I am really looking forward to playing The Walking Dead
look forward to serious challenges of your faith in mankind and your understandings of pragmatism and mercy
My favorite choice from the whole game has to be the one at the end of episode 2. Mostly because players are so closely split on it and it's such a blatantly clear choice in my eyes.
i don't think it's a blatantly clear choice, though, if we're talking about the same thing
(Walking Dead video game episode 2 spoilers within)
The choice to loot the station wagon, right?
i didn't consider that a simple choice to make, and it made me have a good think about what i was doing and why
the game felt so too, given how that kinda matters a bit later on
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Someday, I will be arrested by a traffic cop for exercising my 5th amendment rights. That will be an interesting day.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Really I feel kind of embarassed for the cop who pulled me over tonight. He claimed I was trying to make him feel dumb, and made a transparent attempt to intimidate me. He should have just written the damn ticket and let me go once he realized I wasn't going to answer any questions.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I am really looking forward to playing The Walking Dead
look forward to serious challenges of your faith in mankind and your understandings of pragmatism and mercy
My favorite choice from the whole game has to be the one at the end of episode 2. Mostly because players are so closely split on it and it's such a blatantly clear choice in my eyes.
i don't think it's a blatantly clear choice, though, if we're talking about the same thing
(Walking Dead video game episode 2 spoilers within)
The choice to loot the station wagon, right?
i didn't consider that a simple choice to make, and it made me have a good think about what i was doing and why
the game felt so too, given how that kinda matters a bit later on
Gooodyyyy, I've been spoiling for a talk about this choice with someone ever since I made it. You've got the right of it, and so then;
It wasn't an easy choice for me by any means. I made it knowing full well that something terrible was probably going to happen later on because, you know, it's the walking dead.
Here's what's up though:
*major major walking dead spoiles, don't read until you've beaten the game*
The station wagon was evidently cleared out in a hurry, in an area with both zombies and raiders. No one would have left that many supplies just lying there, doors ajar, lights on, unless they were bugging out for a damn good reason.
What's more, it's not even a matter of leaving the food alone to wait for its owners or taking it for yourself. Like I said, it's an area swarming with raiders, and odds are they're going to notice the Sedan with its lights glaring pretty soon, and then the food will just be going to crazy murder-rapists.
Taking all that into account it's, again, not a fun choice. Few of the ones in the walking dead are. But it was one of the dilemmas I felt the least guilty about. Even when the dude came back at the end, deus ex and everything, I couldn't feel too bad. The pros and cons of either choice were eminently clear to me, and I went with the option that would guarantee utility for me and mine (keep in mind this food saved our asses) over the one that could maybe save some strangers or worse help my enemies. I know that's of no comfort to the person I basically sentenced to die, but them's those breaks. It's also the reason I would have only cold cocked Vernon if I ever saw him again instead of straight up murdering him. Boat stealing jag.
Edit: Clementine's reaction to my thieving was pretty heartbreaking though. She's a good kid : (
edit 2: And while I'm chatting about walking dead, probably the hardest decision I ever had was deciding what to do with Vernon's offer to take care of Clementine. Obviously my gut instinct was to hold on to her since at least then I could do my best to keep her safe, but his offer was pretty tempting. I wasn't sure if I was being selfish or just trying to look out for her best interests. Probably a little bit of both. Looots of conflicting emotions that I'd never felt playing a game before. It doesn't make me envy parents at all.
Tarranon on
You could be anywhere
On the black screen
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The UEF side in Supreme Commander I think gets a disproportionate advantage from the fact that the two main characters in it's story are voiced by the same actors as do the English-translations of the Major and Batou from Ghost in the Shell.
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OnTheLastCastlelet's keep it haimish for the peripateticRegistered Userregular
Hm, this girl has a horrible commute and I'm tempted to say for date 2 I'll just pick you up, we do happy hour then I'll drive you home. Otherwise date 2 is on Saturday. But it's so far awaaaaaaaaaay and I liiiiiiiiike her.
I see the kid from Two And A Half Men has entered that delicious phase of child stardom during which a cult gets to control him for a bit and say all kinds of fun stuff.
Wednesday:
Get a call on the way home from work that one of my best friendswas found dead by his roommate of an apparently self inflicted gunshot wound.
Thursday:
Thanksgiving (hahahahahahahaha)
Friday:
I go to work and then that night I get to hang out with someone I care about quite a bit but barely get to see due to distance because she's in town for the holiday and can make time in between family things. Find out that her best friend tried to kill herself recently and her mom had an accident last month that resulted in stitches, skull staples among other issues that are ongoing. We spend a couple hours just having a randomly semi-sane conversation about everything and nothing which helped both of us a bit. At least I know it did for me.
Saturday:
I work and then go to a birthday party I'd said I'd go to weeks ago for a friend who happens to be an ex from way bakc when (highschool). End up having to explain to another friend that unfortunately no I'm not interested in the birthday girl at all, especially not god damned right now, and then with her help fend off the drunken advances of the birthday girl. Funsies.
Sunday:
I have off so I sleep in and then spend the rest of the day just distracting myself with whatever the hell I can. mostly footbal and Borderlands 2 with a friend.
Monday:
I also have off. Sleep until about 7pm because ya know what? Fuck getting up. Get up and find out when my friend's funeral is and there's really no feasible way for me to make it (North Dakota->Utah)
Today? And this is really just the bleeding anal fissure on top of the shit cake:
I work all day doing my best to not do my job like shit. Think I did ok at that. who knows. Get home and try distract myself with some new rock band stuff. Works for awhile. Get a text about 1:30am from the person I got to hang with the previous Friday who is back home, seven and a half hours away. She'd just gotten back from putting her cat down who was barely a year and a half old. Her cat, after calmly lounging on the couch with her for three hours, started seizing so she rushed her to the emergency vet. Apparently her cat went into severe diabetic shock out of nowhere. The vet was mystified at what the hell could have even caused it because her blood levels were off the charts. As in their machine couldn't even properly register the results. So with everything else she's pretty much shattered right now. At least I was able to talk to her on the phone until another friend who lives down there by her made it to her place.
This pleasant little phase of life can come to a close anytime now.
On the plus side I've been drinking heavily for the last two hours so that sleep is unavoidable via passing out. eightish beers in two hours, one or two more and I should be all set to just crash and see what kida craptaco tomorrow brings
I am really looking forward to playing The Walking Dead
look forward to serious challenges of your faith in mankind and your understandings of pragmatism and mercy
My favorite choice from the whole game has to be the one at the end of episode 2. Mostly because players are so closely split on it and it's such a blatantly clear choice in my eyes.
i don't think it's a blatantly clear choice, though, if we're talking about the same thing
(Walking Dead video game episode 2 spoilers within)
The choice to loot the station wagon, right?
i didn't consider that a simple choice to make, and it made me have a good think about what i was doing and why
the game felt so too, given how that kinda matters a bit later on
Gooodyyyy, I've been spoiling for a talk about this choice with someone ever since I made it. You've got the right of it, and so then;
It wasn't an easy choice for me by any means. I made it knowing full well that something terrible was probably going to happen later on because, you know, it's the walking dead.
Here's what's up though:
*major major walking dead spoiles, don't read until you've beaten the game*
The station wagon was evidently cleared out in a hurry, in an area with both zombies and raiders. No one would have left that many supplies just lying there, doors ajar, lights on, unless they were bugging out for a damn good reason.
What's more, it's not even a matter of leaving the food alone to wait for its owners or taking it for yourself. Like I said, it's an area swarming with raiders, and odds are they're going to notice the Sedan with its lights glaring pretty soon, and then the food will just be going to crazy murder-rapists.
Taking all that into account it's, again, not a fun choice. Few of the ones in the walking dead are. But it was one of the dilemmas I felt the least guilty about. Even when the dude came back at the end, deus ex and everything, I couldn't feel too bad. The pros and cons of either choice were eminently clear to me, and I went with the option that would guarantee utility for me and mine (keep in mind this food saved our asses) over the one that could maybe save some strangers or worse help my enemies. I know that's of no comfort to the person I basically sentenced to die, but them's those breaks. It's also the reason I would have only cold cocked Vernon if I ever saw him again instead of straight up murdering him. Boat stealing jag.
Edit: Clementine's reaction to my thieving was pretty heartbreaking though. She's a good kid : (
edit 2: And while I'm chatting about walking dead, probably the hardest decision I ever had was deciding what to do with Vernon's offer to take care of Clementine. Obviously my gut instinct was to hold on to her since at least then I could do my best to keep her safe, but his offer was pretty tempting. I wasn't sure if I was being selfish or just trying to look out for her best interests. Probably a little bit of both. Looots of conflicting emotions that I'd never felt playing a game before. It doesn't make me envy parents at all.
I would say that all the factors you point out, all the pros and cons you weighed, make it very much not a blatantly clear choice. Even if you arrived at that conclusion in seconds where someone else might've had to mull it over, all it means is you can give yourself a pat on the back for weighing it out and making the call faster than other people looked at the same factors.
If you have to take more than a paragraph to explain to me the reasoning and validity of your decision and why it's the only one you felt you could've arrived at, it's not a blatantly clear choice. It might've been a fast process for you, in which case congratulations for being very in touch with your own moral value system and the practicalities of the things you have come to believe are right, but again that doesn't make it blatantly clear or obvious or simple.
With regards to the choice you brought up in your second edit, I'll offer my reasoning on that and the choice I made, but since I have to get into specifics it'll go into a spoiler.
WARNING: Walking Dead adventure game Episodes 4 and 5 spoilers contained within
I had the same apprehension and difficulty with that choice you did when it came to Vernon's offer to take Clem. Ultimately, I told Vernon I'd think about it, because from my end I just didn't know Vernon very well and I was concerned about whether he would make the right choices for Clementine. Not just from a moral perspective but also from a practicality one. I personally thought Savannah was played out, for example, and that to try to continue to stay in Savannah was ultimately a death sentence even with Crawford gone. I had hoped I would be able to talk to Clem, see where she felt about it, and then try to talk to Vernon more about his plans and such.
However, the game essentially made the decision for me via Vernon's betrayal, and knowing that's the kind of person Vernon and his people are made me feel okay with my apprehension and caution, because Vernon is a straight busta. I mean, when you look at my decision to loot the station wagon, which I did basically for the same reasoning you did, an important factor was the presence of actual known victims and the pragmatic reality of the odds of whoever I might be fucking over.
Vernon straight up stole the boat and the hopes of leaving Savannah from a group of people that did him no wrong and included a small child, and to top it off he did so by locking Christa and Omid in the garage to a pretty miserable death.
So fuck that guy.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
My gut says Date 2 is a little early for you to suggest going to her place after drinks, even with the noblest of intentions. Plus you'd probably get more time together if you wait until Saturday.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
My gut says Date 2 is a little early for you to suggest going to her place after drinks, even with the noblest of intentions. Plus you'd probably get more time together if you wait until Saturday.
I'd just drop her off after drinks would be my offer.
We're hanging out Saturday regardless because she has tickets to Thelma and Louise at a drive-in sponsored by the best theatre in Austin and catered by the best BBQ in the entire world. She's perfect.
OnTheLastCastle on
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OnTheLastCastlelet's keep it haimish for the peripateticRegistered Userregular
She's basically me though so she probably wants to fuck like nobody's business.
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OnTheLastCastlelet's keep it haimish for the peripateticRegistered Userregular
She also looks like a tinier, cuter Lena Dunham.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
hpney vinegar
fuck gendered marketing
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OnTheLastCastlelet's keep it haimish for the peripateticRegistered Userregular
i had a great first date sunday. she has a terrible commute and works a lot. my next date is saturday. can i offer her a ride home (she has no car, i do) and just take her for a drink one of these workdays? it'd save her time and we'd hang out!
she's totally into me and i'm into her!
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OnTheLastCastlelet's keep it haimish for the peripateticRegistered Userregular
@jacobkosh i notice elldren has all these badges for comment #s and I don't. my feelings are unduly hurt and i am lodging a complaint. i'm coming to kansas city and sleeping on your couch unless this is rectified.
i mean, you'd probably have the time of your life but
I would say that all the factors you point out, all the pros and cons you weighed, make it very much not a blatantly clear choice. Even if you arrived at that conclusion in seconds where someone else might've had to mull it over, all it means is you can give yourself a pat on the back for weighing it out and making the call faster than other people looked at the same factors.
If you have to take more than a paragraph to explain to me the reasoning and validity of your decision and why it's the only one you felt you could've arrived at, it's not a blatantly clear choice. It might've been a fast process for you, in which case congratulations for being very in touch with your own moral value system and the practicalities of the things you have come to believe are right, but again that doesn't make it blatantly clear or obvious or simple.
With regards to the choice you brought up in your second edit, I'll offer my reasoning on that and the choice I made, but since I have to get into specifics it'll go into a spoiler.
WARNING: Walking Dead adventure game Episodes 4 and 5 spoilers contained within
I had the same apprehension and difficulty with that choice you did when it came to Vernon's offer to take Clem. Ultimately, I told Vernon I'd think about it, because from my end I just didn't know Vernon very well and I was concerned about whether he would make the right choices for Clementine. Not just from a moral perspective but also from a practicality one. I personally thought Savannah was played out, for example, and that to try to continue to stay in Savannah was ultimately a death sentence even with Crawford gone. I had hoped I would be able to talk to Clem, see where she felt about it, and then try to talk to Vernon more about his plans and such.
However, the game essentially made the decision for me via Vernon's betrayal, and knowing that's the kind of person Vernon and his people are made me feel okay with my apprehension and caution, because Vernon is a straight busta. I mean, when you look at my decision to loot the station wagon, which I did basically for the same reasoning you did, an important factor was the presence of actual known victims and the pragmatic reality of the odds of whoever I might be fucking over.
Vernon straight up stole the boat and the hopes of leaving Savannah from a group of people that did him no wrong and included a small child, and to top it off he did so by locking Christa and Omid in the garage to a pretty miserable death.
So fuck that guy.
I think we might be getting our signals a little crossed then. A lot of the choices in the game, to me at least, don't have a very clear answer even when you have all the time in the world to mull them over after you made them. You don't have a lot of information, you don't know exactly what consequences your actions will have. This one you do right out the gate. You know what you might be doing, and you know what you stand to gain. Every other choice with this level of clarity is generally reflected in the player choice spread, with something approaching an ~80% consensus. This one wasn't an easy choice, especially in the moment when you've got all the characters trying to influence your decision, and the reason I felt compelled to think about it so much afterwards probably means that it wasn't as clear cut as I implied. But it still seems clearer than the player spread would indicate. My own personal theory is players fell victim to their guardian angel impulses that years of playing morality play video games nurtured. As in, they went with what they thought was the "moral" choice, even though the game isn't really about good or evil choices at all. It's about making the least terrible ones.
Re: Vernon
Dang, what? I had Christa and Omid (and everyone else you could possibly have with you searching for Clementine, because I am such a good leader and great at keeping people together 8-) ) with me, so no one was locked in the shed and left to die. That's waaay fucked up. I actually had the same thoughts you did, with Vernon's theft paralleling my taking those supplies, and I also decided that he was more of a bastard than I was. But not enough of a bastard to leave my friends to die. What a jerk!
I mean I'll be ok, I always am. And if nothing else I have awesome friends and family around me and plenty to distract myself with in the meantime
It's just if shit could stop piling up right now thatd be really really nice
but beer 12 is about done (forgot about the 3 I had before the text) and the coughing from chain smoking a half oa dozen cigs is getting to me so I think it's attempted crash time
I see the kid from Two And A Half Men has entered that delicious phase of child stardom during which a cult gets to control him for a bit and say all kinds of fun stuff.
link?
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TavIrish Minister for DefenceRegistered Userregular
it is icy out, do not want
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I want to read what the kid said. Because I refuse to watch him even if it is outside of 2,5 Men. My boycott is non-negotiable.
@Tarranon I'm actually going to take a moment to cross-post a bunch of blarging I did about TWD in the SE++ thread
The only spoilery bits are the bits in spoilers (natch) so those of you considering buying the game can read it too
There are some people who shit on the Walking Dead's accomplishments from a writing perspective and point out that the plot twists and tragedies and so forth are all very standard fair for television, film, and books (including comics). I feel like comparing the writing alone as a piece of fiction to those other mediums and deeming it barely satisfactory and an indication of the nascent stage of video game storytelling is disingenuous and misses a critical element of what makes the Walking Dead so incredible: agency
Agency, to clarify my usage in this context, refers to a player's ability to choose the direction and outcome of the story via their choices through the game's mechanics. That is an element of storytelling that is mostly unique to games as a medium and the Walking Dead uses it in some pretty incredible ways. Agency in a game telling you a story cannot be overlooked or sloughed off as being no different than a choose-your-own-adventure novel, because to do so outright denies the raw psychology of making the player a part of the story by making them experience the choice in a very direct way.
The Walking Dead has a fair number of cutscenes, where agency is taken away from the player in order to further the plot or move things along or introduce a new element to the environment. Where the game doesn't take agency away from you becomes critically important to your ability to experience them in a way that other fiction mediums can't really replicate.
There are many, many moments where the game effectively says to you "Okay, you choose to do this, now pull the trigger. Do it." Instead of taking agency away from you, the player, and allowing you to just watch the results of your choices unfold as if you're watching a movie, the game asks you to follow through on your choice and engage in the act itself. This cannot be overlooked because its potential to psychologically involve the player in doing these things can be far more disquieting (or heartwarming) than simply watching them play out.
When you choose to put a bullet in the head of someone you've come to know and perhaps care about in order to mercy-kill them, the game asks you to put the crosshairs on their head and pull the trigger. You pulling the trigger is your agency. When you choose to do nothing to save someone and walk away, the game gives you ample time to turn around and do something. That you choose to do nothing is your agency. Some of the game's most visceral and horrifying portrayals of violence, for example, give you several opportunities to stop. The game, and the story, will continue if you stop, you don't have to do this. The fact that you choose to continue makes that violence a product of your agency.
What harrows people about the Walking Dead, I think, isn't that it's a tragic story about loss and caring that if told in a movie or on television would be unremarkable. It's that the game asks you to choose to make it harrowing. It asks you to involve yourself and choose to do these things and live with the repercussions of your choices. That utilization of agency is a unique element to gaming and I think it's the most important thing to consider for games that really want to advance the medium as an artform unto itself and not just a shallow imitation of film or television. When people talk about "cinematic" games like the Uncharted series what they're talking about is a blend of art style, animation, QTE sequences and cutscenes to create the illusion that you're watching a movie or a TV show. That is not going to make a game into art. That is not going to give games the ability to reach out and grasp a person psychologically to the full extent they're capable of.
Agency is what can make games unique as an artform, and when games utterly fail to grasp that and essentially try to have as little agency as possible for the player, they don't really interest me very much beyond being time-passers and shallow entertainment.
Here's a bunch of examples specific to the Walking Dead of the sort of agency I am talking about, but because most of these examples are spoilers I am going to put them in spoiler tags.
WARNING: Spoilers for the entire series of the Walking Dead contained here, seriously:
- Shooting Duck. If you choose to shoot Duck, rather than make Kenny kill his own son after the suicide of his wife, the game makes you shoot him. You have to put to select the gun, and then select your Duck.
- The child in the attic has a two-fold version of this. One is your action to kill the child, and the second is burying him. Burying the child in particular is a really good example of this sort of repetition to really make you feel like yep, you are burying a child here. It's not a pleasant thing, and not something you just cutscene away. Click on that dirt pile, put another shovelful on him.
- The beartrap scene. Oh good lord, the beartrap scene. You can stop, and in fact he begs you to stop, and if you continue that is your choice.
- The screaming woman when you and Kenny loot the pharmacy. The choice to either put a bullet in her head or, more horrifically, to let her live to distract the walkers, is your choice and you get to spend the next few minutes either scrambling to get supplies or listening to her scream as she is ripped to shreds. Your choice.
- A good example of the choice to do nothing came for me in the belltower scene when the group was leaving Crawford. I had basically had it with Ben. He got people killed, he admitted what he did to Kenny at the worst possible moment ever despite being repeatedly told not to, and most damning of all he deserted Clementine when she needed his protection at the beginning of episode 4. So, I watched Ben die. When we got to the top of the belltower and the zombies grabbed him, I could've saved him. I let the timer expire while he begged for my help, and I left him laying at the bottom of the belltower, body broken and crying, and I walked away while he was devoured. That the game let me walk away from that is remarkable. That I let myself walk away from that, moreso.
It was just a throwaway paragraph at the bottom of Grace Dent's Independent column today (here). Basically, he counsels people not to watch the show he's in that rakes in $220 thousand an episode for him.
Posts
me and mrs alcy hole are quite happy thankyou and we need no crimson-haired homewrecker destroying what we have
yes
it does today, because I am up before noon.
