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The Walking Dead

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I just finished Episode 1 and am irrationally tickled that Sean's wife is in the "Thank You" section of the credits as "Mrs. Dr. Amelia Moore Vanaman."

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Just bought this in the Steam sale, my save isn't importing from the first episode to the second, not happy about it.

 

If this issue is as common as it seems to be, i'm wondering how exactly the game has been getting such a free pass over it.

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I had Steam syncing issues, but all it really meant was that I didn't get achievements when I played through certain episodes, which I didn't care about. 

 

Is it possible it's a newer problem? I played through Season 1 about five months ago, and it always imported my save data from episode to episode. But when I started the 400 Days DLC, it wasn't able to import my save data at all. Which again in that case didn't bother me so much because the changes to the DLC from it were minimal.

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Some googling led me to some forum posts with a solution, i had to manually move a save file to a different directory. The game was saving the file recording my choices to the wrong folder or something.

It's a really, really shitty game-breaking issue, because this is the kind of game i want to recommend to people who aren't normally gamers, but people who aren't normally gamers would never bother to sort out a technical issue like this.

I talked to a few friends about this, and they all had similar stories about this game.

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Tell them to get the PS3 version.  Two playthroughs, no problems.

 

People who aren't normally gamers probably don't own a PS3.

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I know quite a few people who own one simply because it was the cheapest blu-ray player at the time.

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I never had any issues, and you're only the second person (not including your friends) I've heard of having any issues. And the other guy was also on a forum like this. Granted, I don't follow gaming news outside of forums like this, but I have a ton of friends who played the game. We all got through fine.

 

So... What I'm saying I guess is just because you have the issue doesn't mean it's widespread or super common, and that's probably why it was never reported on?

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So... What I'm saying I guess is just because you have the issue doesn't mean it's widespread or super common, and that's probably why it was never reported on?

 

I don't think there was any conspiracy not to report on it or anything, but I had the issue, and I've seen people complain about it a fair bit. A google search for "walking dead save game fix" brings back plenty of relevant results.

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Yeah, sure, the internet is the best. I'm not denying that it is a problem. Just... questioning the logic behind "I had a problem, and the lack of MASSIVE OUTRAGE massively outrages me!" (I'm exaggerating. Whatever!)

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Ha! Yes, for sure. I would agree that game breaking stuff like that can have a disproportionate effect, or at least what would seem disproportionate to "the likes of us", on people that don't play a lot of games and one of the coolest things about THE WALKING DEAD is that a lot of people that don't play games regularly seem to have gotten really, really into it.

 

As for the issue, I'm sure nobody was more upset than the people at Telltale. I'm not just saying that because Thumbs work there; it would surely be the case that they would be freaking out over save game issues in their episodic game that relies heavily on tailoring specific stories to player choice and experience.

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Well, episode 5 was fairly devastating.

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Irishjohn: Heh yeah. Anyway, I didn't mean to be so confrontational about it. Sorryyyyyy.

Sno: Yes. ):

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I replayed episode 5 so that everybody dies; much better ending

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Well i pretty much got everybody killed without trying for it. Are there multiple endings? What i saw was just hopelessly bleak, it was great.

 

That epilogue with Clementine alone on the hill in the middle of a field, uncomfortably gripping a handgun, seeing two silhouettes in the distance and not being sure about whether or not to approach them. Fucking holy shit, that was great, that destroyed me.



3 and 5, those are god damn great episodes.

I thought 4 was pretty mediocre, and it just killed me that 2 went for the most obvious possible story path.

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I was just joking.

 

I think there are multiple endings, but all off screen.

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Hmmm, just finished all episodes. It's my duty to do this game sooner than later. I just came off the high of finally finishing Tales of Monkey Island last month, which is just about as traditional as it gets, and I absolutely loved that game. There were a few problems, but ToMI achieved some great escapism that I haven't gotten to experience in years and added a major amount of tension and empathy that I don't feel has existed in that series ever was added in by the Telltale gurus, especially the amazing subtle work that all turned out to be Jake :).

