作者：Josh Bycer

最近我开始玩Telltale的全新游戏《蝙蝠侠》。但在玩游戏的过程中我发现自己的兴趣度逐渐消失，反而开始对游戏感到厌烦。在过去几年里Telltale发生了许多改变，我也想知道现在的这家公司与一开始相比发生了多大的变化。

WolfAmongUs(from gamasutra)

Telltale的转变

Telltale是一家在过去10年里发生了多次改变的工作室。该工作室是由Lucasarts的前成员所创建的。他们最初只想要创造游戏《Sam and Max》，但是一开始似乎并不是那么简单。他们的第一款游戏是一款德州扑克游戏，这甚至是在他们的第一款冒险游戏系列之前诞生。在那之后他们开始致力于一些CSI风格的冒险游戏，并想办法面向游戏服务平台GameTap创造《Sam and Max》。

虽然GameTap的寿命并不长，但《Sam and Max》却成为了他们所创造的第一款大型主流游戏，获得了玩家的喜爱。更重要的是，这也是他们所发行的一款完成了整季内容的成功情景游戏。《Sam and Max》的成功推动着他们又发行了2季的游戏以及各种商品和可收集内容。

Telltale给自己的定位是Lucasarts的冒险游戏继承者，他们会将优秀的写作和故事叙述与具有挑战性的谜题内容结合在一起。紧跟着《Sam and Max》，Telltale还创造了一系列授权IP游戏，其中便包括《侏罗纪公园》，《回到未来》，《权利的游戏》以及《行尸走肉》。

如果说是《Sam and Max》将Telltale带向了受人瞩目的舞台，那么《行尸走肉》便奠定了他们在产业中的声誉。《行尸走肉》因为优秀的叙述，获配音等等原因得了2012年最佳游戏之一的称号。

《行尸走肉》的成功为冒险游戏设计设定了一个全新标准并成为了未来游戏设计的一个基准。

尽管《行尸走肉》取得了巨大的成功，但是我却是从这款游戏中开始看到Telltale设计的问题。

逐渐趋软：

Telltale Games在设计上的改变应该是从《行尸走肉》开始的。这是他们的第一款通过冒险风格的谜题与批判性思维去突显故事叙述的游戏。游戏中的谜题非常有限，其中的章节格式也被玩家所接受了。

在之前的Telltale游戏中，每一个章节都是伴随着一些等待玩家解决的谜题而发生在一个或多个环境下。但是在《行尸走肉》中，Telltale采用了章节法。即一个情景的每个章节可以处理不同的情境并且将与之前的章节区分开来。这么做非常重要，因为章节框架让他们能够在故事中创造明确的顺序。

《行尸走肉》的吸引力在于玩家能控制故事的结果，但事实却并非如此。游戏中会跳出一些小评论让玩家清楚“有些人会记得某些东西”，但其实这些内容都和情节无关。当所有章节将面向所有人以同样的方式结束时，这显然不是属于玩家自己的冒险故事。甚至连游戏的“主要选择”也不是如此：他们都会回到Telltale所决定的状态中。

Telltale开始变成只专注于突显游戏中的软选择了。现在即使游戏中存在能将所有内容整合在一起或者能够影响游戏内容的游戏玩法，我也不会再关心那有限的游戏叙述了。虽然事实也并非如此。

玩故事：

在Telltale的每一款游戏中，真正的游戏玩法正逐渐减少。因为采用了章节模式，所以每个章节就像是一些并没有真正联系而只是被拼凑在一起的场景。

首先我来到一个区域，然后我移动到下一个区域去看展览，再然后便到达QTE部分，之后我将再回到展览中，然后这一章节将以吊人胃口的形式结束。

这里并不存在真正需要解决的谜题，并且除了热点外也不存在让玩家与游戏世界互动的方式。而他们最近发行的游戏也都体现出了我在电子游戏故事叙述中所遇到的所有问题。即每当角色开始说话时我便会感到生气，因为我清楚何时会出现“选择”。尝试着添加QTE则只会让玩家觉得自己好像要患上人格分裂症了。因为我需要花30分钟时间去聆听别人所说的话，然后花1,2分钟时间与某些东西进行互动，然后再花3分钟时间进行QTA，并最终回到展览会上。

