Thoughts about the Zombie genre
First off I like to say that I'm a fan of the Zombie genre and RPGs, but not JRPGs or the doom & gloom European Zombie genre.
There's the obvious appeals:
Anarchy, chaos & breakdown of order.
Violence & shoot em up.
Survivor horror.
But then there's the genre's cliches:
Hand-waving modern military power.
Hand-waving the physics of decaying bodies.
Hand-waving the existence of militarized borders and quarantine.
Supernatural infection.
Massive inflation of the undead.
Everyone dies.
The power-gaming stat fiddler in me is bugged by the hand-waving of reality, but it's not a big bother.
I can stand most the the cliches but the RPG enthusiast in me can't get around the last one; everybody dies. It's the same problem I had with the book series, if the supporting characters keep getting killed off and replaced then it's hard to get invested especially if the main character is just a sock puppet for the player. (yes yes not everyone dies in the book but I hated the frequency of character turnovers)
What characters do we have left? Kenny the broken, Ben the traitor, 3 strangers, and the child. There isn't much to go for except the child-guardian relationship. I don't like it, I don't expect it to change since it's a bad precedent to cave to fan pressure post-release, I guess I was just in for another type of RPG.
There's the obvious appeals:
Anarchy, chaos & breakdown of order.
Violence & shoot em up.
Survivor horror.
But then there's the genre's cliches:
Hand-waving modern military power.
Hand-waving the physics of decaying bodies.
Hand-waving the existence of militarized borders and quarantine.
Supernatural infection.
Massive inflation of the undead.
Everyone dies.
The power-gaming stat fiddler in me is bugged by the hand-waving of reality, but it's not a big bother.
I can stand most the the cliches but the RPG enthusiast in me can't get around the last one; everybody dies. It's the same problem I had with the book series, if the supporting characters keep getting killed off and replaced then it's hard to get invested especially if the main character is just a sock puppet for the player. (yes yes not everyone dies in the book but I hated the frequency of character turnovers)
What characters do we have left? Kenny the broken, Ben the traitor, 3 strangers, and the child. There isn't much to go for except the child-guardian relationship. I don't like it, I don't expect it to change since it's a bad precedent to cave to fan pressure post-release, I guess I was just in for another type of RPG.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Well thats how this series is. They love killing off your favorite characters.
I'd quit and abandon all hope.
Do you read the graphics? Because, the main team is far from perfect...especially after the most recent issues.
Well that's just the thing, what would make episode 4 different from being a spin-off with a few familiar faces?
I did, it was a pinprick for me . Not saying that it couldn't happen, just that I'm not into that type of plot.
i don't know but i can't wait for it. Its gonna be even darker and more gruesome then Episode 3
Understood. I just get a bit antsy when people say this group hardly has a chance anymore, look at Ricks group. Lees group is having a cakewalk in comparison.
That's one of the problems, once you get technical you start breaking the willing suspension of belief.
Why should talks of survivability be limited to what the survivors have/know? Why not discuss how zombies should be handled? Oh no we might question the magical attributes of zombies, or how the military couldn't prevent this, or the incredible fragility of society.
Oooohhh, I totally see what you did there, very subtle.
I've seen the tv show version of the walking dead. That does help in that you do get the sense that the military tried, they really did, but there was just too many walkers.
society is very fragile. I saw the events of hurricane Katrina on CNN. Four days to collapse...4 days.
As far as zombies go there is nothing magical...we just don't know is all.
CDC spokesman: I'll take your questions
Carley: Is it a virus?
CDC spokesman: We don't know.
Carley: How does it spread? Is it airborne?
CDC spokesman: Airborne is a possibility. We don't know.
Reporter [male]:Is this an international health hazzard or a military concern?
CDC spokesman: Both
Carley: Are these people alive or dead?
CDC spokesman [shakes head]: We don't know.
See they're working on it....just need a little more time is all.
In the absence of order
Well except in real life situations they would hazard a guess, or lie. Anything is better than public panic.
More importantly even if it somehow succeeds why couldn't there be pockets that gradually expand out? What's to stop an army base from fortifying and rolling out? This is literally cavemen using melee vs assault rifles and artillery.