 

So on that, I guess I feel a little bit strange that I feel somewhat mixed about The Walking Dead after all of this acclaim. I mean technically it is Telltale's best adventure so far, it's beautiful, the animation is great, the dialogue is top notch and realistic, the character design is lovely, the setting is well fleshed out (nagging asset reuse did not happen here like previous Telltale adventures), the choices are inventive, the gameplay is incredibly fluid, and it is thankfully not Heavy Rain at all. I have played a lot of adventure games and I'm of the mind that the genre is not a problem, but that it's really tough to do correctly. I can definitely tell the greatest accomplishment of The Walking Dead is getting non adventure players to not just play Dragon's Lair with hammy writing (Yep, sorry David Cage) to get them through the game and not just give up. I'm kind of thinking about what was off for me still as I'm writing this...

 

It's a wonderful adventure game when it's not being an adventure game! I loved the beginning, (so far, Episode 1) the kind of blurry action sequences and exploration and decision making. But then, of course, it goes into "adventure game mode!" Where I basically hunt for what the heck it is I can interact with and try rubbing a piece of shit against a piece of crap to make some sort of golden unicorn appear.

 

Maybe this is part of it? I think a lot of people think adventure game playing at it's core is just doing idiotic things until something works, but that's just not true in well designed games. I was actually very happy to find the traditional adventure game sequences in this game, as I was under the impression they would mostly be abandoned. I'm not sure why some silly puzzles still existed when the fluff was stripped away though. As mentioned earlier in this thread, getting Carly to understand the concept of batteries or getting Kenny to move an inch to get some maps by giving alcohol to an alcoholic just seem like classic problem puzzles that make people not enjoy adventure games. Most of episode five seemed really broken because I know that Lee

could have had the possibility to go on his own since I was shown the stats at the end of episode 4. I managed to get everyone to come with me by being a nice dude, but was completely taken out of the experience by hauling things around and solving everything on my own while everyone just stood by like assholes with no interest in helping a one armed dude. No one could hold the ladder while I climb up to the bell tower so that I did not fall? Oh I know why, because I would be doing it alone anyway, so we can't have that branching off because Lee still has to get stuck for game's sake.

That said, I'm glad those are pretty much the only bad puzzles.

 

Even though I do sometimes like the inventory crazed stuff, I mostly like when adventures strip down to the core of what it would really be like to solve predicaments in real life, like a stick has many uses and many things do not require one to use an object but instead their body or dialogue. This is where Walking Dead is amazing, not really the easy peasy QTEs and fast button mashing sequences stringing them together. Those parts are just eating candy and exist for fun, the real meat in this game is still the open sections, puzzle solving, and exploration in my opinion. I get a sort of Discworld Noir vibe where I feel like I was playing a character who got shit done with the little he had and his thoughts.

 

I guess then what must have left me somewhat cold on parts just being the characters and plot. Lee and Clementine were wonderful, I'm so glad the game exists without the baggage of the comic and show, not one complaint about those two there. So happy to play a protagonist like Lee even though you can sort of mess with his attitude depending how you want. But Kenny was just a mess, I played the game straight through in about a week and I really still could not keep track of his attitude towards me from one episode to the next. It seemed like he would focus on strange things to hate me for or act like I've never done a thing for him even though on so many occasions I helped the guy. He just seemed like a character without much going on narrative wise after Ep. 3 and just became a nuisance.

 

I didn't really warm up to anyone else except for Doug and Molly, who only appeared briefly. Completely missed Molly's backstory as I've found out, so I guess I'll try that again on my next playthrough where I suppose I will play the biggest asshole ever. But really the side characters aren't a big deal, I guess what took me out of the narrative the most was

the stranger in episode 5 and Clementine's absence. It felt lonely even though I had everyone with me and the strange just seemed to be a bizarre final addition to the story. He gave off the vibe of a child molester but was just mad that I did stuff anyone would do in the zombie apocalypse and twisted it all. I didn't steal the food, killed only one brother on the farm and apologized for losing my cool, and was honest with Clementine that I was a murderer in the office in Episode 1, but the guy seemed to ignore any of my protests. Maybe if I had played as a complete jerk this would have worked more effectively, but I mostly just felt that this sleazy creepy guy was trying to sort of channel the killer in the movie Se7en, but not having much going on against my humanity. Luckily everything after dealing with that guy was just brilliant and moving (didn't cry though, that's somehow reserved for MGS3 and Professor Layton's Unwound Future, go figure). So the game did end on an extremely high note

