The Walking Dead (from Telltale Games) - Catch All

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I mentioned this in the Walking Dead TV show thread and bighoppa kindly provided the link to the game's website.

Discuss.

Have been reading the comic since #1 but didn't like the show and the book lost a lot of its momentum over the last year.

Considering the Jurassic Park game was not that great either I'm having a hard time getting my hopes up for this game

But maybe that's just me. Most people seem to be crazy about the show and everything Telltale does. Going to watch those Playing Dead episodes on the website once I come home from work!

I started collecting the comic at issue #12 or so, and back-filled with trades. It's got to be hard to keep it going. The beginning? That's always easier for zombie/post-apocalyptic stuff, when all the big, sweeping changes take place. This is the window most of the fiction I've seen focuses on. After? Once people have developed a means for survival, it turns into focusing on relations between individuals and groups. Kirkman has steadily weeded out a lot of the danger from the zombies themselves, and even credible danger from most of the humans. I'm sure, like with the prison, this is a build-up to a large calamity, but the hand-wringing is getting a bit invasive.

That's the comic. The show? I really wanted to like the show, and I feel traitorous for saying this, but it's awful. I find it hard to believe that surviving involves as convincing a reprisal of Knot's Landing or General Hospital as AMC currently airs in TWD's time slot. I watched up to and through the episode before last, and while there was finally some suspense, some sense that the world is as hostile as everyone worries about, it was meager gruel.

I'm hoping that the game will find a better balance, and isn't just either a (a) shmup or a (b) four-hour dialog tree written by emo teens.

Long time fan of the comic series, waning enthusiasm for the AMC series for all the reasons mentioned above and in the show thread.

Telltale has a long history of making entertaining adventure games. I'm not sure how they'll work any combat aspects, but they don't do shmups or crappy dialogue. I have a lot of faith that they will do the source material proud.

As disappointed I was with Jurassic Park - tt's approach to the game is exactly right: New character, new story, taking place during the events of the comic with some of the comic's characters having a cameo.

I wish they would have done that with the TV show. Everytime they do something completely different with a character on the show than they did in the comic I just hate it!

And using the girl as kind of moral lense of your actions really is a great idea.

So I'm actually surprised that this might turn out to be interesting!

What is annoying about a game based in a zombie apocalypse is that there are no true moral decisions to make. You could have some kind of "humanity" slider, that goes down when you shoot the slowest runner in your group so that the rest of the group can run away, and when it hits zero, you lose, but who would want to play that?

Here is the first video out to promote the game:

Also of note, two of the lead designers are Idle Thumbs alum Famous Vanaman and Jake Rodkin.

I sometimes have difficulty with simple things such as figuring out

. Anyone with better skills with minor technicalities- can you please embed this link?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugsKL...

It's the teaser trailer for the game. It invokes the Dead Island trailer, but does it with more finesse. Also, the game is actually going to be about the sort of loss such a teaser trailer points to.

Also, also that cinematic has a really nice art style.

Also, also, also, there is a sale at Telltale: get the WD series for $22.49. Or, pay $42.49 to get almost all of TT's catalog (there are a few series missing). http://www.telltalegames.com/walking... Also, there is a contest- I mention this last part since it is noted in the URL I just linked to.

Also, watching the second Playing Dead episode

.

The fact that Gary Whitta is writing on the project (seemingly not all of the episodes) does make me more interested.

Okay, I'm officially stoked for this game.

Love this guy's candidness. The gameplay/presentation looks freakin' fantastic.

EDIT:

For clarification, I spied leaked footage of the first 13 minutes of the game here.

If you don't mind that kind of spoiler, get it while it's hot.

Holy crap. The teaser trailer was phenomenal, but watching gameplay from Playing Dead E3 gives me hope. Because...

Because, damn it, I couldn't blame my wife for laughing loudly, boisterously, when

Spoiler:

Michonne arrived

in the season finale. That was at best B-movie material. I've been trying to ignore subpar elements, focusing instead on the good stuff, but that was full-frontal mediocrity. Maybe given

Spoiler:

we're going to see the prison next season, which implies having to face not-so-nice folks as well as zombies

, there will be less temptation for characters to succumb to teenage logorrhea.

I'm rereading the series from the beginning now, and I know it's always skewed toward verbosity. That's inevitable for a comic, though, at least one that has something to say. It fits, and I'm okay with it. But it seems the writers and producers of the show refuse to take advantage of the fidelity offered by a full-motion medium. Not entirely, of course; I loved the end of E12 and lead-in to E13, where

Spoiler:

the herd approaches an unsuspecting Rick and Carl

. And their use of music was effective, however much music might be a cheap tactic.

Which all is to say I grew more hopeful of the show's quality until I felt my hope was misplaced, and the game makes me want to hope again. Maybe the show will take some cues from TellTale's storytelling style.

(I wish the spoiler tags resulted in inline rather block elements.)

Heh, this is the thread about the game, not the show.

This is available for preorder now on Steam. I find myself more excited for this game than Diablo III and that's saying a lot.

I've read the comics religiously until recently, and will dive into my stack on my next vacation. But I have not watched a single frame of the TV show. My wife is the opposite. She's devoured the show but never picked up the comic. Neither of us have played a Telltale game (though I have a few via sales). We've decided to pick this up and play through it together. I'm definitely looking forward to it, especially after the Giant Bomb interview with the team (recent episode of the podcast). I really hope it turns out to be a good title. I'm jazzed that it's a new story

I'm cautious considering TT's most recent track record. Still, probably going to pre-order tonight.

demonbox wrote:

I'm cautious considering TT's most recent track record. Still, probably going to pre-order tonight.

If by track record you actually mean Jurrasic Park, then I think that was a largely different team.

