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The Walking Dead

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PS:

The Telltale forums are creepin' me out. People have some pretty strong murder fantasies.

I don't find that nearly as

creepy

as

their extreme attachment to Carley. It's good that they're that emotionally invested in the story, but at the same time,

begging for her to be brought back/trying to rationalize how she might actually still be alive

seems like a bit much

.

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Episode three spoilers, also some vague talk about the comic:

I feel like the game has all-but restarted. Ben's time must be short since the game hasn't given us any opportunity or good reason to bond with him. Chuck could just disappear any minute, and of course we know nothing about these new people. As for Kenny, well, in the comic there are characters who loose their entire families... and when that happens they don't stick around for long.

I would really like the opportunity to grill Omid, Christa and Chuck in the next episode. Omid and Christa definitely just parted with another group of people, unless they were surviving by walking up and down the freeway with just the clothes on their back. Here I am, introducing myself as a convict whose friends keep dying and they don't have to explain themselves at all?

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You're about the countdown to tears, this episode did make me weepy. It was gut-wrenching ! :(

Nearly everybody dies in this episode, the Duck part was the most traumatic at all. I let the girl at the beginning die because she was bitten, I knew it was terrible to use her as a distraction. But why try to save her when she's obviously not going to make it? I want to save everyone, but I'm not stupid. I chose to shoot Duck, Kenny just saw her wife kill herself, I just couldn't let him do it, I felt like it would break him. I also chose to help Omid first not only because he was hurt, but because he looked like the weaker of the two.

The train puzzle made me chuckle too, I wondered why Clem had started doing leaf imprints. The "previously and next on" section are kinda weird, why didn't the "previously" part mention the cannibals at all? The "next on" was too spoiler-y. The moment you hear the guy talk on the radio, you can guess what's going to happen next. I like how Christa points out how weird it is for her to still have it almost right before finding out it was working all the time!

While I don't know what to think about Chuck, his advice was sound, Clementine should learn to defend herself but I'm worried he might have a drinking problem. Then again, how much booze can their be left in this wasteland? I don't want to think of Omid and Christa, like it's been said before, it's probable that they had a quarrel with the last group and that's what they were arguing about before Lee arrived.

But seriously, I weeped for Duck and her mom's death.

PS: Anybody else notice the Banang in the RV?

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Loved the new episode

even the bits of it that made me nearly cry.

I have only one gripe:

Where the hell was my huge gas tanker explosion! They mention it could explode if hit with the train, theres thousands of Walkers piling through there, you light that sucker up! ... and then nothing, Walkers just come chilling on through the meagre bit of fire. There are several reverse angle shots from the train, and each one made me expect the huge ass explosion even more, but nope.

Was it a time constraint thing? Engine limitation? Did it not fit the mood? Was it not even considered? I'd love to have some idea of what the deal was, it seemed like a real Chekhov's gun situation

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Wow. (huge spoilers for episode 3)

At the beginning, I was waiting to talk to Carly last among all the other stuff at the motel, so I was disappointed I missed talking to her when the bandits showed up first, but I figured I'd get to talk to her later. That made what happened so much worse--I didn't get any last conversation, she was just gone.

That was also one of the first times I've let the timer run out on a dialogue--normally I try to be nice and keep everyone around, figuring more bodies is better, but I was so shocked I couldn't bring myself to take Lily along. And I figure if she was at the point of shooting people out of blind paranoia, she was too dangerous to the group. Still feel awful about it, though.

And then, Duck and Katja... christ this was a bloody episode.

I was kind of annoyed that

if you don't accuse Ben, Lee is surprised and angry when he reveals his secret. I figured based on his reactions that he probably did it but didn't see the point in accusing him when he would obviously be already feeling terrible about it due to Carly and wouldn't do something like that again. So when he did come out with it, I was hoping for "I know" or "it doesn't matter" sort of response.

Also, curious,

is it possible for Clem to actually fire the gun in the train station?

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I did enjoy this episode, but I had a few problems, though some of them weren't with the actual game narrative.

I was surprised by the number of major character deaths in this chapter (not that it's necessarily a bad thing). I finally had the opportunity to leave Lilly behind, which I've wanted to do since the first episode. The pacing was a bit weird, though, with the high action of the motel attack happening near the beginning, and then sort of coasting until the train escape

I encountered a bug during the motel attack, where I finished the zombie-shooting part, and the scope/crosshair overlay stayed on the screen for the brief cutscene of the RV escaping.

