By Adam Smith on February 16th, 2012 at 10:06 am.
Telltale have begun the process of explaining their take on The Walking Dead, which you may know as a brilliant but at times excessively brutal comic, or a tellybox show that I find strangely unappealing. There are three screenshots, all of which can be embiggened below, and a developer diary that the game will not be an episodic escort mission. Sorry, I’m mistaken, it’s not a developer diary at all. It’s the first episode of “an online talk show…hosted by AJ LoCascio (the voice of Marty McFly in Telltale’s Back to the Future: The Game series)”. The talk show guests (developers) don’t go on to say that the game won’t make Alec weep in frustration, as Jurassic Park did, but let’s hope not.
In terms of describing the feel of The Walking Dead, they talk the talk, but can they walk the walk? I still don’t feel like I know very much about how the game will play, except that I’ll be walking around, and interacting with things and characters. I’ll make choices and those choices will matter, and it won’t be a “headshot game”, although from Telltale that would have been the most astonishing revelation of all.
16/02/2012 at 10:10 Orija says:
The Walking Dead show ruined the atmosphere of the comics just like Hollywood is wont to do. Heck, even the comics have begun to suck because the writer just keeps dragging the story.
16/02/2012 at 10:35 Terragot says:
Agreed, although the TV show did have some golden moments; the gun inside the tank, that new hill billy with the crossbow whom they introduced was pretty fun.
I remember the author of the comic saying that he wanted the TV show to be different to the comics so it retained the will they die, won’t they die atmosphere of the comic.
16/02/2012 at 10:48 Nameless1 says:
The real problem of that serie is the utterly horrible screenwriting (after just the first two episodes).
It’s amazing how incredibly bad It is and how It has ruined a show with a lot of potential.
16/02/2012 at 10:55 Carolina says:
I’m fine with the TV show being different from the comic. I like to be surprised. The problem is, the TV show is crap, and the few good moments it has are essentially taken from the comic, so it doesn’t really have any sort of redeeming value. It’s garbage full of two-dimensional, shallow characters with childish motivations, an awful script, and silly, cheap direction.
What a shame.
About the game, I’m glad these guys are basing most of their work in the comic book, and I surely hope they don’t screw it up like the morons at AMC. It looks interesting so far, and I like the somewhat cartoonish art style.
16/02/2012 at 10:57 JKjoker says:
the first ep of the walking dead’s tv series was a freaking lie, i loved that ep but then the rest of the series never even got remotely close to that level of fun, there were a few moments but most of it was sooo boring (it seemed to get worse the more characters were in the scene), look at Jericho if you want a far better “survival” series
16/02/2012 at 11:00 roryok says:
I agree about the comic, it’s just gone on too long and they’ve run out of things to do with it. The TV show on the other hand, is mid way through season 2 and they’re barely getting into the swing of things yet.
In a TV show there’s so much more character development you can do over a comic, or even a film. I’m looking forward to where they go with it from here.
16/02/2012 at 11:00 Juan Carlo says:
The TV show has been consistently awful since it’s pretty good pilot. I can’t think of another TV show that has had such a steep decline in quality so fast. It’s a really cheaply done show, too. The entirety of season 2 has basically taken place on 1 farm. Which I wouldn’t mind, if the writing was good, but it’s not. So if they are going to have such terrible writing they should at least kill off some characters now and again to make things more exciting.
But it’s ratings keep going up (it’s currently like the highest non-sports program on American cable). So apparently somebody likes it.
16/02/2012 at 11:02 roryok says:
I like it!
16/02/2012 at 11:03 roryok says:
and I hate how you can’t use capitals to emphasise the letter I. I nearly typed “EYE like it!”
16/02/2012 at 11:30 Optimaximal says:
Well, there is the em tag, you could also use asterisks… or EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!1!!
16/02/2012 at 12:05 Maldomel says:
I can only agree with you guys. The TV show was bad past the two first episodes (haven’t wtached season 2 because the first season ending was really too bad). As for the comics, I love it, but it’s starting to feel like they have already done much of what they could about the whole survival stuff. Same with character psychology, the strong point of the comic. You can’t really make your characters evolve constantly, cause that would mean changing their minds and points of views all the time.
16/02/2012 at 12:53 InternetBatman says:
I never got into the comic because I read the horrible things Kirkman did to Ultimate X-men first.
16/02/2012 at 13:59 Tyshalle says:
The Comic has been pretty shit ever since they left the prison. The most recent book of 6 has been the most pointless of all. Guess you can’t blame the guy, he’s been doing it for over a decade I think.
The TV show is one of the best things on television right now (alongside Sons of Anarchy and Justified). It’s exactly what I’m looking for in a show about a zombie apocalypse. A lot of small moments punctuated by explosive violence, and a zombie show that isn’t about the horrors of zombies. Aside from the godawful season 1 finale, I couldn’t be happier with the show.
16/02/2012 at 16:15 Reapy says:
I like the show because its zombies, but the pace is pretty slow, and most of the characters are just outright stupid, and there really isn’t one single redeeming female character on the show to boot.
Still, I can’t help but find myself every episode yelling at them to build a fence. How hard is it to put up a wood fence to block off the zombies if they do get there? They keep going places and getting all lackadaisical like the entire world population hasn’t turned into slow-walking eating machines. If they are going to settle down in an area, dig a trench, put up a mother fucking fence.
