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[PATV] Wednesday, April 10, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 5: “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
How could I have missed that line?! Goes to show there is more in that game then meets the eye. But an equally interesting part is, I saved that kid and the game made me wonder later on: "Is every life worth saving?" specifically because I saved him (can't go into more detail without spoiling). The game is great in making you doubt your decisions with very good arguments (another example, the woman in the Motor Inn in episode 1 and Glenn's response later on)
@rednightmare Whether or not the kid dies, the rest of the story remains the same. None of the deaths actually have an impact on the story, just the way it unfolds.
But I did like how Telltale always made sure we're thinking about our actions.
@Yuurt I'm reminded of my brother's response to a comment regarding another game. "What difference does it make what you choose if the same thing happens?" "It changes if you're a horrible person."
Even if it doesn't actually branch the story, the act of making a choice changes how you view things. What are you thinking about, what are you prioritizing, and how does it color the story from then on, despite the dialogue and action remaining the same?
While I agree that the overall *plot* isn't changed by the choices you make, I think it does change the story a great deal. In my play through, the main character always made the moral decisions, or as close to them as I could make those decisions. It became a story about an otherwise boring man that was thrust into this extreme situation. I've seen other play-throughs where this was not the case, and the main character became, for instance, a deeply flawed individual that was struggling desperately for a chance at redemption. Yes, the plot is basically the same regardless of the choices you make, but the actual story, and your emotional connection to it, I think changes entirely based on the decisions you make. It's something that I really love about this game, that the plot could be so tightly crafted, and yet different decisions give you a completely different connection to that plot.
I started this video then immediately went to check my Steam Wishlist and was overjoyed to find The Walking Dead marked down to $10. Can't wait to try it.
@Yuurt: In that one instance, sure, it makes you think of whether or not you'd let a kid die *without* the meta knowledge that the same thing basically happens anyway. But what about those moments where the game denies you the power to choose, like if you'd rather *not* travel with the crazy redneck couple and their creepy kid, or if you'd like to try and save the woman who gets shot in the face by the side of the road *no matter what you say or do*?
For a game that supposedly relies so much on interactive storytelling, TWD occasionally goes out of its way to shoehorn you into a specific line of plot development.
@there'saforum?
You're missing the point. Those choices might not change how the game plays out in terms of the plot, but it DOES help Lee reflect you more as a person. People react to him differently and say different things based on those choices. And, based on that, OTHER things can change. And if you're talking about instances where you're not even being given a choice you're just being selfish - there are things you can't help, that's just how it is.
Well it doesn't help that the game keeps asking you to kill the same kid. Or that the kid is an idiot. By the time I killed him he had leeched our supplies, endangered the entire group of us from bandit attack, lied to my face and got another group member shot for it, then brought the zombie hoard down on top of us all, and also threatening to enrage another party member in the middle of a supply run and said zombie hoard. And then when he wants to sacrifice himself for the good of the rest of us, so not only would we be better off without him, but he wants to die anyway, then I went "Sure, Fine, Whatever". 1 out of 2 of these conditions wouldn't have made me sacrifice him, but being complete dead weight?
My Lee was trying to be practical though. Trying to keep the group strong so that he could survive.
Sort of similarly, I killed off the girl in the first episode because of equal measures that she didn't know what batteries were (also an idiot), knew who Lee was and because I was spoiled and wanted to see the less chosen option. Plus she had a gun to save herself with, which I knew she wasn't going to be able to use because things go bad, but whatever.
So yeah, I didn't feel bad for my decisions at all.
In fact, at the guilt trip at the end, when your inquisitor starts spouting all the things you've done, and all the people you've wronged, my Lee gave up half way through the conversation. He stopped defending himself, because he'd done what was best for him and his people at each step. So he went on the attack, and instead of justifying his own actions, he instead asked how the inquisitor could justify his own, and threatened him with infection because why not try to fight him off.
Still, this is coming from someone whose reaction to the Hemmingway poem was "No man may be an island, but my isthmus to the mainland is completely submerged by the high tide". Not necessarily the most healthy response mind.
I like how you 'break down' the elements of a game's narrative like this. There are lots of games that seem to aspire for higher conversation too, such as the one present in my mind right now, Bioshock Infinite.
