The plot hole was so big I couldn't appreciate the ending
I was so confused how clem was alive after the infection had already spread to her head I wasn't able to appreciate anything that was happening at the end as I was still so confused and trying to work out in my head if it was all a dream, whether she was dead and it's Aj's imagination, as I couldn't possibly think that telltale would create a pale dying texture for clementine and then forget about how everyone else who has got to that stage of infection it was too late for. Idk.. the rest of the episode was good but they could've made it make way more sense if she never had turned pale.
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Very big agree. It kinda ruins the episode. Maybe not 'ruins' but the plot hole is just too big. Probably the biggest plot hole we've had?
What makes it even worse is the lead designer just making that reddit post explaining how Clem survived,once again something that should've been explained/showed to us in the fucking game and i don't understand how some people think this is ok.
But i guess people dont give a shit their Queen Clem is alive thats all they cared about anyway.
That is the point, friend. She was never infected, her infected blood was simply wasted by the wound that Minnie provoked, in contrast to Lee who before cutting his arm had been walking who knows how long, causing the blood to run faster. She came to the barn that way just for the loss of blood, if you notice, she never fainted in the course, as if Lee did. It was all a trap hahaha.
Exactly. Not just how she escaped, but how the bloody axe didn't further her infection, how her face could go back to normal after the walker flu already taking over her body etc. (no, it's not the fever goddamit, even if that were the case, her fever thing should've been explored)
Oh come on. I shouldn't even have to explain why that's a dumb argument.
The fake out was disappointing and as mentioned above, the cringe as hell reddit post was dumb as fuck. Easily could have been in game when Clem and AJ are talking.
Also how rushed the whole thing was. Clem gets bit, 5 minutes later "IM DYING KILL ME AJ" like great job team, not rushing at all.
I watched Uberhaxornova's stream the other night to see his reaction to the episode and honestly we had practically the same thoughts the whole time. Minnie bridge scene making no sense for example, why arnt we cutting off the leg, seeing the fake out death from a mile away. And I think he put it best after he finished the game. Episode 4 was "underwhelming, it felt like we didnt gain or lose anything of value." Just felt like a lot of nothing really happened.
Didn't they say that started working on this season with the ending?
How dare you copy my Queen Jane signature? Uh-uh, that is not cool!
My main problem with the entire season finale is it was absolutely directionless lacking any serious consequences or objective to proceed the story along. Compare this finale to S1's finale with Lee on borrowed time desperately trying to find Clementine who was stolen by the stranger with no idea of their whereabouts or the stranger's true intentions.
This was built up throughout the season and was a center point towards the end of EP4 leading into the season finale. Here we're just aimlessly walking around to get back to camp i suppose? a few cool scenes here and there, but nothing to progress towards an ultimate goal with serious stakes or payoff at all. 5 minutes into the finale i couldn't help but wonder what exactly are we going to do for 2+ hour since there is nothing left to do and going into the finale there was no endgame we were proceeding towards.
The group is safe with Delta seemingly defeated and Lily either dead or an after thought. Then they had the most predictable event occur with Clementine being bit which had no real emotional impact due to how much overemphasis had been put on Clementine being bit since the teaser for the season finale. And even that one revelation midway through the episode was rushed through having no real payoff and simply being put in to have a false sense of urgency and life in the balance which amounted to absolutely nothing.
Then you had the characters who were either wasted or were the same rehashed formula of characters with practically everyone just being there. There were no uniquely alternate narrative paths taken depending on who is with you and who isn't or the ones that died along the way. You save James only for him radically shift his perception regardless of anything you've done or said simply to cause excessive tension for no reason and then just vanish for the rest of the episode. For the season finale there were was so much varying paths and subplots that could be traveled all with their own unique endings and plot. Perhaps you find your 400 days characters down one path if you ended up with Louis/AJ opposed to others who find Christ in a new society of her own if you save Tenn. That would've made this finale so much more engaging and interesting had they gone down the "Batman: The Enemy Within" path.
I have more of a problem that the season as a whole failed to build up to anything that really felt or built to a season finale such as S1&S2 did. Through both seasons whether it was a underlining plot or a prominent one, there was a consistent buildup to each finale concluding in the emotional conclusions they respectively had. Here it just felt like another walking dead episode that was a throw way because the writers really had nothing at this point and were simply passing time.
This was said well.
This is how I feel too. Its just kinda floating by, no real goal other than "just get back to the school." We already kinda finished our goal with stopping the Delta, so it felt like we already finished everything. The pacing and direction was just super off in episode 4 and it feels like there was no stakes and that we didnt gain or lose anything of value by the end. (And for me the Clem being bit thing wasnt super impactful for me because for one I felt it was obvious they were going to do a bait and switch because we just couldnt say anything about cutting it off despite having a big ass axe with us, and 2 because it was sooooo rushed. Clem gets bit, next scene Clem is already on the ground, sick, and dying)
Let's players already mentioned this (but I thought of it first). I think the ending would've been amazing if when AJ & Clem were passing the tombstones, there was one of Clementine. Having it all be in AJ's head, and he truly has lost it.
