What Style Of Game

[Vainamoinen]

Seems like the spambots have a sudden interest in Fables.
Maybe the moderators should too.

The adventure game would be a complete fit. The community would certainly be happy about some "choices" also, but I think we've had enough of the attempt with Walking Dead just now. A lot of effort was poured into this game only to have the fans complain their butts off that it wasn't at all enough.

Asking Telltale for a "pure" adventure however is probably pretty futile! They'll try to bring something new to it. And I'd really want that as long as it enhances interactivity. Give the pacing back to the player. Make exploration far more interesting, smoother and quicker than it was in TWD. And add far more details to actually explore. Give PC players PC controls. If you just can't think of anything better than a full blown chock full combine items inventory, then do exactly that. Anything but just walking around with one thing from A to B. Your fans want a challenge again that isn't just mini games or even QTEs (*shudder*), something with a bit of immersion to it.

TWD's graphic style was excellent, but the environments weren't always breathtaking. Add some real multi-level architecture, make the environments way bigger, have some freedom of movement (complete with a more dynamic camera), let the main character(s) run again. I think the engine can handle it. I won't speak about graphic style because I know you won't disappoint in that respect.

If it looks like the Adam Hughes covers, you done right.

[Vainamoinen]

Genre/genre.

The great thing about Telltale's best game so far was that it essentially changed its narrative genre while always remaining an adventure by game genre. It had more of a science fiction vibe in episode 1, switched to a 1930s Bogart/Indy/The Sting setting for episode 2, departed into film noir for episode 3 then heavily relied on zombie movie elements for the 4th episode... while the Season finale was Godzilla/Innerspace related. The story arc did not remain without cracks, but still had solidity despite the great variation. The next episode would always be something totally different while also being part of the same story.

I can imagine something similar with Fables - the world is colorful and versatile enough.

Also, I would love to see JEJ forced once again to write completely different music for each episode. What he's writing for TWD is great, but hardly much or even challenging.

[Jennifer]

Yay! Some information on Fables is finally being released! Dan Connors revealed that Fables will have many of the same game mechanics that were in The Walking Dead.

This is apparently the reason why the game is taking longer to develop than Telltale originally intended.

[RAnthonyMahan]

Originally Posted by Jennifer

Yay! Some information on Fables is finally being released! Dan Connors revealed that Fables will have many of the same game mechanics that were in The Walking Dead.

This is apparently the reason why the game is taking longer to develop than Telltale originally intended.

Murg...that's a little troubling to hear, to be honest. The Walking Dead was great, but I wouldn't want Telltale to exclusively do games like that.

[Keupajer]

I personally liked the way they made TWD also the gameplay. I would like to see a good story driven game. But what i kind of missed, and is now hoping for, is that you can actually get some kind of advantage from exploring, for exampel items, that will help you during the game.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by RAnthonyMahan

Murg...that's a little troubling to hear, to be honest. The Walking Dead was great, but I wouldn't want Telltale to exclusively do games like that.

Walking Dead had some really interesting mechanics, but in retrospect, it was REALLY limited by sheer feasibility alone. It lived on the mere continuous assurance and teasing that the player could change things than actually delivering significant alternative paths. In the end, the very same people always survive, the very same people always die, a butterfly effect has not been witnessed and of course you weren't able to pick your own team for the final mission. I wondered why people were satisfied with that, but it probably is because the world of video games is almost devoid of skillfully told stories, which TWD game - in the very very narrow boundaries of the zombie genre - made the most of.

But the greater problem is Dan's description of the adventure mechanics:

[...]where do we take adventure games from here? How do we evolve it and make it more of a storytelling medium and less of a puzzle-based medium? But I think we’ve shown a way that you can do it [...] but I don’t know if the people that played Walking Dead on XBLA are ready for an adventure game that comes out that is ‘walk around the world, pick up objects, use them on other objects, put them back in your inventory, combine two items, solve the puzzle.

The adventure genre needs to evolve, I agree wholeheartedly, and I also agree that storytelling is its core, and puzzles have to date mostly impaired a believable narration. But storytelling, by nature, is not interactive and puzzles are; and TWD has absolutely not convinced me that it showed a "way it can be done".

Inventory puzzles are a very dated way of suggesting interactivity, but at least it's a suggestion that works.

[thesporkman]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...-next-gen.aspx

Fables is coming along really well. We’ve gone back in and really tried to take a lot of what we learned from The Walking Dead and get that integrated into the story with Bigby and the characters that he meets. We want to make it a real interesting battle for Bigby between: Should he give in to the wolf side, or should he try to get along and keep everybody safe? There’s a lot of work in trying to make that work.

So... It sounds like the choice mechanic in Fables is going to be more of a two-sided Paragon-Renegade thing. Possibly.

[Jennifer]

Originally Posted by thesporkman

So... It sounds like the choice mechanic in Fables is going to be more of a two-sided Paragon-Renegade thing. Possibly.

That sounds quite interesting actually. And, personally I didn't mind that The Walking Dead's choices didn't affect the outcome, as they did affect the character's relationships (and I liked that the characters responded realistically to you being a jerk to them (or vice-versa). It's something that I've wished for years that adventure games would do [ever since Shenmue when Ryo was a jerk to the girls he met and you didn't have any freedom to change that]).

This choice (if that is indeed what they're planning) sounds interesting too, since it will affect Bigby as a character, but also the people he encounters. If seems to be kind of like how people tried to make a "good" Lee and a "jerk" Lee. But with more of an emphasis by the designers on that point, if done right, we could have a more dramatic difference between one and the other.