Report Blog Entry
SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4, EPISODE 1 OF TELLTALE WALKING DEAD
☆☆☆
i'll be honest, a lot of the passion i had for this series comes directly from my best friend since high school. they just have so much love for the games that it genuinely made me love them so much more. one of my favourite things about the game that my friend brought to my attention is the obvious comparison you're supposed to draw from the first game's relationship between Lee and Clementine, and season 4s older Clementine and AJ.
If it isn't obvious from playing the games themselves, heres the promotional art for both games.
yeah, it's not subtext.
but what i think is far more interesting is the way the game uses that to mess with you and ask you even deeper questions than the first game posed.
☆☆☆
the first game took the classic apocalyptic setting of rebuilding society and keeping the fire of humanity alive and then gave you a CHILD and said "yeah smart guy, now parent the future of humanity in a way that does all that, PLUS doesn't irreversibly damage her psyche". You're not working with adults with fully developed brains and plenty of experience that influences the way they act, you're taking care of an 8 year old.
so what do you do? for one, any social construct that seemed to have any weight doesn't fuckin matter now that society is gone, so what do you preserve? do you strive to be compassionate as much as possible, even if it occasionally comes at a detriment to you/your supplies? or do you focus on survival only, no matter how many people you hurt or how much the kind-hearted Clementine starts to hate you? and even then, is traveling solo really the safer option? community also brings strength in numbers and fills in the short comings of those who aren't as strong as the others. like, say, an 8 year old.
this is why lee stays with the group throughout as much of the first game as he can, it's ultimately safer for Clementine while she's as young as she is. instead the game focuses on the other questions and you can answer them however you see fit.
do you give mercy to a terrified woman who's been bitten, even though it uses one of the scarce bullets that could keep you safe later? do you try to revive a man having a heartattack or smash his head in to make sure he can't come back after he died? do you abandon an grieving woman on the side of the road even if it leads to her almost certain death because she JUST shot the person you'd saved just before? do you drop a teenager to the death he fears most of all because you view him as a liability after his mistake cost several lives, including that of another child, even though he was trying to do what he thought would keep everyone safe?
these questions are why the first walking dead game got all the endless praise it deserves and even sparked its own genre of games. they're crazy situations that seem almost impossible to make correct decisions for but they're what you have to face every day in this world and remember, Clementine will remember that.
i won't debate on whether Lee did a good job or not but what he does do is teach that 9 year old how to use a gun and gave her enough knowledge that she's been able to survive for about 7 years even after he's gone. she's definitely not without a lot of emotional and physical scars (my clementine brutally lost her finger to a car door during a season 3 flash back) but she's alive.
and now she has AJ, her own kid to raise and teach all the neccessary elements to survive and, hopefully, thrive in this post apocolypse. like Lee, you also have to balance putting AJ's needs above your own while juggling relationships with those around you who could help build safety and stability for the one you're charged with. hell, the game even gives you the same prompt to advise your protege on gun usage!
i was very cute and ended up telling my AJ to always aim for the head, just like my Lee had told Clementine! the game even asks you what you had told her (if you'd played the first game) so you can have the option to pass it on!
and soon, after a mortally perilous encounter similar to the one at the beginning of season 2 that convinces Clem of the neccessity of community protection, Clementine and AJ are luckily taken in by a community! The students of a school for troubled youths had been left behind by almost all their teachers (and assuming they weren't just immediately eaten by zombies, their parents too) but had been seemingly able to survive under the rule of the oldest student, Marlon.
he was the one who had saved clementine from nearly killing both herself and AJ and Clementine gets the opportunity to prove her worth to the community by aiding in protecting it from the zombies that threaten the food-gathering parties. Clementine and the player are given opportunities to teach AJ various lessons as they interact with the other kids in the school and AJ is eventually made to apologize to Marlon for hitting him in a very fragile spot, you know the one, so they can stay. they are allowed into the community and begin helping try to solve their present problem of a lack of food.
but many may be, understandably, asking "why would i want to play the exact same game all over again? isn't it kind of cheap to just copy the first game when you were struggling to follow it's success?" i promise there's more to it! i havent even told you the twist yet:
as you get closer with the residents of the school, you learn about Sophie and Minerva: sisters who had been survivors at the school too until they had been tragically lost while scavenging. this grief hangs over the school, building tension, and is present during most of your encounters. this tension finally boils over when, following an encounter Clementine has with a strange man outside the borders of the school's safe zone, Marlon's arguing with an anxious Brody is loud enough to wake Clem. she follows the noise to the basement but is brought into the fray when she is spotted by Marlon.