It’s actually a very good argument. I see people around here thinking they know the ins and outs of the walking dead when what we’ve seen in this episode isn’t like anything we’ve seen before, hell we don’t even know how the apocalypse started in the first place. We know Reggie was amputated by an infected weapon, he pretty much confirms that when he says that Mike amputated his arm right after saving his life, so it’s pretty much extremely unlikely that different weapons were used for the job.
Clementine had a huge gash in her leg, preventing her from being able to stand on it, plus the fact that people do go pale with blood loss and likely even shock trauma, on top of the fact that we’ve never seen a bite on an already heavily damaged wound, so for all we know it COULD change the bite process. We simply do not know, but what we do know is that this situation is DEFINITELY different from everything else we’ve seen so far in the walking dead, without a doubt, and opens a whole new door of many different possibilities.
This was just such a missed opportunity to make multiple endings. Maybe I don't mind one ending if it's a happy one but this is choice-based game, not linear story-telling like Uncharted, The Last of Us and God of War. Telltale could never keep the promise of making the choices actually matter, the only time they do is with Violet, Louis and Tenn as determinant and that's basically it.
This was a mistake. They should have included the flashback of him helping her out as soon as she and AJ have the heart to heart conversation at the end, where she mentions what would have happened if he hadn't have listened.
Even if it wasn't gameplay, and you just watched. It's a misstep for sure. But to say it ruins the ending, would just be looking for things to be pissed about.
Clem dying would have been a tad bit more drawn out and it would have been nearer to the 2 hour mark to have a more proper impact and a strong goodbye if they actually decided to kill her off.
Killing her off at the 1 hour mark in the barn didn't feel like real pacing.
Making an entire convoluted post "explaining" the plot hole on Reddit just leaves me with weird feelings.
I don't know what creative entity explains away plot holes and inconsistent with posts on internet social forums. It makes the plot hole worse because you having this pre-planned explanation means you inherently knew it was a plothole. Also with most plotholes, they're something willfully contrived for the sake of it. Usually plot holes are just honest mistakes in the narrative.
Everyone's talking about Clementine's blood loss and stuff... and I'm just wondering, how can a 6 year old cut someone's leg with an axe?! I may be wrong, but I don't think he'd have enough strength. Or it would've been slow and sloppy. Definitely not something that could ensure Clem's survival.
Either nobody seemed to notice that her lower leg was completely sliced open or they haven’t seen someone going into shock or recovering from trauma. Far from not being able to buy it or feeling like it was a plot hole, I was cringing because the game wasn’t giving me the choice not to do what it looked like AJ was doing. People surviving bites is well established in TWD and Clem’s injury made it look like the bite would have had an even harder time infecting her as the flesh was all pulled away.
The more you think critically about the storytelling and less about the gushy cheap emotions, the more overbearing the plothole becomes.
AJ becomes a sudden doctor and is able to cauterize the wound afterwards too. I'm pretty sure AJ's never been taught that nor would it ever cross his mind.
AJ also supposedly killed all the walkers in the barn and carried a 100 pound nearly adult female on a wheelbarrow successfully all the way back to the school.
The fact that they they handwaved away this "explanation" in a damn reddit post should tell you the team of writers themselves knew the scene would be too badly written to actually put into the game. If StillNotBitten really trusted their writing process, they would have included AJ's rescue of Clem in the game. But they entirely skipped it because it would have pushed the suspension disbelief to its limits.
Internet kids who don't know what a plothole is need things spoonfed to them. Film at 11.
M Night hackery
Yeah there are a ton of plot-holes.
1. Minnie being able to remain hidden from walkers for so long despite firing off several gunshots.
2. Why Clem was able to survive the axing.
3. How AJ axed her well enough in the first place
4. How AJ became a doctor
5. How AJ saved her
6. Why she was depicted as looking very close to a walker
7. Why did the axe work if it was really bloody
I hope a year from now or even a couple months, people actually look at the ending from a critical perspective.
Pretty sure they rewrote the ending in the last couple of months, at least they/telltale rewrote it after episode 1. There's numerous files in the game that contradict how the ending turned out, the ranch being one of the only things that stayed the same. InColdBlood is doing a video soon about this exact thing.
I think Kent Mudle said somewhere that it took a few swings before hacking it clean off, and she passed out after the first slice.
Yeah i got that vibe too. Remember when the writers were like 'gut wrenching, harrowing endings' and all that. It was said on a website about the Unity thing. It was also said in the Q&A on the forums. And there was also the tweet from Pete Hawley -
''Emotional day at Telltale talking about some tough, tough choices on character journeys. One in particular is heart-wrenching. If choices really matter, get ready..''
that was said in may.
It just felt like a cheapened cop out so they could interject a degree of emotional engagement towards the end which was not deserved or properly built to.
