I don't know about you, but when I am playing a Telltale Games' series, I often find myself struggling to make decisions. It often seems like I'm choosing between the lesser of two evils. Even the seemingly "good" choices come with consequences. Turns out, that's by design.
Speaking to a crowd at PlayStation Experience this weekend, Telltale Games explained how they come up with the answers your presented with in their games.
"When we decide on the choice, we have a different philosophy than many other studios that make games that feature choices. We don't care so much about the flow chart," explained Telltale co-founder and president Kevin Bruner.
"We look for 'messy' decisions. We like to call them lose lose," he continued. "We want to give you something you want, but always at a cost of something. So you can have the option to protect Clementine, but you're going to have to do something that you'll regret."
"So we like messy decisions and it all just happens in the moment when we're writing, when we see the art, hear the music. There just comes a moment where you're like, 'Man, it would just be great to do this thing,' and it's really organic," he said of the process, which actually involves playing the games on paper, as scripts, before actually putting pictures to it.
"About that, something that's really cool for me, I was super super fortunate to be the first person in the world to play Game of Thrones, but it was on paper. We had the production team and everyone around the table, and it was kind of D&D style," recalled Telltale Games PR Director Job Stauffer. "It's intense! And for Thrones, talking to Cersei for the first time, walking into the throne room, and then having to try and say just the right things to not set her off, but also play it cool but please the Queen regent, was insanely difficult. It's just so much fun, we all get together and feel it out."
"We just don't think like playing the good guy or bad guy. We did a lot of that at LucasArts," said Bruner, who actually worked at LucasArts before founding Telltale. "There was the light side and dark side, it becomes too mechanical, sort of like a dice game. We find the messy stuff far more interesting."
So remember the next time you find yourself faced with a lose-lose decision in a Telltale Games episode, that it was by design. They want you to suffer — and for anyone who has played the first episode of Game of Thrones, suffer you will.
