PXAbstraction

I played this episode this morning and felt satisfied when I finished it. But the more I've thought on it, the more I've taken issue with it and that was before reading this. It's odd because I don't normally like games that are just a series of linear narrative events that all ultimately coincide and where choice ultimately has little impact (I really don't care for Gone Home for example), yet I really enjoy Telltale's games. I like The Walking Dead's storytelling and writing more but I much prefer the world in The Wolf Among Us.

It's clearly a noire story and a lot of what happened in this episode is that. Tough choices, moral ambiguity, largely unlike-able characters (intentionally so), that's all par for the course and that's cool. But I agree that some of the shifts, such as the one at the beginning are just very jarring and feel like a part of the scene was cut out to save time or something. And yeah, Colin seemed like such a great character but we haven't seen him since the first episode and he's just here to provoke a fight, then that's it. Why?

I also really don't care for the way they're writing Snow as a bureaucrat. She likes rules and order, that makes sense with her character and she feels an obligation to try to right a broken system as best she can now that Crane's gone. But she isn't at all interested in dealing with the fact that clearly Glamours are too expensive for most people to afford, she just goes "If they can't use Glamours, off to The Farm with them!" And every time someone has to be shipped off, she dumps the responsibility of breaking it to them to Bigby. Why? She's the one in charge, why is it my job to have the awkward conversations for her and become hated by everyone who I tried to get to like me up to now? I get that it was written that way to create dramatic tension but it's not a good way to do it and I wish I could just go "No, you want to be in charge, you have the tough chats."

As for Beauty and the Beast, I once again get that they're incredibly vain people who have warped priorities and that's their character but again, I wanted an option to just go "You know what? Fuck you guys. You got yourselves into this mess, you get yourselves out." You can chide them for their dumb choices but it ultimately doesn't matter and it feels like in the end, I'm going to be forced into doing them a favour they really don't deserve. This is a fairly common trope of noire narrative though so maybe this is how it was supposed to make me feel.

I thought the Johann bit was just boring and it felt like filler. There was no real tension, just some build-up that ultimately went nowhere. You walk through a crowded meat freezer, just to go into a room, look around a bunch and leave while Johann snivels and makes excuses, even going so far as to blame you for not being there for him when he was willingly handing over his store to criminals and not telling you about it. Didn't see the point of it.

I actually quite liked the cliffhanger and thought it was a perfect lead-in to episode 5. A think a lot is going to get crammed into that episode and I'm very anxious to see how it all ends. I hope they can tie all these threads together in a way that's satisfying. This was probably my least favourite episode so far but I still liked it and the entire season so far. I definitely don't think the Wolf Among Us writers are as strong though and they really need to do something with Snow to developer her into a stronger, all round character, rather than one who ultimately just gives Bigby orders. They really aren't doing enough with her.

I couldn't be happier for Vinny as it seems he's going back to where he really wants to be and that's amazing for him and well earned I'd say. That said, I'm with the people who are apprehensive about what this means for the content I really loved Vinny on, namely the Bombcast, Quick Looks and Unprofessional Fridays. They've repeatedly said they don't want the Bombcast to start using Skype and I get why that is but Vinny brought a special kind of energy and humour to anything he was a part of and I don't know how the absence of that will affect things. These guys have done amazing things before though and I've been around since the beginning so I will always give them the benefit of the doubt. I hope they knock it out of the park. Good luck to the incoming new blood, they have some big shoes to fill.

I liked this episode a lot, especially with how brutal it got in places but as others have said, I have a hard time calling it the best so far as well. The tension when you first meet Carver in the last episode was incredibly thick. My hands actually tightened around the controller during that sequence. Whereas here, they did a great job of making you incredibly angry at him for being a cruel dictator but that was totally predictable and it was plainly obvious he was going to get his in the end. Not that the payoff was bad or that I didn't take a sense satisfaction in it (for the record, I chose to have Clementine leave before Kenny beat Carver to death, though it was a tough choice and I did watch the beating on YouTube afterward) but it was not surprising or shocking really. Honestly, I think a bolder move would have been for him to get away in some respect. People would have hated it (though that would obviously have been the point) but I think it would have been surprising and unexpected, especially if it was left unclear as to if you'd see him again and when.

The Sarita bit kind of surprised me but I thought they'd do something different with her, otherwise she would just be another emotionally ruined weight around the group's neck in future episodes (not that I'd blame her but still.) I went for her arm as well, simply because in the moment, I thought that was the best chance to save her, slim though it may be. Like Alex, I also feel she was an underused character who hasn't gotten much development and was mostly there to be upset about Kenny which feels like a missed opportunity.

As for Sarah, I'm with Alex. I empathise with the Hell she's been though but it's not been a picnic for everyone else and her endless inability to look out for herself is becoming tiresome (purely from a game play perspective.) I can't imagine the plan is for her to remain this way forever and I think something is going to happen soon that's going to force her to harden up. I'm actually the most anxious to see where they go with her character cause I think she has the most potential development ahead.

Not my favourite episode but definitely one of the better ones. I can't wait for the next.

Really great watch. I love the Bombcast and the live shows but I also love seeing Jeff talk "out of character" as it were. Smart duder he is. I hope I get a chance to meet and chat with him some day. Thanks for posting it!

The problem I'm seeing with people who are trumping up the virtues of this deal is that no one's wondering what the cost actually will be of selling the Oculus Rift at cost. Facebook doesn't have to make a profit on the hardware. OK, but they're a public customers and their investors will demand they make some kind of profit on it. So where's that going to come from?

Facebook doesn't make most of its money showing you ads on their site. It makes most of its money by mining your private data for information to sell to advertisers, something you don't hear about because they don't tell you. It's them using the Oculus Rift in that kind of nefarious way that bothers me. If Facebook was still private, this wouldn't bug me so much. But they're a public company and public companies are controlled by short-sighted investors who want to see every last dollar squeezed at every chance. Zuckerberg wouldn't have been able to sell this to his board of directors without some game plan for that.

It may end up being harmless, I hope it does and if so, fantastic. But I'm not concerned about having to login to Facebook to use a Rift or seeing ads while I use it. I'm concerned what they're doing with the monolithic amounts of data they could collect while I use it and how they're using it to profit only for themselves, not me, with a device I have to pay to use. Of course, we can only wait and see and that's what I'm going to do. But with Facebook involved, there is a lot of historical context for worry and distrust.

I'm having constant buffering problems with the new player as well, same as before. On top of that, this new player was apparently released without the ability to save your playback position when you leave the page? I can't fathom why a new player was pushed out with features missing from the previous one. But yeah, even on my 150MBit cable connection at home, I have no video issues except here. As someone who bought Premium primarily for videos, it's getting incredibly frustrating to keep having to deal with this nonsense.

Would have been nice if they got all the features of the old player in the new player before deploying it.

I can't resume either and while the constant lag and stuttering of the old player has improved, it's still doing it far too often. I'm on 150Mbit cable at home and 100Mbit fiber at work and am still dealing with constant lag that doesn't happen on any other site. The main reason I pay for Premium is HD video access and it's all but useless.

Interesting predictions. I put up a bunch of my own earlier on my own blog (it's a hobby site, I don't make money from it.) I actually agree on the VR adoption one, though I have to admit I haven't had the chance to try a Rift yet. I really, really hope Twitch doesn't remain the standard for streaming. Their site, UI and servers are all bloody awful but then again, so are YouTube's and they're doing just fine, though I also predicted we're going to see at least one major YouTuber or network jump ship this year. I think both in terms of games in general and the industry, it's going to be one of the most interesting years in a long time.

@amyggen: One would hope that would be the case but basically every Battlefield game has been broken at launch (well, the Bad Company games shipped OK) and each one still substantially outsells the one before it. Sadly, many gamers have short memories when it comes to stuff they enjoy. :( DICE makes good games but even before being bought by EA, they were horrible at quality control.

This to a certain degree. Vox Media may have a more long-form plan to make Polygon profitable that they haven't fully rolled out yet but if they're planning to just adhere to the same advertising model everyone else is, the site's not going to continue forever as it is. There is no money in purely ad driven web sites right now and possibly never will be again. They have some very expensive talent there (several of whom I don't care for but that's another argument) plus the insane amount they must be spending on design and video production and ads alone ain't going to pay the bills there. Jeff has hinted strongly before that Whiskey Media sold because they were out of money and even premium memberships weren't paying the bills so just asking your community to fund you isn't going to work either. And the crew here has a lot more cache and based on the Polygon comments, this place generates a lot more traffic. Vox's venture capital will dry up eventually and if they don't have a stable framework in place by then, stuff is going to get scaled back a lot. As impressive (if gaudy) as some of their production values are, Giant Bomb has proven that you don't need fancy motion graphics to make people consume your content so I really wonder if all that design is really necessary for them to be effective.