toblix

The Walking Dead

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Thought I would share this little bit about how I played TWD at first.

In episode 2, after some opening scenes, there's an establishing shot under opening credits where the main cast is shown living in their new base. There's a bit of a lengthy scene where the hunting party returns to the base amid lots of excitement. There's long dialogue scenes and a climactic finish before you're free to just walk around the base. Long story short, there's a really long scene opening this section.

Anyway, following that scene you're given a bunch of food to distribute to the camp. I took the food and gave it to who I thought was appropriate.

Then I changed my mind.

So I restarted.

Establishing shot. Dramatic entrance. Fuss. Excitement. Lots of dialogue. A long time later, I'm back where I was, and I give people food again.

I handed out the food in a different order, but it didn't really feel right this time. At this point I realized that the game wasn't made to be able to do do-overs.

So I started over to repeat my original choice. I went through the whole ordeal, every last bit of dialogue, and finally did the exact same thing I did when I played it the first time.

Anyway, that's definitely the way you shouldn't play TWD, but I thought it was interesting that that experience happened. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but I'm not sure if it's the game's fault for not accommodating do-overs, or my fault for trying to do-over anyway, or the game's fault for not communicating that do-overs don't work, or my fault for voluntarily putting myself through it all a third time even after I knew it'd be such a pain. In the end I'm glad I started over the second time, because it felt more authentic to go with my original choice.

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The game is pretty explicitly about making hard choices, often under time pressure, and not once did I ever go back and replay a section that I felt I had "messed up" because it felt authentic to me that Lee had messed up in the same situation. It was only in those cases where I felt the messing up was the fault of the game rather than my fault, particularly in Episode 2, that I thought about replaying things, but in the end I decided that I could swallow the "actually Lee messed up" pill and live with it. When it comes to something like the food distribution case, there's no way I would redo that even if I felt bad about it - that's something that was very simple and not at all time-limited, so if I screwed that up it was entirely on me, not the game's clunky controls or a failure of the game's narrative to communicate what the choices were. For an example of a choice that didn't work, from the end of Episode 2 (probably my least favorite episode):

When the old dude has the heart attack and you have to choose whether to help him or kill him, I was frozen with indecision because I had no idea what Lee would do if I chose "help." The guy's daughter was already doing CPR, so I'm not sure what helping would've entailed. It's not like I could do more CPR or something. Maybe "help him" meant "smash Kenny's face in with a haymaker because that's the only way to stop him from grabbing a salt lick and going to town," but I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. I also didn't want to kill the old guy. So the game was giving me two choices, one which I didn't want to pick and the other which wasn't properly telegraphed because I had no idea what Lee was going to do. Then the timer ran out and everyone got mad at me for being useless, as if they somehow know I'm the main character in the game who's supposed to do everything and make all the choices.

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Yeah that was why I restarted the second time. It didn't really occur to me before that point that you weren't supposed to be able to do scenes over easily, but once it occurred to me I wanted to replicate what decisions I made the first time.

Related to your experience, in that same episode when everyone's sitting around the dinner table eating the guy's leg, I ended up just standing speechless for the whole scene. I thought it was a really neat way that inaction was totally meaningful in context, since Lee actually stood there looking horrified.

At the end of that episode though, I was kind of bummed out with the showdown at the end where you have to make the woman back into the zombie. I thought compared with all the interesting choices and dialogue you get normally, it was a total letdown that there was literally only one possible course of action to get through that scene (if there were other possibilities, I didn't find them). I don't know if this is the wrong choice per se, but normally when you don't have a choice, it's in the context of a QTE, and sometimes even those have a few branching possibilities.

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Very much enjoyed listening to Sean & Jake on the Game Design Roundtable podcast talk about making their game. I discovered that I live like 3 blocks away from the Idle Thumbs studio. Sweet!

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Very much enjoyed listening to Sean & Jake on the Game Design Roundtable podcast talk about making their game. I discovered that I live like 3 blocks away from the Idle Thumbs studio. Sweet!

EGG RAID!!!!!!

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Hey I just listened to that podcast you were in. What was Sean's idea that you didn't say on the podcast? I'd like to know what kind of stupid ideas you had. Maybe you've mentioned it somewhere already.

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Hey I just listened to that podcast you were in. What was Sean's idea that you didn't say on the podcast? I'd like to know what kind of stupid ideas you had. Maybe you've mentioned it somewhere already.

