T w e n t y S i d e d

I agree that Episode 4 seems to be the strongest. It’s got a strong theme, interesting choices, quite a few tense scenes, and the gameplay feels a little more polished. They even mess around with some very mild shooting. We’ve shed the adventure game mechanics of the earlier episodes and the characters have more going on than pointless bickering.

The cast is stronger now that Larry and Lily have been replaced with less crazy people. Larry and Lily were really great for making DRAMA, but it was cheap, stupid, frustrating drama that never led anywhere and always left me feeling angry. The moment where you have to get Clem out of the jail cell was far more emotionally rewarding and rang more true than any of our arguments with Lar & Lil’. And that fight featured lazy-writer ninja zombies. I hated them, but they weren’t villains. They were a chore to be around, but having them die didn’t feel like an accomplishment or a victory. It was just more wasted life.

Maybe I’m just mistaking my antipathy for the show for an improvement in design, but now that we’ve moved on from “surrounded by assholes” to “working with reasonable people who don’t always agree”, I find the world and the story much more interesting. I care about Omid and Christa, and I’m invested in seeing them survive.

Kenny is more interesting now that he’s lost his family. As the only guy who still had a family, he was the richest man in the apocalypse. Now that he lost it all in a single day, his personality quirks are a lot more tolerable. He’s driven. He’s got a plan. It’s not a good one, but it’s all he has left.

I don’t know if it’s fair to say that every episode is objectively better than the last, but I do see an overall improvement as we progress.

At least, until we get to episode 5. Then all bets are off.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Check out Lee at the minute forty mark, where the game is daring enough to sell a joke entirely with body language and facial expression. I can’t remember the last time I saw a game try that.

At the end of the episode Chris points out how good the city looks. The framing of the city through the train window is really eye catching. Although, if you look back through the YouTube archives for this season, you can see that just about every video thumbnail looks like a hand-picked framegrab. I guess we have the strong cinematography of the game to thank for that. You’re always looking at a well-composed shot.

In keeping with tradition, here are my personal choices for Episode 3:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Walking Dead EP18: Ninja Zombies”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Continuing the conversation we were having in this episode: The more I think about it, the more I think that “episodes” is a really good way to approach story games. Like I said, so far the approach to telling a story has been to:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Walking Dead EP17: Hobo Chuck’s Private Reserve”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

While re-watching the episode prior to writing this post, I found myself getting that gut-punch feeling again. Notwithstanding our talking over it and making jokes, this is a powerful sequence. It’s wonderfully written and acted.

For those asking what interactivity adds to a story: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Walking Dead EP16: Training Day”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.