Usually, morning ends around three.
i don't think it's a blatantly clear choice, though, if we're talking about the same thing
(Walking Dead video game episode 2 spoilers within)
i didn't consider that a simple choice to make, and it made me have a good think about what i was doing and why
the game felt so too, given how that kinda matters a bit later on
only cat i've ever had that enjoys playing fetch
I think you may have a small dog.
Speaking of fetch, family dog would play fetch but would not drop the stick/ball/whatever. He would actually shake his head if you said drop it.
Gooodyyyy, I've been spoiling for a talk about this choice with someone ever since I made it. You've got the right of it, and so then;
It wasn't an easy choice for me by any means. I made it knowing full well that something terrible was probably going to happen later on because, you know, it's the walking dead.
Here's what's up though:
*major major walking dead spoiles, don't read until you've beaten the game*
What's more, it's not even a matter of leaving the food alone to wait for its owners or taking it for yourself. Like I said, it's an area swarming with raiders, and odds are they're going to notice the Sedan with its lights glaring pretty soon, and then the food will just be going to crazy murder-rapists.
Taking all that into account it's, again, not a fun choice. Few of the ones in the walking dead are. But it was one of the dilemmas I felt the least guilty about. Even when the dude came back at the end, deus ex and everything, I couldn't feel too bad. The pros and cons of either choice were eminently clear to me, and I went with the option that would guarantee utility for me and mine (keep in mind this food saved our asses) over the one that could maybe save some strangers or worse help my enemies. I know that's of no comfort to the person I basically sentenced to die, but them's those breaks. It's also the reason I would have only cold cocked Vernon if I ever saw him again instead of straight up murdering him. Boat stealing jag.
Edit: Clementine's reaction to my thieving was pretty heartbreaking though. She's a good kid : (
edit 2: And while I'm chatting about walking dead, probably the hardest decision I ever had was deciding what to do with Vernon's offer to take care of Clementine. Obviously my gut instinct was to hold on to her since at least then I could do my best to keep her safe, but his offer was pretty tempting. I wasn't sure if I was being selfish or just trying to look out for her best interests. Probably a little bit of both. Looots of conflicting emotions that I'd never felt playing a game before. It doesn't make me envy parents at all.
On the black screen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Well, I have the tolerance of Zeus plus I'd not drink too much.
Wednesday:
Get a call on the way home from work that one of my best friendswas found dead by his roommate of an apparently self inflicted gunshot wound.
Thursday:
Thanksgiving (hahahahahahahaha)
Friday:
I go to work and then that night I get to hang out with someone I care about quite a bit but barely get to see due to distance because she's in town for the holiday and can make time in between family things. Find out that her best friend tried to kill herself recently and her mom had an accident last month that resulted in stitches, skull staples among other issues that are ongoing. We spend a couple hours just having a randomly semi-sane conversation about everything and nothing which helped both of us a bit. At least I know it did for me.
Saturday:
I work and then go to a birthday party I'd said I'd go to weeks ago for a friend who happens to be an ex from way bakc when (highschool). End up having to explain to another friend that unfortunately no I'm not interested in the birthday girl at all, especially not god damned right now, and then with her help fend off the drunken advances of the birthday girl. Funsies.
Sunday:
I have off so I sleep in and then spend the rest of the day just distracting myself with whatever the hell I can. mostly footbal and Borderlands 2 with a friend.
Monday:
I also have off. Sleep until about 7pm because ya know what? Fuck getting up. Get up and find out when my friend's funeral is and there's really no feasible way for me to make it (North Dakota->Utah)
Today? And this is really just the bleeding anal fissure on top of the shit cake:
I work all day doing my best to not do my job like shit. Think I did ok at that. who knows. Get home and try distract myself with some new rock band stuff. Works for awhile. Get a text about 1:30am from the person I got to hang with the previous Friday who is back home, seven and a half hours away. She'd just gotten back from putting her cat down who was barely a year and a half old. Her cat, after calmly lounging on the couch with her for three hours, started seizing so she rushed her to the emergency vet. Apparently her cat went into severe diabetic shock out of nowhere. The vet was mystified at what the hell could have even caused it because her blood levels were off the charts. As in their machine couldn't even properly register the results. So with everything else she's pretty much shattered right now. At least I was able to talk to her on the phone until another friend who lives down there by her made it to her place.
This pleasant little phase of life can come to a close anytime now.
On the plus side I've been drinking heavily for the last two hours so that sleep is unavoidable via passing out. eightish beers in two hours, one or two more and I should be all set to just crash and see what kida craptaco tomorrow brings
Two beers and then it's right into the swan costume with you
every single time
On the black screen
I would say that all the factors you point out, all the pros and cons you weighed, make it very much not a blatantly clear choice. Even if you arrived at that conclusion in seconds where someone else might've had to mull it over, all it means is you can give yourself a pat on the back for weighing it out and making the call faster than other people looked at the same factors.
If you have to take more than a paragraph to explain to me the reasoning and validity of your decision and why it's the only one you felt you could've arrived at, it's not a blatantly clear choice. It might've been a fast process for you, in which case congratulations for being very in touch with your own moral value system and the practicalities of the things you have come to believe are right, but again that doesn't make it blatantly clear or obvious or simple.
With regards to the choice you brought up in your second edit, I'll offer my reasoning on that and the choice I made, but since I have to get into specifics it'll go into a spoiler.
WARNING: Walking Dead adventure game Episodes 4 and 5 spoilers contained within
However, the game essentially made the decision for me via Vernon's betrayal, and knowing that's the kind of person Vernon and his people are made me feel okay with my apprehension and caution, because Vernon is a straight busta. I mean, when you look at my decision to loot the station wagon, which I did basically for the same reasoning you did, an important factor was the presence of actual known victims and the pragmatic reality of the odds of whoever I might be fucking over.
Vernon straight up stole the boat and the hopes of leaving Savannah from a group of people that did him no wrong and included a small child, and to top it off he did so by locking Christa and Omid in the garage to a pretty miserable death.
So fuck that guy.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
I'd just drop her off after drinks would be my offer.
We're hanging out Saturday regardless because she has tickets to Thelma and Louise at a drive-in sponsored by the best theatre in Austin and catered by the best BBQ in the entire world. She's perfect.
drunk elldren, give me your dating advice
i had a great first date sunday. she has a terrible commute and works a lot. my next date is saturday. can i offer her a ride home (she has no car, i do) and just take her for a drink one of these workdays? it'd save her time and we'd hang out!
she's totally into me and i'm into her!
i mean, you'd probably have the time of your life but
I think we might be getting our signals a little crossed then. A lot of the choices in the game, to me at least, don't have a very clear answer even when you have all the time in the world to mull them over after you made them. You don't have a lot of information, you don't know exactly what consequences your actions will have. This one you do right out the gate. You know what you might be doing, and you know what you stand to gain. Every other choice with this level of clarity is generally reflected in the player choice spread, with something approaching an ~80% consensus. This one wasn't an easy choice, especially in the moment when you've got all the characters trying to influence your decision, and the reason I felt compelled to think about it so much afterwards probably means that it wasn't as clear cut as I implied. But it still seems clearer than the player spread would indicate. My own personal theory is players fell victim to their guardian angel impulses that years of playing morality play video games nurtured. As in, they went with what they thought was the "moral" choice, even though the game isn't really about good or evil choices at all. It's about making the least terrible ones.
Re: Vernon
Dang, what? I had Christa and Omid (and everyone else you could possibly have with you searching for Clementine, because I am such a good leader and great at keeping people together 8-) ) with me, so no one was locked in the shed and left to die. That's waaay fucked up. I actually had the same thoughts you did, with Vernon's theft paralleling my taking those supplies, and I also decided that he was more of a bastard than I was. But not enough of a bastard to leave my friends to die. What a jerk!
On the black screen
I mean I'll be ok, I always am. And if nothing else I have awesome friends and family around me and plenty to distract myself with in the meantime
It's just if shit could stop piling up right now thatd be really really nice
but beer 12 is about done (forgot about the 3 I had before the text) and the coughing from chain smoking a half oa dozen cigs is getting to me so I think it's attempted crash time
Night [chat]
On the black screen
link?
