Is that any different than any other story driven game?
The idea behind player choice's is a fallacy. No matter what game tries to say that choices make a difference, it really doesn't. Even Until Dawn, which probably had the most involved system of player driven choice didn't really affect the story any sort of meaningful way.
As long as the developer makes the effect to "pretty up" or hide the fact that player driven choices mean nothing then it makes the game a lot of fun. Telltale Games does a beautiful job of doing so. Even though I know the choices won't make a different, I agonize the any decision I want to make.
Telltale Games have a specific vibe about their games and I don't think people really care if it changes or not because that's why they play them.
Last edited by Smasandian on Dec 4th, 2015 at 11:59 PM
The thing I think they need to work on is the animation. There's a lot of times when the faces don't match up with what they're saying or emoting. And a lot of weird, awkward-looking movements.
Also I just finished off TftB and that final episode was ****ing incredible.
Then you have games like Fallout New Vegas. In fact, any game with multiple endings inherently gives you more power over the story than Telltale in TWD, TWD S2, TWAU and TFTB. (Those are the telltale games I've played, and loved TWDS1 and The wolf among us)
Again, that wouldn't be a problem if Telltale wouldn't beat us over the head in every trailer with the mantra 'your choices will shape your adventure' as a major selling point.
Undertale is a story-driven game where your choices matter more than in any Telltale game, as well as more than in Until Dawn. Your choices affected the story radically.
Why can a cheap Indie game do this, but big budget Adventure Games like Telltale Game series not?
Undertale does this by monitoring gameplay choices such as [SPOILER - highlight to read]: if you killed people or certain characters. Telltale (and Until Dawn) can't really do this because their games are more visual novels than an actual games. They use clear binary options where the player makes deliberate choices. This system is just naturally more limited since those kinds of branching options become pretty vast. And the multiple dialogue options leads to loads of different reactions to keep track of.
Undertales choices effect the story in that you get different lines based on [SPOILER - highlight to read]: which characters are dead in the neutral ending and 3 different main endings based on gameplay choices. Telltale does something similar in that some choices do lead to different dialogue endings and different characters in scenes, but you can't really do multiple highly different endings with voice acting, multiple conversation options and the episodic structure Telltale works in that limits time.
Even then Tales from the Borderlands does pull off having a choice in episode 2 lead to you going through 2 different paths at the first 3rd of episode 3 as well as different flavor text for examining things.
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Last edited by Nephthys on Dec 5th, 2015 at 04:05 PM
Yeah, you are right, in the end it's extremely hard, time consuming and expensive to create a game that completely tailors the story on choices you make. It's highly unlikely, especially for a game that involves voice acting, animation/motion recap, and level design. You are always going to follow linear path the developers have shoehorned you in because they cannot create multiple areas for you to walk through. That's why player's choice is a fallacy.
As I said before (and others!) is that as long as the devs make a effort to hide that fact then it can work brillianty well. Telltale, Bioware and the devs of Until Dawn do extremely well in this fact.
I love TellTale games and I think the storytelling is brilliant. The only title I haven't liked was Game of Thrones, and my complaints were more based around the actual series it's based on. Getting into a scrap with TV Show Ramsay Bolton isn't exciting and tense, because I know ahead of time I wouldn't be able to beat him - BECAUSE he's in the show.
Something like The Walking Dead and Tales from the Borderlands don't have those limitations.
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Dec 4th, 2015 09:58 PM
Thanks Scribble!
