RIP Telltale

[Bhazor]

Anyway. Telltale? Tellfail more like.

[Ferris]

Philistines!

Skyrim was (and is) ace. Nice music, good vistas, a lived-in world, DRAGONS etc etc. I'll stop arguing to avoid derailing the thread though.

[Thursday]

Skyrim is good and compelling despite all it's flaws, better than the sum of it's parts even though it has a lot of parts to it that don't fit together. It always had a backlash, even at the time though, I remember people preaching the superiority of Dark Souls before I was into it, and it's part of what put me off for a time, and comparing the two was always a very stupid thing to do.

Still I'm conflicted between thinking it's been elevated to a status beyond what it deserves, but also thinking it captured something really special, even if it wasn't necessarily intentional.


As for telltale, I think they pretty much dropped all the old point and click trappings as time went on. Old style point and click games are still very much about as indies now, and although I'd tend to think there should be more big mainstream versions of genre's, I think this is one case where the indie scene really does suit it better anyway.

The problem really was just oversaturating the market for me, although I don't know if doing fewer games but dedicating more time to them would necessarily have helped them.
It is a shame though because Tales from the Borderlands was shockingly good. Had no interest in the franchise, but that really worked, and I though that kind of light hearted action comedy style made so much sense for these interactive story games, but I don't think anybody else has done anything quite like it.

[Ferris]

Their advertising was also very shit. I only bought a few of them because I was idly browsing through the PlayStation store and saw a story game title that was on sale. That was why we played The Wolf Among Us but I'd never heard of it before I bought it. Same for a few other titles of theirs. What was their marketing department up to?

[Bhazor]

People seemed to just stop caring after Game of Thrones. I remember until then the major blogs wouldn't stop talking about them. They were the most exciting studio in the world. The new age of gaming. They can do no wrong. Then after Game of Thrones landed with a splat after months of delays no one gave a fuck. You'd think some DC comic book shit would have stirred up some attention. Nope. They were riding high on the acclaim from Walking Dead season 1 and then fell just as quick.

[bgmnts]

I think the major part of their success was being a scrappy underdog developer and self publishing their games that, to give them credit, were somewhat different at the time.

If I remember correctly.

[popcorn]

So we are in agreement, they were a bad company and it's good that all those people lost their jobs and won't be allowed to make bad video games any more.

[Ferris]

Yes - thank heavens!

[colacentral]

So we are in agreement, they were a bad company and it's good that all those people lost their jobs and won't be allowed to make bad video games any more.

I'd go further and say I hope they never work again, in any profession.

[Bhazor]

Philistines!

Skyrim was (and is) ace. Nice music, good vistas, a lived-in world, DRAGONS etc etc. I'll stop arguing to avoid derailing the thread though.

All true. Still sucks to actually play though.

[Mister Six]

How is it snobbery? At least quote me if you're going to tell me to fuck off.

All right, serious response time: It's snobbery to say that games are "completely worthless" because they don't fit your own particular preferences. There are stories and characters to invest emotional energy in, worlds to explore - however limited - and elements of the story that can be affected even if the overall arc remains the same. That's not your thing - fine. But they're not "worthless".

And I say this as someone who only really enjoyed the first Walking Dead season.

What do you mean? I'm talking about getting stuck knowing how to progress, not getting stuck by bad game design, e.g. the missed boat example earlier in the thread.

You can still get stuck in them if you fuck up QTEs, or don't dig up the right objects to progress (also the earlier Walking Dead episodes did have actual puzzles).

[colacentral]

Well I say worthless as hyperbole and of course mean for the reader to infer that they, to me, appear to be mostly lazily tossed off efforts.

[Mister Six]

Given the stories about constant overtime, I suspect the former Telltale staff would disagree with the notion that the games are "tossed off".

[colacentral]

I disagree that the staff being worked as slaves disqualifies the games from being tossed off - the company was clearly churning out more than they could manage. They weren't a perfectionist studio and that wasn't their business model.

[popcorn]

Mister Six, I think you are being a bit harsh here. Usually us gentle folk on CaB are content with slagging things off (this film is shite for cunts, May is a hopeless moron, etc) while also being full aware that people exist in the universe who like those things. That's fine.

Besides, Telltale games are all worthless though, on account of them being shite. I think I've made this quite clear already.

[Thursday]

Nah they cost money. They can't be worthless.

[popcorn]

If they weren't worthless someone would have bought them.

[The Boston Crab]

C-C-C-C etc.

3dit new po5t error

[Z]

They're pretty much worthless on account of all the unused steam keys for them around the place

[colacentral]

I struggle to think of a topic where I'd ever get to use the word "worthless" if we're taking everything at face value now. Bootleg antiques maybe.

[thenoise]

The modern-retro adventure game that got me into revisiting a lot of childhood favourites a few (~10) years ago was the '5 Days a Stranger' series by Ben 'Yahtzee' Crowshaw.

Wadjet eye games are quite good too, I'm still working on them.

[Thursday]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-10-18-a-post-mortem-of-telltale-games

Yeah seems like a case of insane executives

"Telltale Games often got knocked for being very buggy and having a lot of frame skips," said Buck. "Yes, we had some of those, but a lot of the time what people thought were frame skips or buggy parts of our engine, were actually scenes that had gotten redone so last minute, that there was no time to smooth out the cinematography or the animation.... what you were seeing was not a product of a buggy engine, but buggy management system."

With Guardians of the Galaxy, however, it was almost the exact opposite. Much like the source material, which the creative team studied extensively in order to try and capture the tone and feel of the universe, the original draft of the game was funnier and more "goofy", but that was all stripped out to lean into a darker, grittier feel, that was tonally off from the franchise.

"Our executive team insisted that what was popular about Guardians of the Galaxy, was darkness and violence, and sadness," said Buck. "And that people did not associate humour with that brand... So we redid the first two episodes to be less funny and more dark and more violent and more sad, and that's the game that shipped. And one of the biggest comments in editorial, was that it felt very off-tone for Guardians of the Galaxy and wasn't very funny. And we were like 'we know'."

[Mister Six]

"Our executive team insisted that what was popular about Guardians of the Galaxy, was darkness and violence, and sadness"

This sort of shit is why execs need to have their kneecaps broken if they walk anywhere near the creatives' rooms.

Crunch your numbers and fuck off, suit.