Meh I doubt we'll see her again, she felt like a "special guest star" with her own neat little storyline to wrap up before the episode was done. I've never been to Savannah but this is Georgia where the rich white folks own mcmansions all over the damned place. I wish Jake and Sean wrote the actual comic at this point.
Definitely the weakest episode. Previous points about magic zombies and seeing the wires in how staged setpieces were and the choices themselves lacking oomph are all well said. I'm usually pretty sanguine about adventure games especially simply constraining away sensible behavior and actions, because you can only script so many things. Usually. But for me one of the most annoying little bits of that kind of thing in the game was the flat inability to rebury the dog after getting its collar. It's a reeking carcass and there's loose dirt right there. Then again, as demonstrated later, Lee is terrible at actually covering up dead things with dirt. Slow and ineffective, and once he gets distracted, too bad, that foot etc will be sticking out forever. My pick for most unintentionally funny result of game constraints is the bloody locker that Lee laments being unable to open without a combination. Because school lockers are built like Fort Knox. You need a combination or dynamite, there's just no getting into such secure things otherwise! I'm sure I missed a pre-req click or two to get into it, but by that point I was just wanting to finish the episode due to it thoroughly not grabbing me. Runner-up funny moment is Dr. What Have We Become, M.D., after getting shanked and bleeding out, collapsing by the camcorder, reaching up and hitting stop and eject without messing with the camera's orientation or knocking over the tripod or anything, taking out the tape, neatly closing up the camera again, and pocketing the tape securely before allowing himself to expire. I don't know for sure if he rewound the tape first, but I'm going to assume he did because he was already being pretty thorough about things. Honorable mention to "there was a boat in the shed we never bothered to look in before" bit. It tried, but lost form by our heroes already being pretty dumb about hanging around in open streets having conversations after nearby bells and gunshots and whatnot. So not actually searching the spaces they're holing up in is par for the course. They were lucky there weren't thirty magic zombies packed into a broom closet or something, really. The Ben choice would have had more oomph, consequences aside, if he'd been just slightly less of a singularity of useless idiocy. However, in Ben's defense, he doesn't get his foot trapped as a hobby (twice in the same episode, game? Really?), so in retrospect maybe I should feel better about immediately choosing to let him drop.
Also it's probably for the best you didn't get the locker tape because the camera would have been even more of a goofy plot device since it records the doctor after he's apparently turned on his camera to record him pulling his pants up after sex because that's what sextapes are right?
I think he got his doctorate from the same school as the professor at the beginning of The DaVinci Code. (Dr. Become was always jealous because he never did as well in the Writing Coded Messages In Your Own Blood classes).
I agree with many of your points, though I think this is easily the worst episode of the bunch. Of course, worst doesn't mean horrible - I've liked the entire series. But there was just too much garbage in this one. Too many false emotional points. For example, I liked the starving kid thing...then I was beaten over the head with it. Kenny, angst ...blah blah blah. And why do I have to stare into the grave 4 times while covering him up? It just ruined it for me. I was kind of looking forward to dealing with humans for a while, only to find something else going on at Crawford. Ok, I can deal with the unexpected, except it became a rote flashback to episode 1 only with worse writing. I wasn't too fond of the puzzles and none of the morality choices seemed to make much of a difference. Molly was a good character, but otherwise there was a lot of backtracking, unexciting zombie puzzles and a whole lot of teenage angst instead of real drama.
Only 2 issues were Clem magically getting into the shed, and the magic swarm of zombies trying to get into the nurses station, I was all wtf , how did they get here? I am not a good reviewer , but I feel Ep4 was as good as Ep1, I sort of feel Episode 2 was the one I didn't care so much for (maybe its from Season 2 TV series farm exhaustion)... Ep3 was so far the best in the series, and most emotional. :p ***Lazy copy from Qt3: Possible spoilers, click at your own risk! WTF is up with the final stats screen? Did this happen for everyone or is just my game fubar'ed? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=103081470 ALSO, people your choices MATTER! See my final group screen heading into Episode 5: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=103081491 ***
When searching for Clementine, if you go to the side of the shed you'll find a vent cover that has been removed from the wall.
ah I didn't notice that, BUT I do recall seeing the vent from the outside at one point, good catch! Also my stats are working, I had to reload and play part 8 of the episode again. crew: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=103081491 choices: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=103092282
Finished up Episode 4 last night and for the first time in this series, all of my choices were in the lower percentile of all players. I might be a horrible person.