Dead people running around would generate a military response right away, there would be no chance to spread. Considering that most countries vehemently guard their borders from traffickers, invasive species, and illegals the dead walking would definitely generate a response.
Except they don't exist, good fiction is resistant to inspection. We can't say that dragons don't exist, but there's no reason to assume that they exist until we have proof.
I don't like to but as soon as a technical discussion goes on it's hard to avoid touching the assumptions of the genre.
You want to know HOW it occured rather than being in a story where it has occured that is walkers are everywhere and it's a full blown ZA and you're just asked to accept it all without a plausible cause. if that's the case then I would say:
1) The people who make the movies and games simply do not want to tell that part of the story. They could but would rather focus on a group (not a group that is doing well or one where they got trapped and killed themselves for example) that maybe has a 50/50 shot of seeing tomorrow if they could just get along with each other.
2) There are many stories out there that would make a good game or movie those stories just are not told for some reason. I understand why Kirkman does not tell those stories but that does not mean those kinds of movies would not sell tickets. I think a Marine Colonel in charge of a Marine expeditionary force sent to Miami to quell a walker uprising would be pretty nice.
3) Lastly, there is a demand for what happened during the outbreak. That scene in the walking dead where the helicopters were moving towards Atlanta and people on the highway saw just how desperate things were becoming was very popular. More flashback scenes like that were requested from the fans.
Of course, when all else fails, YOU could write a story that focuses on exactly how a zombie comes into being and the worldwide civilian and military effort to contain the outbreak. Then everyone else can just say their movie or video game takes place 15 days after your story ends and is focused on how these few survivors deal with one another in a world overrun by zombies.
So you're a munchkin who believes everything should work out as long as you have a strong understanding of the rules? Man, I would hate to DM one of your games.
Dude, Australia can't even control frogs and rabbits. Americans can't control an amphibious fish, salmonella, or west nile virus.
The chances of the US military neatly swooping down, containing, and quarantining a population of 400,000 people (Atlanta) who are effectively inflicted with rabies and must be killed on sight would be slim. That's 1/8th of the entire military combined. Unless they plan on carpet bombing the entire population, you've seen how effective the military is at containing urban conflict (not very).
I'm not saying that it's impossible. I'm just saying that there's never been evidence that the US military can handle anything even close to this. We're very good at blowing things up, but a chaotic populace of infected people with an unknown vector of disease that drives them insane and then magically turns them invincible to anything but headshots? I'm sorry, but that's not a pretty picture.
Do what?
That doesn't even apply when you consider the fact the bodies are re-animate.
If you're going to hand-wave reality - might as well hand-wave it all.
sooner or later all zombies should be decayed to the point where they cannot move anymore, or is it different in kirkmans world?
But since the game is only 5 parts I find myself thinking of these 3 new people as shields/bait
The virus spread quickly, too quickly for the military to effectively combat or contain is what it seems like happened. I kind of agree with you about the whole "everyone dying" aspect, but in reality we'll all die from old age anyway, even though "old age" is likely to be somewhere around 50-60 with walkers everyone, if that. As for borders and quarantine, who are we to say that the entirety of the world has fallen? We actually have no idea about the situation outside of the United States, or even within since we'll never be going further west than Georgia. While the situation seems bleak, and saying that rest of the world is in the same state is likely an accurate conclusion, we'll never truly know. For all we do truly know Canada and Mexico could be high-fiving each other for successfully containing the outbreak inside America, and saving the rest of the world.
And, I don't get what you mean by zombie inflation. Could you please explain that?
Jeez, you like RPGs but not JRPGs? I already hate you. Maybe that's a little harsh. Let me try softening it, okay? Get off my planet. Get OFF. Sorry, I seem to be unable to acknowledge your credibility. Let's move on.
Is survival horror just a loose term here, or are you using it to allude to another genre? The zombie genre and the survival horror genre do not go hand in hand. In fact, most times they're at odds with each other. Since you made "shoot em up" a point before that, I'll take it to mean the Resident Evil 4 definition of survival horror and erase another tally from your credibility pool. You seem like the "rock and roll apocalypse" sort. I bet your d20s have REAL SHARP edges.