And for a bit of nit-picking: When talking about someone becoming worried or disconcerted (in early-episode lines about Duck), the word is "fazed," not "phased," and guns have "sights," not "sites." I don't know if that's from the original written lines, or from however the subtitles are generated, but that sort of thing stands out to me.

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Did anyone else die more often in this episode than in previous ones? I never died in episode one, only once in episode two because I was dumb and didn't pay attention, but died several times in three. I'm assuming that was a deliberate design choice on Telltale's part, since the shooting and punching parts seemed a bit harder.

I guess this episode was supposed to be a bridge between the first and second halves of the season, since it just seemed to be setting stuff up for the next two episodes and tied up loose ends from the previous. The plot arc wasn't as strong as the previous ones either, and once I decided to check my achievements just so I could gage how far into the story I was.

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Great episode.

Obviously, Christa is pregnant.

The whole Duck thing was the closest thing to Spielberg's vision of tears video games have come, as far as I know. It's interesting to consider how the fact that it's a game affected that whole sequence of events. The fact that I had to, multiple times, actively offer to shoot the child – knowing that I'd probably have to aim and fire the gun myself – really added weight to the story.

I noticed the achievements were less hilarious this time around, which is a great improvement.

About the walkie-talkie thing – how can Clementine have been speaking to anyone throughout the story so far? Is the implication that that someone has been following them, or that walkie-talkies have extreme range?

Oh yeah, I also wonder what happened to the explosion – they even cut to the fuel leaking out, the international symbol for pending explosions! Maybe they'll introduce episode 4 with a bang.

In the cut-scene outside the box car, right after they've met Chuck, Duck was invisible, which made that whole part weird.

My patience for having to walk back and forth is comically low.

When walking onto the train engine from the box car, just walking straight ahead makes the guy enter temporary super-awesome slo-mo until he's rounded the corner.

I really love this game, and this episode.

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The whole Duck thing was the closest thing to Spielberg's vision of tears video games have come, as far as I know. It's interesting to consider how the fact that it's a game affected that whole sequence of events. The fact that I had to, multiple times, actively offer to shoot the child – knowing that I'd probably have to aim and fire the gun myself – really added weight to the story.

In the cut-scene outside the box car, right after they've met Chuck, Duck was invisible, which made that whole part weird.

My patience for having to walk back and forth is comically low.

When walking onto the train engine from the box car, just walking straight ahead makes the guy enter temporary super-awesome slo-mo until he's rounded the corner.

Yes. Totally. Especially how they used

a high angle shot to really pull at the heartstrings and make you hesitate at pulling the trigger. It effectively portrays how small, innocent, and vulnerable he seems just lying against the tree.

Ha. Yeah. When that happened to me, I was like: what the fuck? Where's Duck?! The technical glitches were noticeable- at one point, I had to quit the game because of a weird non-collision glitch that happened on the rails - but asides from that, the game's direction, voice acting and narrative delivery was superb. Really sets it up for darker events to come... um... "Around The Corner".

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Really sets it up for darker events to come... um... "Around The Corner".

I think it's «Around All the Corners»

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So, did you guys wait until Duck stopped breathing?

Kenny waits.

As a side note, the decision for who shoots Duck is among the most intriguing to me. For plenty of the binary choices, you can mostly guess someone's reasons ("We had to kill Larry or face dying in the meat locker!"). For the "Who shoots Duck" choice, there seem to be a whole gamut of reasons from the noble to the disturbing. It's been especially interesting for me because I can't really explain why I had Kenny do it besides the fact that at the time, it felt appropriate.

Also, it seems a lot of people who were moved to tears either cried for the death of Carley/Doug or Duck and Katjaa, but that wasn't quite the case for me. For me, the scene that got me going was when Kenny starts explaining that he blames himself for Shawn Greene's death and he sees Duck's death as fair punishment. I'm not sure why it struck such a chord with me, considering how removed the ideas of a karmic universe and divine plan are from my own worldview, but it struck me as a particularly moving scene. It also gave the statistics page at the end a weird bit of pathos, because I realized how few people even saw that scene -- at the time about 3/4 people fought Kenny instead of talking to him.

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about 3/4 people fought Kenny instead of talking to him.

