Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the only 3 Telltale games on VITA: The Walking Dead Season 1 + its DLC 400 Days, The Walking Dead Season 2, and The Wolf Among Us and I want to talk about it. Spoiler warning,
Baring those super easy junk PSN games that give you a platinum in 30 minutes, these Telltale games are almost certainly the easiest games to platinum (that are still actually proper games) because all you have to do is complete them to get almost all of the trophies. Unlike something like Detroit Become Human which required you to play through them multiple times to find so many different collectibles and experience all the different story sequences through making different choices.
The Walking Dead Season 1's platinum literally just requires you to play through all 5 episodes. No collectibles or requirement to make any specific choices. Same for Season 2 (though since there isn't a standalone version of the game like for Season 1 and Wolf Among Us on VITA, there's no Platinum for the game). However, Season 1's DLC 400 Days, actually has 2 missable trophies that I missed entirely during my playthrough (and no Platinum for it because it's a DLC 😭).
Those 2 trophies were "Reunited - Found an old friend" and "Two out of Three - Won a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors". "Reunited" requires you pick the option to Hide in Russel's Chapter. I didn't choose that option and missed the trophy. But since this happens at the start of the chapter, it wasn't a huge issue to replay that chapter and quickly get the trophy.
"Two out of Three" was surprisingly challenging. In Wyatt's chapter, there's a sequence where you have to play Rock, Paper, Scissors in a best of 3 format. In order to get the trophy, you need to win that best of 3. But it's random what your opponent plays. I kept losing as I'd either get 1 win and lose the others or straight up get 2 losses in a row. You then have to quickly exit to the Main Menu and reload your last save to try again. But since there's no checkpoint before the minigame and no way to skip cutscenes or sections you already played, you need to replay/watch the entire prior sequence before getting another crack at the minigame. I had to play through it an embarrassing number of times before I got good RNG and won. I was seriously considering giving up since it was a DLC trophy anyway. How frustrating would it be to not 100% such an easy game simply because of Rock, Paper Scissors lol.
The next notable game, The Wolf Among Us, asks the player to do a bit more to get the platinum than base Walking Dead Season 1. Every Episode in Wolf Among Us has these collectibles called "Book of Fables" that unlock a lore entry you can read in the main menu kinda like a codex or database from games like Assassin's Creed. Usually, there are around 1-3 of these books per Episode that are truly missable or that you cannot obtain depending on your choices.
As an example in Episode 3, during Lily's funeral in Chapter 2, you need to not interrupt Snow's speech and go inspect the cards on the left to get the collectible (I messed up because while I didn't interrupt the speech, I missed the cards entirely). In Chapter 3, you need to choose to either go to Crane's apartment first or Tweedle's Office first and in Chapter 4 you go to where you selected and search the place. You only get 1 set of collectibles from this so you need to replay Chapter 3 and select the other option to get the other.
For the most part, it's pretty straightforward to get most of the Books without a Guide. I imagine a player that replays the entire game twice and thoroughly checks every corner and makes the opposite choices is pretty likely to get at least 99% of the Books. There's only a couple I felt were really well hidden such as the aforementioned one at the funeral and the Collectible one in Episode 4 since it isn't clear where it's hidden and it's easy for it to be obscured by the fact you need to again choose between visiting 2 places. Fortunately, the main menu labels which ones you've found so it's easy to lookup which one you're missing.
I am rather mixed on this. On one hand, I do like that this encourages players to go back and see the other options or commit to a particular role. For example, in Episode 2 Chapter 1, there's 1 collectible you earn for interrogating your prisoner in a non-violent way for the entire sequence. And another for replaying that entire segment and being as violent as possible. You really need to commit to the bit and really roleplay and the game shows the consequences between how the characters react.
But on the other hand, I personally feel Telltale's games don't really hold up that well on repeat playthroughs. You can't skip or fast forward through any sequences, even ones you've already played or don't matter as much to the overall plot. Gameplay that was kinda dull on a first playthrough becomes quite tedious. Especially as the consequences of any new choices may take some time to take effect so you may not even get that payoff for making different choices anytime soon.
