Telltale Games!

[Colonel Thunder]

We can get enough discussion out of this to warrant it's own thread.

they have a monopoly on their take of the genre and they're milking it

Admittedly this. I definitely wish there were more branching paths and whatnot. To me though, the strength of the story and characters has always outshined the "choose your own path" dynamic of the game.

I haven't played the GoT one since I've heard it's crappy and full of plot armor, and I haven't played the Borderlands one yet, but I hear it's the best as well. To the best of my knowledge, the Borderlands one puts more of a focus on having fun and is significantly less dark than the rest of the TT games.

Here's my rankings of the Telltale Games I've played.

Wolf Among Us - possibly the best game, super film noir, to a greater extent you are in control of what happens. Because you're investigating crime, you can think of every character as a potential suspect, which is a fun way to engage. Do not look up the "Fables" source material or stuff will be spoiled.

Life is Strange - not actually a Telltale game, but an essentially indie game produced by Square Enix. Some sequences are lousy, but there's no quick-time events, you have time travel powers, and it's one of the best slice-of-life games made in a long long time. Also takes place right where I actually live, so that's cool. Possibly better than Wolf Among Us, and very very gripping.

Walking Dead Season 1 - really dark, has some annoying puzzles, has some utter brilliant sequences, and the game that started this whole trend. Has very arguably the best videogame relationship of the past several years, and it has Kenny. It has many flaws, but the story outshines it a ton.

Walking Dead Season 2 - good, but could never replicate the first's success in quite the right way. Has some stand-out fantastic moments, but several weak moments. You get a totally unique ending though, so that's a nice change. The rest of the game is on strict rails though. Not as gripping as the first, but supplementary material makes this a very interesting kind of game. Like, seriously let me know if you've beaten Walking Dead Season 2 and I have a fan's exposition of the game's thesis to send to you.

Poker Night 2 - an improvement on Poker Night 1, depending on how much you prefer the sequel's characters over the prequel's.

Poker Night 1 - fun to play poker and laugh at the characters' jokes, but when it starts repeating dialogue three hours in, the game loses its appeal.

I haven't played Minecaft Story Mode, but supposedly they went for a very Telltale feel there. Anyone play that? More thoughts on TT games?

 

[Tirin]

I've beaten Season 2; me and a couple friends played the hell out of the Walking Dead games while getting drunk last winter, and it was fuckin' awesome.

Kenny objectively the best.

 

[Requiem]

it has Kenny

This isn't a positive though

 

[Tirin]

YOU SHUT YOUR WORTHLESS GODDAMN MOUTH

 

[Jeroth]

This isn't a positive though

Req confirmed for shit taste. Kenny is the best. You probably went with the lying sociopath for the end of season 2.

 

[Colonel Thunder]

Whoa, let's watch the spoilers here..

For people who have played Season 1 and Season 2:

Spoiler

It's worth it.

 

[Requiem]

I mean of course I like the character.

It's jokes, I tell jokes. /sigh

 

[Colonel Thunder]

List Thread Idea: Telltale games.

Idea: Another List Thread.

Another List Thread Idea: Req as Kenny

 

[Requiem]

Please don't do that.

 

[Colonel Thunder]

Req as Ben!

 

[Requiem]

No.

 

[Colonel Thunder]

Req as Christa!

 

[coolpool2]

I've never wanted to pick up any tell tales games because from what I've seen of some your choices don't matter all that much. Wolf among us looks really cool though.

 

[Steal Thy Kill]

My rankings (worth saying that I am a cheap bastard and just watch streams of Telltale games instead of actually buying them)

1) Tales from the Borderlands
2) Walking Dead Season 1
3) Wolf Among Us
Sizable Gap
3.5) Game of Thrones Episode 6
4) Minecraft: Story Mode
5) Game of Thrones
6) Walking Dead Season 2

I have not really done Life is Strange, so I can't take that into consideration. From what I can tell it's nowhere near the top 3 Telltale games.

Entertainment is basically my top metric, because at the end of it all that's what matters. "Choices matter" is kindof a difficult thing to measure, because it depends on what you call "mattering". You can never prevent the ending to Walking Dead Season 1. No matter what you do, shit goes down in Tales from the Borderlands. There's not much radical branching going on for the most part. Game of Thrones and Walking Dead Season 2 are actually the two games that have the most diverse ending points, but nobody's really gonna put them at the top of the list. I'm honestly really interested to what they'll do for Walking Dead Season 3 to bring harmony to the five different endings you can get. The bigger idea though is that different choices create a different story, even if they hit all the same bullet points. What was your relationship with Kenny like? Was Bigby a good guy or did Fabletown fear the Big Bad Wolf? Was Tales from the Borderlands awesome, or was it really really awesome? But honestly, in the end, none of that matters unless you enjoyed the game. The real question is: was it entertaining?

Tales from the Borderlands was fucking incredible the whole way through, not afraid to be ridiculous, had a great soundtrack, and then got surprisingly serious. So basically the overall tone was similar to Borderlands itself. Gortys and Loader Bot are two of the three best characters in all the Telltale games (the other one being Clem, obviously), then also Vasquez was just the right amount of douche. And damn those were some good fight scenes in the last two episodes. This whole thing was spectacular fun. Game of the Year for 2015.

