With Telltale Gone, It's up to Dontnod to Push Story Driven Games Forward

If someone had asked gamers a week ago who was pushing story driven games forward, most would have said it was a close competition between Telltale Games and Dontnod Entertainment. Fast forward to today, and Dontnod is the only one capable of seeing the feat through.

[FallenAngel1984]

Way to completely snub Quantic Dreams

[Silly gameAr]

I think that was the idea.

[uptownsoul]

Quantic Dreams…And don't forget Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games

[P_Bomb]

They brought up Supermassive, but dismissed them. Not indie enough I guess?

Quantic’s been doing this 20 years. Just had their best launch. Didn’t even make the conversation *scratches head*

[SuperSonic91]

The author have no idea how big Detroit Become Human has become. That Connor Army is huge.
Oh and Until Dawn is a master piece of horror story telling.

[-Foxtrot]

I'm sure Quantic Dream will a better job...they are the only ones pushing the genre forward in my opinion. Sure they aren't perfect but at least they try to do new things.

Each game is brand new, no sequels, each game differs from the last, visuals are great, choices actually matter, full on games with no waiting between episodes. Even Until Dawn, a brand new game by another studio did more things for the genre then TellTales Walking Dead or Dontnod's Life is Strange brought to it.

Funny QD are always nit picked to death or ignored...like I've said many times one year Heavy Rain comes out and is nitpicked for issue A, B and C yet the Walking Dead comes out a year later broken into episodes with a much lower quality looking game yet points A, B and C nitpicked the year before in Heavy Rain reviewers overlooked in Walking Dead...goes onto win GOTY. Boggles my mind and shows double standards.

[ArchangelMike]

Exactly^^

If Detroit Become Human was made by any other studio -say an indie dev, it would have been lauded as one of the great story based games of the generation.

[-Foxtrot]

I know people have beef with David Cage but you can't let one man cloud your judgement towards a game made not just by him but the ENTIRE studio. It's not a single mans game or work, it's a team effort.

[coolbeans]

1.) If it were made by another studio/writers, there'd probably be improvements to the storytelling compared to what David Cage does: better pacing, less on-the-nose hand-wringing about its allegorical elements, less bad dialogue, and on and on and on.

2.) What is this nonsense narrative as though Detroit's being unfairly targeted by critics? It holds a 78 on metacritic with several critics--unfortunately--laudin g it as one of the great story based games of the generation:

https://www.metacritic.com/...

And that doesn't include the plethora of smaller sites' reviews crediting its story:

http://n4g.com/channel/detr...

[coffeemaster]

Quantic does a pretty good job too, but they definitely have less impact than Dontnod and Telltale for sure

[WeAreLegion]

Hard disagree. Heavy Rain set the standard that the other teams took inspiration from.

[GTgamer]

What 🤔 Quantic dream choices actually can't say the same for telltale

[P_Bomb]

How so? Dontnod has only really had one hit. Remember Me bombed so bad they needed public funding to get Life is Strange off the ground. Vampyr didn’t exactly light it up either.

If TellTale had the impact you think they did, they wouldn’t be out of business. Within months of eachother, QD had their best launch in 20yrs while TT fired everyone half way through a season pass.

[ArchangelMike]

I think when you say "Story driven games" that description is way too broad. Even if you say story driven adventure games. For example The Witcher 3 did great things for story driven 'adventure' games, so did Detroit Become Human. In fact there have been a number of developers from Bioware (Mass Effect etc), Super Massive (Until Dawn), Quantic Dream (Detroit), to indie devs like Night School (Oxen Free) who have, and will continue to contribute and push the "story driven adventure game" forward, and who I believe do it better that Tell Tale Games.

[PhoenixUp]

You’re seriously disregarding a lot of developers in the narrative adventure/visual novel genre such as Level 5, Capcom, Quantic Dream, The Odd Gentleman, Fullbright Company, Spike Chunsoft, Supermassive Games & Key.

