Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (season 1) was great for the first few episodes. I tried my best to make my choices really matter and not to save scum to go back and change my decisions. But at one point a character I really liked died, seemingly from a choice I made in error, and I went back to change it up.
That’s when I discovered that the story itself is really on rails behind the scenes. If a character has the potential to die in one episode and you let them live, they are almost guaranteed to die in a future episode, so the writers didn’t need to keep extrapolating branching narratives. Yes, the reactions and dialogue change based on your choices, but once I knew that none of my decisions actually decided the final outcome, it made me much less invested in the game.
This is pretty similar in season 2, AFAIK, though there were multiple endings depending on some choices, so at least some decisions mattered a little more. Never played the other seasons, but, yeah, it put a sour taste in my mouth.
Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (season 1) was great for the first few episodes. I tried my best to make my choices really matter and not to save scum to go back and change my decisions. But at one point a character I really liked died, seemingly from a choice I made in error, and I went back to change it up.
That’s when I discovered that the story itself is really on rails behind the scenes. If a character has the potential to die in one episode and you let them live, they are almost guaranteed to die in a future episode, so the writers didn’t need to keep extrapolating branching narratives. Yes, the reactions and dialogue change based on your choices, but once I knew that none of my decisions actually decided the final outcome, it made me much less invested in the game.
This is pretty similar in season 2, AFAIK, though there were multiple endings depending on some choices, so at least some decisions mattered a little more. Never played the other seasons, but, yeah, it put a sour taste in my mouth.