 

I don't know, maybe part of my issue is I really just don't care for zombie stuff. I've never really been interested in zombie fantasies even before it blew up as a mainstream media extravaganza in the last 8 years. And I'm not trying to be too cool or above it in somewhat because it's popular, because when the stuff was the typical B-movie VHS rental standard my friends and I would waste away weekend nights with, I still felt bored with zombies. I love Danny Boyle as a director but 28 Days Later is kind of a snooze fest for me, even though I know everyone else loves it. Were it not for the against genre casting of Lee and Clementine, The Walking Dead would have just been an extreme chore for me.

 

Anyway, there's a few Telltale series I have skipped but after this, I can't wait to see what their next series is like. I guess it would be Fables?

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, have to specifically name two great things about the game. The facial animation was amazing. Coming off the great mocapped facial stuff in Enslaved and then playing Walking Dead and seeing the same exact kind of nuance made me happy it was by animators. It really is all just execution and I loved all of those character moments and responses carried out by only an expression or glance. Facial animation is one of those things you only tend to notice when it's going astray, but here I just amazed when I started to pick up on all of the subtleties.

 

The other thing is just the character moment with Lee cutting Clementine's hair. Just brilliant. Please give me more of those sequences in adventure games or really any kind of game with a story. The small stuff always counts.

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I guess then what must have left me somewhat cold on parts just being the characters and plot. Lee and Clementine were wonderful, I'm so glad the game exists without the baggage of the comic and show, not one complaint about those two there. So happy to play a protagonist like Lee even though you can sort of mess with his attitude depending how you want. But Kenny was just a mess, I played the game straight through in about a week and I really still could not keep track of his attitude towards me from one episode to the next. It seemed like he would focus on strange things to hate me for or act like I've never done a thing for him even though on so many occasions I helped the guy. He just seemed like a character without much going on narrative wise after Ep. 3 and just became a nuisance.

 

I am still only on episode four, because I forget I own this game for months at a time, but I feel you about Kenny so much.

 

Interacting with him pointed out to me the limitations of the dialogue and save system more than anything else. If I only ever let him down that one time in the freezer, I want to be able to call him on his bullshit. As it stood, he just felt like that shallow friend who won't let you forget how you were too busy to pick them up at the airport one Thursday four years ago. At the very least, let me tell him he's a hypocrite, if he can't be made to act consistently!

 

 

EDIT: Loving the rest of the game, though. I've never had so many moments stick in my craw like this.

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Hmmm, just finished all episodes. It's my duty to do this game sooner than later. I just came off the high of finally finishing Tales of Monkey Island last month, which is just about as traditional as it gets, and I absolutely loved that game. There were a few problems, but ToMI achieved some great escapism that I haven't gotten to experience in years and added a major amount of tension and empathy that I don't feel has existed in that series ever was added in by the Telltale gurus, especially the amazing subtle work that all turned out to be Jake :).

 

So on that, I guess I feel a little bit strange that I feel somewhat mixed about The Walking Dead after all of this acclaim. I mean technically it is Telltale's best adventure so far, it's beautiful, the animation is great, the dialogue is top notch and realistic, the character design is lovely, the setting is well fleshed out (nagging asset reuse did not happen here like previous Telltale adventures), the choices are inventive, the gameplay is incredibly fluid, and it is thankfully not Heavy Rain at all. I have played a lot of adventure games and I'm of the mind that the genre is not a problem, but that it's really tough to do correctly. I can definitely tell the greatest accomplishment of The Walking Dead is getting non adventure players to not just play Dragon's Lair with hammy writing (Yep, sorry David Cage) to get them through the game and not just give up. I'm kind of thinking about what was off for me still as I'm writing this...

