Telltale games thoughts

Off-Topic Other Interactive Fiction
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I guess we were talking about different things then. What I assumed you meant by “rail-roading” was that the author forced two different branching paths into one, ala a single railroad. Thus, the choice is merely an illusion, not real freedom to choose. But it seems you were referring to an entirely different thing altogether. Oh well.

Regardless, the freedom is still far more prevalent in those classic CYOA books than in modern video games (Choice of Games included). The key difference here is that the diverging paths don’t join together again at some point. They spread out, and continue to spread out. That’s what makes a true CYOA. The other kind of so-called CYOA, the kind enforced by Telltale Games and Choice of Games, just feels cheap. Your choices lead to the same results anyway, save trivial differences in dialogue that barely have any holding on the story. Why bother choosing?

Take for example, The Cave of Time. You enter the cave of time, and there are literally two paths you can take at a fork. One leads you to the past, to the Titanic and even dinosaurs, while another leads you to the future, to aliens. Neither path will meet each other again. Both paths lead to at least 5-6 endings alone, leading you to an entirely different experience after that when you pick the other path. That’s the beauty I was mentioning about, one that has not been appreciated by modern so-called CYOAs. But like I said, it’s understandable, as it’s highly impractical and time-consuming to design the same thing on a video game rather than a game book. But again, visual novels have managed to achieve the same multiple-ending gameplay where paths don’t converge at all, so I think it’s not an impossible task.

Bottom line, it’s not about finality, but whether if your choices tell a single story, or multiple tales. The Cave of Time, a single book alone, managed to give you aliens and dinosaurs while granting you satisfying conclusions at the end of each path. That’s fun, because then I will never be able to predict what will happen the next time I pick up the book. When I played Choice of Robots a second time, I knew it would just lead me to the same story of warfare and rebellion by the third act. That’s boring.

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…for a handful of choices before you hit an ending. Packard et al couldn’t keep it up because on paper even more than online, you can’t manage the exponential scale that comes with paths than don’t reconverge. Good thoughts on traditional CYOA design here and here, including the claim that “The average story in a 110-page book in the most popular “choose a path” series is only six pages long.” (No citation, but as an avid CYOA reader throughout my childhood that seems about right to me.)

The ones that lasted longer, like Lone Wolf, were as railroady as any CoG game.

And whether you’re happy with those multiple tales being very short. Most people aren’t, which is why modern choice games (and the most popular Fighting Fantasy etc. books of the 80s and 90s) gravitate toward longer, less variable stories.

You should really, really go back to that one again. :slight_smile: Of all the CoG games you could have mentioned, that’s the one that fits your thesis least. It has four completely different final chapters, only one of which is warfare and rebellion.

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Lol, that is just not true.

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There are a couple of CoG/Hosted games that do branch in that way (Gambling with Eternity and My Day Off Work spring to mind). They tend to catch flak for being too short. As @Havenstone said, broader games also tend to have much shorter branch storylines.

Also, you seem to be missing that CoGs often employ delayed branching by using stats. Your choice in Chapter Two may lead to the same Chapter Three but pay off in Chapter Four - it helps keep the story sprawl manageable for the writer while still giving the player/reader some meaningful consequences.

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Yeah, sorry, my bad; I spoke in haste. Yeah, I remember the four completely different final chapters. It’s been a long time since I played the game though. Maybe the chapters and paths that lead to the final chapters/endings were so similar that I confused them as one or two paths instead, I don’t know. Oh well. My mistake.

Anyway, yeah, I understand the challenge that comes with multiple endings. But you know what? Given enough time and a dedicated team/studio, I still feel like it’s not impossible to create an ideal CYOA where you have more than 5 or 7 endings and still have the entire experience last 3-4 days, and not counting replays even. What people could create in small quantity, they could create in big ones too. I know what I’m saying all sounds quite impractical for the video game industry, but man, that would be my dream CYOA.

From what I could recall, I guess there weren’t a lot of CYOA games with that many endings while still keeping each ending meaningful… except Fallout: New Vegas. Yes, it’s all done with slideshows, but who cares? Sure beats plain text anyway, so I don’t see the problem. There were like tons of different scenarios you could end up with. That;'s the kind of CYOA I would love to play, one where you could meet so many different kinds of NPCs and land yourself in different circumstance depending on which route you take. Yes, I believe Fallout: New Vegas is the closest to the ideal CYOA I’m talking about.

And another example: Planescape: Torment. I never got to finish that game, but from what I read about it, it seems like it has loads of different scenarios and paths as well, mostly due to the game relying on text rather than fancy graphics.

I think one reason why I’m so obsessed with this form of gaming is because of my experience playing such ideal CYOAs in the form of visual novels. School Days in particular had like 21 endings and cinematic cutscenes. And it’s not a short game either. Each playthrough would take you at least a single day (due to it being five episode worth like Telltale games). What it lacks in gameplay, it achieved something most modern video games (and especially Telltale games, with School Days’ similarity in being a multi-episode game) could never have done - tell a full-length story that branches into at least six different stories, depending on which girl you flirt more with. And it’s not even just some cheap dating simulator either, since it’s a deconstruction of said dating sims, showing how one high schooler’s selfishness in porking multiple girls can lead to some… bloody results. School Days and multiple visual novels showed me that kind of adventuring, that kind of illusion of control I have, where my choices can turn the story from a romance to a horror (and vice versa). It’s like I’m participating in telling the story myself! It’s exhilarating.

Unfortunately, even among visual novels, School Days is a rare gem. The only reason it has that many endings is because it’s intended to be a game of consequences, whereas the main reason visual novels have multiple paths is because they were intended to tell multiple stories, not have the player suffer consequences. So yeah, School Days is kinda ideal on its own as well.

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Have you played Seven Bullets? (it’s free) It branches off into different genres and can give you some pretty long, very different stories. Though, with ~80 endings (!) not all of them are equally satisfying (or of equal length), and there are several places where you can get caught in a loop returning to previous decisions (because every time you die, you end up in Hell, even if you’ve already been there and gotten out somehow before)
It’s definitely different from most CoG, not tracking stats for anything other than achievements – to the extent that there’s a book version, too. It doesn’t need to be a coded game to work.

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Sounds intriguing. I’ll put it in my bookmark. Thanks for the rec!

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So Batman: Enemy Within has been a fantastic season so far, and in the latest episode your relationship with John Doe finally seems to pay off in regards to what sort of Joker he might be, and who your opponent will be in the final episode. Needless to say without spoilers I seem to have got a more traditional Joker, and two decisions I made in the last two episodes with the intention of doing good have gone south majorly with a LOT of deaths I’m going to have to bear. :frowning:

(I’m the Joker on the left, fyi. Won’t spoil the Joker on the right.)

In lighter news, it’s nice to know we’ll be playing Season 2 of Wolf Among Us sometime this year, yay! Thought I’d share this great fan trailer for the first season, which if you haven’t played you really should, cause it’s one of the best games Telltale has put out in the past few years.

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Kotaku just released a wonderful article showing off behind the scenes artwork for Telltale Games across their line, from Walking Dead to Wolf Among Us to Tales from the Borderlands to Batman to Game of Thrones and Guardians of the Galaxy. Really lovely array of design work showing how characters like Two Face and Harley Quinn were re-imagined, plus art for set pieces like the Batcave and the dock community in Walking Dead: Michonne. Feel free to check it out.