General Gaming Megathread: What are you playing?

[SnapSlav]

Wait, God of War a fantastic game? That one embodies the worst kind of beat em up ever. It's slow, full of area of effects and QTEs and the writting is unironically juvenile. Those games are flashy garbage.
Brutal Legend is not the best game ever but it's a pretty cool RTS and the writting is aware that it's ridiculous and campy.
I don't mind you thinking BL is not that great but when you compare it to something like God of War I just take offense.

I never said GOW was a particularly deep game, but it IS a great one. The controls were solid and the combo system was varied enough that it took thought to approach differently assorted groups of enemies, rather than all-out button mashing. The portrayal of the characters wasn't over-the-top and we weren't constantly being told to hold certain feelings towards them, we were being shown the appropriate amount of Kratos to understand what we wanted to feel about him, as much as we wanted to feel, and even if we didn't like him, we successfully hated Ares more. The plot was great, if unoriginal (the antihero who must redeem himself, yeah, we've been here before), and the twist was suggested throughout the whole game while still shocking once revealed. So the premise was great, the execution was great, the pacing was great, the controls were great, conclusion is that the game was great. God of War went for a very specific thing, and it achieved that specific thing almost flawlessly. Yeah, certain mechanics got improved in later titles, so obviously they weren't ideal in the first game. Yeah, the combos were changed around in later games, so obviously they weren't the pinnacle at the time of the first game. But for what it did and when it did it, GOW was nothing short of spectacular, and their drive to be brutal for the sake of brutality is what makes me feel like there's endlessly more Metal in GOW than I could ever find in BL.

I dunno why you came away taking offense from my comparison, but I can only guess that you probably had a bad experience with GOW if you hold such negative feelings towards it. I played games that are better than GOW in the same genre (Ninja Gaiden 2004), games that copied it and failed (Spawn), games that TRIED to copy it and still failed (Heavenly Sword), and GOW just always stands out as having done everything right. It's one of those games that whether you like it or not, you gotta acknowledge that it WAS a great game. I personally don't care for FFT (or any Final Fantasy, for that matter), but when people compare games to FFT, I understand that they're trying draw parallels or contrasts with a great game, even if it wasn't personally for my taste.

It's not that Brutal Legend was campy that turned me off to it, it was just a bad game. I can't speak enough about floppy controls and unintuitive presentation and how they can cripple a game in its entirety, and BL is tragically guilty of those missteps, in spades. I personally don't like camp, but when self-aware camp is pulled off well (Airplane versus Scary Movie 3; one does it well, the other falls flat, yet they're made by the same people!) I can enjoy it, and Brutal Legend's wasn't finessed in any way that got me to say "Hey, this is pretty good, it's self-aware and smart." Like I already said, it gave me some chuckles (Chiefly Eddie, "We start a revolution!" when asked what good a bunch of idiots who can only bob their heads are, that was a good one!) when it made some inside and not-so-inside jokes, but those don't carry a game. The game carries the game, and it was a bad game. So if I've gotta feel like one game embodies pure Metal, it ain't Brutal Legend for those reasons listed above.

I do LOVE Tenacious D, even though they're equally Metal as much as Parody Metal, but like I posted in #7054, I don't care about the pedigree, I care about the thing in and of itself. Speaking of which, now I must go listen to "The Metal", a song that's both hilarious as well as awesomely Metal! =D

 

[Emperor]

Just finished Primordia and I definitely recommend it.

