BenLuke

Walking Dead Season the Second

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  On 8/27/2014 at 4:24 PM, Twig said:

Ah! Dagnabbit darn dangit damn.

 

I don't think it affects the ending you got but it felt more in-character, in the moment.

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Yeah that's all I really wanted, since that's all the really game is, hah.

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I really hope they wrap up things in the next season, if there is a fourth one, I don't think I'll be able to care about it. I don't know about you guys, but when it comes to more dramatic stories, the longer they get, the more I lose interest in them.  <_<

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Things I liked from this episode:

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I hate having to put everything in spoiler tags; for some reason, it makes it harder for me to organize my thoughts. ):

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All this "not as good as season 1" and "cliche" hand waving is horeshit. I cried just as much at the Lookaway/Wellington ending as Season 1's ending. The inflections in Kenny's voice at his most sincere is heart wrenching. Season 2 was worth the money and the time. I have no desire to see other branches or even youtube the others because that shit ended beautifully. Season 3 with a new protagonist and some surviving season1/2 characters is all I'll need to start again.

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While I don't think the season as a whole was better than the first, I do think this was a fantastic end. And heart wrenching too.

 

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One thing that has disappointed me about this season was the lack of puzzles. The first season I felt still had one foot into its point and click roots, this season seemed to abandon that in favour of straight storytelling. Ferrying the player from encounter to the other, which is fine I guess as it's still one of the finest video games written. I just maybe want a little more interactivity in the next season.

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So I played the entire game in one long sitting on Labor Day.

 

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While I don't regret playing season 2, I didn't enjoy it anywhere as near as the first. Sure the first had glaring issues (the judgement finale; throwaway character in S1E2; etc.), but I feel it got away with that stuff b/c it was so novel. I still like the idea of being a sort of co-writer/actor in these types of games though, so I'll definitely check out reviews for season 3 and hope they do a better job with it all.

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No you're right. The animation system is getting a bit long in the tooth. The body animations can be pretty wooden but I find the transitions between facial emotions or whatever they're called even more jarring. Like, I pick a positive response and the person I'm talking to transitions to "smile" face...it's too robotic. I hope they revamp things for the next season.

 

I don't know if I'd like puzzles to come back. I don't think they fit with the style of game Telltale is going for, but I would like to see some more open ended areas, where I'm free to move around, check things out, and talk to people as I want. Sometimes this season felt too on rails for me.

 

Regarding the final episode:

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  On 9/8/2014 at 1:07 PM, megaspel said:

Don't you...

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I just finished too.

 

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Just finished it, and...

 

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  On 9/9/2014 at 10:57 PM, SuperBiasedMan said:

I just finished too.

 

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So I finally finished this, and

 

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Edited by lobotomy42

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The thing people seem to ignore about motion capture is that you're motion capturing ACTING. So you still have to spend the time casting, rehearsing, and directing the actor that you would otherwise spend animating them. It means you can't cast for voice alone, you have to cast actors who can act (in an isolated face capture box) at a nuanced and true-to-the-character degree that's better than your animators or cinematic direction team can produce on top of a good voice performance alone. (Note: there are very few actors who can do that.)

Other points:

- A good voice actor can often lay down more than one line a minute, which is valuable as hell in a game with a script that is thousands of lines long even for a couple hours of gameplay. This means a team can get all the lines for the main characters recorded, trimmed, and into the games language database within days of the script being complete, which is of immense value On an episodic schedule, and very hard-to-impossible to achieve with other methods.

- The previsualization phase has to be WAY longer and cannot overlap with main production, if mocap is involved, because once you mocap something, that is basically your final motion data unless you do a lot of ripping apart, reconstructing, retargeting work to fix something you don't like.

- If your characters face designs have a stylized look and pull exaggerated comic book or cartoon like expressions to convey emotion simply (as they do in WD), real human face capture often ends up looking creepy and unnatural when applied to those face models, and have to be touched up or re animated by hand anyway.

I think motion capture -- especially face capture -- for a cast of 15, for a bi-monthly 90-120 minute video game is just an untenable solution. Referring to those processes as automatic or as some magic bullet is assuming that just "recording a human doing something" is all that is involved, when the part that takes up all the time is actually conceiving and getting the performance right, regardless of your production pipeline. (And that has to be coupled with the reality of your budget, schedule, team size, etc.)

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played the first two episodes of this over the last week. Quite enjoyed it.  I wasn't sure about how i'd feel about controlling Clementine, like my feelings toward her are attached to lee if you know what I mean. She's an established character and I've been seeing her through someone else's eyes, in the first season she was this person who you based all your decisions on and cared for the most. Now she's all those things AND YOU as well. I was really worried about it but by the end of the first episode I was really in to it. I really like this new savvier, more mature Clementine, she can be manipulative and a bit of a d*ck.  It's also quite striking at times to be in control of someone so small. I really liked the moment in episode 2 where

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. Cant wait to play more but I am determined to ration it. One a week from now on. Make an event out of it, like a TV show. Get in to my dressing gown, pour a glass of whisky and play through it like a king.

 

I do have one minor observation/ gripe. I would have loved an option for Clementine to say "Don't call me Clem" because Pete does that almost immediately and I was like whoa man that's a bit familiar... and lee called her that :'(.  Although that would have created complications in dialogue down the road probs. 

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Played Episode 3 the other day and really enjoyed it

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Can't wait for episode 4 :)

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Finished this yesterday. I didn't like the last three episodes and will definitely not be buying the third season. I guess a lot has been already said and the experience was so deflating I don't feel like going into all that bothered me. I just felt like the game manipulated me throughout without any notion of sticking to the established rules of this world.

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