I tried talking to him! Obviously I picked the wrong things to say because a fight broke out anyway :(

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Guys, is there anyway we can change the title of the thread to something like "UNMARKED SPOILERS ABOUND" so we don't have a page of just black lines? To anyone reading this that hasn't decided on getting the game or not: take it from me, a guy who pretty much despises adventure games: this is one of the greatest games ever made.

So, did you guys wait until Duck stopped breathing?

I had no problem offing Duck, same way I had no problem helping Kenny kill Larry. In both these cases I'm so focused protecting Clementine I waste no time in making decisions. Larry was a ticking time bomb, a giant of a man due to have a fatal heart attack at any moment and come back as a behemoth of a walker. I didn't care if the chances of reviving him were 99% (which they sure as hell were not), if we roll a one on this die we're all dead. When Katjaa killed herself, my first thought was, "That sucks, but it's understandable given the situation and they way she was acting;" which quickly turned to, "She just fired a gun, which attracts zombies every-single-f'ing-time in the Walking Dead universe and Clem is alone with an inept teenager and a homeless man; we gotta euthanize this kid and we gotta do it fast!"

I'm not sure why it struck such a chord with me, considering how removed the ideas of a karmic universe and divine plan are from my own worldview, but it struck me as a particularly moving scene.

I don't think Kenny was thinking on those terms either, I think he's just a non-sociopathic human being who felt immensely guilty to watch another man's son die while he did nothing. There is something in particular about fathers who witness another father loose a child; they frequently come away with totally irrational guilt about the situation even if there was nothing they could have done.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to sing this game's praises again. This game deals with children in a much more daring and realistic way than any game before it. I talk to Clementine as early and as often as possible. When I am playing the game I am constantly thinking about not only her physical survival but her mental health as well. Just the fact that whenever Lee is in the same room as Clem, he is able to go to her and just ask her how she is doing makes The Walking Dead the greatest parenting simulator gaming has ever had.

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So, did you guys wait until Duck stopped breathing?

No way. I sort of wish that hadn't been an option, as I feel like it lets you off the hook a little too easily. But on the other hand I guess it's a good thing for the player to have more options, and it potentially makes that decision more interesting since you have to consider whether your goal is to put him out of his misery or just to prevent him from turning. (Although if you're going to be able to just let him die, I wish he would have actually turned if you left him there long enough without firing.)

On a personal note: I have to admit that when I first heard that Telltale was making a game based on The Walking Dead (which, at the time, I'd only seen the TV adaptation of and wasn't very fond of it), I was pretty skeptical, but then I played episode 1, had to shovel my hat and crow, and immediately redoubled my efforts to get hired there. Episode 3 is the first game I've ever worked on in a professional capacity, and although my contributions were relatively minor, I'm incredibly thrilled and disproportionately, perhaps obnoxiously proud to be a part of it.

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Just finished it and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Would agree with Accros that I would prefer no 'next time' preview on the game. It might fit the show format but I just don't want to know anything that happens in the next episode and just wait for it.

I do have some complaints but I am finishing my lunch break so I might jot some praise and condemnations down when I have some spare time. But in short: am looking forward to the next episode!

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I burned through the episodes last week, ending with ep. 3 in the weekend. I'm marveled by how this is the first game that has made me feel such a complex emotion such as tenseness through a story, rather than the mechanics.

Sometimes I couldn't turn of the analytical part of my brain (

"oh well, they have to hide Carly/Doug in the 2nd ep, then kill them in the 3rd, so that they don't have to do dual voice and animation work every time."

) but this has happened way less than with any other game, and it's so refreshing to actually be caught up in real, deep characters, in situations I'm genuinely conflicted about it. Loving it.

Also fun to see Shammack in the credits. Go Shammack, living the dream!

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I'd just like to take this opportunity to sing this game's praises again. This game deals with children in a much more daring and realistic way than any game before it. I talk to Clementine as early and as often as possible. When I am playing the game I am constantly thinking about not only her physical survival but her mental health as well. Just the fact that whenever Lee is in the same room as Clem, he is able to go to her and just ask her how she is doing makes The Walking Dead the greatest parenting simulator gaming has ever had.

