Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

The Wolf Among Us - Fables Telltale adventure game

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
Compared with other mediums but compared with other games, Wolf Among Us, the whole series is going to cost more than $ 100,00 in dollars for more or less 10 hours in which 8 are going to be cutscenes but if you guys are talking in the Monopoly money we use as currency here in Brazil, the whole series would cost more than R$ 200,00, that is the double a PC game cost around here. I don't know why TellTale episodes are so fucking expensive, they don't have any gameplay on it and the graphics aren't exactly really advanced stuff.

Uh... Telltale games are always $25 for the whole season.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Compared with other mediums but compared with other games, Wolf Among Us, the whole series is going to cost more than $ 100,00 in dollars for more or less 10 hours in which 8 are going to be cutscenes but if you guys are talking in the Monopoly money we use as currency here in Brazil, the whole series would cost more than R$ 200,00, that is the double a PC game cost around here. I don't know why TellTale episodes are so fucking expensive, they don't have any gameplay on it and the graphics aren't exactly really advanced stuff.

Uh... Telltale games are always $25 for the whole season.
My mistake, for some reason, I tought they were selling each episode for 25$, I read the steam page now.:hearnoevil:
 

Kaldurenik

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 3, 2010
Messages
895
Divinity: Original Sin
Oh in that case its fine... I should learn to read. I though they would sell each episode for 15-25 euro each. :P
 

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
Patron
Joined
Oct 28, 2010
Messages
9,613
Location
Your wallet.
Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Will only buy if the series is good from beginning to end. Just like I do with any TV series. This game is little more than that, actually.
 

Jaesun

Fabulous Ex-Moderator
Patron
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
37,241
Location
Seattle, WA USA
MCA
At $25 bucks I would not expect much, just the usual TellTale stuff. I wish a new Sam And Max series would come out though.

What is really sad is, give Blackthorne or MRY or Himalaya Studios this same exact budget (minus the shitty console focus only Publisher) and we would get one hell of an Adventure Game.
 
Last edited:

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
I would have no idea what to do with such a budget, or even a much smaller one. At least at the moment, with respect to adventure games, my creative process is pretty tightly intertwined with Victor's visuals, so it's not like I could or would go out and hire a bunch of artists. (Though for our next project, there is a dedicated sprite animator.) Maybe I could hire a puzzle designer. :)
 

Redlands

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2008
Messages
983
What is really sad is, give Blackthorne or MRY or Himalaya Studios this same exact budget (minus the shitty console focus only Publisher) and we would get one hell of an Adventure Game.

Be careful what you wish for, because...

I would have no idea what to do with such a budget, or even a much smaller one. At least at the moment, with respect to adventure games, my creative process is pretty tightly intertwined with Victor's visuals, so it's not like I could or would go out and hire a bunch of artists. (Though for our next project, there is a dedicated sprite animator.) Maybe I could hire a puzzle designer. :)

...pretty much sums it up: if you don't know what you'd do with the money, it's almost for the best to not have it.

I mean, look at the Double Fine Kickstarter. They're an established game company with very experienced people on board, but they got more money than they expected, and despite having experience, they managed to fuck things up pretty badly. Or Origin, who started making games too big to fit for the price of floppies that they sacrificed sold themselves to EA.

If you're not used to a level of budget, or are really terrible when it comes to budgeting, you can mess up pretty badly by not understanding the limits still imposed by a larger budget (both at the top - by what's possible with this money at your skill level - and at the bottom - higher budgets usually have higher expectations).
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
...pretty much sums it up: if you don't know what you'd do with the money, it's almost for the best to not have it.
Well, in fairness, if I went around asking for money, I would definitely plan out what to do with it in advance. But, yeah, it's even more problematic when you alter your vision of your game "upwards" to accommodate for more money than you were expecting than when you alter your vision "downwards" because of a smaller budget. Up to a point, belt-tightening imposes discipline and discipline improves craft, while over-indulgence rots discipline and weakens craft. (I think this is true not just for game development but for any number of things; the stories of good people ruined by winning the lottery are more numerous than those of good people ruined by not winning it, though perhaps that's a man-bites-dog phenomenon.) In many instances, I wish KS projects would just say, "We don't need more money, we're going to treat this as pre-orders / profits."