I personally feel Walking Dead Season 1 and 2 are the best models for Telltale games given the trophies just ask you to play through once however you want. But regardless, these were pretty enjoyable games to platinum mostly because their stories were quite interesting so I do recommend them.
Now, to review the games themselves:
Firstly, lets talk about their performance. I played the VITA versions here and it was really bad. All 3 games often ran at 20 FPS and lower. There was often a good amount of stuttering and freezes. These were especially bad in 2 places: the montages/trailers at the end and beginning of Episodes as the game would show a clip then freeze for longer than the clip itself before repeating. These montages/trailers often felt like they took twice or even thrice as long as they should. It appears the games were really having a hard time quickly loading and de-loading assets to display the different clips in real time. But at least these just requires you to patiently sit there and wait longer. The QTE gameplay sections in particular have it the worst. These sections often ask you to input multiple QTEs back to back in quick succession but the games have a bad habit of freezing when you give an input. So when the next input comes in, it's already too late and you fail the section. I had quite a few deaths and restarts from these.
Those were the major issues. There were also somewhat infrequent minor issues such as the audio dropping, or playing over multiple characters or playing in the load transitions at the incorrect time. It really hurt the immersion but fortunately, these were mostly infrequent so I could ignore them. I don't know if the VITA just simply isn't powerful enough to handle the games Telltale made, or if the games were poorly optimized for the platform (evidence suggests the latter as I recall the PS3 version of Walking Dead Season 1 didn't run the best). It's no surprise Telltale stopped supporting the VITA after 3 games while continuing to port their games to every other platform.
If you're going to play these games, I strongly recommend not doing so on the VITA.
Also, another issue I faced was that when I was partway through Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 5, for some reason, the game could no longer find and import my Season 1 save despite that not being an issue before. It offered to take me to the PSN Store to buy Season 1 but I already had that installed on my VITA. Fortunately, it was partway through Episode 5 and Seasons 3 and onward aren't on VITA so it wasn't a huge loss to tell the game to then simulate a save for me while I continued where I left off.
Anyway, moving on from the technical stuff and onto the games themselves, I enjoyed the experience and found myself invested in their stories. It was quite compelling.
Funnily, despite me being an advocate for games to rely more on their gameplay rather than cutscenes to tell their story, I do feel these Telltale's games are at their best when they avoid incorporating more significant gameplay and focus more on being an "interactive movie". Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 1 kinda highlights this as the episode has a huge emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving (in a way that resembles more traditional adventure games) in the pharmacy and motel sections which are rather slow and awkward to play through. Especially if you miss a specific thing, it isn't very fun to walk so slowly as Lee (Wolf Among Us adds a feature where holding R makes you walk ever so slightly faster which feels like a joke lol). That's why I feel Walking Dead Season 2 and Wolf Among Us generally felt better paced as a whole. These games focused more on the immediate story sections and shortened many of the puzzle sections. Often being limited to a single room and being more detective focused. For example, in Wolf Among Us, one of the puzzle sections involves walking around Toad's living room and noting clues that stick out and trying to find discrepancies in Toad's testimony. Which you can actually mess up at. If you ask Toad the wrong question or accusation, Toad can give a counter-response and the game game highlights that with "Toad talked his way out of that one". I enjoyed these a lot more than Walking Dead Season 1's equivalents. And to jump ahead a bit, I remember I played the 2 Batman Telltale games on Switch when they were on sale and those doubled down on the cool detective sections which were pretty enjoyable.
I also often wasn't very fond of when these Telltale games make you slowly go through every action via QTEs or prompts to do simple tasks. I'm reminded of a quote from Writing on Games video on Detroit Become Human where he says:
"Let me give you an example.
Imagine you’re reading a movie script; it’s meant to be an exciting heist scene and it
reads “character is told to cut hole in window.
Character picks up bag.
Character walks with bag over to window.
