Killing off **** was a bad idea

[dee23]

Originally Posted by StanleyStutters

That's true, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the best decision for the series going forward. TTG may have sacrificed some of the long term quality of the story in favor of a shocking death in S1. They could have killed Lee in any season and it would have been just as shocking, memorable, and heartbreaking.

Obviously, we won't know if this was a good decision or not until season 2 and we see what new characters/story TTG is able to create. I'm confident in their ability to bring us another excellent story, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried that they won't be able to recreate the success from S1.

My point exactly.

[dee23]

Originally Posted by Rommel49

Basically this. There's not even an option to amputate until after Lee passes out the first time in the Morgue at the start of Episode 5. Anything he did after that was just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, it was already too late.



In my view, I'm not even sure it would've made the season less memorable if Lee had survived. Killing off the Protagonist is hardly new. Quite a few games have been doing that over the past few years (hell, the protagonist dies in the very first known story written in the English language). As has also been said, part of the problem is that Lee was effectively killed in Episode 4; which for me just further blunted the impact of his inevitable death in Episode 5 because it was basically drawn out over the course of weeks.

That's true.

[dee23]

Originally Posted by TealBlue

Quick question, since we know that in stories anything can happen, which is sorta good, but also sorta bad too, anyway, what if that scene where Lee and Clementine go to sleep and Lee is mad at her for talking to someone else on the walkie talkie... well... what if everything that happened after that, was a dream?

Or, you could even have it all happen right after Shawn drives them up to the farm, what if Lee fell asleep in the truck and the second season picks up from him waking up in the truck when they arrive at the farm?

I guess what i'm saying is what if each season, was a different play through of season 1?

Or would you mind the second season starting with your character being Kenny or Katja and playing through the same scenario's but from the new character point of view. Seeing how they made decisions about other things, but also their decisions about Clementine?

I mean, maybe people will scream and yell, or think it a cheap shot or not, but really in stories anything is possible, and it might be interesting to play another character, maybe especially a familiar character and know that Duck and Katja and Kenny and Lee and the others are still alive. The second season could end, exactly like the first, well... and season three could push us into what happens with Clementine.

Or we could flip back and do prequels, what i mean is play Clementine's family just before they leave for Savannah, or Lee and his wife, before he killed the man he found with his wife, or as Kenny and Katja and Duck, or as Merle and Shawn before all goes to heck in a handbasket.

Cheap shot? Or worth the risk and fun? And the familiarity? And having them alive again?

Oh, and what would you think if the ending to this 'replay' was different and people that died in the first season didn't die in the second with the 're-telling'?

Just some crazy ideas,

-TealBlue

For one I would have wasted those months playing the game if it was all one big dream scene and two, Telltale confirmed Lee really died. The actors for Lee and Clementine spoke of knowing about Lee's demise when they were making episode 2 and 3, so what you see is pretty much what you get, 9 characters killed over the course of 13 weeks.

[dee23]

Originally Posted by Jaded X Gamer

Would it really be any stranger for Clementine to bond with new characters than it was for Lee to bond with new people after losing half the group in episode three? Hell, Clem bonded with Lee after he came out of nowhere. I agree that simply having someone else serve as Clementine's parental figure would be strange but to be against her ever forming connections with new people at all sounds almost selfish.

If anything it would likely be a natural continuation of the parental themes in the first season. Season one you get to raise her, season two you could watch what kind of person she grows into, see how she applies the lessons you teach her. Clementine had a life before Lee and hopefully she'll have one after him, I wouldn't mind watching it unfold.

By the same measure is it really that hard for people to think you could be made to care as much about a new character as you did for Lee? He wasn't some keystone to the entire Walking Dead universe or some long running character we've known for generations. He was a well written character people were sad to see, but he was hardly the only one. He wasn't even the only in the game, he was just one of several.

I wonder, all you people who think killing Lee or continuing the series without him is a major mistake, have you ever seen a zombie... well anything before this game? Because the zombie sub-genre is rife with both killing central characters and continuing stories with entirely new casts. Right from the outset with Night of the Living Dead, a series that's never starred the same characters twice as far as I know.

And it's true for video games in the genre too. Dead Rising changed protagonists between games, as did Left 4 Dead. Hell, Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 had completely different casts and it could be considered the forerunner for modern zombie video games. If anything, video games are more receiptable as a genre to cast changes due to players always being allowed to project a part of themselves into the experience. None of the Grand Theft Auto games star the same person.

If anything it would have been weird to me if Lee hadn't died. Right from the beginning I figured he would probably die at some point. Between the cop talking about what Lee did and the look of regret on Lee's face I assumed this would be a tale of redemption with Lee dying as part of his atonement.

Between that and people constantly facing the horror of losing the ones they loved most and I figured it was obvious that something would eventually separate Lee and Clementine, with death being the most likely choice. I was just relieved it was Lee and not Clementine who died.

I hear what your saying about the zombie genre but this game is not based on them, hell the walking dead is not based on them that is why it stands out. The zombies are just the back drop. The walking dead differs from said zombie flicks because you get attached to the characters, seeing them develop over long periods of time. Your point would be so much more valid if the protagonist of the walking dead series wasn't alive and kicking after 8 years worth of comics and hadn't been surviving the ZA for nearly 2 years.

When you watch a movie like Dawn of the dead you expect everyone to die, every one does die and that is how the story ends but the walking dead is the zombie story that doesn't end so there is no rush to kill of it's characters.

[Jaded X Gamer]

Originally Posted by dee23

I hear what your saying about the zombie genre but this game is not based on them, hell the walking dead is not based on them that is why it stands out. The zombies are just the back drop. The walking dead differs from said zombie flicks because you get attached to the characters, seeing them develop over long periods of time. Your point would be so much more valid if the protagonist of the walking dead series wasn't alive and kicking after 8 years worth of comics and hadn't been surviving the ZA for nearly 2 years.

When you watch a movie like Dawn of the dead you expect everyone to die, every one does die and that is how the story ends but the walking dead is the zombie story that doesn't end so there is no rush to kill of it's characters.

Isn't one of the most advertised aspects of the Walking Dead is people can die anytime and your favorite characters always die? Rick staying alive so long and remaining the main character really just feels like a decision made out of convenience, not a deliberate narrative decision. Killing him or retiring him would require the creation of a new character and that's a risky move for a writer to make. (Which seems to be a major point of discussion in this thread.)

And the Walking Dead is most definitely based on popular zombie genre tropes. Character drama being a focal point of zombie stories has been a staple of the Living Dead series and many other zombie movies. As was the idea that humans are the real monsters or getting attached to characters who later to die. It's not uncommon for main characters to survive zombie movies either. (Like in the original Dawn of the Dead.)

It's really only in the explosion of zombie action games and films over the last decade did some people forget these things, but those aspects of the Walking Dead aren't new to the genre. Maybe new to a generation who haven't seen the old stuff, but it has its roots firmly in traditional Romero style zombie flicks.

Honestly, after watching the first two seasons of the T.V. Show and reading the first compendium, the only truly unique aspect of the Walking Dead is its length, which is likely a byproduct of it being in serialized formats. I guess that and it being a zombie story in a serialized format. I can understand a lot of people respond to that, the same story for continuing so long but I honestly find it tiresome after a certain point.

This is probably why I like the game more since it settled on a conclusion after roughly ten hours. They could have had both Lee and Clem survive and just do the same thing over and over again until the series stopped being profitable. But I really think the crux of this issue is how much of the same story does someone want.

Most of the people arguing against killing Lee in this thread don't seem upset by the ending to me so much as they're upset that there WAS an ending. The argument usually isn't "I wanted a happy ending" or "I wanted a different ending" it's "I didn't want it to end."