They won't be mentioned, sorry!

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Also as far as the discussion on the GDRT podcast I had the opposite experience of Dirk. I was always thrilled when there was a part of the game where it slowed down, and you would just sort of walk around and do typical adventure game stuff. I remember actually breathing a sigh of relief on several occasions just because of how heavy the game would get. What didn't work for me (mostly) was the whole tap a button a bunch of times, then press another button. That felt the most like a "I'm playing a video game" moment, and would take me out of the experience. That being said, I understand that the game needed to provide some resistance to the player at points, and it was nice hearing the discussion about it. Also, unless I'm just hearing what I want to hear, it sounds like Sean & Jake had reservations about how it was implemented as well.

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I was amused with some of the observational dialogue in those scenes. "So that's what they did with the Sam and Max writers!"

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I thought I'd crank through the first season in about a week but I actually find myself taking a week off in between each episode. The game is just too stressful and upsetting.

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I thought I'd crank through the first season in about a week but I actually find myself taking a week off in between each episode. The game is just too stressful and upsetting.

Yeah, same here. It's pretty hardcore.

It's also a little uneven across the episodes. I wonder if a TV style writing process would help the series: There's an assigned show-runner who gets final say. Then all the writers "break" each of the stories, laying down the story beats, scene by scene, together as a group.

Then each writer is assigned an episode, or episodes, and goes off to write them alone. Then the show-runner gives them notes on their draft, they go off and produce a new one, until the show-runner is happy.

Then the script is run past the room, with everyone helping polish it. Then the show-runner gives it a final pass -- possibly re-writing parts of it/all of it -- and it's good to go.

It works for TV shows, and helps maintain a consistent voice. (I felt Lee became a different character in Episode 4).

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Also as far as the discussion on the GDRT podcast I had the opposite experience of Dirk. I was always thrilled when there was a part of the game where it slowed down, and you would just sort of walk around and do typical adventure game stuff. I remember actually breathing a sigh of relief on several occasions just because of how heavy the game would get. What didn't work for me (mostly) was the whole tap a button a bunch of times, then press another button. That felt the most like a "I'm playing a video game" moment, and would take me out of the experience. That being said, I understand that the game needed to provide some resistance to the player at points, and it was nice hearing the discussion about it. Also, unless I'm just hearing what I want to hear, it sounds like Sean & Jake had reservations about how it was implemented as well.

Pretty much agree with all of this.

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The credits suggest that different people were lead writers for each episode. Sean or Josh handled the three episodes I liked, and two other people handled the two episodes I didn't like, so yes, I found the quality quite uneven too.

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Yep. Not only were the characters slightly different, but the storytelling seemed very different, too. Breaking the stories as a group and having show runners (*cough* Sean and Jake *cough*) have the final say, would hopefully solve this.

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I liked the episodes they didn't do still. I did feel a little unsatisfied that I didn't know much about the people who were making the creative decisions and their thought process, but they were good. I'm less convinced I would have loved it more it it was more homogenous.

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So in episode 2, did anyone else...

flat out murderfaced the cannibal brothers? The end of episode stats had like only 15% killed both brothers.

Now, I play all these multiple choice type games the same way, always choosing what i feel i would actually do in those circumstances, and i normally always end up being a boring nice guy, making lots of friends, saving the planet etc.

And i played TWD ep2 no differently, if i ever find my self on a zombie infested farm with a family of cannibals who ate my friends legs and lock me in a fridge i WILL shoot them in the face in cold blood... does that make make me a psychopath?

Anyway moral of the story is...

Don't fuck with me!

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So in episode 2, did anyone else...

flat out muderfaced the cannibal brothers? The end of episode stats had like only 15% killed both brothers.

Now, I play all these multiple choice type games always choosing what i feel i would actually do in those circumstances, and i normally always end up being a boring nice guy, making lots of friends, saving the planet etc.

And i played TWD ep2 no differently, if i ever find my self on a zombie infested farm with a family of cannibals who ate my friends legs and lock me in a fridge i WILL shoot them in the face in cold blood... does that make make me a psychopath?

Anyway rule of the story is...

Don't fuck with me!

I typically leave the biggest villains alive - having brutally murdered all their henchmen first, of course - because I have learned that these are the decisions that really define me in the end.