How long are we running a Walking Dead conversation on the show? 3 eps? 4? It's a stellar game, though we hardly span more than 2 at a time on anything. hehe
This week's video reminds me of something that was removed from SWTOR. The option to kill off one of your companion characters. Originally the game's plot was meant to put you in this situation, where you had to make this moral choice of what to do, and it could result in the loss of one of your people. Bioware chose to remove this feature before release. They opted to simply make sure that all players had everything, rather than stick MMO players with a meaningful choice. And I have always felt that the game was diminished for it. SWTOR originally aspired to take MMO storytelling to a whole new level, but ultimately the plots fell pretty flat, because nothing significant or lasting ever really happened. They made a big deal about 'making choices' but when you got to 50, no matter what choices you had made, none of it mattered in the least.
While I agree that you don't HAVE to sacrifice anything of what we traditionally think of as a game to engage these questions, I don't think the Walking Dead is a good example of this.
The Walking Dead's greatest weakness is the lack of player agency and a disonance betweeen story and mechanics. The game's story tasks Lee with caring for and raising Clementine, but the mechanics simply task the player with surviving until the next cutscene.
No player saved Clementine because no player damned Clementine. The lack of meaningful choice really damages the agency of the player in all this. When the biggest source of interaction is dialogue choices and those lead to little or no effect on the game, what IS the player doing?
I know, I know, it's not the subject of this analyses, but I wish it were. The Walking Dead did something great with its story, for sure, but by having EVERY critic or analyses ignore what it didn't do so great, I fear it will give Telltale no cause to fix the very real problems in it. And I don't think people will continue to play these if they remain this way for very much longer...
You know, I did buy Walking Dead to see what all the fuss was about, but I couldn't be bothered to keep playing. I gave up out of a complete lack of interest shortly after I found the kid and there were two guy trying to get their car going or something. I wanted to avoid them but the game did not give me that option. So I just uninstalled instead. Left to my druthers, I would have avoided everybody. I didn't want to deal with the drama of dealing with this stupid group and ultimately got my wish. It just meant not playing the game. Tell you what, though. If a choice to let that kid die or let someone else die came up, I would try to let both of them die.
one of my favorite poems of all times i knew it long before playing the game but it was an amazing moument for me to hear chack say i did not see anybody else reference this and for exposing some to that and for reminding me of it i thank you
I made every effort possible to save everyone, even Kenny, even the boy who let the thugs into the motel. This is why I will never forgive TellTale for killing Carley. She was the only one who actually knew how to use a gun, she was good at it, she was sensible and level headed. She was the ONLY ONE that was never selfish. Damn you TellTale for killing Carley.
On the other hand, it's incredible that they created a game in which I was so invested in the characters. I must confess that if it was possible I would have killed Kenny the first time he screws up.
@thewizardninja: The choices do reflect how others perceive Lee, but only in the most superficial of ways. I played through some parts of the game multiple times just to see what I was missing by choosing A instead of B, and the answer was... not that much.
The choices should have at least *some* chance of influencing the plot. Not necessarily the final outcome, I was OK with that being set in stone but other, peripheral things. If you don't want to take refuge on a farm, if you don't want to take the train to the coast, if you don't want to trust the friendly cannibals - you should have that option.
As it is, TWD gives us only the illusion of freedom. When you first finish the game, you think "Wow, what a great interactive storytelling experience!" But then you reload and try to do something differently, try to do *almost anything* differently - and find out you're being railroaded through the same exact story.
Isn't the zombie apocalypse the worst possible way to represent the idea that we're all in this together? I mean the big problem in zombie apocalypse is not that a bunch of people died, it's that a bunch of people aren't quiet 100% dead. Society can't rebuild because there's a bunch of undead trying to kill them. And since the zombie virus is very easy to stop spreading (you just have to not get biten, pretty easy to avoid, unlike not drinking bad water or something) you end up in a situation were not every death is a bad thing. Haven't played the game pass chapter 1 (the "choice" at the end of it convinced me that the game didn't care one bit about my action) but it seems like that high school kid had it coming, in fact it seems like it would have been better if he died sooner. So trying to impress on us that letting someone die is "evil" seems very misguided in this scenario.
