#being weird about the actors themselves trust me i couldnt care less about them.

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

tgese pictures haunt me every day what the fuck was this for theres no reason for this to behappening im so scared

[leftnipsdoodles]

I would like to hear your reasons for not liking Telltale. I'm not trying to stir the pot, I'm just genuinely curious. (You know, aside from what I've heard they do to their gamedevs)

WELL. if you INSIST

gameplay: none of your choices matter. you usually get 3 choices with either of them making such little difference that you might as well stay silent. the story is set in stone so it doesnt matter how you get there. now, a game like this having a string of events that happen regardless of choice makes sense. but when i treat a character badly and dismissive the entire game and all it does is change our relationship from a romance to star-crossed lovers, or when i do my best to trust and care for a character and they still make my character betray them in the end, or when i go out of my way to pledge allegiance to a cause only for the game to pretend i didn’t bc they didn’t plan for someone to do so, then how fucking dare you advertise this game as being about choices.

i’ve played games like mass effect, that had a core plot that wouldnt change, but every decision you made somehow affected your standing in this plot, your relationship with someone, or just the way your character is portrayed. hell, even in hotel dusk, if you’re mean to ppl, the protag’s personality changes accordingly in scenes where you don’t have control of his reactions. and that game’s a straight up visual novel.

art, design, whatever: ugly as hell. it works for some of their games (wolf among us, borderlands), not for others. but they’re holding onto it as their trademark style and it rly holds them back. however, this one’s subjective, so my other big point about it is:

the animation. absolutely atrocious. every animation is so badly paced and unintentionally awkward that everytime it needs to be purposefully awkward, it just falls flat. not to mention, when a scene is meant to be dramatic, or funny, or heartwarming, or even just fast-paced and action-filled.. it ALL falls flat. there’s not a single scene that feels organic and for a game that’s all about immersion, this is unacceptable. and ofc its not just the character animations alone, its also things like camera work and general pacing. but if they fixed one of these things, it’d already go a long way.

dialogues are just as awkward for the most part, especially because the devs clearly didnt think most of them through when it comes to the choices. they let conversations play out the same, bar one sentence loosely referring to your answer.

also, there is no skip button. you cant skip through the usually long voice lines even tho you can have subtitles on, thus already reading what the person is saying. this sounds minor but it seriously starts to get on your nerves, esp when you’re stuck in a scene that youre not interested in (bc, e.g., you don’t care about the romantic relationship the game has been trying to push you into from the start)

characters: bad. most of them feel the same. again, this is subjective, but i have a huge pet peeve with writers not adjusting their writing style. characters that shouldn’t have witty one-liners bc they’re supposed to be menacing get them anyway bc the writers couldnt help themselves. every character can develop a nervous stutter at any given moment, as if that’s sth that’s universal to people. stuff like that.

i remember in boderlands, when i finally got to meet handsome jack and thought ok, now it’s finally get more energetic and fun, he didn’t feel much different from the characters we had already met. and don’t even ASK me about the characters in batman. they even LOOK interchangeable for the most part bc guess what, telltale character designs are either ridiculously plain or ridiculously over-designed.

and this isn’t mentioning how much the characters miss their mark. you’re supposed to think of x character as a sympathetic freedom fighter who has their heart in the right place and is worth getting to know, but they wrote them as a rude, whiny, borderline sociopathic asshole who makes me wish telltale had the balls to let you make big decisions so i could kill this dick already.again, its subjective. but thats the beauty of a game about CHOICES. if someone feels differently about a character than you intended, you let them choose to act accordingly and experience the game in a different way.likewise, characters that are supposedly horrible and irredeemable but rly only did one messed up thing that you dont care about. but the game forces you to condemn them for it anyway. like alright then, bye.

and ofc, the protagonists are……….. weird. first of all, half of them are voiced by troy baker and as great as i think he is as a voice actor, im sick of him. especially since he delivers all his performances in his normal voice. im starting to feel like im playing troy baker more than rhys wayne or whoever.

and to latch back onto what i said above, what the game does with them is awful: you’re supposed to identify with them bc you get to decide how they act but at the same time they’re more or less established characters and if you don’t relate to them from the start, the game dismisses your choices. so in the end, it’s neither here nor there. i remember i thought rhys was gonna be great bc he was the protag, but one of the bad guys, and he was one voluntarily and with a lot of conviction. thats so fucking interesting! i wonder how this game is gonna play out if i indulge in my love for this concept! i wonder if i can end this game as the new head of hyperion! yes, look at me go!! this is awesome!! this is everything i wanted!! my relationship with jack is the only one that actually feels rewarding and now we’re gonna be the bad guys together!! this makes all the hours i wasted on this so worth it i can’t believ- oh we hate hyperion now for no reason and want to kill jack. ok then.also full offense but as the game went on it kept going out of its way to make rhys look incompetent and humiliate him and is that rly what you want for the character you’ve (allegedly) been making decisions for..? it just felt uncomfortable after a while lmfao

anyway, in general, the idea is nice, the execution is horrible. kinda like how i tried to section these things off into different topics but ended up rambling without structure anyway.

like, look. ive gotten tired of bioware games too. i probably couldnt play mass effect again just bc ALL bioware games feel the same (even tho i like some of them more than others and mass effect is definitely still one of my fav trilogies ever. but if you keep reusing gameplay, voice actors, animations, etc… it just gets tiring).

so i think telltale’s 2 biggest sins are not giving you the control of the story they promise you and desperately clinging to their ways in order to keep their trademark style