This allows an injured Lee to kick his way to freedom, crawl from the wreckage, kill his first zombie, and begin the long journey to understanding and dealing with the nightmare all around him.Įarly on, he meets Clementine, a 8-year-old littl e girl hiding a tree-house, awaiting the return of her parents from Savannah where the spread of the outbreak is implied. The police cruiser is run off the road by one newly-infected walker, and t u mbles into a ravine. It’s not long before the zombie outbreak happens, though, and break out it does… suddenly, violently, overwhelmingly. You are introduced to simple and effective interface commands, allowing you to look around and make smalltalk with the old sherrif who is driving you to prison for what you discover is a murder you committed. The games opens with your character, Lee Everett, handcuffed in the back of a police car. I would like to see the studio make games where your decisions have a direct, explicit impact on the story, but until then, a shift in attitude will have to suffice.This game features the little-known “Clever Zombie”. So I’ve decided to give Telltale’s back catalogue another chance and play them with the mindset that, yes, the choices I’m making here don’t mean much, but I can still enjoy taking a few interesting backroads and sidestreets along the way as I hurtle towards the inevitable conclusion. They’re a way to experience an interactive story without as much effort or investment. So I don’t think it’s a problem that Telltale adventures, which sit comfortably at the casual end of the spectrum, exist as lighter, more accessible alternatives.
There are plenty of games on PC where you’re given the freedom to actually create stories, whether it’s an immersive sim, a sandbox, or an RPG. Although, admittedly, the power of these scenes has been dampened by their somewhat predictable appearance in successive games-including Batman. They’re soon wrestled back, but it’s this illusion that made the first Walking Dead such a hit. A timer is ticking down, two people are in life or death situations, and you can only save one of them.Įven though this will probably only go as far as changing some dialogue-or maybe a character you save will just die later anyway-it temporarily feels like you’ve been handed the controls of the freight train. If you’ve played its games, you’ll know the feeling. One of Telltale’s cleverest tricks, however, is making some moments feel like the most important decision you’ve ever made. Players are primed to expect something that isn’t there, and disappointed when it fails to deliver the goods. But you don’t, and I think that’s where a lot of the frustration comes from. ‘This story adapts to the choices you make’ it says dramatically at the beginning of an episode, making you feel like you might actually have some agency over what’s about to happen. The problem is, Telltale tries to make it seem like its games are much more than that. It’s about how you approach a situation, not how you shape it.
Altering the tone of the story, and how the protagonist makes their way through it, is really what Telltale games excel at.
It’s pretty gimmicky, but a nice way of showing that your own path through the story will have been, at least in some small, surface level way, different from that of other players.Įven though the story will end the same way for everyone, bar a few details here and there, these little choices-and the ripples they send through the narrative-are enough to make the experience feel like more than just passively watching a TV show. The game actually rates your personality at the end, with factors such as compassion, brutality, cunning, and collaboration being recorded as you play, resulting in a final score.
Or you can hold him up as a symbol of hope, reassuring people that someone out there is fighting for them, even if the crooked politicians and corrupt cops are not.
You can use Batman to intimidate and terrorise the city’s criminals-and its citizens. There are opportunities in Batman to craft a personality for Bruce Wayne, through the way he interacts with people and how he chooses to present his alter ego to Gotham.