I think there are a lot of intresting moral dilema to explore using game. Think of like a walking dead pre quel where you eventually find patient X and have the choice of killing him or not. I keep thinking there should be a game where you play has the "evil guy" trying to wipe a bunch of people but the game actually give you a good reason for it, so do you wipe out 90% of human population to allow the other 10% to live, or do you doom the 100% just to not have to dirty your hands? But setting up a situation where by all account the good choice is to let someone die or putting you in a situation where no matter your choice the character will die, but then pointing the finger at us and saying "you are a bad person" if you let him die, doesn't work. SImilar to how specs ops forced you to do the *spoiler* but then blame you the entire game for it.
“The ideas that the whole human race is, in a sense, one thing- one huge organism, like a tree-must not be confused with the idea that individual difference is not important or that real people, Tom and Nobby and Kate, are some how less important than collective things like classes, races and so forth. Indeed the two ideas are opposites. Things which are parts of a single organism may be very different form one another: things which are not, may be very alike. Six pennies are quite separate and very alike: my nose and my lungs are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share its common life. Christianity thinks of individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body- different from one another and each contributing what no other could.”
-C.S. Lewis
[transcript] To me, in this moment, we were reminded what the whole work is saying: that each one of us is an incredibly valuable thing; that even the least of us makes the whole 'more', and if we give up on that, we give up on being human.
I very much agree with the quote. However, stating that those who don't follow a given philosophy are inhuman is not acceptable.
@there'saforum:
"As it is, TWD gives us only the illusion of freedom. When you first finish the game, you think "Wow, what a great interactive storytelling experience!" But then you reload and try to do something differently, try to do *almost anything* differently - and find out you're being railroaded through the same exact story. "
To me, that's kind of the point....
That's another big theme of TWD universe too; you can TRY to save everyone, you can TRY to make the best decisions and keep holding on and holding on to hope...but in the end you're basically fucked. If This doesn't kill you, That will. If That doesn't kill you, Over Here will. If Over Here doesn't kill you, Over There will. And so and and so forth. The Dead Always Win.
To quote from the comic book: "We're surrounded by the DEAD. We're among them -- and when we finally give up we become them! We're living on borrowed time here. Every minute of our life is a minute we steal from them! You see them out there. You KNOW that when we die -- we become them. You think we hide behind walls to protect us from the walking dead? Don't you get it? We ARE the walking dead! WE are the walking dead...”
And that goes along with what EC is talking about here and why people are digging on the game; it's not necessarily about your decisions making a huge impact on the PLOT persay, rather how they'll come to affect you and the people surrounding you before it all comes to an inevitable end. What kind of man/woman/boy/girl will you be at the end?
@there'saforum? "The choices should have at least *some* chance of influencing the plot. Not necessarily the final outcome, I was OK with that being set in stone but other, peripheral things. If you don't want to take refuge on a farm, if you don't want to take the train to the coast, if you don't want to trust the friendly cannibals - you should have that option."
I'm sorry, were you unaware that this is an adventure video game and not a magical holodeck that can conjure entirely different plotlines at your whim? The game does give you options that influence the plot, but those things cannot change the overall story arc because there are certain things that have to happen in order for the story to progress. This isn't an open-world RPG with a huge budget and a sprawling world for you to explore; if that's what you expected then you must've known next to nothing about the game or adventure gaming in general.
Do you seriously think the developers should script, code, model, animate, and voice act two entirely different versions of Episode 2 just to satisfy dullards who want the game to have an infinite number of possibilities? I'm not saying I wouldn't have *liked* more choice in the game, but it's a pretty unreasonable expectation when most other games in the genre are even more restricted.
I think people wouldn't be bitching about this nearly as much if Telltale just ditched the pre-game screen that says "Your choices really matter" or whatever. It seems like people throw common sense out the window when they see that, as though the game could really account for all the choices every John Q. Nobody would want to make.
Been thinking about why I didn't care about most of these characters, save Clementine.
