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How is it possible that Telltale's engine is this awful

PaulloDEC

Member
It's a shame they can't get their shit together. Their newer stuff looks good and runs pretty well on PC, but with the amount of successful titles they've released there's really no excuse for them to not give their engine a well-overdue technical overhaul.

As everyone says, games as visually simple as the Telltale games running poorly on modern hardware is straight-up embarrassing.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
I was appauled by one of TWD episode recaps. The audio was all out of sync and everything was choppy as fuck with load screens inbetween.

The games feel like they're held together by duct tape and will crash at any moment. It's a massive pile of garbage and I'm done buying telltale games until they actually change.
 
Yea, it's about time reviewers start docking major points for stuff like this. I was llaying GoT on X1 yesterday and it ran like crap before crashing. Seriously, bunch of BS
 

nkarafo

Member
They cater on the casual Game of Thrones or Walking Dead viewer. Not gamers. The technical standards are pretty shitty.
 

Dash Kappei

Not actually that important
Yeah. makes me wonder how the ipad games run.

Much better than on Vita but still like butt.
And they're plagued by the usual save glitches which at this point I have to imagine comes with the engine itself (same problems on pc, consoles, portables, tablets...). It's the reason I've stopped buying their games even if I enjoy them.
 
I don't know why people get so upswt about performance for these telltale games...

They probably don't fix it because for 99.9% the performance doesn't effect the quality of the game or how people play it.


I played TWD on my IPad Mini and that was actually a struggle.
 

ZeroX03

Banned
Last Telltale games I bought were Monkey Island and Back to the Future.

Won't buy another one until they fix their technical issues, but they've shown no intention to do so.
 

Nudull

Banned
Oddly enough, I rarely came across any issues, playing on my PS3. Sucks for those who did (and still do), though.
 

TomShoe

Banned
Does anyone know how Tales from the Borderlands runs on PS4? I'm thinking about buying the season pass since it's on sale.
 

Fjordson

Member
Yes, I have both Borderland and GoT on PS4 and they work flawlessly.
Thanks. I'll break my Telltale ban for Tales of the Borderlands' first episode.

By chance have you played Wolf Among Us on PS4? That ran like total garbage for me on 360, bought the first episode and didn't even finish it.
 
Walking Dead ain't got shit on Poker Night on PS3. It's literally unplayable. Freezes after every hand and near single digit framerates.

Poker Night on PS3 is still literally the worst performing game I've ever played. Like, I almost can't believe that made it through certification bad. I may buy a Telltale game at some point (got Poker Night through PS+), but it won't be until I've heard that they overhauled their engine.
 

Dachande

Member
I just played through TWD season 2 on my mid-2011 Macbook Air and didn't have too many issues. The framerate struggled at some points when there were a lot of characters on-screen, but I put that down to the machine more than the engine.

It IS a pretty noticeably janky engine though. It doesn't feel like it's improved since Telltale formed and their games aren't looking much better, which isn't really acceptable. Glad I've never tried to play any of their games on console.
 
I refuse to play these games until they are fixed, and Telltale actually fixes the shit they release.

Poker Night may be the most disgusting performing piece of shit that I have ever seen.
 

dhlt25

Member
because they can get away with it. People don't give them enough shit for releasing game running on 2005 technology.
 
Has their tech advanced at all since Tales of Monkey Island? The amount of jank that still persists through their games it starting to get really annoying.

They at least need to work on facial animation more.
 

Timeaisis

Member
That's a great question. I have no idea. It's not like they need physics or anything, they can bake all their damn lighting, and their character models aren't anything to write home about. So, I have no fucking clue what's going on over there.
 

FHIZ

Member
Telltale games seem pretty ok on PC.

Seemed pretty okay on PS4 too. I've played all of their current games this year there, and coming from playing just a few scattered (technically awful) episodes on the 360, the difference is night and day. I remember like one noticeable hitch in Game of Thrones, and I think it was just a loading thing.
 

Gray Matter

Member
Fucking yes. I played both seasons of TWD and season 1 of the wolf among us on PS3 and all ran like hot garbage. There were time where the game froze but the sound kept going, times that right after the opening credits the game crashed, and every transition from gameplay to cutscene the framerate was at the lowest.

Fix this shit TT.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Played season 1 of walking dead on ps3 and will never buy another one of their games. It was the most. Choppy mess I've ever played and OP is right, there isn't anything demanding going on. Pretty pathetic. Can't believe it won game of the year

It's not that bad. At least it doesn't freeze during dialog like the PSP2 version. I haven't even bothered to buy Season 2 for EITHER of those platforms because of it.

PC version apparently will wipe your choices/save file so I haven't bought Season 1 or 2 on Steam either.
 
Played TWD season 1 on my iPad 3. It runs ok, but has some serious crashing issues and will never ever let you pause the game and open another app - it will just quit itself and you will lose everything you've done since the last checkpoint. Had to play several parts over and over again because of this oversight from the devs.
 
