Telltale NEEDS to make an Alien game.

[The Crispy Tiger]

It could work I suppose, but I see an Alien gaming having more action, then again the walking dead did have a good balance of action and talking so prahaps....

Nope. An alien game should be 80% downtime and talking with 19% action and 1% gore.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

They do not matter if you do not allow them to matter.

No, they do not matter if they do not impact the final result of their chosen path.

So let me just recite something I said earlier, in regards to the Alien franchise. Newt dies, and in the introduction to the sequel to Aliens. Does that make everything she went through meaningless? Answer that honestly, because I really want to see how you think of that.

Er, so I should be happy that the game lied to me about my decisions making a difference because it successfully fooled me into thinking it mattered? Are you serious?

I can't distinguish much of a difference. I mean, you're saying "if they do not impact the final result of their chosen path" that they're meaningless. Well, one problem arises in what you consider as "impacting the final result". For one, the TWD series has yet to be finished, so that could mean that there are decisions that could have an impact that we haven't encountered yet, so technically any event involving Clementine or a character who isn't confirmed dead could have still matter. Additionally, "final result" can be applicable to the player as well, just like it does in any other media, so things that may be meaningless to you might mean something to another player, and while this applies to all of media, its application is probably widest in gaming because its interactive and you have to invest yourself into the core of the experience.

Do I actually have to explain the difference between a game which has you press one button at a scripted interval,

Just like the example I made in Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

and one which demands any number of various button presses at any given point in time depending on the actions taking place on screen, the player's tactics, and/or the general mechanics of that game?

So some of the reflex-based action segments in TWD?

I'm genuinely asking, now, because if you're seriously going to go ahead and go down the road of "All games ask you to press buttons, therefore there is no difference between QTEs and CoD", then I'm stopping the crazy train right here so I can get off. I don't even like CoD (I'm awful at shooters) and even I'm not gonna go there.

Quick-time events are gameplay, objectively speaking. They require player input. You may not find them compelling under any circumstance, while I do if they're done well. CoD doesn't do them well. The Walking Dead did. In Call of Duty unavoidable events unfolded that often allow you to advance because they rid of a complete contrivance that the current gameplay would make you think you could do, ie there's a vehicle over there. You could noramlly just grab an RPG off of a dead guy or huck some grenades or something like that, but this one is invincible to everything but this one is invulnerable to everything but frisbees, so you have to go push a button that will have it automatically attacked by a horde of frisbees. Admittedly, a fair amount of QTEs in The Walking Dead are similar, with the only real difference being that you're actually under a time limit to complete it. Others, however, go well beyond that, as I've demonstrated.

There's a huge difference between a game which demands arbitrary buttons be pressed at designated scripted intervals, and games which demand arbitrary button presses in response to the game's output and the mental decision making of the player. The former is no more mentally demanding than a Skinner box, whereas the latter is at least demanding some form of mental processing by the player. Certainly, one can argue that most games rely on Skinner box-esque logic in their design, but I don't think most folks would argue that all games are essentially the same because they all expect you to push a button.

I never proposed such madness. And as for the mental input, I would say The Walking Dead provides more mental input that a lot of games do in these sequences. Typically its one button press to go through a long sequence that does a ton of things, whereas TWD tends to separate actions indivually. Where one game might just have to press X near a key to take off handcuffs, the other requires you to pick up the key, then uncuff one hand, and then uncuff the other.

Again, no one is arguing that TWD did a bad job with QTEs, so I don't know why you keep feeling the need to defend TWD in particular. We're talking about how in the hell you'd translate a pure QTE model

It is not a "pure quick-time event model". There is more to the gameplay than mashing the Q key every now and then and you know it. If you want to know what one looks like, go play Final Fantasy: All the Bravest/

This is a franchise where a majority of the characters presented in it are marines, usually with various pewpews in their possession of varying firepower. A QTE sequence in lieu of "true" action sequences isn't going to work out well here. Telltale's story telling may be fantastic, but it can only stretch QTEs so far.