*Spoilers Ahead*
First, it didn't help that most of the characters were sucker-killed. I mean the list is huge: Carly/the guy in that same choice/that one guy you meet in 2/the heart attack victim/his daughter (left, but still)/Kenny's family. And then you get the choice to save the kid. Not once are you given the choice to save any of the previous victims, so you can't help but feel like this life is worth as little to the story as all the previous ones. If you do save him, he probably gets killed off in the next episode anyway (there's a scripted balcony collapse that didn't trigger because I didn't have as many people with me at that point). The game treats the lives within it as something to be thrown away at every turn, that the act of killing someone off really loses meaning, since the idiot with a broken leg will be likely killed off without your help anyway.
But more importantly, most of the characters don't see any growth. You make a decision, they act bipolar about it, until you make another decision. They rarely do anything to get past their issues, or even at least escalate them, and just seem to wallow in the same emotional state. Those that try to be interesting and express disagreement get shot in the face for their actions.
Clementine is the exception. With each decision, you have to go back and confer with her, and then she comes to an understanding about it and moves on. She'll then act on these resolutions later in the game, and challenge you with the implications. In fact, my favourite choice in the game was teaching Clementine to swear. In the first barn that you sleep in, if you tell Clementine that it smells funny because of the "shit", she'll then reiterate it to Kenny's kid and wife in a later barn where you'll have to scold her, and then she'll scold you for swearing at a later point, and then when you meet with the two at the train bridge, she'll hear the guy say "shit" at which point you can ask why he gets to swear and you don't. There's this back and forth over the same issue which slowly progresses and this dialogue between the two characters makes you feel far more connected to Clem than any of the "You agreed/disagreed with me. I'm going to be happy/unhappy with you forever" choices that happen with the rest of the cast.
So when the game makes life ridiculously cheap, and there is no way to have any meaningful dialogue with the cast, is there really any surprise when we let a character we don't like go a bit early?
Although there is a strong argument to be made for a narrative theme that revolves around the 'pointlessness of the protagonist trying to escape fate', I think others have already brought it up and I wanted to add something along these lines, but perhaps a little different.
I think that perhaps this is just a failure of immersion, and not a failure of the game or it's intentions as a whole. I think some people got more engaged with TWD than others, and I think that such a subjective experience is never going to be able to reach every person completely. That being said, I think that we (as gamers) pull out the "can't do what I want" card far too often. Yes, there are piles of shitty games out there that such a criticism clearly applies to, but I think this has stopped people from really examining WHY this criticism is valid.
EC made some great points about how adventure games are still relevant as a gaming "genre," but just like movie genres, not everyone is always in the mood for a particular genre. Everyone has certain types of movies that they are less drawn towards, and I think that TWD simply cannot engage every audience. I certainly think adventure games can continue to advance and become even more relevant to modern gamers, but it's not a failure of the players impact on the plot, but rather a failure of the games ability to immerse you upon a second playthrough.
Many great games and movies restrict the protagonists choices, but the thing that holds them together is their ability to connect on an emotional level. Sure, a game that proposes that "players can do anything, it's open world!" deserves to be shot down if it fails to deliver on those exact premises, but all too often this suggestion is then applied to other games that would undoubtedly be WORSE if the player could do whatever they wanted.
Think of half-life 2, the NPCs looking at Gordon Freeman while talking to him definitely added something to their ability to connect with the player, but at the same time you could dance around and do ridiculous stuff while they just kept on talking, and this hurt the experience. Adding the ability for the NPCs to naturally react to the player being stupid like they would irl would be a good option, but so would something else that motivated the player to act seriously instead. Many games simply opt to take away player control (often a cutscene), and this can be suitable in certain circumstances, but when a game feels like it "cops out" by bringing in a cutscene it's the same type of analysis that must take place. A cutscene can fit a narrative just as much as a linear plot can. It's really the quality and ability of the game to connect with the player being lost that is a problem.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying TWD is a bad game. Every game has high points and low points, and obviously the game was emotionally engaging to the point that most people didn't feel like the game was cheating them somehow or taking a shortcut, in part because the theme was tied to this emotion of hopelessness. I see it as beneficial that TWD made use of it's weaknesses like this, but that's only me. This type of thing is so subjective it's hard to declare that it "worked" from an engagement point of view, but it's still important to analyze the pieces.