--EDIT--

On reflection, I've come up with how I could spend an essentially infinite sum of money on even an adventure game like Primordia: voice acting and localization. I'm not talking about hiring big-name actors, but just the cost of having solid voice actors, recording them together at the same time in a studio (so that you get a repartee, rather than the awkward "he speaks, pause, then she speaks" routine) I suspect adds up really fast. Then I would hire a really good translation / localization team for all the languages of the player base (and Primordia had a very international fanbase), then hire good voice actors for those languages . . . . Before you know it, I could spend millions! But I think it would be a pretty legitimate way to spend it without compromising anything about the game's vision.
 
Last edited:

Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
Going 2-3 times to the cinema = 3-5 hours. Buying a DVD with a single (relatively new) movie on it = about 15$. Buying a single (relatively new) movie on BluRay = 20-30$.

Except when I buy a game I want a game not a movie.
 

Tommy Wiseau

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2012
Messages
9,424
I think whether the series is ultimately fun -- a criteria that was, in my opinion, met by its starting chapter -- should be more important than cataloging.
 

aris

Arcane
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
11,613
  1. You miss the point. The codex is butthurt (as it always will be) of the (financial) success (or the milking cow) of the walking dead series. That's why everyone here tries to discuss anything else than the game excels at.
  2. And metro is, as always, omnipresent in any thread where the general codex-consensus is that the "game sucks", trying to gather KKK. It's as reliable as gravity.
  3. If a game is fun/entertaining, then that's ultimately the only thing that matters. Games are, after all, entertainment.
 

Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
I think whether the series is ultimately fun -- a criteria that was, in my opinion, met by its starting chapter -- should be more important than cataloging.
  1. So if you ask me to recommend you a good game and I reply, 'Citizen Kane,' you'd have no problem with that?
  2. gaudaost is, as always, redefining new lows of shit taste while posting in his moronic list form
  3. Saying 'games are entertainment' is arguing that playing video games, watching movies, having sex, playing golf, riding a bike, and painting a picture are all fungible activities that all provide the same experience.
  4. The retarded cadre of gaudaost, Tommy Wiseau, HHR, sheek, et al assuredly stick together~
 

aris

Arcane
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
11,613
  1. "Saying 'games are entertainment' is arguing that playing video games, watching movies, having sex, playing golf, riding a bike, and painting a picture are all fungible activities that all provide the same experience." - yeah of course, they all provide for the same basic need: The need for entertainment. Though in different ways.
  2. What are games to you?
 

Tommy Wiseau

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2012
Messages
9,424
I'm curious to know why he's mentioned us along with the rest of those users. (Aside from the fact that we all post from the same IP address, of course. :troll:)

  1. So if you ask me to recommend you a good game and I reply, 'Citizen Kane,' you'd have no problem with that?

The target audience for this game will have likely played other games as well, whereas the average film-goers who saw Citizen Kane don't necessarily share much in common with the former group, not that it matters. Relevant:

Man Who Enjoys Thing Informed He Is Wrong

LOS ANGELES—George Himmelsbaugh, 32, was informed Tuesday that he was incorrect in enjoying a thing he had been deriving pleasure from for many years. Authorities in the field informed Himmelsbaugh that, although he believes his appreciation of the thing to be a matter of subjective personal taste, any positive feelings or satisfaction taken from this are by definition erroneous. Furthermore, sources reported, Himmelsbaugh does not in fact enjoy the thing, but has merely been convinced that he does by the influence of others who also claim to enjoy the thing but who must be insane or developmentally disabled if they actually do. Himmelsbaugh has responded to the information by endeavoring to enjoy the correct things in the future.