Character puts bag down at window.
Character opens bag, etc.”
You’d be laughed out of any writer’s room for not just having a character say “get
the goddamn window” and then showing the window getting got."
These 3 Telltale games often do this and it makes repeat playthroughs less exciting. I imagine if these were TV shows, movies, comics or novels etc, they'd "trim some of this fat" that they only have because they are video games.
However, there are a few instances where said "fat" does enhance the story. One of the best examples is in Walking Dead Season 2 where Clementine is injured and needs to clean, stitch and bandage her arm on her own. This leads to an entire sequence where she needs to sneak out of captivity to her captors' house, grab the supplies, get back to where she was imprisoned and then you have to choose which steps to do in her self treatment and painstakingly control Clem through it. So if you first choose to have Clem pour some Hydrogen Peroxide to clean her wound, you gotta control Clem dunking an entire bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide onto her large gaping wound and screaming in pain. If you choose to have Clem stitch her wound, you have control Clem as he threads a needle through her own skin (all while making sounds of pain) multiple times to try stitching. Only to then be jumped by a Walker.
I feel this sequence works. Needing to sneak around yourself keeps the situation tense as there's this worry you could be discovered. Needing to control Clem as she treats her injury is uncomfortable which communicates how messed up this situation is for Clem and how much more experienced she is now. And this lowers your guard so the Walker Attack is more surprising. Such sequences are generally rare as most of the time, the interactivity isn't particularly stimulating.
Speaking of these games' stories, one criticism I often hear regarding Telltale's games is how your choices don't really matter as the overall plot remains the same. And I don't think that's the point. Telltale's games let you control the story but not the plot. The events of what happens are mostly set in stone, your actions only colour in and flavour the experience in a way that's more personal to you. In addition, there's this aspect that you're simultaneously the Director, controlling the overall events, An Actor roleplaying their part, and the Audience experiencing and reacting to the consequences.
I remember this was particularly apparent in the Batman Telltale game as you had to make choices as Batman which not only included the major "choose between 2 major forks in the road" events but also how violent you wanted Batman to be and together, these would inform how other characters reacted to Bruce/Batman. Making the resulting story at least somewhat personal to you.
This is still the case in The Walking Dead Season 1, 2 and Wolf Among Us.
Walking Dead Season 1's main hook, I feel, is how you play as Lee and have to be Clem's guardian as this adds an additional wrinkle to decisions as thinking about how it affects Clem may affect your choices.
As an example, in Season 1 Episode 2, there's a section where some of the crew is imprisoned and one of the characters, Larry, has a heart attack. His daughter Lily begs you to help with CPR. Your friend Kenny wants you to help him smash Larry's head in with a cinder block to prevent him from turning into a Walker.
Normally, I imagine the player would want to side with Kenny here. Both Lily and Larry have been jerks to Lee and Clem. Kenny has been helping you the whole time. So the chance off Larry would even feel karmic here. But because Clem objects, the player might not choose a side so easily. Maybe you think about how killing Larry here would affect Clem. This adds more ambiguity to the choice. Good stuff. And this is the case for the entire game. I really found myself invested in Lee and Clem's story as I chose to play a more "self doubting" Lee who doubted if he was really a good parent for Clem.
Walking Dead Season 2 follows up in an interesting way as now that Lee is gone, both Clem and the player is looking for a "replacement Lee". Clem bounces between multiple groups with the story presenting different candidates such as Luke, the first new character that actually goes to bat for Clem to the new group. Kenny, who despite not really talking much with Clem back in Season 1, feels so good to see and talk to because he is a Season 1 character and close friend to Lee. Making him the closest to a Lee Proxy (you know I mashed the f@%k out of that "hug Kenny" button). And Jane. This wildcard that's detached from the group but extremely competent.
The crux of the game's final episode and choice is essentially you the player deciding who you feel deserves to Clem's new Lee. Your choices are Kenny, Jane or even Clem herself setting out on her own because she feels it's a better option.