在Telltale的设计中他们并未让玩家去思考发生了什么，因为在这里他们已经为玩家决定好所有选择了。

而就像我之所以会喜欢《她的故事》便是因为它让玩家能够真正思考游戏中发生了什么并更深入地去了解故事—-即使游戏玩法并不是以传统形式表现出来。

虽然Telltale受到了一些冒险设计师的赞扬，但他们的游戏中的确不再存在任何“冒险”了。我觉得自己就像在观看一款电子游戏或者在玩一个故事一样。

通过《与狼同行》和《蝙蝠侠》，Telltale希望能够添加一些侦探/调查元素到游戏中，从而让玩家能够真正沉浸到游戏情景中。但是再一次地，这些元素都未能有效地与游戏故事或情节联系在一起。

根据报告他们的每一款游戏都带有一些技术问题。但是因为本文主要是关于设计和故事叙述，所以我并不打算深入探讨那些内容。

我还想说他们的动画风格在某种程度上还是让我很郁闷的。他们最近的一些游戏都拥有非常单调的漫画风格，虽然拥有细致的外观，但却仍让人觉得只是徒有其表。

反倒是《Sam and Max》的美学还是可让人接受的，因为我们面对的并非人类，但是在最近的其它游戏中我却发现许多角色外观都非常生硬。此外这些游戏的叙述方式似乎都只是依附于对话系统。

比起让玩家像正常聊天那样交谈，在游戏中玩家的节奏总是会被突然的停止所打断。

关于未来的选择：

最近我们在Perceptive podcast上提到了Telltale并谈论了我们对这家公司的期许。对于我来说，我认为他们所存在的问题便是太执着于授权内容。我希望看到的是他们能够创造出一些基于创造性且能够基于他们想要的方向而发展的内容。

如果我们能够玩一款所有人都能有不同体验的冒险游戏该多有趣。而Telltale便为这样的游戏创造了基础；现在他们只需要将其创造出来便可，我也敢保证这样的游戏肯定不是来自授权内容。

最后我必须承认本文所提到的内容只是我个人对于Telltale的看法这并不能代表其他人的想法。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Tracing my Troubles with Telltale Games

by Josh Bycer

Recently I started playing the latest game from Telltale: Batman. But going through it, I’m finding myself getting more annoyed than interested in seeing it through. Telltale has changed a lot over the years, and I’m wondering if they’ve gone too far away from what drew me to them in the first place.

Telltale’s Transformation:

Telltale is a studio that changed itself multiple times over the last decade. The studio was founded by ex-members of Lucasarts. They originally wanted to work on a Sam and Max game, but couldn’t get the rights starting out. Their first game was a Texas Hold’em title before their first adventure series based on the Bone comic book series. After that, they worked on several CSI-styled adventure games before managing to secure the rights to work on a Sam and Max game for the game service GameTap.

While GameTap did not last, Sam and Max proved to be their first big mainstream hit with gamers. More importantly, it was one of, if not the first, successful episodic game release to get through an entire season’s worth of content. Sam and Max was so successful that they released two more seasons and a variety of merchandise and collectibles that you could buy from them.

Telltale was positioning themselves to be the adventure game successor to Lucasarts by combining great writing and storytelling with challenging puzzles. Following Sam and Max, Telltale worked on a slew of licensed IP games, including but not limited to: Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Game of Thrones and of course The Walking Dead.

If Sam and Max was the game that put Telltale into the limelight, The Walking Dead cemented their reputation in the industry. TWD was considered one of the best games to be released in 2012 and won awards for its writing, voice acting and more.