The atmosphere, the characters, the story, the locations are very well done and the endings, ah the endings.
7 to 10 endings ( Can't exactly remember how much) in an adventure game, of course some just require a last minute action to happen at the final stage while others you need to pick certain items, do certain quests, know how much information at the course of the game.
There no good ending, it goes to the darkest one to the grey one and the ''best'' ending cease to be that when you think of everything you done to archive it.
The setting is very dark but is very disguised by your sidekick, his sarcasm with the actual situation and the main character reaction can effectively hides the darkness of the world, you only see it if you search for it. I only stopped to think about when I finished the game.
The sidekick is another thing that I liked, apart of his personality( which I liked), he was the way the developers thinked of giving hints to the various puzzles to the game without simplifying them, of course he doesn't tell the hints all the time, in fact if you keep bugging him, he will only make jokes and tell to think for yourself.If you keep stuck for a period of time, when you interactive with him there is a good chance that he will tell something helpful. The helpfulness increase over the time you are stuck, it goes to vague informations to an obvious answer ( I never reached this point)
The puzzles are varied, it goes to the easy ones to the harder ones. Sometimes when you rage over a puzzle and decided to quit the answer comes right into the mind and most of the time it was a simple thing that you didn't notice. I have shame telling that, when I reached in what you can consider the hardest puzzle I looked up in the internet, I just couldn't figure everything out ( it had parts) and I keep clicking on my sidekick so he didn't help me much. Frankly, I would never figured it out.
There are a lot of easter eggs ( there is even a Fallout one) and there are a lot of secrets.
The mood/atmosphere remembered to me Fallout but the history given a lot of a Planescape Torment vibe ( I think that, manly, it was a personal history) as well the world.
I'm definitely playing it again in the future, to find all the secrets and archive a different ending. I totally recommend it.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

How is the story?

Too early to tell honestly, but seems like typical fantasy RPG stuff. You're tracking a murder, there's evil magic involved, plus there's the looming threat of "The End of All Time" that you somehow are destined to stop.

But, it's very tongue-in-cheek, so that's acceptable IMO. At least it doesn't take itself too seriously. Conversations with animals are particularly hilarious if you have the skill. Also, a lot of interesting roleplay comes from interactions between your two PCs (originally designed for multiplayer, but also works in singleplayer if you're schisophrenic enough). Sure, you can disable that or always pick the same option between the two PCs, but that's sort of boring - you miss out on how the characters can evolve in the process. For example, in my current game I'm playing a pair of noble female knight and underhanded rogue. Well, it turns out the girl had a thing for romantic idealism and is a bit impractical at times, while the rogue is also very level-headed and compassionate to those going through hard times.

Classless leveling system that offers for a ton of different builds and strategies, without forcing you to powerbuild like DnD usually does. Might have less skills and spells that NWN2, but oh so many more ways to use skills and spells in combat. Lots of opportunities to roleplay, and lots of reactivity from your surroundings. Very well polished with great optimization, great voice acting, very minor bugs.

Actually, there is a metric ton of skills/spells. They are just not made available from the start. Go here and watch the feature trailer, specifically the part where they click through the skillbook: http://store.steampowered.com/app/230230/

Then there's the Divine Divinity-style perks, typical ability score nonsense, as well as 'abilities' (kind of like proficiencies or feats). So definitely a lot of customization, and also flexibility.

It really has very little in common with NWN2. Best turn-based combat in a fantasy rpg to date, imo.

Better than TOEE? Also, how many party members can you have, since i only saw 3 at most.

You get 2 PCs and 2 NPC slots, unless there's a way to expand that later on. You can pick story NPCs or mercenaries. In multiplayer, that gets split to 1 PC and 1 NPC each.

Not sure I can claim the combat is better than TOEE just yet, but it's definitely the best SINCE that game. Definitely better than what I've played of Wasteland beta. Infinitely more polished than either of the two.

Well, i saw that one can summon rain and then electricute enemies who are standing in the puddles. That's pretty interesting, kind of a better version of dragon age spell mixing.

It's more like Magicka, I think. You can spill oil then set it on fire. You can drop heavy stuff on enemies or teleport them into environmental hazards. You can throw a fireball at a water barrel, making a steam cloud, and then electrify it with an air spell.

There are also statuses like "warm" or "wet"; stand next to a campfire, and you're "warm", which makes it easier for certain spells to set you on fire. If you're "wet", you can be electrocuted or frozen. If you're standing in a cloud of any description, you cannot be targeted by ranged attacks - only AoE or melee. All of this can be done via spells or special crafted arrows.