Episode 5 is due next week #TheWalkingDead Season Finale from @telltalegames hits 11/20 PSN NA, 11/21 PSN EU, XBLA, PC/MAC, & iOS. #ForClementine twitter.com/telltalegames/…— Telltale Games (@telltalegames) November 15, 2012
Oh, I missed out on the final achievement too. Part of me wants to go back and replay the chapter for it, but ultimately I think that would cheapen the story for me. I made the choices I made and I was content with them.
Yeah, I'm with you Kalle, I don't know if I could go through that again. Blackadar, you just get achievements periodically throughout the story (not sure if you're playing this game or not) and I didn't get the final one. From checking around, looks like a bug, but I think I'm just going to live with it.
I thought the epilogue was pretty weak sauce, and look forward to discussing it once folks have had time to play through. Did anyone else get something like "Chap 1: Desc 1:1 You and 49% of other players Desc 3:1" as their final stats screen? I'm thinking it's sloppy coding on TT's part, just like this bug for the final cheevo you guys are describing.
Just bought this tonight and played Episode 1 until I reached Macon. I, uh, won't be sleeping tonight.
Spoilers for episode 5 from this point forward! I’m writing this before having read the thread because I don’t want to bias my thoughts. I had a full group for this episode. I’m going to start with the good. The ending was fucking masterful. The game kills its hero, and it works, because it doesn’t feel like something pulled out of the game’s ass to try and create feeling. This is something that fits in with the game’s world and has been built up over the course of the episode; hell, a lot of episode 5 is about ignoring or denying what’s happening to you. Not only that, but the game brought it back around to where it all started, just you and Clementine, the emotional heart of this game. The final moments together had tears rolling down my cheeks. And bravo for keeping the game from Lee’s perspective and not switching me to control Clementine. I dislike when games do that, it reduces my feeling of being in the game as an individual, and now I become a remote controller of events. It was all the more affecting from being seen through his eyes, helpless by the radiator. Then the black followed by silent credits. The “what you did” for all the episodes was a nice touch. Not sure how I feel about the “villain”. Perhaps if he’d been less insane and challenged me harder on the choices I’d made it would have been a more engaging scene. As it was he never managed to leave the evil kidnapper box in my mind. I’m going to take a point away for putting something after the credits. That’s just chickening out on what was up until then a brilliant, and final, end. You want to do more? Great. Do it. And release it. Don’t half-arse some “cliff-hanger” after the credit sequence that your writers will need to hand-wave when they decide what they want to do next season. Talk about leaving a bad taste at the end. I’m going to pretend it didn’t happen. Beyond the ending what this episode drove home once more how important the Lee/Clementine relationship was. She isn’t present for most of the episode and I think it suffered for this. The group dynamic is just too dry with Christa and Omid being pretty passive and under-developed. I appreciated the scene in the attic where you have the rotating sit-down chat though. Bar the ending the attic was the best scene in this episode. I’m going to take a moment to reach back to episode 3 and how, while it was I think the best episode, it was also the worst. It was a really unsubtle mid-season reset. Clementine is the emotional heart of the game, but the people around Lee give him ways to express his feelings, or review his morals. Episode 3 takes out two of the three primary support characters (Lilly, Carly/Doug, Kenny) which rather forces your hand when it comes to the group dynamic. Before you had to choose between the factions, or even life beyond Clementine, now you’re left with little to do but work with Kenny to survive and integrate the new characters. It doesn’t work for me and the last two episodes suffer because all that character development has been thrown away which means Lee loses additional ways to express himself. The Ben/Kenny conflict is grown specifically to replace the Lilly/Kenny conflict, but it’s a far more passive conflict from your perspective, it’s not determining the power structure within the group and its entire future as the Lilly/Kenny conflict did. With Carly (haven’t played with Doug) you lost the close-friend/romantic interest. It removes Lee’s route to express himself more fully as a person and on his views on the group dynamic. Really, the group never comes back from episode 3 where you had Lilly/Kenny, Lilly/Carl/Lee, Carly/Doug/Lee, Lee/Clementine, Kenny/Ben. So many conflicts within conflicts, it was brilliant. After that it becomes Lee/Clementine and Kenny/Ben, and that’s it. It would have worked had episode 3 let you keep Lilly or Carly/Doug in the group. Christa and Omid were never really needed, they’re just there to fill the gap created. They’re too passive a part of the group to really make an impact. Indeed, Omid is out-of-it for most of episode four and a good chunk of five. Christa’s pregnancy is hinted at (and indeed Lee just mentions it out of the blue in one conversation), but it never really impacts anything. The episode suffers contrived death syndrome. Kenny died defending Ben, but the scene doesn’t work because he is using his one bullet on Ben but could have done so long before the walkers arrive. His death was unnecessary, therefore it feels forced and thus doesn’t work. It’s supposed to be Kenny finally forgiving Ben but I think they