I entirely agree. In reality I am ambivalent at best about children, but my priorities in the Walking Dead are 1) keep Lee alive, 2) keep Clem alive, 3) keep Clem happy/healthy/something, 4) everything else. In episode 3 particularly,

I immediately thought about the ramifications of Clem learning about Lee's past after she'd seen him/me kill one of the brothers in the previous episode. When Carley suggest I talk to some people about Lee's past I was very reluctant, but eventually decided that Clementine at the very least had to know before it came out publically. In the end I also told Kenny because I thought he was the one most likely to be a problem if he found out the wrong way, and most likely to be ok if he found out the right way. The way the episode went seems to support me in that decision.

Oh and I agree about the contrived problem, specifically

the map thing. I also did not want to give Chuck the alcohol, and searched for any other way to progress before giving in to it. The fact that I had to provide an unknown alcoholic with whiskey and then invite a man who had just lost his wife and child to also potentially get drunk while driving the train we're all on took me out of the experience pretty hard. At that point it was just a game puzzle to me.

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Pretty much what Gwardinen said in the spoilers section was something that I felt was too jarring; similar to one of the puzzles in Ep 2 where it made no narrative sense to do so if only to make me solve a problem in a very gamey way.

I wouldn't normally say this but I am absolutely fine with the Walking Dead removing the more game-focused elements. Certainly keep the short fights in there and when a puzzle doesn't feel too shoe horned go for it. Otherwise just give me more of the talking and the interactions, which are almost all superb.

The only other complaint I have is that it doesn't really feel like the climax of Ep 2 really paid off in Ep 3.

Cannot wait for Ep 4 and can't wait to see what you guys do next.

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I wouldn't normally say this but I am absolutely fine with the Walking Dead removing the more game-focused elements. Certainly keep the short fights in there and when a puzzle doesn't feel too shoe horned go for it. Otherwise just give me more of the talking and the interactions, which are almost all superb.

I would love it if Jake or Sean could jump in here and justify the puzzles, but I'll give it a shot: basically, the puzzles are totally necessary to The Walking Dead's pacing and are inserted in a very deliberate way to keep the game from going stale. If the game was just dialogue, exploration and action sequences I think the game would really suffer for it. You never do one thing in The Walking Dead for longer than fifteen minutes and I think that's one of the reasons why the game is so great. It's certainly the reason why I play each chapter in a single sitting whereas with most games the longest I can play is forty-five minutes before I'm not interested anymore.

I had a bit of a revelation during episode three: when I was trying to find out who was

stealing the drugs

, or how to

get the train started

, half of my brain was trying to solve those puzzles, but the other half was thinking about the group dynamics and what my next move was there. There needs to be time to figure out what you're going to do when your plans are ruined by something totally unforeseeable, as is prone to happen in this game.

Also, writing dialogue and voicing it is hard and expensive enough, respectively, especially since we have all these lines that in some case apparently only 20% of players will see. Finally, what about die-hard Telltale fans who demand puzzles? They can't afford to ignore that part of their audience.

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Holy crap spoiler bars everywhere.

I usually wait for telltale stuff to all be out before i play through them, because I have a shitty memory and really like the long varied experience a 5/6 episode run delivers. However, I heard so much amazing things about Walking Dead that I had to fire it up.It was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with a game. Especially a game's story.

I love the way the system forces you to make choices on a timer. It forces the decisions you make to be truer, since they can't be mulled over forever. There's a decent amount of gut reaction in each one. At the same time, it makes the decisions that you do have endless time on feel even more important. I feel like those are moments where I have complete control, so I'd better make the most of them.

I love the way it reveals information about the characters (mostly the protagonist). The reveal in the drug store was one of the most natural unforced story reveals I've ever experienced. I actually felt it slowly becoming apparent as Lee hides it from everyone *including* the player. It made him seem even more sad and alone when I realized that he wasn't going to let me in, this was truly *his* experience.

I also think the way there is action in the game is really nice. I thought the first motel sequence was fantastic, and also kind of hilarious what with the waist high objects.

Clementine is great, and garnered a very strong attachment that made me honestly scared to fail at some of the action moments.

Oh and my favourite, although tiny thing, was how the choices you see, the ones which I assume to be Lee's intent in his mind, doesn't always come out as such when you start actually talking.

Specifically the one where you try to tell Clem that you killed someone after she asks about your parents, which fails as he lightens it by talking down to her. Also, the later choice with Clementine to 'try to find out more about each other' which just goes nowhere completely awkwardly (and adorably).

