The Walking Dead Game Creeps Up On You

It’s no secret that I love zombies. One look at my story The Fast and the Dead is enough to convince anyone of that. It should come as no surprise then that I love The Walking Dead in every form it’s available in; as a comic/graphic novel, as a TV series, and now as an adventure game from Telltale Games.

I’ll have a full review of The Walking Dead Game up on GeekBeat.TV soon, but I wanted to go into how episode 1 handles the storytelling, as that’s really the part of the game that impressed me the most.

It’s common these days to call any good, impressive game ‘epic,’ but The Walking Dead Game Episode 1 - A New Day is the opposite of epic. It’s small, it’s personal, it’s isolating, stressful, fearful and very satisfying.

The game puts huge emphasis on the importance of the choices you, playing as Lee Everett, make throughout the story. Conversation and investigation make up the bulk of the game play; make no mistake, while this is a zombie game, it is NOT a shooter, nor is it a survival horror game. It is pure adventure.

Lee EverettAt key points throughout the game, you’ll say things in conversations, and you’ll be given a brief flash of information about the impact that your choice had on things. If you stick up for a friend in an argument, they’ll remember it. If you mouth off and call someone a nasty name, they’ll remember that too. In a twist that’s very Bioware in nature, these decisions can have consequences far beyond episode 1, impacting your journey into the next four episodes as well.

The examples I gave above were relatively trivial (at least they seem that way at first glance.) But there are much weightier choices to be made as well; there are a number of points at which you’ll literally be choosing who lives and who dies, and make no mistake, people WILL die.

The story’s far from over; we’ve been given a single episode of 8 chapters, with four more episodes to come. I’m really looking forward to seeing how deep the connections run between episodes. I’m loving Telltale’s Back to the Future series, but haven’t finished yet in part because each episode is so very self-contained; there’s not as much driving me to finish all five quickly. If The Walking Dead Game lives up to the early promise it shows, I won’t have that problem with it.

This Mass is Effecting My Writing

This new story is really being uncooperative these last few days. Yeesh. Back to games and another blog post I guess. This time I’ll tackle Mass Effect.

I’ve played Mass Effect before, and I got part way through Mass Effect 2. For those who aren’t aware, Mass Effect is a series of science fiction role playing games for the PC and consoles put out by Bioware, the creators of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Mass Effect 3 came out, and so it’s time for me to finish the other two. Or to replay them as the case may be. I lost my original game data for them.

While playing through the original Mass Effect I was reminded of just how good these games are. Of course for me “good” means strong story, and that has caused me to sink large amounts of the last 3 days into playing.

The stories are rich and peppered with minor stories for variety. The characters are fleshed out and convincing, and the amount of thought that’s gone into the themes and background information on the world of Mass Effect is nothing short of remarkable.

There are flaws, of course, but those mostly have to do with the game mechanics and level design. Since I’m writing about story, I’ll ignore those. They’re minor quibbles anyway.

A part of me had hoped that immersing myself in this great story would give me some insight into getting past this part of the story I’m writing. So far that hasn’t happened, but there’s always tomorrow; who knows. I am coming up on a part of the game that I remember only vaguely from my first play through, and it does contain a situation similar to the corner I’ve written myself into. I won’t be able to copy anything from the game—the scenarios are far too different—but maybe it’ll give me an idea.

It is also striking all kinds of chords for stories I could consider later in the series, though I didn’t really need to play Mass Effect for more ideas like that. I’m planning another post some time on how the act of writing will, itself, generate more ideas than you could possibly need.

The takeaway I intended for this piece is one I’ve expressed before; don’t be afraid to look outside of the traditional world of books for examples of fantastic storytelling. Film, theatre, even television and video games can all provide fantastic examples. Mass Effect certainly does.

A Diversion - Steam and EA's Origin

I’m going to step out of the writer’s corner to address video games again. As long-time readers and those who know me personally may be aware, I’m a big fan of Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG.) When I got it, the only option open to me to get it digitally was through Electronic Arts’ Origin service, which didn’t make me happy. I’ve been a fan of Valve’s Steam service for many years.

I’ve been going through my Steam game library and looking at Origin over the last few days and I’ve noticed there’s an odd relationship between them. I bought a game from EA’s popular Sims series, and I did so through Steam. The next time I opened up Origin, I found that same game had been added to my collection and was ready to download.

It makes sense in a way I suppose. It’s an EA game; EA obviously gets their cut of every sale of their games on Steam.

It even makes a certain amount of sense that they would allow registrations like this through a competitive service to be used on their Origin service. It makes it easier for people to use Origin more if they don’t have to rebuy content they’ve already paid for, and all of their stuff (at least stuff from EA) is there waiting for them.

The thing that I find odd is that it also constitutes a disincentive on the customer’s part to buy anything from Origin itself. I’m very interested in getting EA’s Mass Effect 3, for instance, and I was thinking of getting it via Origin, since it’s not currently available on Steam. Now though I’m wondering if it’d be better to wait until it is available on Steam.

Any game of EA’s that I buy on Steam is available to me via both Steam and Origin. But since Steam doesn’t get a cut of EA games I buy from Origin, stuff I buy on Origin stays on Origin only. (Yeah, my head is hurting now too. Sorry!)

Just another facet of the complexities of life in the digital age I guess. But it’s that same digital age that has had such a great effect on self-publishing opportunities for writers, so it’s hard to complain.