The cataclysmic shift in quality and expectations between TWDG and S2 really is mind-boggling. As I’ve pointed out, Telltale’s latest games at the time were Jurassic Park: The Game and Law & Order: Legacies. Nobody was expecting their most recent licenced work to big a massive hit, let alone a major GOTY winner and possible codifier for a new subgenre of video games. Then to follow-up such an overwhelming success with such a cut rate, half-assed, careless trainwreck was a move so cynical even I never would have seen it coming.

I always thought the one silver lining to the crushing disappointment that was the Star Was prequels was it hardened me to disappointment, like nothing could ever really shock me like that again. And for fifteen years, it seemed to hold true, then I played S2, and now here I am getting ready to write a SECOND novel sized fanfic to help cope with grief. It really is unbelievable, even now, a year later.

At least with the Star Wars Prequels, there was a fifteen-year gap between them and the original trilogy. Telltale spun around so fast between TWDG and S2 it almost seemed like a deliberate attempt to sabotage the series. I suppose it did explain the mass exodus of the remainder of the company’s old guard and all the major players behind S1. If the management would sign off on such a disaster, God only knows what they were demanding from the creative staff.

I think a better question is why people like JT Petty were allowed to write for TWDG? Was it his “work” as Outlast’s writer, where crazy people are literally killer monsters that won over Telltale? Or was it him directing and writing Mimic 3? Or does he work cheap and fast and Telltale didn’t give a fuck what happened? I’m leaning towards the latter.

Ideas are easy. Execution is hard. Anyone can have a good idea, but putting it to practice and making it work is what separates a success from a failure. This is precisely one of the things that make S2 so frustrating, it constantly fails at things TWDG succeeded at. The first game actually created a great blueprint for Telltale to use going forward for their titles, and they completely botched it anyway! =P

I’m torn on this issue. As I noted before, the limitations imposed on the original The Walking Dead Game, along with the lack of expectations for it to become a breakout success, may have been what enabled it to succeed in the first place. Despite being a licensed work, TWDG didn’t have much to connect it to the franchise other than a few minor character cameos in the first episode, which were insignificant, a character from the comic so minor she was little more than a name, who was later declared not the same character anyway, and then zombies and a theme of family, both of which are common in modern fiction and aren’t exclusive to The Walking Dead. Even being set in Georgia is fairly irrelevant, it easily could have been anywhere. 

The fact that the game was just some side project allowed to run off on its own, free from any hard connections or expectations from the franchise, is one of the reasons ended up great. It wasn’t just some adaptation or expansion of some other well-known work where people would demand certain characters show up or certain plot points. It was free to be its own story and the creative staff could pursue their own characters and their own themes in their own controlled environment.

The irony of course is TWDG’s massive success meant it suddenly created the same expectations and demands that likely would have doomed it had they been there in the first place. “You have to have important choices!” “Lots of people need to die!” “We want Clementine!” I’ve actually seen people on TTG boards, even people I normally respect, say “No Clem. No Sale.” Where I can certainly understand people wanting to see more of her, it feels so tone deaf to say you won’t even entertain the idea of playing another game in the series without her when before TWDG, she didn’t exist. Is it not possible the same people who created a character you loved, can’t also create other characters and other stories you’d fall in love with?

I remember I became very worried for the series the moment 400 Days was announced. Them pushing a new singular episode so quickly after TWDG racked up the accolades reeked of an attempt to cash in on the series as soon as possible. TWDG, even though episodic, felt complete as a single work. Suddenly saying there will be one more special episode seemed counter-intuitive. The title was concerning, casually announcing a massive jump in time from where TWDG ended. And the fact that 400 days was the last thing the S1 staff did was deeply disappointing to me. I was shocked to see Sean Vanaman himself, S1′s head writer, had written the awful Russel & Nate section, which felt like an exercise in inexplicability.

Prior to the announcement of 400 Days, I, like a lot of fans, speculated about what a sequel could entail. Personally, I didn’t want to see Clementine in a sequel, at least not so soon. She was such complex and great character, further complicated by her input with her as Lee, that it felt like it would be nearly impossible to continue her story without the most careful of planning. And her popularity would demand any story she was involved with be about her, severely limiting the creative staff’s options to tell a new story.

The crazy recommendation I had, and even sent to Telltale (or at least one of the email addresses they listed on their website) in the form of a fan letter, was to simply do another story with a wholly original cast, whose only connection to the first game would be that it’s set in the same universe. But, the hook would be two of the characters in this story would be revealed to be the people Clementine saw on the hill, shown at the end by having them simply spot Clementine where we last saw her in the first game.