Plus there's stuns, knockdowns, and other stuff. Pretty OP if they land, giving you 100% to hit the downed/stunned enemy. A fair portion of skills/spells specializes in buffs and debuffs - typical rage/haste/weak/slow/bleed deal. Then there's a bunch of different summons. Finally there's a bunch of perks, which can modify your combat - heals via blood-drinking, backstabs and sneak attacks,

So in short, it's very different from a typical DnD game but still a classical RPG through and through.

It seems like a very interesting game, but looking that gameplay videos, i can't shake the feeling of this sacred 3, or dungeon siege 3 cheapness vibe. It kind of looks like a bit of a mess.

Not sure what made that impression. Sure, the graphical style is somewhat similar to those two (I'm assuming you mean Sacred 2 since I've never heard of 3), but that's about it.

 

[aenemic]

Better than TOEE? Also, how many party members can you have, since i only saw 3 at most.

Been a while since I played ToEE, but I'd go as far as to say it's better. Very similar in many ways, but the way you can interact with your surroundings is such a huge part that ToEE completely lacked.

Huh? I never powerbuild my characters in DnD (one of my current IWD characters is a rogue barbarian). If you're playing online that may be true, i have no idea, since i always play them in single player mode.

Well, by powerbuilding I mean there's an inherent problem with the DnD rules that make some builds very powerful, some near useless. In my opinion, at least. You have a lot of options, but also a lot of restrictions that make many of those options not very viable.

Well, i saw that one can summon rain and then electricute enemies who are standing in the puddles. That's pretty interesting, kind of a better version of dragon age spell mixing.

Much much more complex than Dragon Age. Ausdoerrt summed it up nicely.

It seems like a very interesting game, but looking that gameplay videos, i can't shake the feeling of this sacred 3, or dungeon siege 3 cheapness vibe. It kind of looks like a bit of a mess.

Never played Sacred. Played Dungeon Siege 3 and liked it. But I can promise you, this game is much more polished than Dungeon Siege 3. Not sure why you'd think it's a bit of a mess. Granted, a lot of things are a matter of taste. If you don't like random loot, quirky humor, over-the-top high fantasy, colorful graphics, turn-based combat etc, then so be it. But all these things fit well together in this game. I've been playing pretty much non-stop since the release and I feel like I've only scratched the surface. It's full of quests, with no hand-holding and multiple solutions, challenging fights that you find yourself coming back to with better gear and higher levels, secrets and puzzles that you have to figure out all by yourself, experience rewards for exploring, a crafting system that barely gives you straight up recipes and forces you to experiment. And much much more.

 

[Walpknut]

Still loving Deadly Premonition, so quirky and weird. I mean a graphic adventure with a hunger, tiredness, car maintenance, open world and even personal hygiene system? Talk about weird japanese devs.

 

[SnapSlav]

Beat Doom 3... again again again. First time completing it on Nightmare, but this must be the 5th time I've beaten it in total. Sadly, it just seems to be "one of those games" where nothing about it really screams for me to replay it after beating it. Played it after a good 5 years or so after getting it, then decided to play it on the now-unlocked highest difficulty, and now what? That's it, really. Short of just looking up mods and playing those, it appears as if my Doom 3 experience has reached its conclusion. Now to find those programs to get my original Doom games running on modern systems (not to mention a *COUGH*pirated*COUGH* copy of Doom II to download, cause I can't seem to find my disc T_T) and give those games a go for the first time in almost 2 full decades. XD

 

[Makta]

Still loving Deadly Premonition, so quirky and weird. I mean a graphic adventure with a hunger, tiredness, car maintenance, open world and even personal hygiene system? Talk about weird japanese devs.

I should really install it.. But i'm currently working my way trough Deus Ex HR after giving up on Resident evil revelations achivements.. Got a bit bored. Also noticed steam have added the old and gold game named Z! I still have the discs here and i feel like trying it again after all these years. If it will run on a newer system that is

 

[valcik]

That book sounds interesting. Some basic outlines give me The Re-Animator vibe. I suppose because of the whole head-business going on...