For some I guess they wanted this story to go on longer, or simply never end. That's fine, the comic or the T.V. show will probably oblige that. But for me, I think the game was just the right length and I was happy it actually did conclude Lee's story and did not simply prolong it for the sake of the writer's convenience.

[Mark$man]

^I liked the game alot, and would love if Telltale made another 2 or so seasons. However, I wouldn't have minded season 1 being the end if it wasn't for the cliff hanger.

In my opinion that really sucked lol. Not that they did that, just that I don't like it. Makes me overthink stuff.

[Jaded X Gamer]

Originally Posted by Mark$man

^I liked the game alot, and would love if Telltale made another 2 or so epsiodes. However, I wouldn't have minded season 1 being the end if it wasn't for the cliff hanger.
In my opinion that really sucked lol. Not that they did that, just that I don't like it. Makes me overthink stuff.

I can understand that but I think that's kind of inevitable with most zombie stories, that they're almost always going to end in some form of a cliffhanger. There's very few that end with there being a cure or some kind of solution to the zombie problem and as such the story always has at least one major loose end. Except Shawn of the Dead, which actually had an awesome solution.

Otherwise the best you can hope for is the characters end up somewhere reasonably safe and even that carries a lingering doubt that things could go right back to shit at some point. So much so that the remake of the Dawn of the Dead's epilogue snippets during the credits were added later because the audience didn't really buy the boat sailing off into the sunset thing as a happy ending.

Still, you also have to consider that the "cliffhanger" probably wasn't originally conceived as a cliffhanger. When the story for the game was being written Telltale probably didn't know if the game would be a hit or not and the post credits sequence segment was probably conceived to give the audience something to go on about Clementine's fate if there never was another Walking Dead game to continue her story.

If this ended up being the one and only Walking Dead game they made then at least's there's something there to feed the audiences expectations. I was just relieved to see Clementine made it out of Savannah in once piece but if you wanted you could just imagine the two people in the distance are Omid and Christa and that things worked out. Or Kenny and Molly. Or bad people Clem has to fight off, or whatever you wanted.

I've seen at least one person suggest the post credits scene is actually heaven. Clementine died on her way out of Savannah and the two people on the hill are actually her parents. In any case, it was a smart way to give some closure without having to write a whole new story to do so. All though now that the Walking Dead game is a hit, there probably will be another story at some point. But still, I think it was a smart way to conclude Lee's story while still giving us something to think about in regards to Clementine.

[Mark$man]

I know... but Lee... "Damn... God... DAMN." He wasn't ready to go, Clemmy needs him :/ She's 9 for crying out loud lol. I can't lie that the way he died was awesome and touching but now it's Clem, Christa and Omid, maybe Molly (doubt it, she a lone wolf), Lilly(I'd hate that so much), and Kenny (dreaming). So... yeah not alot to go from, but alot to branch to. I just didn't want it to end like that ya know? Like if they got reunited and were suddenly attacked by an unknown group then maybe I'd be fine because I at least know that they WERE safe. Right now Clem is the only 100% alive character, unless ya know, like ya said she is in heaven. That would suck too. And yeah I knew that they didn't know, that's why they had to change Kenny and make his death 'ambiguous' in case they needed him.

[zjs]

Originally Posted by montesinos7

I agree. It would have been a good idea only IF they were not going to have a season 2. I will never be as attached to those characters than the season 1 characters. I think it makes a compelling story, but they should have done it at the end of season 2 if they wanted to continue the story.

I disagree.

If you continue the next season with Lee, you're essentially re-running the same game, with a slightly older and wiser Clem.

As I've said before, there needs to be a new dynamic: a new group, with an older and more experienced Clementine, who's a useful member of the group and at an age where she's like a (younger sister) to a younger character, who can take care of herself. The absolute worst thing would be to see someone else taking up Lee's role with Clem and going through the exact same paternal role.

Moving the story on a few years so that Clem is a young teenager, has seen and done a lot more etc, means she can elude to Lee. Your character could even be someone with a similar story, but the key point is: new group, new areas.

