{"id":17894,"date":"2012-11-27T19:45:52","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T00:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=17894"},"modified":"2012-11-29T19:36:13","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T00:36:13","slug":"walking-dead-ep1-general-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=17894","title":{"rendered":"The Walking Dead EP1: General Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2AotaFMhTZk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2AotaFMhTZk'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>As Rutskarn points out in the opening, this is a gameplay idea that hasn&#8217;t worked in the past (Indigo Prophecy \/ Heavy Rain) using a game associated with some uninspiring titles (Back to the Future and Jurassic Park) and drawing from source material that most of us dislike. And so it was somewhat of a surprise to see just how good the final product turned out to be. The Heavy Rain gameplay was a workable idea, it just needed to be leveraged properly. The Telltale tech was fine, it just needed the right type on interactions. And the Walking Dead is fine, it just needed a little more pathos and a little less &#8220;dysfunctional reality TV cast of shallow jerks caught in the zombie apocalypse&#8221;. All of these ideas were improved by combining them. It shouldn&#8217;t have worked. It did.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the cover image Josh was talking about in this episode: <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><table   class=\"\" cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/walking_dead_show.jpg' class='insetimage'   alt='walking_dead_show.jpg' title='walking_dead_show.jpg'\/><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>Some people asked why we were willing to put up with the timed conversation options in this game and not in Alpha Protocol. One reason is that we&#8217;re just way more excited about this game and willing to overlook a few frustrations. But the larger reason is because they&#8217;re a lot less obnoxious here. In Alpha Protocol, I was often still trying to parse the choices when the timer ran out. <em>Wait, if I pick aggressive is that just going to threaten this guy or am I really going to hurt him? If I pick professional will I&#8230; oops. Too late. I ran out of time and the game picked for me.<\/em>  I was always surprised by the random crap Thornton was doing in conversations, which made me really gun-shy with dialog choices, which was exacerbated by the short-fuse timer, which was then turned into a circus of mayhem by the game&#8217;s tendency to just pick FOR YOU.<\/p>\n<p>In The Walking Dead, the choices are much clearer, the timer is longer, and picking nothing usually signifies <em>saying<\/em> nothing. If you don&#8217;t pick, Lee is simply stoic and silent. There are a couple of quick decisions in the game, but those are usually clear binary choices with understandable time pressure imposed by the story itself, not arbitrary time pressure added to make talking more videogame-y. Also, the REALLY though choices have incredibly long timers. I think some of them last a minute or so. Again, it&#8217;s enough time to mull it over, but not so much that you can put the controller down and and come back an hour later to find everyone still waiting patiently for you to answer the question. <\/p>\n<p>Our spoiler policy for this season is going to be to freely spoil stuff in the current episode (particularly stuff that will happen in the next hour of gameplay) but otherwise avoid them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) As Rutskarn points out in the opening, this is a gameplay idea that hasn&#8217;t worked in the past (Indigo Prophecy \/ Heavy Rain) using a game associated with some uninspiring titles (Back to the Future and Jurassic Park) and drawing from source material that most of us dislike. And so it was somewhat [&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":[208,269,268],"class_list":["post-17894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-spoiler-warning","tag-telltale","tag-walking-dead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894","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=17894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}