Eh, your loss. The game did a really good job of selling the setting I think.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
I remember a scene on Tex Murphy Overseer where you have to invade the home of a murder with him still inside, there wasn't really complicated puzzles, just moving around and doing very basic inventory based puzzles, the trick was that he moved inside the house with you still inside, first he is taking a shower, then eating, then changing clothes, there was a moment where he suddenly entered on the bathroom with you still inside and you had to think quickly what to do... there wasn't a fucking huge circle pointing where you should click. If he finds you, he has a gun, you not, so bye, bye, there wasn't an easy QTE to save you. You can enter in any room of the house, even if he is in there. There wasn't this very annoying one room/cutscene/one room/cutscene bullshit. TellTale can place as many QTEs as they want, they aren't going to achieve the same tension of that scene. If you are going to make a movie/game, you have to make the game part interact with the movie part, if the scene invokes tension, the gameplay should invoke tension as well. Actually, some FMVs did a much better job at being movie/games even if at that time the production values were laughable, who would thought TellTale would make them look like incline? QTEs cause boredom while you are watching a scene that supposedly should cause tension and adrenaline. If you are investigating a scene, you should need to think a little instead of the character solving everything for you.

I was almost sleeping in the middle of the Woodsman fight, in the middle of a certain chase scene and on another fight scene later. Why those fucking too long and pointless cutscenes? Because it was to show a dramatic fight with big ass red circles that you would miss only if blind and QTEs so easy that makes Farenheit look challenging. Just filler to make an episode longer than it should. I didn't even paid attention to what was going on because I was concentrated in seeing the next QTE. Fuck, even Grey Matter that has easy as fuck puzzles that almost solve themselves for you (I consider it a movie/game as well) was way better in terms of gameplay and I don't think Jane Jensen had even close the money TellTale has now. I don't like TellTale games because they make interactive fiction but because they are lazy as fuck. QTEs is the equivalent of a game designer saying: "Fuck this, I give up." You could see the conflict:

Why we need to bore the player with those long and pointless cutscenes if the story could get to the point way faster?
But we need to give them something to do.
You could make big hotspots where they could click once to see some random commentary of the main character and other cutscenes.Make sure you don't go overboard and allow them to do somehting useful and interesting with those hotspots. You shouldn't let them feeling confused.
But that isn't enough, they are going to end sleeping if they do that stuff all the time. They are going to ask questions, like ask why you can't Interact with the objects on interesting ways?
Yeah, we need to distract them with QTEs to cut the tedium. I just don't like it because we need to shoehorn QTEs everywhere and make scenes that should be short and to the point way too long.
We can use them to extend the length of the episode.
So it will be QTEs and click once on every circle in the screen until something happens?
We can tease them with fake C&C.
But Bioware isn't doing this for years?
Yeah, worked for them, isn't it?
Why people are buying our games?
Because they are desperate to play games where the writing isn't so awful that makes you want to commit suicide from shame of belonging to the human race, so desperate to the point of accepting the things we make. Another possibility is that they like to have a free hand to masturbate themselves at same time as well.
Well, I don't care, as long as they are paying.
 

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,076
Location
Azores Islands
Finished the game last night, i enjoyed the narrative and the visuals, but the gameplay is simply not there...

The player is even more relegated to a spectator role than in the Walking Dead series, very disappointing in that regard.
 

drae

Augur
Joined
Aug 9, 2013
Messages
179
As a fan of interactive fiction, I'm loving the recent resurgence it has enjoyed. The Walking Dead was brilliant, and so was episode 1 of Fables. Hopefully this will see more big budget interactive fiction being made in the future.
 

aris

Arcane
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
11,613
  1. Wolf among us has failure states (which is actually more than you can say about most classic lucas arts adventure game) as well as mechanics. So among the specific things he said, wolf among us, has them both.
  2. I agree on the thing he said with Dear Esther, it is basically a tour, a exhibition.
  3. Saying that Dear Esther and wolf among us (for those who say that) are the same however, is completely wrong. I can accept it if you want to call wolf among us an interactive story (but again, what keeps monkey island from being an interactive story? In Monkey Island you can't even have a failure state, everything is set in stone and must happen in the exact sequence that the developer intended), but it is not an exhibition. It is not comparable with Dear Esther.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom