The Walking Dead: The Game

So when Clem was examining the soil she found it "crappy". I forget what option I had Lee say way back when but does her comment change depending on that scene in the barn back in S1 E1?

edited 14th May '14 4:19:40 PM by Spirit

No, sadly.

I am very patiently awaiting Clem's first F-bomb. And she had better have one.

I feel like we're learning about the characters in a way other than talking to them this season. I have opinions about Luke, Nick, Sarah, Sarita, Mike, etc, and not one of them is based on the fact that every time I try to talk to them they start saying racist shit, berating me for agreeing with someone else, or apologizing to me for screwing up. And yes, those are all characters in Season 1.

I specifically pointed out that I'm already a fan of Jane, and not once do you have the opportunity to have a conversation with her. The first time her name is even mentioned is when the game gives you a "character will remember that" message. But I already know that she's a bit of a loner, prefers to keep to herself, has problems with authority, is highly observant, and is whip-smart under pressure. Just from watching her.

Jane scares the crap out of me.

x2 Exactly.

I'm in the minority when it came to watching Carver die, it would seem. I didn't watch - I thought it would take away too much of my humanity. He deserved it for sure, but I forced myself to leave. I probably would have stayed if Luke and the others didn't speak against it, though. It wasn't the death itself, but the pure savagery of it. I would have supported just shooting him.

I cut off Sarita's hand. I didn't think about the part where our doctor just died, though.

Also, I hope that the entire community wasn't destroyed in that attack. Carver was a brutal monster, but not all of his people are. You could form a good, thriving community there.

edited 14th May '14 5:32:51 PM by SilentColossus

A lot of them are. Bonnie is the exception, not the rule. Tavia, Troy, and that guard with the beard are definitely not innocent, and there's more like them.

Yes, a lot of them are. But not all of them, and most of the real brutes are people with power. Not everyone there deserves to die. Aside from Bonnie, Vince and Wyatt are the only 400 Days characters who went in my playthrough, and they're still kind and humane enough.

edited 14th May '14 5:39:33 PM by SilentColossus

I don't think we ever really got an idea of how many people actually live in the compound. The only ones you really see not carrying a gun around are Steph and Becca. At least in my playthrough, where Vince and Russell weren't there. There may be a couple, and they may have gotten away. But it's a walker attack. They happen.

I think one's colour of the community is kinda coloured by how many 400 Days characters survived.

Like, pretty much every character I talked to who wasn't in the yard or Tavia, Troy, or Beardy was a 400 Days character. So a majority of the people there seemed decent to me.

Stephanie or Shel??? Because, last I remember Steph, she was locked in a truck awaiting execution from Roman.

Back to the hard time getting to know the new cast...

I feel like I'm getting shades of their personality, but I don't know anything about them. Like, back in Season 1, Omid and Christa are in a relationship, from San Fran, have a cat, Omid is a history nerd, Christa wears the pants in the relationship while Omid wears his heart on his sleeve, and both are rather paternal.

Lilly, who was one of my favorite characters in Season 1, had a complicated relationship with the rest of the group; She had a dad to look after and, though he had his flaws, she saw past them because he was her dad. She was ruthless because the world forged her into a stressful and difficult situation. Not that I excuse her killing Carley, but I recognize why it happened. And I liked her because I understood her character. When Carley died, I was seriously considering what do I do with her and it was a tough decision because I knew both characters.

Duck's death is another situation where I knew the character's well enough to know how those involved would act and I saw Katjaa's suicide coming and damn did it get the water works going.

Now, say we had a situation where Sarita killed Carlos... I wouldn't be as shocked or emotionally impacted because I don't know those characters well at all. I don't know a thing about Sarita and I don't know a thing about Carlos. I don't know their characters at all except 'Sarah's Father and a Doctor' or 'Kenny's Replacement Goldfish for Katjaa' which is, at best, a premise for a character.

The only character that I feel like I know enough is Sarah.

And I keep noticing the issues; there are these parts where it seems logical to start talking to someone and we don't get the chance, unlike Season 1. That moment when we first arrive at camp in Episode 3; you can try talking to Sarah and Rebecca but they don't say anything. I feel like we really should be able to talk to all these other characters because this is the time we would have done so in Episode 1.

And its really starting to impact things as more characters are dying and ending up horrible situations and, while I do care, I'm thinking more 'Oh god! Duck is going to be a zombie' rather than 'Oh god. Duck got bitten and Katjaa and Kenny aren't going to be able to take this kind of trauma'. Y'know?

Onto the Caver's gang thing; true, I suppose its a decent revenge, though I still feel that they're more trouble than they're worth at this point and I feel like it should come as no surprise that the people who don't want to be there and don't want to follow your rules as you give them no reason to trust you or think of you as family are going to continue to try and escape or even kill you.