The Re-Animator is just half-arsed and very childish zombie apocalypse. For instance, how could the separated head talk? Vocal cords can't work without a flow of air expelled from lungs. Professor Dowell's Head is a serious sci-fi, those heads are connected to a tank with compressed air. When the valve on this tank is turned off, they can't talk at all.

 

[5545Trey]

Currently playing the Halo: Reach Campaign.

 

[Walpknut]

So, I completed the last episode of Wolf Among us twice.... and now I think I hate Telltale "games". Well, I guess those 20 dollars gave me a lesson.

 

[naossano]

I played Back To the Future by Tell Tale.
While i agree that the games felt like a movie with an interface, but the writting & the acting was great.
I didn't expected that a new entry on that franchise would entertain me that much. (as a great fan of the movies)

 

[Walpknut]

The Back to the Future game was a more straight forward Point and click adventure. These new TWD and WAMU games are all about being cinematic experiences with choices and consequences... but they completely fail on that front.

 

[Ilosar]

The Back to the Future game was a more straight forward Point and click adventure. These new TWD and WAMU games are all about being cinematic experiences with choices and consequences... but they completely fail on that front.

How so? I hear great praise about them otherwise and was considering buying Wolf Among Us.

 

[Walpknut]

To tel yo uthe turth I don't really get all the praise. Considering those games outright lie to you every episode telling you that the game is "tailored by how you play" yet all the choices you make are superficial an unsubstantial. If you want to buy Wolf among us, buy it during a sale it really isn't worth it full price. I mean that last one claims to be a mystery game yet you don't even do any kind of point and click investigating, outside of episode 1, you just let the cutscenes happen and choose a dialogue option every now and then that it's not even gonna affect anything other than a message telling you "X character will remember that". I mean, no spoilers but there is a part of the game were a character is about to die, you are specifically told so, and the game still pops up the "will remember that" message. They are pretty hour long cutscenes but they really barely qualify as games and I am someone who defends Heavy Rain to death.

 

[Ilosar]

Ah. I got told that the choice permutations did exist but weren't story-defining; the same things will happen, but the opinions of some characters and whenever they live or die will change. No real investigating is a bummer, though.

As for me, I'm trying my hand at the Company of Heroes 2 expansion, which adds the Americans and the german Oberkommando West. I really like the US faction, very mobile and versatile with strong infantry and tank destroyers. The new Germans however are campy and rely on getting to lategame to crank out Panthers and King Tigers and other assorted panzerporn. Not my cup of tea. One thing has to be said, the factions are remarkably balanced considering Relic's track record. What I dislike is the new unlock system; they now have ''war spoils'' drop from time to time, random stuff like skins, faceplates, small bonuses, and more importantly Commanders which actually large have a gameplay effect.

Also playing Original Sin. It's good, but I don't think it's as awesome as some people here do. The writing is pretty meh (albeit Larian was never really good at that I found), the setting generic as humanly possible, and the game's systems seem to lack a bit of depth. Melee fighters boost Strength and Man-at-Arms. Archers and the like put points in Dexterity and boost Expert Marksman and use summoning spells and magic arrows. Mage wreck faces by putting points in Intelligence and choosing among 5 schools. You need one character with high perception to get shiny stuff and almost all secondary skills you can get ample points from items so don't bother investing in them. The combat is very nice, however, and I love the whole environment interactions. The beginning of the game was unforgiving, but it gets easier and easier as my fighters pile up resistances and can just wade into melee killing most things in 2-3 swings. Still a good game, but flawed. At least it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Don't have much in terms of new releases until Dragon Age: Inquisition. Uh, maybe I'll replay Origins in the meantime. 3 months is about the time for a full playthrough usually.

 

[Walpknut]

Some character's deaths are dependant on choices (like 2 I htink) BUT even if they survive they turn into extras, as to avoid actually having to change the story "by how you play".

 

[SnapSlav]

Having not (yet) played TWAU, but having played TWD, I'd have to disagree with the assessment that the "choices" were superficial and unsubstantial, at least as far as the latter title is concerned.