And the entire first movie didn't have a single firearm, if I recall correctly. One rigged flamethrowers and a bunch of items used as melee instruments on the fly. The star of the first four films wasn't a marine, the second most significant character in Aliens was a child, and most of the characters in Alien 3 were unarmed convicts, and it wasn't until the last five-or-so minutes that a gun even appeared. Furthermore, Alien: Isolation seems to be about another engineer, unlikely to have any sort of combat experience. The series seems to be appropriate for something other than dudebro space marines with M41A pulse rifles and smartguns, and I think trying to have that as the onnly archetype for the player is very limiting, especially if you're going for horror, which tends to rely on disempowerment.

Also, this is in no way a proper response to my earlier proclamation (in response to something you said) that there is a clear and obvious middle ground between having a QTE-driven game and a game which has ten or more elements to its game play. So I don't even know what you were aiming to do here. You're the one who argued that a game with too many elements falls flat. Yet once I pointed out that I never said that, you switch back to talking about TWD....so what was the point of that argument, then?

I said that the gameplay was altered for budget concerns. You said it was unacceptable. I cited how focusing on multiple differing types of gameplay results in less polish for each different type, and how on such a limited budget it'd be unlikely to produce a title with quality, intuitive gameplay in all ways the developers wished to do, so they made on central gameplay aspect, the cursor-driven interactivity, and molded every interaction to fit that specifically. The cursor works the same way whether you're firing a gun, trying to flip a switch, giving somebody an item, punching somebody, etc.

Which is a failing in the way that game was made. It is not a failing in the genre itself, as most games of the genre don't do that. And Warfighter was taken to task by numerous individuals and critics because of those things. So you're just cherry-picking here, and you're not even cherry-picking all that well.

I never meant to indict the genre as a whole, although I can see looking back as to why you thought I may have. Thats my mistake.

The days of things like player movement, dialogue interaction, and cursor interactivity being new and amazing game play elements worth boasting about ended over a decade ago. Nowadays, those are staples of gaming present in virtually every game on the market. Even CoD, which you malign earlier in your post, has all of those things, which I suppose means that it, too, is drastically more innovative than you claim it is.

I never demanded anything about the title being "innovative". What they have works, it fits the bill for what they want to do within the game. And I malign Call of Duty in particular, along with Warfighter, because instead of using the tools that are usually at hand in the game, like having the player find an RPG and use that to blow up a helicopter or something like that, it more and more often has strayed away from that and started using sequences where pressing the X button has your character go through a huge sequence of actions that results in a bunch of dead guys. Instead of having one button cause one action, it has shifted towards one button doing many. It alienates the player from the action. Its like if in a fighting game pressing the A button once unleashed a long sequence of different attacks, relinquishing the player from any control over the game for a good period of time.

What do Telltale Games offer beyond that? Not a whole heck of a lot, really. There's a very good reason most people who talk about Telltale Games don't refer to how amazing the game play is, but instead focus on the story: because their strong suit is story over game play. It always has been.

And the story is by far better. I don't think the gameplay is bad though, it suits its purpose at every point in the game, and in many parts goes further than that alone and exceeds a lot of other games in intertwining the narrative and the gameplay.

I think it's hard to argue otherwise, honestly. The game clearly doesn't fall into any other sort of genre as far as game play is concerned.

You've never played an old-school adventure game from the 80s' or 90s', have you? You're really missing out on a lot of great games.

It's ridiculous to use budget as an excuse for limitations to game play. Especially in Telltale's case. They make these kinds of games not because of budget constraints. They make them because that's what they know how to make, and they don't want to risk making something different.

They've allocated resources from places other than the gameplay programming, such as storyboard, art design, sound design, music, etc, so I'd say its a completely fair understanding of it.

At least we can agree on this much.

TellTale makes adventure games, and while they can do some horror, horror tends to rely on fewer kinds of actions, so what I said earlier about budget concerns with different types of gameplay (like the LA Noire example) is likely averted. Alien: Isolation doesn't seem to be worried about creating highly-polished first-person shooting, but rather moving, hiding, moving discretely, and maybe using tools, most of which aren't particularly demanding, so it makes sense to specialize the gameplay rather than paint all actions with a wide swath that the cursor uses in the TellTale games.