I think it can be argued that the entire series from the GN, the TV show, to the game are all more fatalistic than not. It would appear to be more about how a small number cope with a world that has already ended, than how they make something new, better, or forge a recovery. In a limited series of episodic games, I was impressed how that was still the theme, while letting you project yourself onto a major character.
Another great episode. I really appreciate the way you guys dig into the game to show us how the industry can perform at its best.
I teach English in Japan and I use the game to help my students learn English because it's dialog driven and because it's great to enjoy a game where you get to make the decisions, but you don't have to button mash.
btw, I love how the new artist has expanded on Allison's repertoire. The show looks great.
See, I think people dehumanize themselves based on their own choices. And once they do that? They no longer are someone I care to think about as human or have any guilt removing from society/the group.
What if I told you that both me and a lot of people I know would have personally killed most of the characters at one point or another if the mechanics had allowed it? Don't just assume that everybody agrees with your sense of morality, especially since this is a post-apocalyptic world in which good/evil values are even more uncertain than usual. I saved the kid because I like her, that's it. Whenever there were who-dies-this-time choices involving characters I liked I just picked the one I liked more and accepted that the game, as good as it is, is still just a glorified choose your own adventure game in which you are limited to predetermined scenarios. Not really into these Walking Dead Extra Credits Episodes though they are probably awesome for people who just want to hear some good stuff about a game they love.
The idea is that every person has a purpose, and that purpose benefits humanity as a whole. It comes down to economics: that person added something to the world just by doing his job every day (that's why you get paid), and now that he's dead, he's not adding that tiny amount anymore. The average human being makes a very, very small contribution in the grand scheme of things, but it is there.
That doesn't apply in *all* cases (not all people make a net positive contribution to humanity; hence, prisons), but it's a good rule of thumb, and one of the most basic principles (along with the fact that killing people emotionally harms the people who knew them) of both most systems of morality and many religions, Christianity included.
This episode made me appreciate the game a bit, thanks.
Before this, most of what I got from the experience was that my choices didn't matter - everything sucks, no one wants to work together, Murphys Law is literal, anything that seems to good to be true is just that and that as much as it wants to be a game, it's mostly a story that you sort of shape, but not really.
The idea is that every person has a purpose, and that purpose benefits humanity as a whole. It comes down to economics: that person added something to the world just by doing his job every day (that's why you get paid), and now that he's dead, he's not adding that tiny amount anymore. The average human being makes a very, very small contribution in the grand scheme of things, but it is there.
That doesn't apply in *all* cases (not all people make a net positive contribution to humanity; hence, prisons), but it's a good rule of thumb, and one of the most basic principles (along with the fact that killing people emotionally harms the people who knew them) of both most systems of morality and many religions, Christianity included.
The only response to this is basically what others have said here. Don't try to push that morality onto me.
You're not a bad person for letting somebody drop simply because, as you said, they truly are harmful at times.
The kid described above is exactly a kid I would let die. I won't agonize over it or be judged for it. Being a child certainly gives you some certain moral consideration, but there are limits.
And their economic value shouldn't matter to your own humanity anyway, whatever that's supposed to mean. What I don't get that is where they get from "you can't survive on your own" and "you demean yourself for letting them die!"
The sermon is a pointless moral imperative divorced from any sort of reasonable rationale. It is also couched in terms of "Europe" being a single whole, so yeah, it really is ironic when the unspoken implication is that the rest of the world doesn't count.
Posts
But I did like how Telltale always made sure we're thinking about our actions.
@Karbacca Yes, yes you do.
Even if it doesn't actually branch the story, the act of making a choice changes how you view things. What are you thinking about, what are you prioritizing, and how does it color the story from then on, despite the dialogue and action remaining the same?
For a game that supposedly relies so much on interactive storytelling, TWD occasionally goes out of its way to shoehorn you into a specific line of plot development.
You're missing the point. Those choices might not change how the game plays out in terms of the plot, but it DOES help Lee reflect you more as a person. People react to him differently and say different things based on those choices. And, based on that, OTHER things can change. And if you're talking about instances where you're not even being given a choice you're just being selfish - there are things you can't help, that's just how it is.