[ShadowWolf712]

Atlus

[gamer7804]

They mention the election between Hilary and Donald hoping that "she" will win. The only white guy thats nice/helpful is an "activist" who moved away from home due to disagreements with family or something.

Not sure if it matters to some but it seems that this game only paints a 1 dimensional picture of our society and pushing a political agenda on its players, much more in your face than the previous games. (which I loved).

Don't nod has the freedom to make whatever they want but this is something that I think people should be aware of before buying.

[generic-user-name]

The gaming media is predominantly left wing, especially sites like Kotaku and polygon, pandering to their views is a great way to get high scores.

[gamer7804]

I was thinking the same thing, the game will probably be a critical success by review sites for partially this reason.

[trouble_bubble]

You’re not wrong

[Fist4achin]

Aren't visual novels huge in Japan?

[WeAreLegion]

False. What Remains of Edith Finch was better than anything either team has done.

[jimbost79]

Yes it was. So was observer. Theres loads of games ive played that were better at storytelling than anything telltale have done. They were massively overrated.

[pyroxxx]

Not really,.. Observer is actually a great game,.. What remains of Edith finch is a 40 minutes long self absorbent pos,.. Hell even firewatch was better ,.. and that game is utter shit. about telltale ,.. first walking dead,.. was actually really great game,.. everything else was really kinda shitty,..

[jimbost79]

See i thought edith was brilliant, but yea wasnt too impressed with firewatch thought it was decent tho. Glad I played it. Lengths not an issue for me in these type of games i enjoyed dear esther, the park, layers of fear, last day of june, blackwood crossing and theres loads more i cant remember of the top of my head. All doable in one or two sessions but real memorable experiences. Agree with you about the first walking dead. The rest were the same old shit.

Edith finch is longer than 40 mins tho mate

[RememberThe357]

I LOVE the writing in Dear Ester, such a great experience. I didn't really know how to take it when I started it but man I settled in and just rode the wave.

[capjacksparrow]

*Choice giving story driven games.

In which case Quantic Dream shouldn't be looked over.

We all know Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, and CDProjekt will continue to lead the push of strong story driven games,

[Poopmist]

People have mentioned most of the other good developers of story driven games.
InExile is pretty good too. Seems weird to just focus on one studio.

[rob-GP]

Why do people think that TT Games and Dontnod are/were the only developers out there creating narrative-driven games? There are a number of talented development studios who make these games, most of them like to release a game in its entirety though rather than episodic.

Not bashing Dontnod as I like their games, but there are certainly better adventure games out there.

[Yui_Suzumiya]

Quantic Dream?

[Tross]

Well, it's not as though Telltale had a monopoly on the genre. About the only unique thing they had was the right to produce titles based on licensed IPs, but it's not as though they were the only company on the planet able to secure a license. I'm sure the genre will carry on just fine. On a side note, I think it needs a better label than "story driven games", as many games across multiple genres are quite story driven. What we're referring to are branching narratives where gameplay takes more of a back seat. It's kind of close to the Japanese visual novel, but not quite there as there is gameplay to be had. Perhaps it's high-time we find a label that adequately encapsulates what this particular genre is.

[jaycptza]

Tones of Japanese devs, QD, Many PlayStation First Party devs

[UNCHARTED2FANATIC]

Never cared for life is strange. Not into the emo teen story

[WitcheRivia]

I trust SuperMassive Games to do this correctly. DONTNOD is the worst when it comes to the story driven games & it's clear that there is always a leftist agenda behind them.

[TheUpbringer]

We're screwed

[AK91]

I’m not too sure about that, I mean I know I’m in the minority but their writing is absolutely atrocious.

[Gatsu]

I love Dontnod and LIS 2.

[Realms]

I will give you that Telltale had pretty good writers but the latter games had become meh. Their best games were the Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us and probably Border Lands. It surprises me that so much lead way was given to Telltale since this style of gaming had been around for a while and they took heavily from games like Grim Fandango. Many people had issues with their terrible game engine that instead of adding to the experience and making a more complete game they double down on their really bad game engine and license every property they could get their hands on which contributed heavily to their demise.