I like what the story is going for. I chose to roleplay a wiser and wearier Clem. Someone who despite being like 10 years old, has the experience and knowledge of someone much older. My Clem was someone who as able to read between the lines and communicate to adults in a way to help progress her goals. Like, instead of trying to tell Carver he is insane, my Clem chose to placate him and play along with his vision. Or when Bonny was frustrated at why all the men in the group were so quick to anger, My Clem responded about how it was a combination of their pride and fear instead of saying "I don't know". My Clem was also something of a mediator and voice of reason. When the group bullies Arvo, I had my Clem step in and try and protect him (this was how I played Lee). I felt this playstyle complemented what the story was going for. Especially whenever Clem gets betrayed because I felt it contrasts her trying to stick to her crumbling moral code and not being a monster versus how often the world kicks her down.
It all comes to a head in the game's final choice between Kenny and Jade. The story was building to this. And I love the idea but not the execution. The story starts by making Kenny so ideal. He's warm, charming and the closest thing to Lee. He's also experienced and capable and an asset to the group. But as the story goes on, he starts to crack (likely due to all the stress and trauma he's endured). Kenny starts becoming more dictatorial and irritable, lashing out whenever people challenge his decisions or when he feels threatened. To me, I really had to confront the fact that Kenny may be a bit of a monster when he started savagely beating up Arvo after spending the entire time verbally abusing him. I chose to have Clem try and save Arvo only for Kenny to accidentally hit her. Yeah, Arvo does end up betraying the group later but can you blame him when the supposed leader of the group is that unstable and especially abusive to him? Jane even describes Kenny as a Time Bomb and really pushes his buttons. I was worried for Clem and AJ here because if Kenny decided to make a wrong decision, there would be no way to challenge or appeal it. Especially if his plan is to go North where it's colder. Now, I haven't watched the Walking Dead show or comic. Literally all I know about the show is that Rick is the protagonist and that one Matpat Film Theory about them going deaf and that the zombies survive longer in cold climates. So I was pretty worried for poor Clem here.
Jane is the alternative to Kenny here. She's far more detached from the group. Not even significantly caring about AJ or the rest of the group that. She even tells Clem she's only sticking around for her after initially leaving the group. However, she does appear to be more of an experienced survivor. Even teaching Clem knee melee attacks to allow her to easily take down individual adult Walkers. She's also much more pragmatic than Kenny. Able to see if a plan is flawed and not stubbornly sticking to it. To use a dumb analogy, if this was a stragedty, Roguelike or tactics video game where you could recruit people to your team to help you complete missions and survive, Kenny would be like a B overall in all his stats (maybe an S in mechanics) while Jane would be an S overall in her stats.
So the choice here is between Kenny who is more loyal and caring and has that personal connection but is slowly unraveling and becoming more volatile, or Jane who is more capable all around but less caring......or none of the above and have Clem and AJ set out on their own. On paper, I love this but the execution I feel is lacking. The way the ending is set up kinda robs all this nuance and ambiguity and makes Kenny the clear winner instead of it being a hard choice between 3 options.
For Kenny, I feel the story doesn't go far enough with his anger issues. He does berate the group, bicker with Jane and abuse Arvo but it only really heats up towards the end. Plus, depending on your choices and own beliefs, you might even side with Kenny doing all this so you wouldn't get to feel that tension as much. I feel there should have been a couple more instances of him lashing out against Clem through no fault of her own. As well as being more hostile to a character Clem is on good terms with who tries to act rational and as a mediator who aquieses to Kenny just to keep the peace. Have them talk to Clem and voice how they are kinda scared of Kenny now early to really plant that seed. Maybe even have Kenny talk about killing people to himself and have Clem overhear it. I feel it would be better where even if you chose options to side with Kenny the whole game, you still have instances where you see even that doesn't fully guarantee your safety from his mental state.
