in small ways. Sometimes they actually went out of their way and did extra animation to bring about the same fate to the same people. There were a couple of places in the story where they could have put someone on a bus instead of killing them, but instead they made sure they died in the end. The trick is to find ways the world they leave behind can be different, maybe if you do it this way that place doesn't get overrun when you leave it etc...

Even though it is totally understandable because of budget, that doesn't actually excuse the game either. If someone couldn't play decent music because all the strings on their guitar had snapped they still didn't give a good performance. The Walking Dead chose to highlight choice as a key feature of the game, it was The Walking Dead's responsibility to find a way to deliver on that.

This will seem negative because I'm just talking about the counter-point you made, but this isn't really the biggest issue for me with the game. I think I've made a defence of some of the choice in The Walking Dead in other reviews

The Walking Dead chose to highlight choice as a key feature of the game, it was The Walking Dead's responsibility to find a way to deliver on that.

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