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Originally Posted by Jaded X Gamer
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but are you so influential on this Emily girl that she basically becomes different characters? Because that sounds like she's just an extension of the player character, and not a complete character herself. I think one of the things that has made the Walking Dead game so popular is the strength of the characters in it and that you don't actually control them.
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Yes and no. I suppose calling the main character a bodyguard is somewhat of an understatement for the game's setting and the PC's official position as Royal Protector. For all intents and purposes, the player character acts as Emily's political tutor and bodyguard and father figure. Emily herself is the last surviving heir to the throne whose being hunted down by political enemies, so she would basically be looking to the PC for guidance on a lot of things. Plus, most 10 year old children would certainly be influenced in how they act by their fathers.
The setting itself also contributes to how Emily develops as a character. She lives is dystopian Industrial Revolution world undergoing a devastating plague outbreak that turns people into zombies before they finally die. The government reaction is to kill anyone that might be infected. The PC's actions could also lead to more violent government retaliations which in turn lead to more zombies.
The PC's actions in dealing with these problems and the way he deals with political intrigue all influence how Emily views the world and how to solve its problems. A Machiavellian PC who decides killing opponents would increasingly turn Emily into a Machiavellian herself, so yeah, the PC does have a lot of influence though it's not unrealistic given the setting.
However, there are certain things that the PC could do that would utterly break Emily's heart, who does look to the PC as a father (in some of her drawings, she calls the PC "dad" and it's heavily implied that Emily is the PC's illegitimate daughter) that would lead to the outcome mentioned by anonymau5. So Emily does show that she could be her own person.
What I find similar in both games is that there are a lot of bonding moments between the father figure and the daughter. Where they differ is the observable influence each father figure has. One of the things I noticed on the forums is that a lot of players seem to have an expectation that Lee had a lot of influence on Clem, but after playing Dishonored, that doesn't seem the case after comparing the two. I'm not saying either approach is wrong or unrealistic, and it's fine for Clem to be more independently minded as some children are, but I will say that Lee doesn't seem to have as much influence as a father figure than some players may hope. It's also an expectation that I think TTG has encouraged through the storyline but ultimately had to "railroad" a lot of what Clem does. But then again, there seems to be an expectation that Clem would really show Lee's influences during season 2.