For Jane, I feel it's the opposite problem where the ending makes her too distrustful and manipulative. She feigns losing AJ in order to rile Kenny up into a murderous rage in order to prove to Clem that Kenny is a time bomb. But I feel the fact she lies about AJ to cause Kenny's murderous rage hurts her case.
Not to mention the endings here where you kill or leave Kenny have him trying to comfort you in his final words and trusts your decision rather than raging significantly undermines Jane's case.
I feel Jane's case would be stronger if she was at least caring towards AJ and more kind to Clem earlier on. Perhaps even offering insight or help in caring for AJ in a way better than Kenny could at the time. As well as a different scenario that prompts her and Kenny's final fight. Maybe have Clem walk into their fight that's already started. Kenny is too angry to talk straight and thinks Jane killed AJ while Jane is trying to explain what's really going on. Now the player truly has to make a difficult choice. They don't have the full context. All they know is maybe Jane did something to AJ but that's not confirmed but Kenny is trying to murder her for it and is all rage. If the player sides with Kenny and they later learn AJ was alive, just safe in a car, they are horrified over the notion they killed an innocent Jane which can justify if Clem chooses to leave Kenny. If the player sides with Jane, a dying Kenny berates Clem one last time for Jane tries to comfort her and tries to explain she was trying to keep AJ safe which you can choose to believe or not (maybe there are some obvious holes in her story that Clem picks up on).
I feel something like this would truly give Season 2 that heart wrenching ending that Season 1, or something close to it at least.
I'd love to see what happens next in the story, but the remaining seasons aren't on VITA. I am curious to see how Season 3 starts given Season 2 has basically 3 completely different endings that take place in completely different locations and circumstances. And even the similar endings (Clem leaving Kenny later or setting out on her own) have pretty different contexts. I'm interested to see how Season 3 somehow weaves all of that into a single story. Maybe it's like Cyberpunk where you have 3 distinct lifepaths before it converges to the same main track. Maybe I'll watch it on YouTube someday.
-The Wolf Among Us
This is the only other Telltale game on the VITA. I was emotionally drained after playing Walking Dead Season 1 and 2 back to back and knew little of Wolf Among Us before heading in aside from it being a noir detective story. Hopefully it would be a nice change of pace.
So imagine my surprise when I found the protagonist Bigby, a hard-boiled sheriff investigating a disturbance only to be talking to a 2ft tall frog man in the opening minutes. Wolf Among Us is apparently an adaptation of an existing comic book series called Fables. I did not know that. The setting is one where all these fairy tale creatures have moved into a district on New York and hide themselves from the muggle world (called "mundies" which petition to replace Muggle with Mundies). Except this hidden society deals with all sorts of real world problems such as class divides, poverty, government corruption leading to criminal and black market racketeering and prostitution. The whole works.
I'm reminded of a quote from SuperBunnyHop's review on the Witcher games. That "first book is a collection of anecdotes about what would seemingly go wrong when a world full of as much socio-political bulls@$t as our own also has to put up with a bunch of supernatural bulls@$t to go with it". Wolf Among Us fits that description. Bigby's whole quest to investigate the murder of prostitutes that went missing weeks ago is only given the greenlight because one of them had to plant the head of one of the murder victims on government building's front door to make it seem like a threat to them and tarnish their reputation. Otherwise the authorities wouldn't have even noticed anything was different. Bigby is constantly hampered by the citizens of Fabletown, partly because they don't trust him because of his past actions (something you can reaffirm through choosing to be more violent) and partly because they know he and the system he represents doesn't care for them and is only showing up now because something spooked them.
On top of that, the requirement to stay hidden from the mundies means Fabletown citizens have to purchase glamour from the government to disguise themselves. Official Glamour is both expensive and in short supply and difficult for many citizens to obtain given the layers of bureaucracy required to obtain them leading to black market production of glamour. Which drives many citizens to debt to either maintain their status in Fabletown or allow themselves to be sent to the Farm. Even Bigby is surprised by how much glamour costs since he is one of the privileged few to not have to worry about that. Something characters like Toad bring up against him.