fluffed it. However, it also speaks to the possibilities of this episode, what if Ben hadn’t been there? The dead couple in the bed was like the boy in the attic, but done right I think. Or at least far less heavy-handed. I’m unsure though what I’m supposed to think happened to the doctor’s group. Brie was part of that right? I think I like that this was never answered. This episode felt quite short. I also felt like I had much less to do than in previous episodes, there were more cut scene chats and less Lee initiates bits. You can see some of the joins regarding all the group setups, primarily in Lee going first all the time even though it would make more sense for someone to jump ahead and give him a hand when he lands. Still, I thought they handled things well and there’s room for a few different ways for the journey to play out. On that note I’d like to see Telltale be more adventurous with choice & consequence. It was all too railroaded with the big choices being undone by Telltale to keep things on budget. I want to see more conversations make reference to things that have happened. The little reference to the Larry incident worked well and I want to see more of that! It’s been a great series with really strong writing, and I want to give a nod to the way Clem's parents were handled. It wasn't dwelt on, it wasn't driven home, it simply was. Such an important point in her story and it was handled brilliantly. Almost enough to make me overlook how Clem gets Lee into that building. The engine needs fixing so it never hitches, and I want to see them be more adventurous with choice & consequence than they were this series, though episodes four and five was a step in the right direction, so maybe my dislike is just the giant mid-season reset. Still, I will definitely check out their next season though. Once my eyes have dried.
It's because you've disabled see the outcomes to your choices in the game settings. I think the episode has a few moments like this where it hopes you don't think about it too hard.
Was the woman on the video at the end of episode 2 supposed to be the wife of the guy who kidnaps Clem? I was never sure how that tied into anything.
No, I don't believe the woman in episode 2 has anything to do with Clem's kidnapper. He mentions his wife leaving him with their daughter, and then finding them both dead in the street not long after.
And so it ends...... Damn I was tearing up more than Clem at the end. This was just a fantastic 5 episode series. My Episode 5 Choices People Screen 1 People Screen 2
Wow, I totally didn't surrender my weapon but I didn't know you could kill the guy yourself. Perhaps it's because I clicked so fast when the chance came that I missed a clever option or something. As for those of you who made Clem shoot you at the end... you suck. I wish I'd had the foresight to screenshot my choices as I went through the game though!
You can view the stats screen for every episode. Just reload your save, pick the chapter and click the stats button at the bottom middle.
Just finished episode 2.... Holy shit this game is good. I was planning on playing all the way through tonight but I really think I need to take a break and let that those first 2 sink in. Fuck me.
I liked it, there's some things I would have done differently but the whole is pretty damned fantastic.
I'm done, and like a lot of you, somehow got dust in my eye at the end. Kalle, I understand what you mean about not replaying the episode. I doubt I will replay this - I think I would make the very same choices throughout unless I went against who I am, and that just wouldn’t be fun for me. Really, credit must go to the creators, I was that personally invested. So, kudos to them.
I plan on a second play through, saving people I didn't the first time. Probably around Christmas, gotta catch up on some AAA releases I have half started.
Just finished it. There were some issues I might have with some small parts of it, but really, I can't go through bit by bit and state the little problems I had. In the end I found the whole experience to be overall fantastic and whether or not I found an episode weak or a choice a little contrived, the takeaway is that it was an amazing game, an incredible story (and not 'for a game') and without a doubt the best adaption of the source material. Including the source material itself. Hell, I didn't even mind the post-credits sequence. And to those who didn't force Clem to make the hard choice of making certain you didn't become a walker, you suck!
I played all five episodes in the last few days and I loved it. There are a few issues that could have used some more work, but in general the game was well told and I always had the feeling that my decisions actually did something despite the story being on rails.
I do have to say that the last zombie killing sequence was some hot bullshit. First time it almost instantly failed me for no reason and the second because I didn't just click constantly. Got it third time but really fuck that part of the series.
No, it's the woman you find when you're scouting for the bandit camp, who threatens to kill you with a crossbow. She was in league with the bandits until they killed her daughter. She became fixated on Clementine. It ties in by showing you that the bandits are aware of the group at the motel, and that your group (especially Clementine) are in danger.
That was one hell of an ending. We're well into spoilers now, yeah? Yeah. Therefore: But then the final act made all such nits unpicked. Damn.
Which when you think about it, is something pretty rare amongst computer games. But that's just it, by that point there's nothing on the tape you don't already know. It felt like it was supposed to be a reveal, but I couldn't see what its purpose was.