I understand a lot of people's collective gripes about the zombie apocalpyse. Mostly that it's overdone and stale. Some of these staples are cited as problematic. Why are the military always useless? Why do half the survivors do stupid things?
To me, The Walking Dead is the definitive zombie story. It gets a pass on a lot of things because I feel that it's the ultimate form of the story. Things that have been "evolved" away in modern entertainment, like runner zombies, are still played straight. The focus is boiled down to a small stage with a psychological threat over a physical threat. My favorite thing about the Walking Dead is that it's the Christian apocalypse done through an atheistic scope. If endtimes simply means that there is no longer a set rule on death and corpses roam the world eternally, but this means nothing about Jesus returning or salvation or anything supernatural, then the apocalpyse has no easy ending. You can't just get to civilization or find a cure. Mankind will grasp at straws, but will not allow themselves to rebuild what they once had.
Anyone that hates that people die in media bothers me. I feel like someone should die every season at the very least. The status quo cannot stand. You know who should really get that? Someone who plays role playing games and is used to character death and the revolving door of PC/NPCs. So Carley died. Reroll.
Show me the die roll that killed Carley! If it happened behind the screen, it doesn't count! It doesn't count! I'm taking my Mountain Dew back home with me!
This is the part I really can't get around. Lee is not a sock puppet for the player. Link is a sock puppet. Cloud is a sock puppet. Commander Shepard is a sock puppet. "Sock Puppet" to me, implies that the model is nothing but a mouthpiece for your own voice to fill. For that, they have to have a bland personality and no strong character traits to latch onto. Lee is not that. Lee is a surprisingly defined character for this style of gameplay. We know a lot about him. Shockingly, we know he's a killer and how he feels about a lot. Someone we can dictate their opinions and choices fully is a blank slate. If we could choose to kill Clem and rob Hershel, then Lee would be a sock puppet. Instead, Lee chooses for us that we like Clem. He states that he's in Hershel's debt.
The game's been fully written and nothing's getting changed. (BioWare are sellout wusses.) This isn't an RPG, it's an Adventure Game. If you can't level up, gain abilities or change your character's name: it's not an RPG.
In closing, I don't like your stance on the zombie genre or RPGs. No hard feelings, but I think you'd be better off with a more fantastic take that you could roll some dice to.
two things
I think the pain/strength relationship you're talking about is when endurance lowers and lactic acid starts flooding your muscles as a 'stop mechanism' that we know as fatigue. It wouldnt make them physically stronger but it would allow them to perform basic motor skills for hours on end
I thought about the isolation; since all communication is cut it could very well be that this is only in a certain country...but the dead are buried everywhere and apparently what activated them here most likely did it globally
For me, I like the idea that if a zombie grabs you, you aren't getting away.
I see people pull away from walkers all the time in the movies/comics
I doubt it's all brute force.
Thanks for clearing up the strength thing, it was just something I heard a long time ago. And I'm fairly certain that it's only the recent dead returning, like someone who died last week. But I guess that other countries have plenty of people who died within the last week too, so it would make sense for the rest of the world to be overrun.
I did, and as a military enthusiasts I can tell you the US army was incredibly incompetent.
Yep, and they plausibly covered why in the book.
If you don't intend to discuss it, don't bring it up.
I'm not sure where you get the D&D from, I like being pragmatic and methodical, I can't stand contradictions since they are signs of an incomplete scenario. Also should I hazard a guess to your personality?
Did I complain about the technicality and plot in the same point? I complained about the team's excessive turnover in the game, you seemed to have somehow merged that with my criticism on the genre's general plausibility .
I didn't ask for stats or so, I said I liked things similar to RPGs and Stat peddling, not that I wanted them in game. I suppose I would have been just fine with "I didn't like this point" but I suppose elaborating on my opinions with "I didn't like this point because I prefer this" opens me up to more personal attacks.