*Spoilers Ahead*
Well it doesn't help that the game keeps asking you to kill the same kid. Or that the kid is an idiot. By the time I killed him he had leeched our supplies, endangered the entire group of us from bandit attack, lied to my face and got another group member shot for it, then brought the zombie hoard down on top of us all, and also threatening to enrage another party member in the middle of a supply run and said zombie hoard. And then when he wants to sacrifice himself for the good of the rest of us, so not only would we be better off without him, but he wants to die anyway, then I went "Sure, Fine, Whatever". 1 out of 2 of these conditions wouldn't have made me sacrifice him, but being complete dead weight?
My Lee was trying to be practical though. Trying to keep the group strong so that he could survive.
Sort of similarly, I killed off the girl in the first episode because of equal measures that she didn't know what batteries were (also an idiot), knew who Lee was and because I was spoiled and wanted to see the less chosen option. Plus she had a gun to save herself with, which I knew she wasn't going to be able to use because things go bad, but whatever.
So yeah, I didn't feel bad for my decisions at all.
In fact, at the guilt trip at the end, when your inquisitor starts spouting all the things you've done, and all the people you've wronged, my Lee gave up half way through the conversation. He stopped defending himself, because he'd done what was best for him and his people at each step. So he went on the attack, and instead of justifying his own actions, he instead asked how the inquisitor could justify his own, and threatened him with infection because why not try to fight him off.
Still, this is coming from someone whose reaction to the Hemmingway poem was "No man may be an island, but my isthmus to the mainland is completely submerged by the high tide". Not necessarily the most healthy response mind.
How long are we running a Walking Dead conversation on the show? 3 eps? 4? It's a stellar game, though we hardly span more than 2 at a time on anything. hehe
The Walking Dead's greatest weakness is the lack of player agency and a disonance betweeen story and mechanics. The game's story tasks Lee with caring for and raising Clementine, but the mechanics simply task the player with surviving until the next cutscene.
No player saved Clementine because no player damned Clementine. The lack of meaningful choice really damages the agency of the player in all this. When the biggest source of interaction is dialogue choices and those lead to little or no effect on the game, what IS the player doing?
I know, I know, it's not the subject of this analyses, but I wish it were. The Walking Dead did something great with its story, for sure, but by having EVERY critic or analyses ignore what it didn't do so great, I fear it will give Telltale no cause to fix the very real problems in it. And I don't think people will continue to play these if they remain this way for very much longer...
I really hope I'm wrong...
**** SPOILERS ****
I made every effort possible to save everyone, even Kenny, even the boy who let the thugs into the motel. This is why I will never forgive TellTale for killing Carley. She was the only one who actually knew how to use a gun, she was good at it, she was sensible and level headed. She was the ONLY ONE that was never selfish. Damn you TellTale for killing Carley.
On the other hand, it's incredible that they created a game in which I was so invested in the characters. I must confess that if it was possible I would have killed Kenny the first time he screws up.
The choices should have at least *some* chance of influencing the plot. Not necessarily the final outcome, I was OK with that being set in stone but other, peripheral things. If you don't want to take refuge on a farm, if you don't want to take the train to the coast, if you don't want to trust the friendly cannibals - you should have that option.
As it is, TWD gives us only the illusion of freedom. When you first finish the game, you think "Wow, what a great interactive storytelling experience!" But then you reload and try to do something differently, try to do *almost anything* differently - and find out you're being railroaded through the same exact story.
I think there are a lot of intresting moral dilema to explore using game. Think of like a walking dead pre quel where you eventually find patient X and have the choice of killing him or not. I keep thinking there should be a game where you play has the "evil guy" trying to wipe a bunch of people but the game actually give you a good reason for it, so do you wipe out 90% of human population to allow the other 10% to live, or do you doom the 100% just to not have to dirty your hands? But setting up a situation where by all account the good choice is to let someone die or putting you in a situation where no matter your choice the character will die, but then pointing the finger at us and saying "you are a bad person" if you let him die, doesn't work. SImilar to how specs ops forced you to do the *spoiler* but then blame you the entire game for it.
-C.S. Lewis
I very much agree with the quote. However, stating that those who don't follow a given philosophy are inhuman is not acceptable.