True, as Ilosar points out, often times the story progresses in the same way but something in the background is different, but the key words there are "often times", not always. Prioritizing helping one person and getting another person killed more or less leaves you with person A tagging along in place of person B, but it's not just cosmetic or thematic. There are overall choice impacts that do make a big difference. Choosing one character gives Lee a romantic interest, which clashes with a character who (depending on your choices) provides a separate dimension of romantic feelings. Choosing another character gives a reliable friend, and none of that conflict "love triangle" conflict. Being a pragmatic survivalist will result in certain characters hating you, meanwhile if you try to be a moralist, other people hate you. In a story with a limited group of survivors to ever befriend at once, you don't want to alienate yourself from any of them, so those choices do matter.

You ultimately still "do the same things", in a sense, but these have gameplay impact, which is felt very real by the player, not just told that it's real by the game. A choice on how you approach an investigation at one point in the game will cause a difficult encounter to spawn during that journey whereas it won't with another choice. Some characters in the later Episodes will join your group, while others come and go in that same Episode, regardless of your choices. Ultimately, what you do, leading up to who hates you and who has you back, results in how many people survive to the end of the game, and this is a substantial affect on the game. Yes, Character C is always scripted to die by this point in the game if he/she hasn't died earlier, but there's a large group that can get killed OR make it to the end of the game, depending on your choices.

Because Telltale's The Walking Dead is a Point-and-Click Adventure Game, and therefore "raildroady", it can certainly seem like your choices do not matter... if you fixate on the fact that you make it from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. But that's like suggesting that it doesn't matter how you played your Vault Dweller because in the end you always got expelled from Vault 13; of course it mattered, because the experience was different depending on what you did- that was the GAME you played, impacted entirely based on HOW you chose to play it!

(Hopefully that point was conveyed despite the fact that due to spoilers being tough to avoid with a game like TWD I had to dodge talking about anything specific at all.)

I will agree that the game was perhaps overhyped. It wasn't particularly amazing, BUT it was a good game. You have to look at it from the perspective of 2012, when the game was released, and recognize what pick in games we had. TWD wasn't just some indie Steam title. This was before the surge in enthusiasm and massive popularity around "Let's Play" games such as Outlast and other indie crazes. TWD was a game available on multiple platforms, and that made it a title to be compared directly with other Triple-A titles. Unlike the shallow experiences of RE6 and BFBC2 and a bunch of other titles which, at the time of 2012 was beginning to wear on gamers as tired and repetitious gaming, The Walking Dead was a breath of fresh air. It wasn't like FO3, which promised choices with impact, and delivered an abundance of choice without ANY impact to it; the choices and their consequences felt immediately apparent. It wasn't like EVERY GAME OUT THERE which took any license, any genre, any inspiration, and dulled it down to some FPS, it was a Point-and-Click Adventure Game, something that at the time was all but extinct! At the time it came out, TWD was so different, it felt new. It was a good game, and it deserved all the praise that it got. The problem was confusing that praise for assuming that it was a perfect and immortal game that would never age and always be a great game. It was praise for a game being a good game out of exasperation of getting nothing but the same shit over and over for years that for a change wasn't that.

. . . . . . . . . .

As for the subject of what I'M playing... eh, I decided to finish what I started and installed Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, and surprisingly (I guess because it checked that I had "completed game" saves from the first title) it allowed me to play on Nightmare difficulty right off the bat. Well, I will say that this is offering a DIFFERENT experience than vanilla D3. Since I have the Artifact to work with, not the Soul Cube, I can't heal to full every 6 monster kills (if I choose), so it makes for MORE cautious gameplay on my part. It's still bogged down by the same problems as the rest. It was frightening as fuck when I played it for the first time, and it's jump scares are indeed masterful, but when you're just good at games and you've played this before and you know what's coming, that no longer intimidates you. Worse is that quicksave and quickload reduce as much as dreading having to restart a level to dreading repeating 5 seconds.