Think about this: In this world it didn't just start in Atlanta and spread to other cities, states, countries, etc. (Remember, it's not that all of a sudden zombies appear everywhere. One person who dies comes back to life. Oh, joy! Aunt Ethel has rejoined us! The Lord has sent her back to us! Hey! Why is Aunt Ethel eating Cousin Jimmy? Why is Jimmy eating that police officer who is trying to restrain him? Why is that police office not going down when his partner is unloading a revolver into him? Why is that police office chewing on my leg? This happens in every city on the globe at roughly the same time. An isolated incident here and there. Then more. And more. And more. Until a turd is thrown into a fan somewhere and LOOK OUT!) It would have to be something that would begin happening at roughly the same time in most parts of the world. If it were just in one area, I have no doubt that the govt - ours or anyone else's - would have no problem in "containing" the outbreak. Something triggers this apocalypse, and it happens at the same time all over the world. In the US, our military is spread out all over the damn planet. Bring 'em home? Okay. Gonna take some time. Reserves? Okay - the ones not in the Middle East right now - they're at home with their families ---- watching their family members and neighbors come back from the dead. Are you going to leave your family that is under attack to go help another family in another city? I'm not. Most of you wouldn't either. Damn your orders.
So, what is the cause of this epidemic? Because it happens everywhere at once, it must be something of either a cosmic nature or some sort of evolutionary step gone wrong in our DNA. What triggers it? Who knows? That's the point. Any writer or creator in their right mind would never tell you exactly how it happened. The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear. Why are the dead being reanimated and why do they want to eat us? Military? Space? Science? God? We'll never know. WHY??????
In the original Night of the Living Dead, which Kirkman has said he based his world on Romero's world, there is a news broadcast of a space satellite with a decaying orbit (paraphrasing here) and coming back down to Earth. There is the hint that maybe radiation or something from space caused this, which if you look at the time it was made - late 60's - that makes sense.
As far as the zombies being a self-solving problem, well, they kind of are. Except that everyone else who dies comes back. We keep making more people - Lori and Maggie - (oops!) and when they die, they come back.
Also, a point I would need to know would be how decomposition affects the walkers. Are they actually dead? Or are they still living, but now 'zombies', and merely suffering from flesh necrosis, which would lead them to their appearance.
In either case, how would any walkers fair in extreme cold, which does happen to hit a good portion of the US and a lot of Canada during the winter months. When a walker is left in frigid cold weather for the countless days it would be outdoors, it would surely end up freezing, which would not 'preserve' it by any means. It would lead it the destruction of cells, which would eventually lead to those walkers not being able to move, rendering them useless.
I could go on with how any sort of zombie-type apocalypse wouldn't happen, but I do like the genre, and one must have a suspension of disbelief when they go into most any fiction.
Hey, you brought it up and didn't talk about it. You can't fault me for it any more than you should yourself.
I don't get what you're talking about. The summary of what I said was about survival horror and the safe assumption that "shoot em up" + "survival horror" pegs you as the sort of person who prefers Resident Evil 4 to 1. There's nothing wrong with it. I just don't like that brand of survival horror. I'm a Silent Hill guy.
If you say role playing and "power gaming", that sounds like D&D to me. If that's wrong, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to insult you, I'm trying to understand you through few lines of telling dialogue. Hazard a guess at my personality, if you want. I'd like to hear what you come up with.
Okay, let me try this slower. I may have overestimated your ability to argue. You complained about everyone dying at once, that's all I said. Then I made a joke about how people who play role playing games want hard stats over plot devices. You haven't addressed anything I've asked: about whether you feel Walking Dead is too supernatural, your feelings on character death as part of the status quo, or other bullet points I've laid out. You put up a good topic and I felt you were capable of discussion, all you've done is lick your wounds and said you might call me something at some point.
Come on, man. There's tons to discuss and disagree on.
Having an opinion is what makes you an interesting person. Try responding to my post like you have an opinion you're not afraid to have. If you can't do that, why are you on a forum?
Well, it was going to be lively discourse, but no one met me on the field of honour.
See, this is what should have been said instead of "hand waving". There is always an attempt at explaining why the police and army couldn't resist the undead. Sometimes it's just "they didn't aim for the head". With automatics, it's hard to believe that this didn't happen on accident and was assumed as a rule.