I think I left the other brother live. He did not seem happy about it.

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I think I left the other brother live. He did not seem happy about it.

"Live" isn't exactly what he did. More like, instead of being shot in the head with one cold clean painless bullet, I saved my ammo and let him get devoured by zombies. Who's the psychopath now??

Ha! Nice try. I'm not biting this time.

I'm glad that you're a big enough man not to be offended by me enjoying a video game (seriously?)

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I was in the shower thinking about this, and I thought I'd give some points on what I liked and disliked about each episode:

Episode 1 (written by Sean Vanaman)

Great: Opening well-done, very natural-feeling approach to cinematography an perfect tactile execution. I liked how the camera would move to follow points of interest without completely taking control (when the sirens pass going the opposite direction), and the first zombie encounter felt extra tense when you had to fiddle and click to perform every little action.

The Best: Expectations are subverted. Early on you have to choose between helping the farmer's son or Duck, but the outcome is actually predetermined (and obviously so). Later on, you have to choose between Carley and Doug, but the choice is real, and you can only save one. There's nothing that tells you so before hand, and it's actually kind of a shock.

Shitty Wizard: Walking around and clicking everything wasn't really that fun. I probably would have liked it more if there was less dialogue or fewer mini-cutscenes of Lee looking at things or picking things up. After having to play through all that dialogue before I got to the Pharmacy, I think I would have preferred to be able to just explore and look at things more passively.

Episode 2 (written by Mark Darin)

Great: It's a self-contained horror mystery. Most of the episodes are distinctly going somewhere. Episode one is escaping the city. Episode three is about travelling, and dramas starting to form. Episode four leaves most of its original plot points completely unresolved. The great thing about this episode is that it stands by itself. It contributes to the larger story without being completely tethered.

The Best: Crazy shit happens. You have the choice of chopping a dude's leg off. The Lilly's father's head gets bashed in while you're performing CPR. You walk in on Clem eating your buddy. You turn a corner to find a guy pointing a gun at you point blank. The whole scene in the camp where the crazy lady gets straight-up murdered. This episode has the coolest moments.

Shitty Wizard: Some iffy deterministic shit. I didn't like at the end when there's a showdown with Mrs. St. John, and you have to follow the exact correct choreography or... start the scene over. In the action scenes it kind of works with the type of tension there is, but here it feels less dramatic to know there's only two ways it can go down.

Episode 3 (written by Sean Vanaman)

Great: A lot of cool new characters are introduced.

The Best: The deaths in this episode were shocking, and feel preventable, which makes them even more affecting.

Shitty Wizard: It's pretty boring really. Some stuff happens, but it mostly feels like you're biding time until the action starts. In the next episode.

I'll finish this later.

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I'll go ahead and finish this, I don't have very strong thoughts for these two episodes.

Episode 4 (written by Gary Whitta)

Great: Crazy cliffhanger, Molly's awesome.

The Best: This is lame, but nothing jumped out at me. I was glad that there were some meaningful choices (who you can save, who would go with you to Crawford, &c) but it was all just... Good. I liked it.

Shitty Wizard: Nothing egregious either. The Crawford story was less interesting than I wish it was. Some contrived adventure-gamey things like finding the doctor's locker combination in his pocket. The worst thing is that Chuck dies before he can be an awesome homeless man more.

Episode 5 (written by Sean Vanaman)

Great: Crazy over-indulgent badassery with Lee taking on an entire street of zombies.

The Best: The details. The fact that you can choke the stranger to death, even though the UI doesn't say so. The fact that you can't tell Clementine the obvious "I love you". Nice touches.

Shitty Wizard: Kenny's death is the most contrived bullshit in the whole game. I read there's a couple ways it can happen. They're both stupid.

It's not the worst thing ever, but I wasn't really impressed with the conversation with the stranger at the end. It seemed like a far too obvious way to criticize your moral choices through the game, and no matter what you do it's still bad.

I disagree with your Episode 3 analysis.

I stopped feeling strongly about the quality after episode 2. Everything I think comes together well, I liked it a lot, but once it found its legs there's not really that much to critique, broadly speaking. I mean, I had a great time talking with my friends about our experiences and choices, explaining what we did and why. I think it's all really strong. So really I guess my 3-5 analysis is just for completeness' sake.

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