Brody finally breaks and admits the truth she and Marlon had been hiding for a year on that very day. the sisters hadn't been killed by walkers, the man Clementine met had taken them as a trade with Marlon in return for leaving the rest of the school's inhabitants alone. before she can finish, Marlon impulsively caves her head in with his flashlight.
He is incredibly distraught and rushes round looking for medical supplies as Clementine holds the dying Brody who tells her she and AJ aren't safe. Marlon will give them up too if given the opportunity. Marlon returns in time to hear her warning and watch Brody die before realizing she will turn into a zombie. Clementine tries to chase after him but he is able to lock her in the dark basement with a flickering torch that barely functions after it's use as a murder weapon.
Now that's awesome obviously but i'm gonna skip ahead to her inevitable escape and the confrontation she has with Marlon and the rest of the school's students. AJ holds Marlon at gunpoint, asking where Clementine is, to which Marlon responds by trying to put the blame of Brody's murder onto Clem. The students are unable to ignore the visible blood on his face though so he switches tactics and distracts the others long enough to take AJ's gun and turn it on Clementine. She can taught him by telling him he would not be able to let the raiders take her if he shot her, if the player chooses, and tells the other students what Brody had revealed to her.
It's not that easy of course, and students are hesitant to side with her against the boy who had lead them all for so long. Clementine calls on the help of those she had begun to get close to over her short stay and enough students are swayed enough that they begin to close in on Marlon in an attempt to get him to drop his gun. Marlon swings the gun toward those he screams that he was always trying to protect. He is breaking under the pressure and accidentally lets slip enough that admits his guilt.
Finally admitting his guilt and devastated in the face of the two sister's grieving brother, he finally is overpowered or talked down. if he's talked down, he brokenly drops his gun, saying he knows that he had betrayed them and asks to let him leave and never return. in both scenarios, the students look to clementine to decide his fate.
Then Marlon is shot in the back of the head. As his corpse hits the ground, AJ is revealed holding his gun and, confused by the horrified reactions of everyone around you, he recites back the rule you chose to tell him when shooting monsters.
☆☆☆
you thought this was going to be like the first game, huh? you thought it could be as simple as giving bits of survival advice to a kid who had already been brought up in a world that allowed for compassion to be nourished (at least more so than this post apocalyptic world)? Ha, sweet, innocent, naive, you who just listened to exactly what the game was trying to make you think, even with its promotional material, just so it could do this exact beautiful rug pull. how could you think that raising a child who knew nothing but the violence, isolation, and brutal survival of the apocalypse would be as simple as the already gregorian task Lee had initially undertaken?
This juxtaposition between how Lee raised Clementine, aided by her experience of life before the the outbreak, and how AJ has been/continues to be raised is what makes season 4 so much more than just a copy of the original. And there's so much more that is explored in the game alongside this already INCREDIBLY COMPELLING main theme of the game!!
But, just in case i convinced you to maybe give season 4 a shot or even revisit the games again after all this time, I will leave this at what it is and keep that for another blog post. Plus its almost 5am and i'm already gonna get bullied for that by my lovely girlfriend sleeping so cozily next to me!
thank you for reading through my almost entire episode 1 summary (even after i tried to cut that down as much as i could)! if you liked what i wrote i'd really appreciate a comment! i'd especially like to hear what you thought about the final season of tell tale's walking dead as i was never involved in the fandom and so wasn't aware of the reactions to the game outside of my own! i might even start a forum post about this post if enough of a discussion gets going because i really loved this game!!
Comments
Displaying 0 of 0 comments ( View all | Add Comment )