This was the button to make the next thing happen, and it was the only way to move on. But at some points in Episode 5, my inability to choose and the invisible hand of the developers forcing me to follow a specific path and no other felt very real.Īgain, I don’t want to spoil anything, but during one important scene, I had to press a button. That would create a design flowchart that I would never want to make. I’m under no illusion that choice-driven games must and do respond to my every decision and whim. Some of the imagery in Tales is beautiful, despite the inhospitable environment. The actual plot doesn’t seem to change it’s just really effective seasoning, but developers of choice-driven games don’t often take the time to say, “You did this then, so you can’t do this now.” And enough things affect this moment and its aftermath that you can’t help but admire how much really went into making this thing.
And depending on how that sequence goes, the ending can unfold drastically differently.
“The Vault of the Traveller” manages to outdo that scene by having all of the relationships players have cultivated throughout the series actually affect a decision later on. It was meant to put everything into perspective and maybe even make you question whether or not you’d made the right decisions along the way.
One of the best scenes in Season 1 of Telltale’s earlier series, The Walking Dead, had an antagonist confronting the main character (and, therefore, the player) with every choice they had made along the way. You can see the effects of all of your choices laid out in front of you