I was intensely scared in Dead Space 2 EVERY time I replayed it on Hardcore Mode, even though I practically memorized all of the monster spawn points, because there was no abusive "F5 F9 F5 F9 F5 F9" spamming that could take me back a few seconds/minutes ago to try again; dying once meant losing HOURS of work, and that was scary. It wasn't psychologically terrifying in the sense that you were dreading the unknown, but you were dreading something inevitable, and when you ultimately succumbed, or whether you triumphed, WAS your unknown. D3's convenience just can't measure up to that, unless I voluntarily impose personal Iron Man restrictions on myself, and that doesn't work for me. I CAN (and often do) play by my own self-imposed restrictions to enhance my experience, but it's better if the game imposes them for me. I want the GAME to set the pace, to enforce the rules. I don't want to have to do it for the game. So, for now, this is a project test on how long it will take me to slog through Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, because it's quite boring... ~_~

 

[Walpknut]

I have beat that game 3 times, let's go with the SPOILERS:

Spoiler

The Walking Dead:
Episode 1.
You choose between helping Duck or Hershell's son, both options net you the same result, Hershell's son dies no matter what you choose, and you are kicked out of the farm no matter what you choose.
You choose to save either Carry or the geeky guy, they die in a very stupid way on episode 3 without really doing anything plot relevant after their "choice segment".
Episode 2 - 3.
The old guy will get his skull crushed no matter what you choose, there a is theme of choosing the better leader of the group on this episode and the next one, Lily still goes crazy and kills the aforementioned Carrie/Geeky guy and you let her on the road to then board a train, or you don't and then she steals the SUV so you get on the train. Yeah, some fine choices and cosnequences there.
Did yo uside with Kenny on all the episodes? or did you choose a vague opton that for some reason pissed him off? Well, with the first he will be friendly, and with the second he will be agressive, but he will still save you. So aesthetic change.
You can choose to not kill the girl that is beign attacked by zombies (How the fuck did she get there? It's like 4 months or so into the apocalypse) or not, yo ustill get attacked by a horde of zombies at the end of the sequence.
You can be nice to Duck and play along with him, or not do it, he dies 10 minutes later.
Kathja kills herself no matter what you choose to do with Duck after he gets bitten, which is understandable but there is still no point in there being an illusion of choice there.
You then throw the short guy off the bridge and he lands on the train and breaks hsi leg, or he jumps by himself, then lands on the train and breaks his leg.
You also get the option of choosing between him and his girlfriend to save. If you save him the girl just gets on the train no problem, if you don't sae the crippled man he still gets on the train no problem.
Also, some generic dude gets introduced at the beginning and then disappears 10 minutes in, because he is getting eaten alive.
Episode 4.
Only extras and one episode characters die here.
You can save Ben or let him die..... which bring us to the next
Episode 5.
If you saved Ben he dies, no matter what, and doing absolutely nothing to boot.
You can cut your hand off, you'll still be able to one hand a horde of zombies, climb ladders fast and make jumps to grab onto ledges. But hey, yo uget a gory scene and a comment from little Clementine, so CONSEQUENCES! You still die.
Does Kenny "die" mercy killing Ben or saving Krista? It's not even an option of "does he 'die'?" because even when you have no other companion with you he still "dies".
None of the people that go with you to find Clementine do anything at all, just provide commentary and, in the case of Ben and Kenny. die.
Did you choose the good options regarding morality in the previous chapters? The dude that kidnapped Clementine still hates you and wants to take her away. Even mentioning that you haven't done that bad.
Clementine still ends up alone and goes with Christa and the short guy even if you hid your bite mark and they abandoned you.

Bonus: Episode 1 Season 2.
The short guy gets killed by a plot hole (he was guarding the bathroom Clementine was in... yet a crazy scavenger still got in through the front door and then he comes in all surprised someone else is in there, wtf?.
And then you get separated from Christa. Good to see none of what you did in Season 1 has any impact.
Episode 3 or 4 I don't remember.
Remember the 4000 days survival camp that we were told was big and organzied? well, this si the Walking dead, so they are lead by a cartoonishly evil guy and then the camp gets ran over by Zombies at the end.

