How games from TELLTALALL LOSE OF Interactiveness

Having played on The Walking Dead: The Final Season from Telltale, I came to the realization that not all games related to this genre can meet its current standards, and in particular, games from the same Telltale. And now, I will try to explain what exactly I mean.

Video games by definition are an interactive type of entertainment. In most of them, we have to manage various characters or entire nations, solve riddles and interact with the environment, all this can be fully considered interactiveness. So, the key word in the name of the genre is "Cinema"? In this case, everything is also ambiguous. Cinema appears in symbiosis between the picture and the movement and this gives us the understanding that cinema is moving pictures. But even if you abstract from this and perceive cinema as something more, not just moving pictures, but symbiosis of literature, theater and painting, then the question arises, and why Uncharted, God of War or Call of Duty cannot be interactive cinema? Do not understand me wrong, I’m not saying that interactive cinema cannot be a genre or is not such. I just want to understand what the video game is "interactive cinema", and what are the requirements for it now.

Genre is a very useful thing. He helps the player find the game that corresponds to his taste. At the same time, the genre can harm the game if the developer is fixed on it. This has already happened to the same TELLTALALALALE when, when developing the Jurassic Park, they decided to “be inspired” by the then Heavy Rain and many people know what happened. But this was the moment when the “Interactive Cinema” genre began to find the species that he possessed today, and this happened due to the appearance of imitators, in the person of Telltale with their games based on stories. It is the appearance of imitators that is the main criterion for the emergence of a new genre, but this is not enough. The imitators must bring new elements to the familiar, established mechanics of the genre, otherwise, except to call them by clones, it will not work out in any way.

The choice in interactive cinema, according to the majority, is the main idea of ​​the genre.

So what is required of a good game in the "Interactive movie" genre? First of all, reproduction is not a mechanic who were involved in the original game, but the transmission of the emotions that you experienced during its passage. When I played Heavy Rain, I did not leave the feeling that I was watching a film whose events I can influence, whose scenery I can interact. It was a game that gives the opportunity that people dreamed of when watching any film. Someone wanted the hero to go to the obvious trap, someone would be interested to study the scenery in more detail, and someone wanted to hear alternative dialogs or let the story along a completely different path. And the only important thing is that the game was able to give the players these emotions. But if you start understanding, it becomes clear that the fork in the game is not as many as we would like, as well as alternative solutions that affect the development of the plot. This is not a minus, on the contrary, if the player does not see the system and deception from the developers, then this is rather a plus. And here we approach Telltale games and how they exploit the simplest genre mechanics, while other studios try to develop them.

“Illusion of choice” – this phrase often https://bookmakersnotongamstop.co.uk/fast-withdrawal-betting-sites/ pops up in a negative way during the discussion of the games of this studio. I do not consider the illusion of a choice to something terrible. In my opinion, in the games there is no choice as such, there is only an illusion that a good game tries to hide as thoroughly as possible. During the release of the first season, The Walking Dead kept the inscriptions: “This character will remember your words or actions”. At that time, it played very much to the feeling that the game takes into account your actions, and you believed even more when the character of the characters or their attitude towards you changed, although this slipped in the form of slightly changed replicas. The effect of novelty did his job, and the players believed, but this could not continue for a long time.

Some events are not forgotten.

If you imagine Telltale in the form of a magician, then its games will be tricks, and the most important thing in them is the unknown of how they are done. The more often you show them without making changes and not trying to confuse the viewer, the faster he will guess to the secret that underlies the stunt, and magic evaporates for him. This is what happened to Telltale games. They went out so often that players were able to understand their structure and even learned to predict the consequences of the choice. This was also influenced by the reduction of game mechanics. I had to study locations less and less and look for interactive items with which it was possible to interact. There were less and less QTE and even ordinary gameplay episodes that could diversify the monotony of dialogs. Well, Telltale himself depreciated the player’s choice too quickly, while he did not have time to penetrate the consequences of perfect actions. This is perfectly traced with two examples.

The first season The Walking Dead has a choice: "Save Karli or Daga". Regardless of who the player saves, this character appears in the game for three more episodes. During this time you manage to find out the character, you spend a long time together. Discuss the past, get out of the troubles, you manage to feel the consequences from the chosen decision. And when the character you saved dies in the third episode, you do not have the feeling that you will deceive. This is a positive example of an illusion of choice that is not striking. But there is also the opposite example. In New Frontier, we have the same choice, save one of the members of his team. And regardless of who survives, trip or Ava, this character will die at the beginning of the next episode. The player is not given time to realize the consequences of his choice, killing the surviving character literally in the next scene.

The choice with which you manage to put up and believe in a happy ending.

All these negative moments, one way or another, are present on TWD: The Final Season. And when you begin to analyze Telltale’s games in more detail, you begin to understand that they have nothing to do with the genre of interactive movie. Nobody calls these games in this way, even the developers themselves believe that they make StoryBasted, games based on the plot. In fact, these are modernized Point-Ed-Click quests. But the strangest thing, the developers, although they do not call their games in this way, they do not miss the opportunity to remind the player, that in their games, the choice entails serious consequences and is presented in such a way that the whole game can go in a completely different way. This is reinforced by a script that is built in such a way that the player destroys the importance of the importance of decisions he has taken.

In the new season, we have to raise a child, and the developers constantly remind you that our actions affect him. And then who he will become depends only on us. You will kill the walking or leave alive, give food or try to take away by force – all these actions do not allow you to doubt that they will affect the character. But you stop believing it when, despite all your efforts, at the end of the episode he knocks out the brains of the antagonist, even if you decided to spare it. It is clear that this is done for CliffHanger, but when it is the detriment of the main idea, the choice and its consequences, why then he needs it?

The scene that makes us say: "I do not believe"

It turns out that telltale does not even need to change your established formula. They just need to stop overstating expectations, through constant reminders of the importance of our choice and the consequences entailing them. And write a script that will not enter into a confrontation with the choice of a player. Moreover, they succeeded in The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among us, not perfectly, but the script took into account the choice that the player accepted and was built in such a way as to contradict him as little as possible.

My goal was to show that Telltale games have nothing to do with the “Interactive movie” genre. They simply borrowed the main mechanics of the genre and added it to classic quests. In the same way, Borderlands or Farcry is not RPG, although they have elements characteristic of this genre. Does this make Telltale games bad? In no case. But this gives a great reason to postcate this topic. That "interactive cinema" actually? Is it right to highlight such games in a separate genre? How can they be done better? Fortunately, comments are always open, and you can express your opinion on this matter, without any restrictions.