That and Back to the Future. And yes, I have heard this is a different team that JP.

When I played it, I thought that most of Back to the Future was really good. I never played JP since everyone said it was a dud.

I have no willpower.

Pre-ordered.

Also, you can pre-order through Steam for the same price as TellTale's website and still be eligible for the contest.

I must be one of the only people that like JP. It had some technical issues, but over all I enjoyed it. Does anyone know how long it takes them to release an episode? I didn't play JP until all the episodes were released.

I think for JP they actually decided to release all the episodes at once. For previous games they usually release an episode once a month, occasionally there's a two month break if the season goes through the holidays.

Hooray, it looks like the download is now starting for the game on Steam! I did the pre-order last night.
IGN was quite positive on the game and gave it 8.5. 'A New Day' is one of developer Telltale Games' best outings.

I'll have a chance to dig into this game this evening. Then it will be time to crank the volume, dim the lights, slurp down some yum-yum juice, and see if it's as creepy as it looks.

I pre-ordered last night also.

Darn, I was going to resist buying this, but after watching some gameplay videos, it's getting harder.

This is a must, even if it sux, if you are a Walking Dead fan

Goonch wrote:

This is a must, even if it sux, if you are a Walking Dead fan :)

That was my thought too. After the comics and the tv show, I needed the game to complete the trifecta.

Clifton, NJ! Wow. I live in Bloomfield and work in Passaic. Howdy, neighbor!

50% through chapter one - I was wary after the poor reviews JP got, but this is actually pretty good (very appealing borderlands-ey graphics style).

Very choppy cutscenes for me though, had to tone down a few settings. Also the "controls" menu consists of a large picture of a 360 controller *rolls eyes* (plays perfectly fine with mouse + WASD though).

Goonch wrote:

This is a must, even if it sux, if you are a Walking Dead fan :)

It's definitely a must have if your a fan of the graphic novel, in my opinion.

Hooray, it's time to crank this bad boy up!

stevenmack wrote:

50% through chapter one - I was wary after the poor reviews JP got, but this is actually pretty good (very appealing borderlands-ey graphics style).
Very choppy cutscenes for me though, had to tone down a few settings. Also the "controls" menu consists of a large picture of a 360 controller *rolls eyes* (plays perfectly fine with mouse + WASD though).

Goonch wrote:

This is a must, even if it sux, if you are a Walking Dead fan :)

It's definitely a must have if your a fan of the graphic novel, in my opinion.

Yep, I'm getting the same freezing/choppiness/crunchy sound here and there that I did from Jurassic Park. As with JP, turning shadows off/down helped a fair bit. I'm not far into it, but the worst was the first ten minutes. It seems that ATI users (Radeon 5850 here) are likely to see more issues than nVidia users based on forum comments.

It's fun so far, and I agree that the graphical style is rather spiffy. Pretty grisly too - they definitely haven't tamed the gore level down.

*EDIT*

As I often like to do, I wander in and out of my girlfriend's studio room when I'm playing new games, and share with her various tidbits. At one point early in the adventure a girl is hopeless with a radio, and forgot to check if the radio had batteries in it before pronouncing it not working. Fair enough! In times of trouble anyone could forget such a thing. Being a manly man of the suitable man-protagonist variety we offer to help her out, and notice that it has no batteries. When we offer to find such batteries for her she responds with noticeable relief, saying 'Thanks, I wouldn't know what to look for.'

My girlfriend screamed out 'AHHH!!!!!' , flapped her arms up and down, and began running around the house (she's rather mechanically inclined and probably better at engineering stuff than I am). The thought of girls not knowing what batteries are is pretty amusing, but the thought that we couldn't even explain to a [girl] what a battery was to establish a viable search image was even more amusing.

*edit and by girl, I mean in this case a woman who can handle a firearm, and is at least 20+ years old.

Yeah that is pretty silly.

Spoiler:

And also she puts one of them in the wrong way round when you do finally give them to her

I chalked it up to shock and post zombie stress

***

And finished chapter one. I think this might be the best thing Telltale have done to date - not so much in the way of puzzles but they seem to have gotten the hang of the whole "interactive story" thing.

There seems to be a lot of conversation responses and choices that could theoretically come back to haunt you in later chapters, so It'll be interesting to see if they follow through on some of that later.

Launch/Story Trailer

Enjoyed chapter one. As others have said, the graphics style is fantastic. Makes you feel like you're in the graphic novel.

Also like how Chapter One happens parallel to the start of Comics Book 1. So as you're starting out, somewhere Rick is waking up from his coma in an empty hospital.

stevenmack wrote:

Yeah that is pretty silly.

Spoiler:

And also she puts one of them in the wrong way round when you do finally give them to her

LMAO

stevenmack wrote:

There seems to be a lot of conversation responses and choices that could theoretically come back to haunt you in later chapters, so It'll be interesting to see if they follow through on some of that later.

I'm interested more in this dynamic. Spoilers based on observations of the choice system:

Spoiler:

Out of curiosity, I kept repeating the scene at Herschel's farm where you have to choose to save Sean or Duck. I tried what I believe to be every combination of actions and I found it impossible to save both. What's more, regardless of who you save, Herschel ultimately kicks you off the farm.

When I got to the pharmacy, I believe the same thing happens with the choice of whether to save Carly or the I.T. dude. You can't save them both, someone has to die.

Also the escape from the pharmacy, I didn't replay the confrontation with the old asshole repeatedly but I would venture to guess that no matter how you choose to act in the confrontation, the old dude is going to punch you in the face and leave you on the ground. What I don't know is whether or not Kenny will come to your aid depending on how you treated him at Herschel's farm or during the confrontation with Old Man River.

Interesting game so far. Nice change of pace from my usual FPS games.

Anyone heard how much they will be charging for episodes?

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