SPOILER ALERT!! THE
FOLLOWING CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FROM THE WALKING DEAD GAME SEASONS ONE AND
TWO. BUT I’M GUESSING IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED THEM BY NOW THEN YOU REALLY HAVE NO
INTENTIONS OF EVER DOING SO AND YOU MAY NOT EVEN CARE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY. REGARDLESS,
IF YOU PLAN ON PLAYING THESE GAMES, DON’T READ THE FOLLOWING BECAUSE IT’S GOING
TO SPOIL THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYTHING AND YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME FOR NOT
TAKING FIVE SECONDS TO READ THIS SMALL, ALL CAPS MESSAGE.
The Walking Dead games use
story as a game play mechanic and it has truly innovated the way stories can be
told in an interactive medium. I wanted to talk about these two stories in
particular because I have recently played through both of them a second time
and realized that these games, despite their amazing stories, totally fumble
the whole, your choice changes the game, thing. Or perhaps it’s us who
misunderstood the intentions of the choices given.
The first thing that
stands out about The Walking Dead is that the story is decided based on the
decisions you make. Haha I’m totally kidding! Your journey is determined by
your choice, not the story itself. Regardless of the many choices you’re given
throughout the entire franchise, The Walking Dead games tell the exact story
they intend to tell. Let’s look at some examples.
Lee is still going to die
after his zombie bite. It doesn’t matter if you choose to have his arm cut off
or not. You’re still going to sit through that terribly emotional scene where,
in my case, I had Clementine shoot him. Rough stuff.
That scene with Lee
confronting Clementine’s kidnapper plays out EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, even if you
played the game totally different the second time around. Seriously, his
primary beef with you and your crew is when everyone stole his supplies, which
in turn caused his wife to leave him and wind up dying. Play the game
differently and try not to steal his stuff and your group robs his ass blind
anyway and he still thinks you’re the world’s biggest asshole despite the fact
that you sat on the sidelines.
I saved Carly instead of
Doug because I thought maybe being her knight in shining armor would get me laid.
I saved Doug the second time around because I knew Carly wasn’t going to put
out. Doesn’t matter though because not only did Doug also fail to put out, but
he is still shot in the face by Lilly the same way Carly was.
I saved Duck instead of
Shawn because he was the helpless little boy. The second time around I saved
Shawn instead. What happened? Duck still gets saved and Shawn still winds up
being a human happy meal. The only difference is that you piss Kenny off and have
to spend the rest of the game with him reminding you of what a dick move that
was.
I helped Kenny drop a salt
lick on Larry’s head when he died. What happens if you play it differently?
Well, instead of helping Kenny drop a salt lick on Larry’s head, I helped Lilly
try to revive him. Guess what happened? Kenny dropped it on his freaking head
anyway, only this time Lilly wasn’t mad at me. Still, that didn’t stop her from
becoming a psychotic team killing fuck tard.
So the game doesn’t really
adapt to your choices in a way that determines the ending. Think of each decision
as a fork in a road. Each side of that fork will be different, but in the end
the roads are connected again.
Season Two plays out the
same way. No matter what you do you can’t save Pete or Alvin, Arvo still brings
his gang after you and winds up shooting you, and Kenny will definitely get his
face smashed in by Carver. Probably the most annoying thing in Season Two, for
me any way, was Luke’s death. You can either not help him and watch him drown,
or you can try to help him, fall in the lake, get saved by Luke, and watch a
zombie drag him down where he’ll drown anyway as he’s being simultaneously
eaten. That scene just feels like a slap in the face. Like who cares? Why
bother saving him if there is no chance he makes it off of this frozen lake
either way?
People boast about Season
2 having like five different endings and they’re wrong. There’s five different
ways to reach the end, but the end is the same regardless. It’s just a matter
of who will be standing next to you when you get to that point. Clementine and
the baby will be there every time. But did you let Kenny kill Jane (you’re an
ass if you did)? Or did you shoot Kenny? From there you can either forgive the
victor and they’ll join you or you can choose to go your own way. So in reality
there is one ending, just multiple different choices you can make as to who
will be with you.
One other thing I’ve
learned from playing these games twice is there are no good choices, ever.
You’re always a douche bag to someone. Even if you try to play neutral, you’re
decisions always seem to have a negative consequence. The entirety of Season One
is like that. Quite literally everything you did for Clementine as Lee (our
hero) is used against you at the end when the kidnapper tells you how terrible
you’ve done raising a little girl in the apocalypse. Like there’s a right way? Of
course he says this to you moments before he opens a bowling bag with his dead
wife’s zombie head inside and starts talking to it. I’m sure that’s less
emotionally jarring to a little girl than teaching her how to defend herself
against the dead people trying to eat her.
Regardless of that crazy
bastard, other characters judge the living piss out of you. Did you try save
Omid or his pregnant girlfriend, Christa, as they tried jumping onto the train?
Doesn’t matter, the person you saved first will verbally attack you for not
saving the other person before them, even though you wind up saving them both.
Um, you’re fucking welcome! At one point you’re tasked with passing out five
food items to people when there are eleven in your group. Yet instead of people
being understanding adults and letting the kids eat first, they gripe at you
like the selfish babies they are.
How about the cannibal
farm? Oh it wasn’t really just my idea to come out to this farm and trade gas
for some of their food during a time where only some of us got to eat today,
right? I mean, we were all kind of like, starving and wanting food. Yet when we
realized we were eating our wounded pal, who we thought was being taken care of
by these awfully nice farm folk, it’s all of a sudden my fault that we were
there. Piss off people. Kenny got pissed off because I put a girl out of her
misery while she was being eaten alive. So selfish was he to use her as a
distraction while we got away. Imagine dying a painful death where human teeth
are ripping your flesh right off of you. Yeah, shoot me if that’s ever
happening to me. Regardless, if you let her live the zombies still find and
chase you. Some good that did.
Don’t let any of this
deter you. If you’ve read this far and still want to play these games, despite
me having ruined everything, I implore you to do so! You have to understand
that your choices will not put a dent in how the story is played out, but that
story is just so amazing. The relationship between Lee and Clementine is so
strong that when its foundation is shook, you cannot help but feel the real
human pain these fictional characters can’t. I won’t lie. I cried a couple of
times during the first game. Watching as the young Duck dies from his zombie
bite was tragic to me and not just because I’m a dad. Watching his parents walk
him out into the woods all I could hear is his harsh shallow breathing and it just
crushed me. That entire scene was tragic. If you have played this game and
didn’t shed a tear as Lee had to say goodbye to Clementine then you’re a
sociopath who probably murders people for fun.
So with all of this said
it’s hard to harp on The Walking Dead games because they are truly amazing
experience to have as a gamer. I just feel there is a misconception on what
your choices are intended to do. I’m not sure if that stems from the developer
telling us that the choices effect the game or if it’s us gamers assuming that
a game that includes choice must provide us different conclusions. Regardless,
this is a fantastic franchise and I look forward to Season Three.
No comments:
Post a Comment