Lee's Last Stand vs Asher/Rodrik's Last Stand: Which Was More Emotional For You?
Since this crossing over two separate franchises licensed to Telltale I wasn't sure if it would belong to the GoT forum or the TWD forum.
TWD S1 very much deserved its Game of the Year award in 2012, it was the most excellent story game to come out at its time, and I've been reflecting on this memorable scene in S1 Ep.5 where a bitten Lee has to make his way through a horde in order to reach the March House to save Clementine. It is in that scene where you begin to realize this is it for Lee's five episode long story arc, playing someone who has both nothing and everything to lose at this point, along with the sense of his impending mortality looming on us the players, along with a mix of emotions such as anger, fear and determination, knowing all that matters now is rescuing that little girl who symbolized his redemption.
Lee is a flawed and realistic character who feels very much like a human being whose life we come to care for. And in the end we're forced to see it slowly leech away, succumbing to the virus, making us reflect on the life we made him live through our choices, making us reflect on the difficult moral decisions we had to make and what they mean now in his last stand - to me this scene evoked so much deep though and emotion without any dialogue whatsoever.
In one of Teltale's latest games, we made a traumatic decision that rendered players like myself into a state of moderate chronic depression when we're forced to sacrifice one of the Forrester brothers to save the other from a Whitehill ambush - it was an event that made the Red Wedding feel like a birthday party in comparison due to the high level of player involvement and emotional investment directly attributed via player choices to both characters.
To me the 'right' choice was to sacrifice Asher, he was my favorite character but this end felt somewhat acceptable for a character who had lived so much of their life fighting, it was only right that he should you die as he had lived, not to mention how choosing him brought with it an underlying layer of redemption towards his own character - given that he was the exiled second son who had essentially dishonored his family, only for him to return in time to save his older brother and preserve the stability of his House's leadership - to me through this act he had essentially redeemed his name to his family and died an honorable (and presumably very painful) death.
I was almost on the brink of tears watching him fight one last time, outnumbered but still managing to take down four Whitehill soldiers, and while watching him struggle through it all I wondered what must have been flashing through his mind in those final moments of his: he was supposed to make a heroic return to Westeros and fight side by side with his brother against the Whitehills but this sense of romantic heroism is quashed GRRM style and your realistically sliding towards death and all you can do in the mean time is keep fighting until its all over.
Sacrificing Rodrik felt less fulfilling, while I don't believe he became as popular as Asher (rogue male protagonists are an awesome trope) his death was emotional but not in the same way as Rodrik's, to me his last stand against the Whitehills did echo more of Game of Throne's harsh sense of futility where anyone no matter how 'heroic' can die but it felt less fulfilling than Asher's death - there was no redemption, there was no purpose as since he was the Lord of Ironrath its customary for his survival to be of prime importance, what I felt in his last stand was loss and futility, he had miraculously survived the Red Wedding and felt destined to accomplish great things in the face of hardship that was to come, he had a stand-off with Gryff and dealt with a traitor, it was all building up towards a final showdown that was suddenly decapitated without warning, very GRRM style but unfulfilling storywise.
In either case there is also the lighting of hope - that the surviving brother won't let their sibling's sacrifice go in vain, hope that perhaps their deaths weren't wasteful but that they could perhaps signal an emotionally fired up showdown that's been building up over the course of five episodes since Ethan's death.
Whose final stand invoked the most emotion from you? To me it was Lee's - since he was a singular main character we invested so much of our emotions into, his flaws made him relatable and we felt his impending sense of mortality and shared his mindset of having to rescue Clementine no matter what gets in the way.
Comments
Lee's 100%. Rodrick/Asher's last stand is a great scene. But Lee's fight against the herd gives me goosebumps every time and his death brought tears to my eyes on multiple playthroughs.
Rodrik/Asher's no doubt, simply because I was more attached to them.
Lee all the way, Rodriks/Ashers (Rodriks in my case) death scenes we're pretty emotional as well but I wasn't really attached to Rodrik.
Lee on the other hand, I was attached to him like super glue. His death hit me hard.
Lee. I didn't really get a chance to get too attached to the brothers