I'm also trying to figure out if Carver legitimately believes what he's saying or if he's just batshit mad.

edited 14th May '14 6:31:40 PM by lancesolous13

I honestly don't. What difference does this make?

Rebecca talks about how she can't remember the last time she told Alvin that she loved him, and that she is very concerned that he believes she no longer cares about him due to how cold she can be to him. She wants Carver dead for what he did to Alvin. I don't see how this is much less development than between Kenny and Katjaa. Keep in mind Alvin survived episode two in my playthrough, so I don't know how she acts if he died. Aside from her relationship with Alvin, Rebecca has a tendency to be very confrontational and otherwise quick to anger, which puts some strain on her relationship with the group as a whole, and not just Alvin or Clementine.

Carlos is very overprotective of Sarah, believing she is unable to handle how the world is. Whether he is right or not, Carlos is a very caring father, to the point where Carver, the Social Darwinist he is, believes he is a weak, pathetic, terrible father. He doesn't take Clementine seriously, believing she is Just a Kid.

What I'm trying to get at is I felt the first season's cast as people and I felt like I knew them and I knew how they'd react and I really cared for how they felt because I knew their story.

Season 2... I don't feel like I know any of these's character's stories or anything about them to the point that, if Sarita were to kill Carlos, I wouldn't be impacted really, while the same situation in Season 1 with Lilly and Carley did get my emotions up.

The only point in Season 2 that got my emotions going were Omid and Christa at the beginning of the game, Christa being attacked, and then Sam at the campsite. All those moments got my feelings in a knot about what was going on and etc. I'm just simply not feeling the same for this season. Granted, we haven't gotten all that many big choice situations anyway, but we're at Episode 3 and I feel like I don't know anyone, I do feel separated from the group because of how little I know anyone else, and its keeping me from feeling invested in what happens to these people.

Another way of putting it is, should someone be attacked, I'm more inclined to think first 'Oh, I have to save that guy because its the right thing to do' instead of 'Oh, I need to save x from being attacked because he's a nice guy and I care about him and don't want something bad to happen to him'. The first is just doing something because its the right thing, the second is doing it because of the relationship between the player and the character.

Now, Season 2 hasn't been completely void for me; I feel like I understand Sarah and have a relationship there and I liked the conversation with Luke from Episode 1's end.

And I look to where we were at this point in Season 1 and there were all these scenes with Lilly in the Motor-Inn, Carley on the Balcony, Duck's "I'll be Dick Greyson, your ward. :D", and so many other moments that really made me care for these characters and understand them, their emotions, and their motivations.

Now, maybe this is just simply Clementine vs. Lee in terms of how they operate; Clem is a kid who doesn't get to make group decisions while Lee was a grown adult who took the reigns???

You understood them and knew how they'd react because they always reacted the same way about everything. Everything Kenny said was about his family. Everything Ben said was about how much he's a screw-up. Lilly is not once pleasant to deal with. Carley is always on your side. Katjaa is never anything except generically sweet.

As good as Season 1 was, its cast was pretty flat.

edited 14th May '14 7:11:22 PM by BadWolf21

I definitely don't believe that the cast was flat - those are pretty oversimplified versions of them.

(edit:I'd removed a comment about Lilly prior to Wolf's response)

edited 14th May '14 7:24:30 PM by SilentColossus

I did help her in the meat locker. She's marginally better to put up with, but then she goes and shoots Carley in the head anyway. And that's after I'd already had to break up a few stupid and pointlessly aggressive fights she started with Kenny.

By the way, do you know why I helped Larry? Because a) killing him wouldn't save somebody else, and b) Clem was watching. He was never anything but a racist dick to me. I would have been happy to leave him behind to be walker-chow.

As I think back on Season 1, a lot of my decisions were based not on how I felt about the character they would affect, but how they would affect Clem. Now I am Clem. And I'm still making decisions based on what's best for her. The only other character whose feelings I considered in most decisions was Kenny.

I didn't help kill Larry out of any sense of malice. I killed him specifically because Clementine was in there. It was just too much of a risk.

I disagree.

Kenny, though very much about family, was also incredibly protective and... a bit of an asshole to deal with and very strong character when it came to what he agreed and disagreed with, though he also had his morals of character; such as saving you at Episode 1's end. He is someone that is going to act first instead of being pushed to act; He's active and no passive.

Ben was basically what a teenager would be like in such a situation; he's too old to be helpless and looked after like Clem and Duck, but not old enough to have the age and wisdom that Lee and Kenny naturally have from being an adult. He's in an awkward predicament; much like a teenager. Though he screwed up countlessly, I sympathized with him a lot (since I myself am at that awkward coming-of-age age) and wanted to see him mature for the better.

