Beautiful Trees with No Branches

There are minor spoilers for Telltale's The Walking Dead

Recently I’ve been playing Telltale Games even finishing the ones that I should have finished earlier and I’ve got to saw I really love the games despite their biggest obvious flaw that all their Adventure Games have in common.

The Telltale Adventure Games are actually good by design since it makes you really immerse into the stories you are given, even if the writing of those stories are iffy. Their games give you control of a character, or in their later games characters, where you give control dialogue and major choices within the story. It has to be noted that you do not have full control with your characters but only the personality and how they handle situations. For example my version of The Wolf Among Us Bigby is different, though not unique, from anyone else’s version of the character.

Every game has a flaw and Telltale got one of the biggest and the most obvious flaw, the fact that they lack branches from big major choices. What made Witcher 2 so impressive is that the major choice, siding with either the brutal Blue Stripes or the radical Scoia’tael, at the ending of the Chapter One gives you two different versions of Chapter Two, something that you don’t see in many ‘Choice Games’ these days. The Telltale game doesn’t really have that same branching like in Witcher 2 and when it does it later combines really quickly.

Spoilers: He dies either way

For example in the first season of the Walking Dead episode 1 you got a choice to save one of two people but the one that survived died in episode 3 and there is nothing you can do about. It’s the same with every other ‘Save or Not’ choices where you didn’t just exactly save them but instead just slightly prolong their lives and there’s nothing you could do that prolong it even further, it’s like being in a Final Destination movie.

Telltale say’s that ‘Choices Matter’ which I would agree but ‘Consequences Matter’ too because if you in a big Moral Dilemma and either way the same thing happens then it makes you feel that your choices doesn’t truly really matter. If consequences do not matter you could be free for being a complete saint or a complete prick because it does make a true difference in the Telltale worlds, like in the ending of Mass Effect 3 where Buzz Aldrin calls Shepard a hero who saves all despite the monstrosities Shepard could make.

The Face of a Benevolent Hero who saves the Galaxy

I mean yeah it’s true that everyone has a choice but like in real life not every choice matter, choose a brand of toothpaste does not have a world-shattering effect but your behaviour does have a effect to your personal life.

I’m not saying every Choice Game should have different consequences from all choices since writers cannot write different branches of stories. The best I could think that does this quite well is Alpha Protocol, a game which I could consider to be a true Choice-&-Consequence game since the Developers make all the gameplay mechanics and characters react to your choices, behaviour, gameplay actions and even your FREAKIN appearance. I could even become the Shadow Ruler of the World as a “Pacifist” that looked like Gendo Ikari. I do believe Alpha Protocol is a game that Telltale should aspire to.

Obsidian briefly shows a 'hentai tentacle' flowchart of Alpha Protocol's choices

Well I do hope their current games Tales from the Borderland and Game of Thrones does have some branching like at the end of Walking Dead Season 2 because I really liked their games so far and I want them to grow into something better than it should be rather than stagnate. I do recommend giving Tales from the Borderlands a try even though I’m not a fan of the Borderlands world, mostly because of Gearbox.

References: http://youtu.be/5owJbBO1CT4