It's in the video.
but love the analysis none the less!
The None-Troll Commenting guy
"As it is, TWD gives us only the illusion of freedom. When you first finish the game, you think "Wow, what a great interactive storytelling experience!" But then you reload and try to do something differently, try to do *almost anything* differently - and find out you're being railroaded through the same exact story. "
To me, that's kind of the point....
That's another big theme of TWD universe too; you can TRY to save everyone, you can TRY to make the best decisions and keep holding on and holding on to hope...but in the end you're basically fucked. If This doesn't kill you, That will. If That doesn't kill you, Over Here will. If Over Here doesn't kill you, Over There will. And so and and so forth. The Dead Always Win.
To quote from the comic book: "We're surrounded by the DEAD. We're among them -- and when we finally give up we become them! We're living on borrowed time here. Every minute of our life is a minute we steal from them! You see them out there. You KNOW that when we die -- we become them. You think we hide behind walls to protect us from the walking dead? Don't you get it? We ARE the walking dead! WE are the walking dead...”
And that goes along with what EC is talking about here and why people are digging on the game; it's not necessarily about your decisions making a huge impact on the PLOT persay, rather how they'll come to affect you and the people surrounding you before it all comes to an inevitable end. What kind of man/woman/boy/girl will you be at the end?
That's seems appropriate and fitting. It *is* a bunch of empty moralizing.
I'm sorry, were you unaware that this is an adventure video game and not a magical holodeck that can conjure entirely different plotlines at your whim? The game does give you options that influence the plot, but those things cannot change the overall story arc because there are certain things that have to happen in order for the story to progress. This isn't an open-world RPG with a huge budget and a sprawling world for you to explore; if that's what you expected then you must've known next to nothing about the game or adventure gaming in general.
Do you seriously think the developers should script, code, model, animate, and voice act two entirely different versions of Episode 2 just to satisfy dullards who want the game to have an infinite number of possibilities? I'm not saying I wouldn't have *liked* more choice in the game, but it's a pretty unreasonable expectation when most other games in the genre are even more restricted.
I think people wouldn't be bitching about this nearly as much if Telltale just ditched the pre-game screen that says "Your choices really matter" or whatever. It seems like people throw common sense out the window when they see that, as though the game could really account for all the choices every John Q. Nobody would want to make.
*Spoilers Ahead*
First, it didn't help that most of the characters were sucker-killed. I mean the list is huge: Carly/the guy in that same choice/that one guy you meet in 2/the heart attack victim/his daughter (left, but still)/Kenny's family. And then you get the choice to save the kid. Not once are you given the choice to save any of the previous victims, so you can't help but feel like this life is worth as little to the story as all the previous ones. If you do save him, he probably gets killed off in the next episode anyway (there's a scripted balcony collapse that didn't trigger because I didn't have as many people with me at that point). The game treats the lives within it as something to be thrown away at every turn, that the act of killing someone off really loses meaning, since the idiot with a broken leg will be likely killed off without your help anyway.
But more importantly, most of the characters don't see any growth. You make a decision, they act bipolar about it, until you make another decision. They rarely do anything to get past their issues, or even at least escalate them, and just seem to wallow in the same emotional state. Those that try to be interesting and express disagreement get shot in the face for their actions.
Clementine is the exception. With each decision, you have to go back and confer with her, and then she comes to an understanding about it and moves on. She'll then act on these resolutions later in the game, and challenge you with the implications. In fact, my favourite choice in the game was teaching Clementine to swear. In the first barn that you sleep in, if you tell Clementine that it smells funny because of the "shit", she'll then reiterate it to Kenny's kid and wife in a later barn where you'll have to scold her, and then she'll scold you for swearing at a later point, and then when you meet with the two at the train bridge, she'll hear the guy say "shit" at which point you can ask why he gets to swear and you don't. There's this back and forth over the same issue which slowly progresses and this dialogue between the two characters makes you feel far more connected to Clem than any of the "You agreed/disagreed with me. I'm going to be happy/unhappy with you forever" choices that happen with the rest of the cast.
So when the game makes life ridiculously cheap, and there is no way to have any meaningful dialogue with the cast, is there really any surprise when we let a character we don't like go a bit early?