You sir, are a hero.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

As much as i love telltale, i don't think their art style would fit the alien universe. Honestly, comic style aliens just don't jive with me at all.

^ this. I was pleasantly surprised by how well their style worked with The Walking Dead (as someone who first came into contact with the franchise through the TV show, not the graphic novels) but the Alien universe is very much defined by HR Geiger's original art style and designs. Moving away from that would be a big problem IMO.

Also, I've never really seen big choices and morality as being central to the Aliens world. It worked in The Walking Dead (I think, at least) in large part due to the slow-moving nature of the zombies. It made it seem realistic that you had just enough time to make a "big choice" about what to do or who to save or whatever. Aliens don't work like that, they're lightning fast and kill pretty much instantly. So I think they'd have to go out of their way to manufacture the "big choice" situations that worked so well in The Walking Dead.

That's not to say they couldn't make it work, I'm just saying I don't see it as a natural fit.

You see, I think it could be very well created in the art style. The Wolf Among Us played well with blue and red and they could very much create an atmosphere of scares and intensity at every corner.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

They might as well, they're making games for everything else.

I don't know how well Alien would translate into a Telltale style game though. If you're going for the "true" Alien experience, survival horror (like the aforementioned Isolation) is the best way to go.

You see, I agree AND disagree. I think Telltale is a character based company. Something that should be focused on in Alien. Since the movies are mostly dialogue then it will work well for the game to have a story based company.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

The problem with decisions in games mattering is that no they fuckin' don't. They don't. At all. Nothing you do actually matters. It seems like it does, but it doesn't.

And the killer is, nobody seems to consider messing around in a sandbox to be part of a story, which is just ridiculous. I mean, do biographies only include important life choices? No.

Yeah, games can be more than fun, but the big problem with story in games is that you can just hit "New game" and nothing you do will be permanent. Sure, you might still get emotions, but it still does not matter except at that particular moment when you're getting that particular emotion.

What the fuck is a "Meaningful choice" anyways? I see it brought up in story threads a lot (Maybe not here yet, but a lot), but I don't know what that phrase actually means. How does a meaningful choice differ from one that's not meaningful? What makes a meaningful choice meaningful? What makes it more special than deciding to spare one pedestrian in GTA or not going on a rampage in saints row?

Meaningful choice and permanent. That would sum up Xcom pretty fucking well. Game can do these two things awesomely. We have permadeath, what the fuck is keeping us from having a permanent choice mode. A meaningful choice is picking who to give food in TWD, or choosing who dies in the first Mass Effect. It something that effects you emotionally while also affecting your relationship with characters.

 

[Frezzato]

I think you have a point. The closest thing I can think of comes from 11 years ago, The Thing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(video_game)] video game. It was from the original Xbox/PS2 era. Certain choices would have unforeseen effects on your team members. I always meant to play it, but always managed to forget about it somehow.

I had fun with that until my guy with the flamethrower turned out to be the thing. Fuck that went bad fast. I always had a propane torch on me but still.

Anyway I would be game for that tell tale seems to be good with stories and characters.

I can't wait till my copy of The Thing gets here! Backwards compatibility FTW.

This thread reminds me of another Telltale game I always meant to play, Hector: Badge of Carnage. That one got mixed/poor reviews but I'll give it a shot someday. And I still think Telltale could make a decent Alien game because, honestly, other companies have had their chances. They went 'big', they tried tried to make things shiny, and yet the best Aliens game in my opinion was AvP on PC, from 1999. Damn, just thinking about the Alien campaign still makes me queasy.

 

[hermes]

No... what they NEED to do is a Fables game. How long has it been since the last episode? I feel like they are spread too thin, now having TWD Season 2 and two more games announced in the near future.

 

[Mzuark]

All I want is a game where I can play as the Alien. Unless Telltale knows how to make being an unstoppable monster interesting I don't want any.