 

 

Maybe this is part of it? I think a lot of people think adventure game playing at it's core is just doing idiotic things until something works, but that's just not true in well designed games. I was actually very happy to find the traditional adventure game sequences in this game, as I was under the impression they would mostly be abandoned. I'm not sure why some silly puzzles still existed when the fluff was stripped away though. As mentioned earlier in this thread, getting Carly to understand the concept of batteries or getting Kenny to move an inch to get some maps by giving alcohol to an alcoholic just seem like classic problem puzzles that make people not enjoy adventure games. Most of episode five seemed really broken because I know that Lee

could have had the possibility to go on his own since I was shown the stats at the end of episode 4. I managed to get everyone to come with me by being a nice dude, but was completely taken out of the experience by hauling things around and solving everything on my own while everyone just stood by like assholes with no interest in helping a one armed dude. No one could hold the ladder while I climb up to the bell tower so that I did not fall? Oh I know why, because I would be doing it alone anyway, so we can't have that branching off because Lee still has to get stuck for game's sake.

That said, I'm glad those are pretty much the only bad puzzles.

 

Even though I do sometimes like the inventory crazed stuff, I mostly like when adventures strip down to the core of what it would really be like to solve predicaments in real life, like a stick has many uses and many things do not require one to use an object but instead their body or dialogue. This is where Walking Dead is amazing, not really the easy peasy QTEs and fast button mashing sequences stringing them together. Those parts are just eating candy and exist for fun, the real meat in this game is still the open sections, puzzle solving, and exploration in my opinion. I get a sort of Discworld Noir vibe where I feel like I was playing a character who got shit done with the little he had and his thoughts.

 

I guess then what must have left me somewhat cold on parts just being the characters and plot. Lee and Clementine were wonderful, I'm so glad the game exists without the baggage of the comic and show, not one complaint about those two there. So happy to play a protagonist like Lee even though you can sort of mess with his attitude depending how you want. But Kenny was just a mess, I played the game straight through in about a week and I really still could not keep track of his attitude towards me from one episode to the next. It seemed like he would focus on strange things to hate me for or act like I've never done a thing for him even though on so many occasions I helped the guy. He just seemed like a character without much going on narrative wise after Ep. 3 and just became a nuisance.

 

I didn't really warm up to anyone else except for Doug and Molly, who only appeared briefly (Doug not so much). Completely missed Molly's backstory as I've found out, so I guess I'll try that again on my next playthrough where I suppose I will play the biggest asshole ever. But really the side characters aren't a big deal, I guess what took me out of the narrative the most was

the stranger in episode 5 and Clementine's absence. It felt lonely even though I had everyone with me and the strange just seemed to be a bizarre final addition to the story. He gave off the vibe of a child molester but was just mad that I did stuff anyone would do in the zombie apocalypse and twisted it all. I didn't steal the food, killed only one brother on the farm and apologized for losing my cool, and was honest with Clementine that I was a murderer in the office in Episode 1, but the guy seemed to ignore any of my protests. Maybe if I had played as a complete jerk this would have worked more effectively, but I mostly just felt that this sleazy creepy guy was trying to sort of channel the killer in the movie Se7en, but not having much going on against my humanity. Luckily everything after dealing with that guy was just brilliant and moving (didn't cry though, that's somehow reserved for MGS3 and Professor Layton's Unwound Future, go figure). So the game did end on an extremely high note

 

I don't know, maybe part of my issue is I really just don't care for zombie stuff. I've never really been interested in zombie fantasies even before it blew up as a mainstream media extravaganza in the last 8 years. And I'm not trying to be too cool or above it in somewhat because it's popular, because when the stuff was the typical B-movie VHS rental standard my friends and I would waste away weekend nights with, I still felt bored with zombies. I love Danny Boyle as a director but 28 Days Later is kind of a snooze fest for me, even though I know everyone else loves it. Were it not for the against genre casting of Lee and Clementine, The Walking Dead would have just been an extreme chore for me.

 

Anyway, there's a few Telltale series I have skipped but after this, I can't wait to see what their next series is like. I guess it would be Fables?

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, have to specifically name two great things about the game. The facial animation was amazing. Coming off the great mocapped facial stuff in Enslaved and then playing Walking Dead and seeing the same exact kind of nuance made me happy it was by animators. It really is all just execution and I loved all of those character moments and responses carried out by only an expression or glance. Facial animation is one of those things you only tend to notice when it's going astray, but here I just amazed when I started to pick up on all of the subtleties.