I guess it sounded insane, but I thought it may have been the best compromise between financial and creative demands. This suggestion would put Clem’s story on hold and give the creative staff some much needed time to plan out the next part of her journey. It assures there’s another TWDG product to financially capitalize on the first game’s success. Deliberately divorcing it from the first TWDG installment would avoid expectations that would be created by caving to fan demand, allowing for more creative freedom to make another story, while ending on a promise to ultimately give fans what they want in the next installment, which the creators might be better prepared for with two characters they can craft now to play a role in Clem’s story later.

Ultimately an outlandish suggestion on my part (and purely dreaming that some random fan letter would convince anyone of anything). But I did make more reasonable ones on the forums. I suggested having Clementine as just part of the follow-up’s cast. Whoever our player character was wouldn’t have a special relationship with Clem, so as not to undercut Lee’s role in Clem’s life, and our decisions as Lee would affect some of Clem’s actions and dialogue, effectively letting us see how our tenure as her guardian changed her. This keeps her in the story, our S1 decisions color her a little in a way that could be meaningful, but she’s kept in an NPC role where her growth as a character can be kept consistent but intriguing, possibly ending with setting Clem up as a protagonist in the third installment.

I guess the momentum was impossible for Telltale to ignore, although I doubt they even wanted to ignore it, despite their claim of not wanting to be known as “The Walking Dead” company. I only found out later the original writing staff had left the company before S2, and speaking with a friend who had followed Telltale from their earliest point and click days, he told me members of the company’s old guard had slowing been dropping out over the years, and after TWDG the last big names still there moved onto their own companies and projects.

So between fan demands, likely new pressure from Kirkman or Skybound, and a business seeing money on the table, while the people who made it possible walk away, I guess all the pieces were in place for TWDG’s follow up to be a disaster, where Clementine is unceremoniously shoved into the role of player character where she wandered through a broken and cut up story that ultimately succumbs to cheap pandering by resurrecting Kenny when Clementine alone didn’t have enough nostalgia to carry the weight of S2′s failings.

Before playing S2, or even hearing about it, I was dead set on us not playing as Clementine, at least not yet. She had just been thrown into the world alone, barely able to fight off a single walker with Lee’s help, and as intriguing as I might find playing a game that realistically depicts a nine-year-old in a horrible world, I figured Telltale would never sell a game where our PC is so powerless. It just seemed like there was no way to make it work without wrecking Clementine’s character in the process or breaking my suspension of disbelief. And I didn’t want a repeat of S1, with someone adopting Clem for a while and Clem leaning on them for everything. They already did that.

The irony is while I could claim S2 proved all my greatest fears to be well founded, it suddenly made me realize how another story with Clem could both be believable but without a need to repeat S1′s formula of partnering her with an adult. Sarah, or a character like her, was the answer. Another “child” character, relatable to Clem while being distinct from her. Someone physically older but more emotionally naive, allowing a natural way to empower Clem with her relative wisdom to Sarah, while having an ally who could help her overcome her size limitations, but isn’t so strong herself that she’s a guardian to Clem but a peer, which allows for a completely different relationship than the one she had with Lee.

It… it was right there. It was the missing piece of the puzzle and it was right next to the rest of the puzzle! It just needed to be put in the right place. I could not stop thinking about the possibilities of these two characters. It’s why I wrote my own version of S2 over the winter. It’s why I’m planning to write a follow-up to that story, because there’s so much more that can be done. …and S2 just threw Sarah away like rotten fruit that couldn’t be gladder to be rid of, the exact thing they needed, and even CREATED, and they didn’t see it.

So I guess to answer your questions: A sequel was never needed for TWDG, it was a complete work in itself that stands on it own. Even if not needed, a sequel need not be a disaster as there were numerous ways to continue TWDG’s story in ways that not only satisfy but expand on the first game’s creative and commercial success. But a sequel to TWDG was likely doomed before it started by the overwhelming success of the first game, because the actual sequel we got seemed like it did have the components needed to succeed, but a combination of executive meddling and possible lack of foresight on the creative staff prevented them from ever coming together.

I guess you could say, there was a small but still realistic chance a sequel to TWDG could have navigated the pitfalls that would prevent it from being everything it should have been, but it didn’t happen…

Well I’m glad someone finds my ranting and rambling useful. =P

I did think about doing an in-depth breakdown of S2 in its entirety. I used to have a gaming blog where… well, where I mostly bitched and complained about things that had been bugging me for years. I had done a complete breakdown of Metroid: Other M and the movie Prometheus for it. And my biggest inspiration WAS the Plinkett reviews. So what you’re suggesting does feel like it’s squarely (roundly?) in my wheelhouse.