I was most disappointed that Carley was killed off and that Lilly left the group. In my game, Kenny was killed off, but it allowed him to redeem himself. He was definitely a Shane character; caring only about himself and his family, willing to do anything etc. Sometimes he was right, a lot of times wrong. He wasn't bad to the point of being evil, but he did fail to help on a lot of occasions until his final redemption.

Having Kenny alive would make sense if you let Ben go, but it would have to be a token appearance. I mean, if the saves are being imported, then he couldn't be someone who took a big role, as it would either mean he'd have to come back as a human (when he was 'lost to the horde' last season) in saves where he sacrificed himself. It could work if those saves where Kenny died meant he was replaced with a different character model/name for the few episodes he's in during the next season, if he was to return.

[StanleyStutters]

Originally Posted by zjs

I disagree.

If you continue the next season with Lee, you're essentially re-running the same game, with a slightly older and wiser Clem.

As I've said before, there needs to be a new dynamic: a new group, with an older and more experienced Clementine, who's a useful member of the group and at an age where she's like a (younger sister) to a younger character, who can take care of herself. The absolute worst thing would be to see someone else taking up Lee's role with Clem and going through the exact same paternal role.

Moving the story on a few years so that Clem is a young teenager, has seen and done a lot more etc, means she can elude to Lee. Your character could even be someone with a similar story, but the key point is: new group, new areas.

I was most disappointed that Carley was killed off and that Lilly left the group. In my game, Kenny was killed off, but it allowed him to redeem himself. He was definitely a Shane character; caring only about himself and his family, willing to do anything etc. Sometimes he was right, a lot of times wrong. He wasn't bad to the point of being evil, but he did fail to help on a lot of occasions until his final redemption.

Having Kenny alive would make sense if you let Ben go, but it would have to be a token appearance. I mean, if the saves are being imported, then he couldn't be someone who took a big role, as it would either mean he'd have to come back as a human (when he was 'lost to the horde' last season) in saves where he sacrificed himself. It could work if those saves where Kenny died meant he was replaced with a different character model/name for the few episodes he's in during the next season, if he was to return.

I'm not sure they can do that. I'm not familiar with the deal they have with Kirkman, but do we know if they are allowed to go farther than he has in the comics? In the comics I think they've only covered a couple of years so far. If TTG isn't allowed to go past that point they really can't age Clem at all.

And even if they can do that I hope they don't. I understand not wanting the same dynamic with Clem as S1, but I don't thinking jumping several years is the answer. I'd like to play those years and see what happens rather than start S2 with Clem part of a group that has survived for several years already.

[Web Head]

I am attached to Lee, AND THIS ATTACHMENT CAN ----------------NEVER----------------- be BROKEN, NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR EVEN AFTER MY FUCKIN' OWN DEATH!

[Mark$man]

Deaths I didn't like: Carley, Mark, Kenny, Ben, and I wished Lee hadn't died. I understood his death, and by his death didn't mind Carley's as much as I would have if they both could have made it. Mark was pretty cool and Lee's friend. Sucked he got... well... eaten. And Ben... I'm sure people could say he deserved it, but I don't sympathize it.

[thestalkinghead]

i think it would be good if telltale continued to make unique stories in the walking dead universe, they could be set anywhere on the planet but just use the established rules of TWD universe, i liked that there were 5 episodes and that ending had a real conclusion instead of just being a set up for more of the same.

there could be a whole series called "The Walking Dead : stories " or whatever and each one tells the story of a different set of people, there could be the odd cameo or tie in but they are separate stories from each other, that would be more appealing to me than the continued adventures of Lee and Clementine (that wont end until people are really bored of it)

[aerial-ballet]

Originally Posted by Web Head

I am attached to Lee, AND THIS ATTACHMENT CAN ----------------NEVER----------------- be BROKEN, NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR EVEN AFTER MY FUCKIN' OWN DEATH!

What he said!