 

[SnapSlav]

Never said I was avoiding spoilers for YOUR sake... Likewise, I ALREADY pointed out that every complaint of yours of "this happens anyway, so it never even mattered!" was irrelevant, because they still impact your GAME. You playing the game. Your experience with the game. These are all interactive choices. Furthermore, you were mistaken on many of the results of the choices you listed.

Spoiler

Saving Duck or Shawn is a morality or practicality choice, and impacts Kenny's "like-o-meter". Choosing Shawn over Duck will be a permanent "Strike" against Lee.
Saving Carley or Doug causes you to play the next several episodes with a completely different character. They fulfill similar roles, but noticeably distinctly different.
Every choice of siding with Kenny or Lilly will be points in Lee's favor, or more "strikes" with Kenny. They will also impact others' impressions of Lee, and whether they keep his secret or not. Practically speaking, you still play the same game even if Lee gets outed, but this still has an impact later on.
Mercy killing the girl will shorten the scavenging duration, so you get fewer supplies as a result.
How you treat Omid and Christa, from which you try to help onto the train, to whether you leave him unguarded, impacts their respective "like-o-meters".
You missed several choices in Episode 4 which determine what happens to Molly. Either she definitely lives, or you get her killed, or you manage to save her. Your choices have a direct and felt impact, here.
Saving Ben or letting him die determines if he makes it to Episode 5, which acts as the "measure" for the game: who joined Lee in the end? If he dies in the bell tower, obviously he never helps Lee, regardless of his doomed fate.
The scenes immediately following whether you cut off your own arm or not are different.
If Kenny's "like-o-meter" was too low before Episode 5 and you can't convince him, he will abandon Lee because Lee pretty much abandoned him.

Regardless of how much you try to assert that this or that is "meaningless", guess what, YOU'RE PLAYING A GAME. You're trading one arbitrary line for another if you want to argue that reaching the end of the game renders all choices moot. Like a horror game that loses its scariness after playing it once, the outcomes of your choices seem less pivotal to moving on after playing TWD more than once. That doesn't make them meaningless, though. When you directly get a character killed SHOULD register as different than that character getting killed shortly afterward even if you saved them. If you can't see a difference, that's just fatalistic of you. Your glass is half empty. It's all a matter of perspective. All that jazz. Ultimately, it's all you, not the game. It IS a game you're playing, so of course, if you wanna split hairs here, then it's all "meaningless" because eventually you close the game. But that's all bullshit, since none of that fatalism will undo the experience of you having played the game, and the impressions of the divergent gameplay based on your choices.

By the end of the game, even though certain things were inevitable, it's still a prudent observation of the game that the players were all globally assessed based on which characters helped Lee in the end, because clearly their choices affected those characters in their willingness/availability to help Lee. If the choices never mattered, then the game wouldn't have been able to assess this after the credits rolled.

 

[Walpknut]

I did a run where I mostly antagonized Kenny and the guy still came with me to the final confrontation, and then he proceeded to do nothing.

THey don't really immpact the game and that's where my point about the illusion of choice sets in. Same problem Fallout 3 has, the game pretends like it has choices. The games say they change by my choices and are tailored by how I play, yet they are more enamoured with their own story than on that promise they make at the beginning of every episode. And yeah, if the character I choose nto to save still dies 10 minutes later then that means the choice was superfluous. Imagine you are playing Fallout New Vegas, and instead of the multiple quest paths giving you different endings, in all of them but the House ending some dude appears out of nowhere and takes control of the region with the Securitron army jsut so they can have thier one ending. That would suck major ass.

If a choice in a "choices and cosnequences" game doesn't have any actual effect on the story and it's inmediately rendered pointless by the game itself or worse yet the "effect" it has is only aesthetic then that's bad, just simple like that. If a game is linear but makes no pretensions about being otherwise then there would be no problem, I like the Ace Attorney series and they are point and click adventure games with no alternate paths, same with other similar games. But Telltale games insist on telling us that our actions change the game, when the only effect they have is minor, they did a worse job than Mass Effect 3 when it comes to taking your actions into account, ME3 had 3 endings mostly differentiated by the color of the cutscene.... but at least they had more than a single resolution.