In Walking Dead, there's the more plausible explanation that the military worked, it only disbanded in favor of family. It's hard to believe that every army stand against the undead would fail. If everyone just went home because the world was fucked and they didn't have a flag to believe in, that's better.
As far as the winters go, that's actually from the comic. Walkers freeze during the cold season. Then they come right back.
I think there's a letters column where Kirkman says he originally planned a space artifact as the origin. Whether or not it's in the story in any way still is impossible to theorize. And the arc "A Larger World" is about adapting to the idea that you can rebuild and live despite the zombie presence. You'll have to burn the dead and watch the elderly, but life can go on.
Well I saw a lot of handwaving of stuff at first then, paragraphs, the fall of the military then I think I nodded off...so what are we getting at in here?
The Walking Dead however is really amazing because it takes us into the true reality that would be a zombie apocalypse and it's freakin horrible and tragic. It's not about killing as many zombies as you can, but rather acknowledging just who those zombies used to be; people. They could be your friends and loved ones and yet, at the end of the day, you will be forced to put them down. Everyone is a potential victim; man, woman, child, it doesn't matter and, in the end, they become something demonic.
I have friends who play a lot of cheesy zombie games and they'll joke around and say "Man, when the world ends, I hope it does so in the zombie apocalypse" I'll joke back, "You really want the world to end where all of humanity is slowly turned against each other and where your own friends and family will become unbearable savages that you will have to kill before they kill you." Then they say "Crap, I never thought of it like that".
Again, we were just joking around, but I think that sums it up pretty well. A lot zombie games really don't acknowledge that this situation would really be one of worst, if not the worst, ways for humanity to get killed off. Walking Dead brings that up full force with massive amounts of time on character development and surviving absolute hell. We hear no convoluted ideas on how the whole mess started (though I will admit that I would be fascinated to know just out of general curiosity, but I guess that is also a huge appeal of the comic and show) and it's just about the effects it has on the characters.
It's emotional, depressing, and incredibly well written. It embraces the reality that would be a Zombie Apocalypse.
I understand this is how the fiction is supposed to work, but if your country were in great peril, and you served in the military (and believed in it), would you really 'go home' when your country truly needed you, in a time as such?
There isn't much time between the start of the pandemic and where the apocalypse was shown in the fiction. The amount of time is a few months, if I recall, and in those mere months I strongly believe that any good army would still be standing against such a threat.
The only way I could see this as more plausible in a real world context would be if the whole world fell apart maybe a full year later, and even then, I'd assume there would be bastions of humanity that held strong against a threat as such.
Humanity, when held in the face of disaster can fall quite short. But, humanity when held in the face of adversity is a sheer force to be reckoned with. I'm entirely sure that the world would mostly come together to combat such a dire threat, a possible end to humanity's very existence. The combined might of the world's armies, and the combined intelligence of the world scientists is a force never seen, and one to be reckoned with.
On an aside, the whole 'dead coming back, regardless of how they died' thing would be picked up on pretty quick, I think, as would the 'aim for the head' deal. Army personnel would surely be given this intel in short order, by the farthest stretches of the imagination, it would be hard for people to not figure this out with a week of the core outbreak (the part that would need the army).
You know that nasty thing that ruins frozen food? Freezer burn would happen to walkers too. And freezer burn isn't just something that doesn't taste good, it is cell death, a literal cold burn. They wouldn't 'unthaw' the same walker they froze as. They would be very damaged and quite possibly unable to function.
This is why I put science aside when I get into zombie media, they don't mix.
A lot of zombie staples are terrible and need to be avoided. Walking Dead fixes a lot. There's a lot less "handwaving" involved. Things that used to be jokes are played straight and effectively.
Yeah, I would. I don't believe in country now and I especially wouldn't believe in one when all communication and structure has fallen apart. I'd choose my family over that any day. Would you rather die with people you love or fighting a futile war over something that doesn't exist anymore? That may apply to people more "noble" than me, but whatever. Nobility is for tangible concepts like family and people.
No, no. I agree. Just pointing out what you didn't say. It's lifted from the comic. I especially agree that no zombie lore holds up under scrutiny. I'm positive that Walking Dead is supernatural. That's why I asked the OP to elaborate on if he likes this world or not.