{"id":17887,"date":"2012-11-25T17:21:26","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T22:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=17887"},"modified":"2012-11-25T19:01:06","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T00:01:06","slug":"coming-soon-the-walking-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=17887","title":{"rendered":"Coming Soon: The Walking Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table   class=\"\" cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/walking_dead.jpg' class='insetimage'   alt='walking_dead.jpg' title='walking_dead.jpg'\/><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>What if you took the choice and conversation wheel gameplay of (say) Dragon Age or Mass Effect, and made that into a game all by itself? No shooter combat. No classes. No equipment. You just talk and make decisions. The whole time. <\/p>\n<p>Telltale Games has done it, and the result is basically a new genre of videogame. Yes, on the surface it&#8217;s mechanically similar to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telltalegames.com\/samandmax\" title=\"Sam &#038; Max: Freelance Police\">Sam &#038; Max<\/a> or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telltalegames.com\/strongbad\" title=\"Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People\">Strongbad adventure games<\/a>. But making it a serious, drama-based story with gut-wrenching choices creates a very different experience. <\/p>\n<p>The game is based on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Walking_Dead_(comics)\" title=\"The Walking Dead Comics\">the Comic series by Robert Kirkman<\/a>, and features brief cameos of existing characters. There&#8217;s also a TV series based on the same material, which I hated because it&#8217;s way too much a soap opera of idiots and jackasses.  I watched the first several episodes and didn&#8217;t connect with a single character. <\/p>\n<p>The entire Spoiler Warning cast has played through the game by this point. I realize the game is a bit &#8220;new&#8221; by the standards of our show, but this is an important game and we all have stuff to say about it.  If you&#8217;re looking to play along at home, the game is available right now on Steam for less than $20. It&#8217;s an innovative high-quality game that weighs in around twelve to fifteen hours. I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a happy face.<\/p>\n<p>We normally take a couple of weeks off from Spoiler Warning when we finish a season, but we&#8217;re rolling straight into The Walking Dead. Buckle up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What if you took the choice and conversation wheel gameplay of (say) Dragon Age or Mass Effect, and made that into a game all by itself? No shooter combat. No classes. No equipment. You just talk and make decisions. The whole time. Telltale Games has done it, and the result is basically a new genre [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[208,268],"class_list":["post-17887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-spoiler-warning","tag-walking-dead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}