This is all juicy stuff for a setting and I am all here for it. I love all this moral ambiguity and realistic drama. I especially love how even Bigby sees the issues with this society and his own role in it. His government is understaffed and funded by a few select individuals (namely Bluebeard and Crane) who can pocket some of the profit to prevent progress. Even Snow White, who is trying to be a better person and be genuinely helpful to the downtrodden while in Office, exhibits her own biases and her commitment to being "by the book" often hurts innocent people just as much.
On top of that, the game doesn't shy away from showing how even the residents of Fabletown aren't entirely good. Beast, Beauty and Toad, even when given multiple opportunities to help themselves, splurge their financial aid on luxuries and blame Bigby and co. And most of Fabletown is susceptible to mob mentality during the "trial" in Episode 5 where they will grasp the flimsiest of unsubstantiated evidence to support their case.
Something Bigby doesn't pick up on (or is proud of depending on your choices and relationship with Colin) is just how much freedom and lack of oversight he has as the equivalent of a police officer in this setting. Bigby doesn't need to obtain any warrants for his investigations and can simply walk into many place he wants for the sake of his investigation. He's free to be as violent and brutal he wants to any suspects with no consequences, even being allowed to torture and kill (even when his boss is right there next to him telling him to stop). He can be the literal judge, jury and executioner for a trial. Characters like the Woodman, Bloody Mary, Aunty Green and the Crooked Man all point this out against Bigby as he can be a criminal worse than them who parades the law around to punish people for doing the same or less than him. Bigby can defend himself by arguing this is the only way to bring justice but depending on your choices and reputation with other characters, this may not very convincing.
So yeah, I was hooked and really enjoyed my time with Wolf Among Us. I do have some minor complaints. Most of them to do with the world building and additional details. Like, because this is a pre-existing world, I don't have the full context of everything. Normally this isn't an issue as the game does a pretty good job filling you in as you play it. With the Book of Fables offering additional context. But there are a couple times where I felt I was confused on the exact details. One of these was the Farm. A place in upstate New York where Fable creatures who cannot look human are sent to. When I first heard of it and how characters like Colin and Toad didn't want to get sent there, I imagined it was like this "Fairy Tale Ghetto" where circumstances were even more deplorable, cramped, wild and lawless than in Fabletown. But reading the Book of Fables Entry and the later interactions with Toad kinda paint a different picture. It now looks more like a regular Farm or Rural community. This is what the Book says on the Farm:
"The Farm is home to Fables who cannot pass as human - giants, goblins, animals, etc. It is located in upstate New York, far enough away from the mundies to avoid detection. Some of its residents resent their confinement to The Farm, despite its size and comforts. To them, The Farm is a prison. They would be allowed to leave The Farm if they could purchase a glamour, but many don't have the money for something so expensive. Though some, like Colin, sneak out into the city anyway."
I'm confused as to what the issue is? The Farm seems to have plenty of space and comfort so it's not like it's a cramped slum or ghetto. It's even described as having some nice rivers and scenery by Bigby. And what makes it a prison? It says they can leave any time if they can purchase glamour so it's not like once they get sent there they are trapped permanently. Colin doesn't seem to have faced any consequences for his escapes. Snow White only threatens to send him back there.
And is Fabletown really that much more of a place of freedom given it's possible needing to purchase glamour might put you in debt to the Crooked Man and his criminal empire? There's even documents in the Tweedle's offices suggesting that Beauty was being considered as a prostitute or stripper for Georgie should she fail to pay back her debts. Even the murders that kick off the story are considered a big deal because of rare they are. So if you live on the Farm, you save the money you'd either spend on Glamours or pay back to the Crooked Man.
It's entirely possible I missed something so someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.
So yeah, in closing. I really recommend these Telltale games for their story. Just please don't play them on the VITA (no surprise Telltale abandoned the VITA in 2013).
My next VITA platinum will probably be Undertale. See you then. For PS4/PS5, I'm playing Borderlands 3 casually and really enjoying it. Take care now.