One thing I wasn't so sure about was the way you can lie after ultimatums. The first time I played through episode 1, I chose every cop out response (I thought I could save you both!) even though I absolutely knew that wasn't the case when I made my decisions (except for the very first one when I might've had a little hope). I felt pretty bad about it, but how else could I justify my decisions. On my second run through I definitely avoided those, and felt a bit truer for doing so.

I then started up episode 2 and really enjoyed everything I played through a large part of it. The way this game develops a sense of dread, discomfort and fear is amazing.

However, I had to stop when I ran into that PC bug that meant Larry recounted doing the exact opposite thing that I experienced in the episode 1 conclusion. The weird thing was, I wasn't sure if he was lying or if I was missing something until I rechecked the stats. I replayed episode 1 once to try and fix things, but at the end the stat breakdown didn't match up. Just in time for the new Steam stuff to get rid of the forums which probably had easy to find stickies for help with that stuff. And of course since I'm so far behind, the examples people give for how they are sure they fixed it were all spoilery, and the fixes are outdated and don't seem to work. So I guess congrats Telltale, fuck Telltale.

I'll try and figure out how to make everything work though, because this is seriously one of the best experiences I've had in a game. Period.

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Having drawn the EU PS3 straw, I've just finished ep. 3 now. Holy shit.

After seeing Carly being murdered, Katjaa's suicide, having to shoot duck... the most depressing thing was still the look on Clem's face after I butchered her hair. She was so goddamn sad. It really drove home "Oh, she'll probably never have a proper haircut again, I really have to step it up and progress from just chatting and giving energy bars."

I really liked being given the chance to finally just tell everyone straight up about my past. I didn't want the hassle of juggling situations based on only certain people knowing, so the plan was to tell everyone. Katjaa's reaction to Lee's past, and hearing about what happened between Kenny and Larry, really changed my mind halfway through. She didn't need this. She looked so defeated. I didn't have the heart to tell Ben or Lily afterwards. (Also, Katjaa's VA was damn good in this episode in particular)

I always talk about how one of my favourite moments in a video game is the end of MGS3 where you are holding a gun to The Boss' head and have to physically press a button to shoot her. The scene stays still infinitely until you press it. So when a similar thing happened here, I was a bit sad that the game pulled the trigger for me after I took too long.

Still, this game is amazing and I'm looking forward to giving Kenny a haircut next.

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I fixed my issues and played up to the current point over the weekend. Great stuff.

I sided with Lilly in episode 2, and I'm not entirely sure how episode 3 works if you don't. I mean obviously there's a version for that, but so much of the episode seemed driven by my specific dynamics with Lilly and Kenny up to that point. I've never had a branching story game be so strong that I can't imagine the other side, and honestly I don't wanna see how it looks. :P

Can't wait for episode 4.

Side note:

I didn't honestly have that much of an issue with Kenny choosing to do what he did in episode 2, even though I thought Larry could be saved, but if that asshole doesn't help me in a life threatening situation one more time, it'll be the last time.

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I sided with Lily before Ep 3 and was getting rather annoyed with Kenny. I never really cared about his family either, knowing we'd not stick together for long if Kenny left with them, which is what I hoped. So Duck's death didn't really affect me that much, and I tried to not get too involved by saying Katjaa should shoot him.

However, at some point, just before giving Clementine a haircut, for some reason I thought the story was pulling a RDR and Lee was going to die soon and then I dropped a single tear.

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Started and finished this episode in one sitting. Didn't feel like it ever dragged, unlike Episode 2.

Carly getting shot

was the first time I've ever genuinely exclaimed 'FUCK!' in a video game situation. Completely out of the blue and super emotional.

Duck's death

was the complete opposite, where I

was relieved the annoying little bastard was gone.

I guessed what

Katjaa did

as soon as I

heard the gunshot.

Also, I tried to

save the woman

at the beginning, but either

I'm such a terrible shot that even Lee thought he didn't try to help her

or

the game didn't recognise my intentions.

With the last decision, I didn't even see

the dude running alongside the woman

until after I chose to

pick her up.

I guess I can rationalise that as Lee being so overwhelmed in a tight spot, though.

EDIT: Oh man what happened to Black bar spoilers? This makes my post way more hilariously awkward to read though.

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