It's hard for me to feel too bad about this. Their actual adventure games ranged from okay (Back to the Future, Sam and Max Season 1, some of Monkey Island) to great (Sam and Max Seasons 2 and (especially) 3, some of Monkey Island), but they never should have gone further in the story game direction than Jurassic Park. (I actually think Jurassic Park was their most fun narrative game because of the constant pressure, "hit point" system, and actual obstacles.)
I enjoyed the first Walking Dead season, and have since played a number of other Telltale titles, but once you realize that the actual hook of these games, narrative choice, is total bullshit, it's really hard to form much of an attachment to them. The first Walking Dead season at least still had a few perfunctory "puzzles", but the studio quickly abandoned any aspect of real interactivity. Thus they had no actual design hooks or gameplay exptertise anymore, and it's not at all hard to copy this game-type or to incorporate a "story design" that depends on the novelty of picking A/B/C/D decisions occasionally that have no major effect on anything. Until Dawn, for instance, did a much better job of fabricating a dynamic narrative, and tons of games now have meaningless dialogue response options on top of traditional gameplay.
In general, though, as might be obvious, I'm pretty disdainful of this "I made my character act rudely sometimes! This is my story!" thing that shouldn't pass as game design and shouldn't be a substitute for what a true dynamic narrative would entail.
Topic: Games Industry Death Watch 2010-present (Read 362707 times)