And considering how much ovrrmrphasis there was to Clementine being bit to the point where the game practically stops for 6 minutes in EP3 also took a considerable amount of the impact out of Clementine being bit.
Holy shit.
When I finished the game I pondered "hold on, they definitely lied about something"
because there were so much shit TT talked about, prior to dropping EP3 and EP4 that weren't in the game at all.
Things they hyped and mentioned, but were nowhere to be found in the finale.
Initially I thought I just misread and misinterpreted some interviews and whatever but if there's game files contradicting the ending then man...
Yeah i also got a feeling they rewrote the ending to not piss off their fanbase or something,maybe they even planned to have multiple endings if they had the budget i know there was a different storyline that got cut before.
I just don't believe the team wrote that ending first and was like "yeah so we're gonna do a fake out and everyone's gonna love it lmao"
Not to piss off their fanbase? Surely not when they are so open and appreciative.
The thing about having to do PR before episodes are even fully plotted is that plans change. Doesn’t make them lies and it certainly doesn’t make them promises. If an author had to tell you what a book is about when they are halfway through the first draft, you can be sure what you end up reading will be significantly different. It’s how the creative process works.
But unfortunately in this case, Telltale going under would have had a huge effect on what happened that last season too. It probably didn’t make a huge amount of financial sense to finish the season and, in all honesty, I feel it should be taken as a minor miracle that we got it at all. They would have done it with vastly reduced resources from what already seemed like a leaner production. So yeah, you can bet some things just got dropped due to practicalities. Unfortunate but that’s the way it went.
But everyone did love it... I’ve seen about 5-6 people who disliked the ending and they all came from here.
Definitely not everyone. The people elated over it are the super die-hard TT fans who would have taken any ending the game had given them as long as it provided fanservice, and these types are just incredibly more vocal than most and feel to need spread everywhere that it's the best ending of all time and whatever other sappy bullshit.
You do know TT's TWD fanbase is incredibly niche right? Like super niche.
There's people who "like" the endings to B-movies, the endings to mediocre movies. Doesn't mean anything.
. But notice that no one in the general and greater video game community actually cares.
It's only a 73 on Metacritic, not exactly rave reviews is it?
And the reviews (majority being mid-sized to small publications) I've seen do a lot of tapdancing around the actual writing quality of the game, and seem more functionally concerned with being glad that the episode is actually out and that an ending for Clementine exists. Just grateful for the sake of grateful.
Yeah everyone loves it,or more like everyone just have super low standards and are just happy that Clem is alive and her story is finished.
That is not surprising though, because most people who still truly gave a shit about the quality of this series jumped shit after ANF came out.
All in all it's more like a "shit dog it's cool clem is alive and the devs were able to finish the game!" it was nothing amazing,most people won't remember the ending in a few years and won't talk about it in the same way people did with S1 and the S2 endings.
Exactly, if you stuck it this far long you're simply a die-hard fan.
Everyone who's ever played S1 loves it and considers it a masterpiece, but many of those same people disliked S2 and dropped the series after that, and even more people could no longer straggle on to the series on after the horror that was ANF.
The people who stuck it through from the very beginning to make it to TFS are in the very, very small minority. I bet most current fans of the series became fans only recently.
In all honesty, it feels like a lot of ‘fans’ should have dropped off a long time ago. It’s okay to be a fan of just season 1 but I don’t get why people would persist through three more seasons only to complain their way through them. There are other games.
S1 was so romanticized that it kept many people in a continual state of illusion. That was the case for me.
"TT might change here -- maybe they learned from last time -- maybe they'll reach their peak again".
I think if I had gotten into TWD much earlier, I would have long gone dropped it due to being less idealized.
Again, TT were able to churn out three further inferior seasons over the course of 5 years due to how incredibly great S1 was.
I probably should've jumped ship like many others did after Season 2 but i was too stubborn to let it go and i'm not gonna lie things were looking good when S4 came out until they fucked it all up again.
I play many other and better games it's not like i spend my entire life complaining about the things i don't like,i just check out the forums when something is on my mind because i remember that this series is still a thing and just say my piece then leave and do something else.
I don't think any of us takes any pleasure/enjoyment doing this,some people just have strong feelings about this series because it has been a huge part of their life and they're disappointed because it could've been so much more/better so they talk about it,because that's what forums are for.
I wouldn’t say it’s called having low standards. I think the Witcher 3 was one of the worst games ever produced, and I always try to look for the bad while avoiding the flaws because I value my experience above all else, and even that couldn’t save how shit I thought the game was, but I still don’t talk about it because nothing’s going to change and people who do like the game will be pissed if I’m constantly chatting shit rather than pointing out both sides of the argument.
Case in point, even though I do have a severe hatred for the Witcher 3 and I think it’s pathetic, I’m not low enough to go around telling people to stop loving it, and that I hope they stop talking about it, that’s their business and your business is yours.