I liked Lilly. I didn't like how she went about many things, but there were a number of points where, though I don't like how she did it, she wasn't wrong either. She made me realize that complaining to her about issues wasn't the way to go about solving them and working more as a group and compromising would have a better outcome. She is a tragic character who tried to take on the weight of the world and simply couldn't take the pressure in a situation very very few could handle. I do want to see her return again at some point.

Carley isn't always on Lee's side. She tries to play a compromising role between the two faces of Kenny and Lilly, which Lee falls into a similar role. She tries to stabilize and improve relations. I do find that her character was lacking compared to Lilly and Kenny because she was absent in Episode 2, but she was better off the Doug.

Katjaa was sweet and maternal, but she could also be brutally honest. She was rather passive compared to the forces of Kenny and Lilly, but she would act on her own if pushed to her family's aid. Towards Episode 3, you can tell she's breaking in the situation and considerably less 'sweet' than she used to be and she was crushed by the love for her family.

Now, if you were to ask me to sum up Luke's character or Alvin's, I don't think I could really give you an answer. I feel like I understood Pete as a character who is trying to be paternal to Nick in place of another but his way of being blunt and straight forward is ruining his relationship with Nick and Nick is falling further and further behind as he tries to catch up and ends up doing something he ends up regretting; running from Pete or killing Matthew. But that was about 2 episodes ago...

Alvin is... He's very passive and looking out for his wife and... ? Luke is a leader guy and he's generally nice to people and thinks the best of them...? Rebecca is very vocal and scared for the safety of herself, her baby, and Alvin? But what is her relationship to Luke? Nick? What is anyone's relation to Sarah except Carlos'???

I don't feel like I know these people at all.

It seems to me that the main theme of this season is what to do with people who are too weak to survive the apocalypse on their own.

Carlos has a set of skills that are indispensable, but he is "burdened" by the need to protect Sarah. Alvin is similar, though he's less skilled than Carlos and Rebecca is less in need of the protection of others.

The choice between saving Pete or Nick at the end of Episode 1 reinforces this theme. Do you save the unarmed guy who may be bitten and is doomed for sure if you don't interfere or the guy who can still fight and help the larger group but may be able to survive without your help.

Nick loses his will to live following Pete's death and becomes a danger to the group. Clem has to choose whether to support him despite this weakness.

As I've said before, Telltale is obviously building up to a situation where Clem has to choose between allowing Sarah to remain with the group or abandoning/killing her so she won't hold the group back.

The choice at the end with Sarita also reinforces this theme? Do you cut off her arm, possibly saving her life but creating a host of new problems for her and the group, or do you just kill the Walker and doom her but prevent the group from having to care for an amputee?

Which, while nice, I wish I knew more about them before having to make these decisions instead of only really having the 'lens' so-to-speak of cold calculus.

With the whole 'force them to join me', Carver's also arrogant enough — overconfident enough — to believe he can do it. He's got this community going already, and he's the most powerful figure in it. He's the leader. People either do what he says or they're done. He controls others by manipulating them, by trying to get in their heads, make them think that he's right — and if that don't work, it's punishment time.

Not only does Rebecca have his child, but Clem and Sarah are potentially nice bonuses. Like I said, get 'em young. The younger, the better. He can potentially use Sarah's existence to control Carlos, giving them a doctor, while also getting revenge on Carlos by forcing him to watch as Carver terrorizes his daughter. And if he can indoctorate the kids, sway 'em over to his side...

With the new survivor groups, I think part of the problem might be that, well... it feels like they're dying faster. Maybe there's some reluctance to get attached on the player's part, too. And if somebody potentially dies, and you save them, then they either get killed off in the next episode anyway or they kinda drop to the back and coast along? It doesn't seem like your choices affect as much as they should. I dunno. Maybe it's still possible that if you keep Nick alive, he'll survive past the end of the season, but it doesn't look good. And Sarita feels marked for death right now.

Let's not forget Carver specifically says he saw that spark in Clem the first time they met at the cabin. So what does Carver want? He wants the baby, Carlos, and Clem. If he can turn the others, great. But those are his prizes.

I suppose now we look at, where are we now?

We all seemed to think Carver was the big bad but now he's out permanently. Will Tavia or anyone from 400 days rise to his role? Or are we Charles-Dickens-ing things and moving on to the next local?

I wonder if, should anyone from 400 Days NOT be recruited, they'll end up in a future episode??? And that's actually the 'better' option?

Pretty clear that the plot is now "find Sarah".