At the time I played S2, I had stopped blogging for about a year and seriously thought about making an exception for just it. I had even started writing my introduction, but trying to piece it all together in my head and realizing I’d probably have to replay it again to do a proper analysis felt overwhelming and for something I wanted to stop thinking about. Ultimately I didn’t want to put myself put myself through all this misery of reliving such a crushing disappointment and all probably for an audience of next to nobody. (Where were you then! =O)

But I was still reeling from the disappointment and had to do something about it. In the couple of months after No Going Back came out, I spent a lot of time on Telltale’s official message boards, discussing all the problems of S2. And as I did that I’d often suggest better ways they could have handled the story. And after a while I had made so many of these suggestions that I had pretty much constructed an entire outline for a rewritten Season 2 in my head. So I was like:

“Why am I bothering making these suggestions to a company that doesn’t care and couldn’t do anything with them even if they did care? Screw it, I’ll just write it all down as my own version of the story.”

And I spent the first three months of this year doing exactly that. Now I’m back to complaining about and dissecting S2 somewhere else, so I guess that didn’t cure me. Maybe some day, once I move past the emotional aspects and can look at its failings a little more detached, I could do a full start to finish examination of EVERYTHING that was wrong with S2. But I don’t think I have the energy or patience to take on the subject as a whole at this time.

Still, feel free to send me asks though, as I’m an attention whore at heart and I usually get worked up enough to dive into certain aspects of S2 just by having someone bring up part of it. Or even ask me about S1, because what started this whole endeavor was I loved discussing S1 so much that I couldn’t help discussing S2 as well, which I’m still doing apparently. I’m just glad it’s helping someone. =)

S2 was definitely a bigger kick in the nuts for me, but it is important to note the context of how I viewed these things. I was fourteen when The Phantom Menace came out, not exactly the refined and enlightened bitter crank I am today. As a young man viewing the first new Star Wars movies in fifteen years in theaters, a lot of what’s wrong with The Phantom Menace went over my head, which was much closer to the ground back then.

I remember leaving the theater and thinking “That was okay,” and it wasn’t until many years later I realized what was wrong with an excitable kid who loved Star Wars at the time thinking the start of a new trilogy was only “okay”. It wasn’t until years later when Attack of the Clones (which contrary to popular opinion IS the worst of the prequels) came out did the then ongoing failure of the Star Wars prequels finally start to dawn on me.

I went to see AOTC with my cousin, her kid and my little sister. About an hour or so in, my sister and my cousin’s kid, who were ten and six at the time, told us they wanted to leave, because they were BORED. And the sad thing was, so were me and my cousin, and our only argument to stay was “It’s gotta get good soon.” And they weren’t stupid, they didn’t buy that, so we left. And I found out when I saw the whole movie later, no, it never really gets good.

By the time Revenge of the Sith came out I went to see it mostly to complete the experience, and afterward me and a bunch of friends went to eat and discuss it, mostly coming to the conclusion it felt like a big joke, with Darth Vader’s comically over the top “NOOOOOOOO” being the punchline of the last six years of this long-running disappointment, and probably one of the reasons why I’m such an overly analytical freak today.

But even accounting for my perspective, I’d still say TWDG S2 was much worse than the Star Wars prequels. The clear disregard for quality, continuity and the story that’s evident all throughout both is more damning for TWDG because S2 followed shortly in the massive breakout success of the first game, where the Star Wars Prequels came over a decade after an original Trilogy of successful films. The Prequels were the big “RETURN” of Star Wars to the big screen after long absence following its initial success, whereas S2 was dropped on us before the dust of TWDG’s success had even settled.

Telltale’s crude exploitation of the very thing that elevated the status of their company, won them over 80 Game of the Year awards, and was famous for moving people to tears, by making such a cheap, clumsy, cash grab, and so quickly, was a move so cynical that even a long jaded skeptic such as a myself never would have predicted it. It’d be like the original Star Wars being followed up by releasing The Star Wars Holiday Special in theaters instead of The Empire Strikes Back.

You think with the overwhelming critical and commercial success of TWDG, Telltale would be extra careful about a sequel, at least for a while. Instead, they crapped out 400 Days and S2 for a quick buck, and now the series has stalled because they’ve destroyed everything the original game worked so hard to build with Clementine’s character and the themes it conveyed. Like a friend of mine said, Clementine’s story barely got out of the womb before they ruined it.

And Telltale’s terrible management passing around the story and constantly changing things on a whim made S2 into a full-fledged clusterfuck. At least with the Star Wars Prequels they were a consistent failure of being thoughtless crap leveraging the Star Wars brand for money and for George Lucas to experiment with making movies with CGI. Going into the Revenge of the Sith, I pretty much knew what to expect by that point. S2 constantly found new ways to annoy and disappoint me right up to the shoddy multiple choice endings.