The only spoilery bits are the bits in spoilers (natch) so those of you considering buying the game can read it too
There are some people who shit on the Walking Dead's accomplishments from a writing perspective and point out that the plot twists and tragedies and so forth are all very standard fair for television, film, and books (including comics). I feel like comparing the writing alone as a piece of fiction to those other mediums and deeming it barely satisfactory and an indication of the nascent stage of video game storytelling is disingenuous and misses a critical element of what makes the Walking Dead so incredible: agency
Agency, to clarify my usage in this context, refers to a player's ability to choose the direction and outcome of the story via their choices through the game's mechanics. That is an element of storytelling that is mostly unique to games as a medium and the Walking Dead uses it in some pretty incredible ways. Agency in a game telling you a story cannot be overlooked or sloughed off as being no different than a choose-your-own-adventure novel, because to do so outright denies the raw psychology of making the player a part of the story by making them experience the choice in a very direct way.
The Walking Dead has a fair number of cutscenes, where agency is taken away from the player in order to further the plot or move things along or introduce a new element to the environment. Where the game doesn't take agency away from you becomes critically important to your ability to experience them in a way that other fiction mediums can't really replicate.
There are many, many moments where the game effectively says to you "Okay, you choose to do this, now pull the trigger. Do it." Instead of taking agency away from you, the player, and allowing you to just watch the results of your choices unfold as if you're watching a movie, the game asks you to follow through on your choice and engage in the act itself. This cannot be overlooked because its potential to psychologically involve the player in doing these things can be far more disquieting (or heartwarming) than simply watching them play out.
When you choose to put a bullet in the head of someone you've come to know and perhaps care about in order to mercy-kill them, the game asks you to put the crosshairs on their head and pull the trigger. You pulling the trigger is your agency. When you choose to do nothing to save someone and walk away, the game gives you ample time to turn around and do something. That you choose to do nothing is your agency. Some of the game's most visceral and horrifying portrayals of violence, for example, give you several opportunities to stop. The game, and the story, will continue if you stop, you don't have to do this. The fact that you choose to continue makes that violence a product of your agency.
What harrows people about the Walking Dead, I think, isn't that it's a tragic story about loss and caring that if told in a movie or on television would be unremarkable. It's that the game asks you to choose to make it harrowing. It asks you to involve yourself and choose to do these things and live with the repercussions of your choices. That utilization of agency is a unique element to gaming and I think it's the most important thing to consider for games that really want to advance the medium as an artform unto itself and not just a shallow imitation of film or television. When people talk about "cinematic" games like the Uncharted series what they're talking about is a blend of art style, animation, QTE sequences and cutscenes to create the illusion that you're watching a movie or a TV show. That is not going to make a game into art. That is not going to give games the ability to reach out and grasp a person psychologically to the full extent they're capable of.
Agency is what can make games unique as an artform, and when games utterly fail to grasp that and essentially try to have as little agency as possible for the player, they don't really interest me very much beyond being time-passers and shallow entertainment.
Here's a bunch of examples specific to the Walking Dead of the sort of agency I am talking about, but because most of these examples are spoilers I am going to put them in spoiler tags.
WARNING: Spoilers for the entire series of the Walking Dead contained here, seriously:
- Shooting Duck. If you choose to shoot Duck, rather than make Kenny kill his own son after the suicide of his wife, the game makes you shoot him. You have to put to select the gun, and then select your Duck.
- The child in the attic has a two-fold version of this. One is your action to kill the child, and the second is burying him. Burying the child in particular is a really good example of this sort of repetition to really make you feel like yep, you are burying a child here. It's not a pleasant thing, and not something you just cutscene away. Click on that dirt pile, put another shovelful on him.
- The beartrap scene. Oh good lord, the beartrap scene. You can stop, and in fact he begs you to stop, and if you continue that is your choice.
- The screaming woman when you and Kenny loot the pharmacy. The choice to either put a bullet in her head or, more horrifically, to let her live to distract the walkers, is your choice and you get to spend the next few minutes either scrambling to get supplies or listening to her scream as she is ripped to shreds. Your choice.
- A good example of the choice to do nothing came for me in the belltower scene when the group was leaving Crawford. I had basically had it with Ben. He got people killed, he admitted what he did to Kenny at the worst possible moment ever despite being repeatedly told not to, and most damning of all he deserted Clementine when she needed his protection at the beginning of episode 4. So, I watched Ben die. When we got to the top of the belltower and the zombies grabbed him, I could've saved him. I let the timer expire while he begged for my help, and I left him laying at the bottom of the belltower, body broken and crying, and I walked away while he was devoured. That the game let me walk away from that is remarkable. That I let myself walk away from that, moreso.
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