Walking Dead Season 1 was Walking Dead Season 1. The final episode was a massive gut punch and a true work of art. Lee and Clem were done perfectly, and the supporting cast were all pretty good. Sure, some of them weren't very likable (fucking Larry), but overall a lot better than Season 2's cast. You felt something for them. Ben was fucking worthless though. This was an exceptional story, and while it beats Tales from the Borderlands on art value, TftB is kinda just too goddamn fun. And fuck you Req, Kenny's great.

Wolf Among Us has that great noir thing, and is actually really close to Walking Dead in my rankings, but can't really edge out the Lee/Clem relationship. Bigby's story of ruling by fear or respect is a really great divergence in making the story, and it's just really cool to see his different forms. Some great fight scenes related to that. The side characters were all great, especially Snow. I cared about the damn villains. And, most importantly, I was just really invested in what was going on with Bigby. The whole thing played out really well, and was riveting up until that mindfuck epilogue. Excellent, excellent game. One of their best.

The above are all by far the best three, and like I said, there's a sizable gap between them and the rest. Michonne is cool so far, and she's a fucking badass, but nothing extraordinary so far. Gonna be middle of the pack or so. The concept for the Batman game actually seems cool and inventive. And it'll probably up the "your choices matter" factor back up if what I remember is actually accurate (that you can approach problems as either Bruce Wayne or Batman). Looking forward to it.

Minecraft: Story Mode is really different from the other series that it's kinda hard to rank it. It's a kid-friendly game, so it's got a rather straightforward story to match, but it's still fun in a simplistic way. Jesse is a solid protagonist. Lukas and Petra are pretty solid badasses. Axel is kinda annoying, but whatever. And then fucking Reuben man. Damn Telltale magic making me love a pig with no lines but oinks. If you're gonna play this game, you have to know what it is and be ready for that. It's a kids game. A good kids game, but a kids game nonetheless. Don't expect much more.

Game of Thrones plays out like the series it's based on. The villains are so fucking hateable. The divergent POVs and storylines makes it hard for any of them to get hardcore development. And everything fucking sucks. Life is the pits and then you die. I will say that they did a good thing with the cameos from the TV cast. They didn't really go out of their way to involve them (for the most part), but weren't afraid to acknowledge that they exist. If you're at King's Landing, you're gonna run into the King's Landing power players. The problem is that, even if there were some high points (Asher was overall great. Beskha POV please), it just feels like they were just spinning the wheels in the middle episodes until you hit the finale. That said, the final episode was pretty damn good, hence why I ranked it separately. Like the TV show, the season is all building up to a kickass finale, but it's easier to do that when you get a new episode every week instead of every two months, and frankly the show does a better job of it. You need to keep things interesting even before the climax. Foreplay is important. Another problem is that the protagonists were all generally just okay. Gared was... eh. Asher was good. I actually rather grew to like Talia better than I did Ethan. Then the other two were only as interesting as you made them, and even then there was kinda a limit. The supporting cast was rather limited and flat as well. There are consequences to your actions, but overall you follow as similar path of feeling that no matter what I do I just can't win. So yeah, really captured the Game of Thrones experience there. Just so happens that people like winning.

I'm still sold on a Season 2 though. Partly because Telltale addict, but also because the finale was just damn good.

Almost every single new character in Walking Dead Season 2 sucked massive donkey balls. I just didn't care about any of the new characters, which was a problem. With few exceptions, it was either apathy or irritation. I mean, feeling much of anything would be nice other than "I find all of you annoying and would rather not be with you". Like, Luke was pretty cool... and then yeah. Like, Jane was fine, though less of a badass than Molly, but I didn't really get attached to her. Maybe it's just because she said "these people are pretty worthless as a survival group. You should ditch them", which was 100% correct. And let me tell you, Nick was even more worthless than Ben. Goddamn, I recommend everybody who plays this game to get rid of him as soon as you can. Clem's independence is kindof a big part of the game, so there's some sense to that... but at the same time there's a better way to tell that story. Give me a better reason than "this specific group of people is not worth being with".

 

[Null Hypothesis]

I personally like Tails From the Borderlands the best out of all of them, but I still haven't played the Minecraft one or the GoT one.

 

[Colonel Thunder]

For me, Carver was the best part of Season 2. Voiced by Michael "The Man" Madsen no less. His bits made the game for me. He, Luke, and the return of the special someone were the only characters I had any attachment to.

And Stealthy, I don't know how you handle just watching the games. That'd be torture for me, just a gigantic drop in engagement and investment.

 

[Steal Thy Kill]

It's occasionally agonizing to watch somebody make a choice that I feel is dumb, but overall it's like watching a movie. Still plenty engaging for me.

 

[Colonel Thunder]

Alright then.

Also, my only complaint about Wolf Among Us is that it didn't have nearly enough Bloody Mary.

Definitely my favorite character.

Arf.

 

[Tag_Ross]

Only TC has played Life is Strange? I would recommend it. I will warm you though, their are only two endings, the choices don't change the endings, they only add/remove sequences near the end (and a major one in the middle)

 

[Requiem]

I wouldn't say the choices throughout the game don't matter. Sure, there's only two endings, but the way you play the game and feel about the characters yourself might drastically change which choice you pick. I honestly had a hard time choosing between the endings because I saw that both were the right option.

But anyways, Life Is Strange, quality game.