And the progression of the prequels showed Lucas isn’t entirely tone deaf to fans as he parses Jar-Jar down to eventually nothing and tried to go “darker” like some fans wanted. I’d say his attempts to “improve” were about as successful at his attempts to “improve” the original trilogy with the Special Editions, but at least it was an effort to improve.

S2 seems to flaunt how little a shit it gives, killing off people in stupid and pointless ways, even killing Nick off-screen because they probably didn’t want to pay his voice actor for one more episode. Them making you hit zombie Nick like four times while their Mary Sue glibly remarks how often Clem’s hatchet gets stuck felt like a deliberate attempt to rub it in the audience’s face how much they hate us. (And Jane pointing out the hatchet sticking if Nick’s not there shows their laziness as nothing prompts that observation then).

But the most frustrating thing about S2 is, for me, it signaled the video games industry’s inability to evolve as a medium, even when there are proven successful formulas that show how to both expand certain types of games to new audiences, while still maintaining an appeal to the traditional audience.

TWDG’s incredibly simple gameplay coupled with its fantastic storytelling felt like a veritable blueprint on how to do meaningful interactive drama in a way that doesn’t require intimate knowledge of playing modern day video games. My brother, who usually only plays fun arcade style games, compared playing The Walking Dead Game to “reading a really great book”. And after I played Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale’s last game before TWDG, it felt like the natural trajectory of their brand would be to further simply the gaming element, focusing the interactive elements for when they’re most effective to letting the audience interact with the story in some way.

What’s most heartbreaking about S2 is it not only completely failed to understand the story of TWDG, it also missed the greater opportunity of Telltale further honing their style of games into something that helps transcend the barriers that normally keep out non-gamers or non-traditional games. Instead, they opted to put in new “dynamic” elements to the gameplay, like having to hit left or right during certain action scenes or you get a Game Over, something that was as novel as when it was first introduced back in Dragon’s Lair…

And the lack of thought and maturity in the writing really makes it clear just how little Telltale appreciated The Walking Dead Game’s often subtle and nuanced approach to things. And the fact that S2 mostly got the same reviews as the original TWDG, also signals how little most of its target audience appreciated it, suggesting that a lot of them only viewed the game as a novelty where you can kill zombies and be an asshole to people you don’t like.

Such a massive drop in quality going mostly unnoticed by a big chunk of the audience is deeply dishearting, especially since it proves Telltale and really any company can keep cranking out half-thought-out junk and there will be enough people to eat it up to keep things profitable.

S2 is much bigger disappointment than The Phantom Menace to me because TWDG actually raised my hopes about something I was very cynical about, only for those hopes to be used to sell some godawful half-ass piece of crap that if it weren’t for nostalgia for the first game, would already be forgotten about because it’s connection to a much better work, which is only in that it crudely exploits both Clem and Kenny’s images, is the only thing that elevates it in some people’s eyes, and in my case, serves as a constant reminder to what COULD be instead of what was.

I always kind of figured after the Star Wars Prequels, I’d never face a crushing personal disappointment of that specific kind again, where some outstanding work I want to immerse myself manages to completely shut me out with its bafflingly spectacular failure. I assumed the Star Wars Prequels were a once in a lifetime kind of disappointment. S2 proved me wrong…

She won an award for it, and I don’t doubt she deserved it because Melissa Hutchison did an amazing job in TWDG as Clementine. Gavin Hammon (Kenny’s VA) pointed out the award Melissa got was big news for them since it was the kind of thing that almost always went to big name voice actors, like Nolan North. And I remember reading somewhere Telltale nearly cut Clementine in pre-production because they couldn’t find an actor right for the role.

Melissa had to a walk tightrope with Clem’s character, making her sound both childish and mature at the same time without swinging too far either way AND delivering a full range of emotions while maintaining that particular hard to strike balance that contributed to Clem’s character as bright child trying to grasp the entirety of her circumstances. It was the standout performance in a game with several very strong performances… which makes it all the more baffling when in S2, Melissa apparently said fuck it and just switched to her normal speaking voice when doing Clem.

I’ve heard doing Clem’s voice was hard for Melissa and I don’t doubt it, but Jesus, she won an award for that performance and it was one of the things that contributed to appeal and identity of their breakout character. You think there’d be a major effort to maintain that key part of Clem’s character going forward… but no, like all things S2, they don’t spare any effort for one of the things that elevated the first game to a major success and Clem just sounds like a grown woman now, and a boring one at that.

You know, when I wrote dialogue for Young and Young at Heart, I always heard nine-year-old Clem’s voice in my head. Picturing her was trickier, having S2 fresh of my mind at the time and committing Clem to being a colder person, her eleven-year-old likeness often would come to mind even when I didn’t want it to. But not her voice. The voice was always what she sounded like in S1, because that’s how memorable that performance was… and it’s a travesty they didn’t even TRY to repeat a success like that.