 

The other thing is just the character moment with Lee cutting Clementine's hair. Just brilliant. Please give me more of those sequences in adventure games or really any kind of game with a story. The small stuff always counts.

 

i agree the giving alcohol to Chuck to get kenny to move to get the map even though he really didn't need to move, Lee could have just reached it himself or just specifically asked for it was sort of an unnecessary puzzle for puzzle sake thing and the batteries thing was spread out a bit too long, Lee should have just put the batteries in himself.

 

the stranger maybe doesn't work the best when you didn't take the food, but the food does get taken so your group is responsible for his wife leaving and dying in his eyes, so it doesn't matter how much you protest or explain, he has rationalised that punishing Lee is what should be done, so for him to be reasonable and realising you're not a bad guy isn't going to happen, he had a serious breakdown and was not in a rational frame of mind

 

but you seemed to enjoy it even though you don't like the zombie genre that much, considering that is a large part of the game that is cool

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Interacting with him pointed out to me the limitations of the dialogue and save system more than anything else. If I only ever let him down that one time in the freezer, I want to be able to call him on his bullshit. As it stood, he just felt like that shallow friend who won't let you forget how you were too busy to pick them up at the airport one Thursday four years ago. At the very least, let me tell him he's a hypocrite, if he can't be made to act consistently!

I guess that's it, the only moment I opposed him was with Larry yet treated him as nice as I could about his family woes the next episode. I definitely agree, it would have been nice to call him on how unfair he was acting for just one event. I guess it makes sense because

Ben calls Kenny on his one track mind and how unfair he's being if you keep him alive, but at no point does Lee ever get to pick apart Kenny.

 

i agree the giving alcohol to Chuck to get kenny to move to get the map even though he really didn't need to move, Lee could have just reached it himself or just specifically asked for it was sort of an unnecessary puzzle for puzzle sake thing and the batteries thing was spread out a bit too long, Lee should have just put the batteries in himself.

 

the stranger maybe doesn't work the best when you didn't take the food, but the food does get taken so your group is responsible for his wife leaving and dying in his eyes, so it doesn't matter how much you protest or explain, he has rationalised that punishing Lee is what should be done, so for him to be reasonable and realising you're not a bad guy isn't going to happen, he had a serious breakdown and was not in a rational frame of mind

The battery puzzle was definitely the most embarrassing. I am really not sure why there is a woman who knew how to handle a gun but could not grasp the concept of batteries, but I just tried not to dwell on it too long.

 

I guess that's my point with the stranger, he was just being an irrational villain according to my playthrough so therefore it was just a very dull sequence of needing some kind of "final boss" character. I wasn't actually cheating to see the choices or going out of my way to be nice, I was just trying to handle situations like I would in real life, on a neutral ground and apologizing for any kind of angry outbursts as soon as I could. I also figured if I were Lee and had killed the man sleeping with my wife, it would probably be routine for me end up getting angry and killing one of the brothers (got the older one because he taunted me too much). Either way, I don't hide it and I apologize for my extreme actions to Clementine, which is just as much as any decent human being would do. So when the stranger was grilling me on little things that meant I was unfit to care for Clementine, I feel like I was responding with great points without much reaction. Then we just killed him, making it a kind of ineffective detour.

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The Stranger

 

The reason the stranger worked for me is because of the end of episode choice statistics and reading about choices that other players made. Even though I felt justified for many of the choices I made, the game was designed for any choice to be seen as the right one and the stranger channeled this intention and the choices of other players that contradicted my own. And the choices I actually did regret stung, like killing one of the cannibal brothers in front of Clem. Of course in the end he's still a crazy villain, but that scene certainly did not feel flat or dull to me.

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I guess that's it, the only moment I opposed him was with Larry yet treated him as nice as I could about his family woes the next episode. I definitely agree, it would have been nice to call him on how unfair he was acting for just one event. I guess it makes sense because

Ben calls Kenny on his one track mind and how unfair he's being if you keep him alive, but at no point does Lee ever get to pick apart Kenny.

 

There is actually one point at the end of episode 4 where you can tell Kenny to go fuck himself, but I think you only get the option if he initially refuses to go with you.

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Ah I guess I just didn't want to speak so aggressively, but I was kind of a jerk to him in the attic but did not choose to hit him with the statue head.

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