The success of TWD set a new standard for adventure game design and would become their foundation for future titles.

Despite the success of TWD and even enjoying it all the way through, this was the game where I started to see the writing on the wall about Telltale’s design.

Going Soft:

Telltale Games’ transition in terms of design was seen with The Walking Dead. This was the first game where the adventure-styled puzzles and critical thinking were toned down dramatically in favor of storytelling. The puzzles that were in the game were limited, and the chapter format was adopted.

In previous Telltale games, each episode took place across one or multiple environments with puzzles to solve. In TWD, Telltale changed that to a chapter approach. Each chapter of an episode dealt with a different situation and essentially closed off the previous chapter from the player. This was important, because the chapter framework allowed them to create permutations in the story.

The hook of TWD was that the player could control the outcome of the story, but that’s not necessarily true. The game pops up little comments to let you know that “someone will remember something,” but none of that is related to the plot. It’s not a choose your own adventure story when every episode ends the same way for everyone. Even the game’s “major choices” aren’t that: They still return to the status quo defined by Telltale. I talked about this in a post looking at hard and soft choices in storytelling.

Telltale’s style has evolved to feature nothing but soft choices in their games. Now if there was gameplay to tie everything together or impact things, then I could let the limited storytelling slide. However, that is definitely not the case.

Playing a Story:

The actual “gameplay” of Telltale’s titles has been reduced with each new game. Because of the chapter format, each episode feels like a bunch of scenes stitched together without any connection between.

First I’m in one area, then I move to the next area for exposition, then it’s time for a QTE segment, then back to exposition, and then the episode ends with a cliffhanger.

There are no real puzzles to solve, no means of interacting with the world with exception to hot-spots, and recent games checks off every issue I have with video game storytelling. It’s gotten to the point that I get annoyed every time characters start talking, because I can tell when a “choice” is coming up. The attempts at adding in QTEs just make the games feel like they have a split personality to me. I spend 30 minutes listening to people talk, then a minute or two interacting with something, then another 3 doing a QTE, and then it’s back to exposition.

Telltale’s design simply doesn’t ask the player to think about anything that’s going on, because all real choices have already been decided for them.

What I loved about Her Story was the fact that it challenged me to actually think about what’s going on to learn more about the story, even with the fact that there wasn’t “gameplay” in the traditional sense.

Despite Telltale’s accolades as adventure designers, there really isn’t any “adventure” in their games anymore. I feel like I’m either watching a video game or playing a story, when I’d rather be doing the opposite.

With The Wolf Among Us and Batman, this was their attempt to add detective/investigation elements to their game, so that the player could feel like they’re engaging with the situation. However once again, they are downplayed and have no relation to the story or plot.

There are also reported issues of each game have technical problems and not so stellar launches. However, since this post is focusing on the design and storytelling, I’m not going to dig too deep into that part.

I will say that their animation style is starting to irk me to some extent. Recent games have a flat comic book-like appearance to them; despite having detailed appearances, they still look and operate like mannequins.

The aesthetic was tolerable with Sam and Max, because we weren’t dealing with humans, but there is just a stiffness to characters in recent games. Another point is that the writing seems to be forced to adhere to the conversation system.

Instead of people talking like in a normal conversation, the pace gets broken by the constant stops and references to the decision tree.

Choosing the Future:

We recently brought up the topic of Telltale on the Perceptive Podcast, and we talked about what we would like to see from them. For me, I think my problems with Telltale’s titles are the fact that they are locked to their respective licenses. I would love to see them make something completely original and have free reign to take it in any direction they want.

Imagine playing a choose your own adventure style game where things are truly different for everyone. Telltale has been building the foundation that would let them do something like that; now they just need the property to do it, and I can tell you that it’s not going to come from a licensed one.

I’m entirely willing to admit that these are just my problems and everyone else is happy with Telltale’s growth. But for me, I don’t know if I’ll have it in me to finish another season of episodes in this style.(source:gamasutra)