I mean that first season, they had tin cans on a wire as their zombie defense. Fucking tin cans! Sure, I’ll spend 22 hours digging graves for the dead I foresee, instead of putting up a mother fucking fence. Damnit they all deserve to die.
Eh anyway, I still enjoy watching it, cause its zombies, but yeah, it really has gone downhill. I haven’t read the comics at all, so at least the good stuff is still a fun surprise for me, but I really wish to see this show get much better. Stop having the characters act stupid, just have them act smart and put them in shitty situations if you want bad stuff to happen.
18/02/2012 at 19:58 Joc says:
You must be the only people who echo my entire frustration with the Walking Dead TV series. It’s the worst thing I’ve seen on television in recent years because it tries to be so sincere, yet has awful progression, terrible writing, and characters I find it difficult to care about because they’re all written as morons. I watch it every week purely for its cathartic value, yet I can never remember any of their names! I hope they all die. And in the TV show.
16/02/2012 at 10:13 Tretiak says:
QTE…
Second screen: Press ‘a’ to get away from wa… crawler.
Third screen: Press ‘a’ to close the door.
16/02/2012 at 10:17 Giant, fussy whingebag says:
Repeatedly tap ‘x’ to repeatedly bash a zo.. (oops, not allowed to call them that for some reason!) walker in the head.
16/02/2012 at 10:20 Tretiak says:
IF mode would be nicer:
‘A nasty walker is attacking you. What do you do?’
> smash walker
‘I can’t see that’.
> smash nasty walker
‘With what?’
> smash nasty walker with hands
‘I can’t see that’
etc.
16/02/2012 at 11:02 roryok says:
Or how about point-and-click
[use balloon on walker]
“I can’t use the balloon with that”
[pick up badge from zombified corpse]
“It says ‘ask me about grim fandango’. I don’t want people always asking me about grim fandango”
16/02/2012 at 10:17 Saxocat says:
I am delighted to see Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman in any situation. I just wish they were speaking into a microphone with Chris Remo and then sending the audio file to me.
16/02/2012 at 11:00 terry says:
Ahem…. http://idlethumbs.net .
16/02/2012 at 17:09 outoffeelinsobad says:
Same here. But I didn’t know Big Bird worked for TellTale Games.
16/02/2012 at 10:50 JKjoker says:
i watched the interview and all i cant think about is “Amy + Tell Tale’s Jurassic Park + the worst parts of TV’s Walking Dead”, i wish they would stop talking and just show the game
16/02/2012 at 11:21 Drake Sigar says:
Already got a top notch Walking Dead video game coming, it’s called Dead State.
17/02/2012 at 09:08 JB says:
^This. Exactly this.
16/02/2012 at 11:44 hosndosn says:
“Choices will matter” is starting to make me cringe. It doesn’t mean anything. Press “X” to choice. Yea, great. They’re writing 2 half-assed stories instead of one and at one point you can chose the only branch you’ll ever see unless you play through the game several times (which you likely won’t if the story you discovered first isn’t any good).
Honestly, I like The Walking Dead. But I mostly like it because it’s the only classic George A Romero zombie story told in either comics or television. As far as storytelling goes, it’s mostly cheesy soap opera and deeply illogical survival decisions.
Why doesn’t Telltale do their own stories? The Sam and Max episodes kinda worked and I respect them for reviving the genre like that. But why are they just soaking up licenses left and right even if they don’t know what to do with them (Jurassic Park anyone?). This will be a quick-time fest. I’ll say it out loud. No way the gameplay won’t suck. What is there even to do with that story for an adventure? I actually don’t like that they’re so proud of not having any shooting. An adventure FPS with mild combat focus actually would work, IMO. And it’s exactly the kind of thing Telltale can’t do because they’re bad at doing anything beyond classic adventure gameplay. I don’t understand why, at this point they can’t come up with their own games where they can use their own kind of humor and model it around the kind of gameplay they’re best at.
Not excited about this at all, which is a shame since I like Telltale in general.
16/02/2012 at 13:00 Kdansky says:
Their poker game was atrocious. The new Monkey Island episodes were impressively dry, with only a handful of decent jokes and puzzles each.
16/02/2012 at 12:41 WhatKateDoes says:
I really like the series, tho it did lose footing after Frank Darabont got fired (that guy knows how to do grim, seen “The Mist”‘s ending??) but I still enjoy it, more so as I dont really know where its going since it deviated from the comic’s key plot spine. The comic itself is perhaps just a little TOO grim.
As for the game. No. They’ll ruin it. Like they did Jurassic Park. Its now a by-the-numbers “convert popular zeitgeist genre thingmabob into our basic game template”
We already have Left4dead, Dead Island et all, Film has Romero. TV has The Walking Dead. We have our zombie incarnations fine already thank you.
16/02/2012 at 19:50 Phantoon says:
The pacing is all wrong. In the comics things happen fast, and a lot. The show just seemed to be too slow.
Also, Dead Island was terrible. Guns not doing anything via headshot? Scaling zombies? Too RPG for a zombie game, but not even good RPG.
16/02/2012 at 14:36 beema says:
There’s nothing strange about how unappealing the TV show is. It’s just not a good show. People moping around and yelling at eachother for 40 minutes and then a couple minutes of a “walker” getting killed every goddamned week is not fun to watch.
16/02/2012 at 15:49 theblazeuk says:
I enjoy the TV show a great deal.
16/02/2012 at 20:19 Kefren says:
Funny seeing this, I was just re-reading all my Walking Deads, up to vol. 13 this morning (which made me a bit late for work).