Although there is a strong argument to be made for a narrative theme that revolves around the 'pointlessness of the protagonist trying to escape fate', I think others have already brought it up and I wanted to add something along these lines, but perhaps a little different.
I think that perhaps this is just a failure of immersion, and not a failure of the game or it's intentions as a whole. I think some people got more engaged with TWD than others, and I think that such a subjective experience is never going to be able to reach every person completely. That being said, I think that we (as gamers) pull out the "can't do what I want" card far too often. Yes, there are piles of shitty games out there that such a criticism clearly applies to, but I think this has stopped people from really examining WHY this criticism is valid.
EC made some great points about how adventure games are still relevant as a gaming "genre," but just like movie genres, not everyone is always in the mood for a particular genre. Everyone has certain types of movies that they are less drawn towards, and I think that TWD simply cannot engage every audience. I certainly think adventure games can continue to advance and become even more relevant to modern gamers, but it's not a failure of the players impact on the plot, but rather a failure of the games ability to immerse you upon a second playthrough.
Many great games and movies restrict the protagonists choices, but the thing that holds them together is their ability to connect on an emotional level. Sure, a game that proposes that "players can do anything, it's open world!" deserves to be shot down if it fails to deliver on those exact premises, but all too often this suggestion is then applied to other games that would undoubtedly be WORSE if the player could do whatever they wanted.
Think of half-life 2, the NPCs looking at Gordon Freeman while talking to him definitely added something to their ability to connect with the player, but at the same time you could dance around and do ridiculous stuff while they just kept on talking, and this hurt the experience. Adding the ability for the NPCs to naturally react to the player being stupid like they would irl would be a good option, but so would something else that motivated the player to act seriously instead. Many games simply opt to take away player control (often a cutscene), and this can be suitable in certain circumstances, but when a game feels like it "cops out" by bringing in a cutscene it's the same type of analysis that must take place. A cutscene can fit a narrative just as much as a linear plot can. It's really the quality and ability of the game to connect with the player being lost that is a problem.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying TWD is a bad game. Every game has high points and low points, and obviously the game was emotionally engaging to the point that most people didn't feel like the game was cheating them somehow or taking a shortcut, in part because the theme was tied to this emotion of hopelessness. I see it as beneficial that TWD made use of it's weaknesses like this, but that's only me. This type of thing is so subjective it's hard to declare that it "worked" from an engagement point of view, but it's still important to analyze the pieces.
I teach English in Japan and I use the game to help my students learn English because it's dialog driven and because it's great to enjoy a game where you get to make the decisions, but you don't have to button mash.
btw, I love how the new artist has expanded on Allison's repertoire. The show looks great.
Except it's not.
The idea is that every person has a purpose, and that purpose benefits humanity as a whole. It comes down to economics: that person added something to the world just by doing his job every day (that's why you get paid), and now that he's dead, he's not adding that tiny amount anymore. The average human being makes a very, very small contribution in the grand scheme of things, but it is there.
That doesn't apply in *all* cases (not all people make a net positive contribution to humanity; hence, prisons), but it's a good rule of thumb, and one of the most basic principles (along with the fact that killing people emotionally harms the people who knew them) of both most systems of morality and many religions, Christianity included.
Before this, most of what I got from the experience was that my choices didn't matter - everything sucks, no one wants to work together, Murphys Law is literal, anything that seems to good to be true is just that and that as much as it wants to be a game, it's mostly a story that you sort of shape, but not really.
I just felt lied to throughout the game.
The only response to this is basically what others have said here. Don't try to push that morality onto me.
You're not a bad person for letting somebody drop simply because, as you said, they truly are harmful at times.
The kid described above is exactly a kid I would let die. I won't agonize over it or be judged for it. Being a child certainly gives you some certain moral consideration, but there are limits.
And their economic value shouldn't matter to your own humanity anyway, whatever that's supposed to mean. What I don't get that is where they get from "you can't survive on your own" and "you demean yourself for letting them die!"
The sermon is a pointless moral imperative divorced from any sort of reasonable rationale. It is also couched in terms of "Europe" being a single whole, so yeah, it really is ironic when the unspoken implication is that the rest of the world doesn't count.