TWD Season 1 is fine on PC, I remember it being slightly choppy at a few, only a hand full over 5 episodes, moments. The iOS port was poor.

GoT on PS4 is alot more choppier than the PC version of TWD. Also the blur effect is really destracting at times, in particular the scene with
Margery Tyrell at King's Landing
.
 

AEREC

Member
Ive always wondered this as well but I guess if their games are selling well then why waste money on fixing them.

I wont be buying any of their games at full price and unoptimized code is one of the biggest reason.
 

fhqwhgads

Member
I've long since stopped supporting Telltale, their standards have gone down the drain and they simply do not care. No fixes, no advice, all they're doing is counting the cash they make and finding the next big IP to snatch the rights to make a game for. I dare say Telltale is one of the few cases where I can say they've "Sold out"
 

Lrrr

Member
The Wolf Among Us is a great game, but as others have said, it ran like hot garbage on last gen machines and is the primary reason I didn't purchase GoT on PS4. I refuse to financially support a company who continually releases games that are either poorly programmed or optimized. There's no excuse for that.
 

TSM

Member
TT games run flawlessly on PC. Must be console coding they suck at, regardless of the machines specs.

Hardly. I couldn't play Puzzle Agent for 3 months after I bought it. I went to their website. checked the forum. There were loads of threads about people having the same problem. No solution was presented. One day I was bored and tried starting it and it started. To this day I have no idea why it spontaneously started working.

Telltale is notorious for broken games on all platforms. The PC is sadly not an exception and gets no better support then the console versions.
 

Jeels

Member
played GoT on PS4 and had absolutely no problems with performance, even felt like it was running at 60 at times. even the load times are quick. huge difference from last-gen.

This is great to hear, as I was planning on looking into Game of Thrones eventually.
 

Alcander

Member
I beat the first act of GOT on x1 and, yeah. Performance was pretty cruddy. I like the art a lot, though.

I am also really surprised by the super janky animations/controls. Story was decent.
 

GavinUK86

Member
Hardly. I couldn't play Puzzle Agent for 3 months after I bought it. I went to their website. checked the forum. There were loads of threads about people having the same problem. No solution was presented. One day I was bored and tried starting it and it started. To this day I have no idea why it spontaneously started working.

Telltale is notorious for broken games on all platforms. The PC is sadly not an exception and gets no better support then the console versions.

I was referencing TT games post-WD not old TT.
 

FyreWulff

Member
People continue to confuse sane budgeting and running of a company with hubris.

This is a small studio by modern standards, considering the amount of platforms they are on. And mostly licensed properties. Ever work with licensed properties? The licensee isn't going to give you a budget for an expensive premade engine, and you become dependent on the engine maker to be available on your target platforms.

Why yes, let's re-write our entire engine just for HBO, who probably won't even renew the license in ~5 years time, on an HBO budget, who's working with us externally, lowering the budget even more. The cost of switching an engine could kill the company off - doing something like that is NOT free, or easy. Especially when you have to split your profits with another company while doing it.

I've barely played any of these Telltale releases but people truly do not know how games are developed, why it's not always advantageous to kill your in house engine. Bugs are a QA issue, and not something fixed by licensing another engine that also has bugs (and splitting your income even more)

Considering the good critical reception of games like Wolf Among Us, and the fact that they have multiple projects going at the same time, they're doing pretty good for their size.
 

sn00zer

Member
People continue to confuse sane budgeting and running of a company with hubris.

This is a small studio by modern standards, considering the amount of platforms they are on. And mostly licensed properties. Ever work with licensed properties? The licensee isn't going to give you a budget for an expensive premade engine, and you become dependent on the engine maker to be available on your target platforms.

Why yes, let's re-write our entire engine just for HBO, who probably won't even renew the license in ~5 years time, on an HBO budget, who's working with us externally, lowering the budget even more. The cost of switching an engine could kill the company off - doing something like that is NOT free, or easy. Especially when you have to split your profits with another company while doing it.

I've barely played any of these Telltale releases but people truly do not know how games are developed, why it's not always advantageous to kill your in house engine. Bugs are a QA issue, and not something fixed by licensing another engine that also has bugs (and splitting your income even more)

Considering the good critical reception of games like Wolf Among Us, and the fact that they have multiple projects going at the same time, they're doing pretty good for their size.

Just to be clear TWAU is the buggiest game I have ever played on a console. The situation describes plenty of studios and they still release technically competent games. Hell the budget nightmare that was Deadpool ran fine on my PS3 and thats had far worse budgeting constraints than any stories from Telltale.
EDIT: You really do need to play these games to see what people are talking about. Go grab TWAU on PS3
 

jholmes

Member
Back to the Future is an unbelievably crappy port. The fact they put it on a disc and cared so little about making it run properly.

Edit: I meant on the Wii, how did I not say this at any point.
 
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