Decisions Going Too Good
It's the ZA. It's natural for people to be darker. But in a misguided attempt to balance things, most players are a good guy and that's wrong. It doesn't make sense.
I think the best example for the tone of the game's decisions is the St. John's brothers. A lot of players killed the first one. They didn't kill the second one, Andy, because of Clem guilting them. And I think that's real.
Look, people should be growing darker. When at the end of ep 2 a vast majority of people aren't stealing the food then you've failed as a story teller to convey how dire the situation is b/c no human alive would do that. Our brains won't allow us to starve.
I think the job of the writers should be to try to subtly keep people from growing too dark but as a trend people should be bad if not full blown crazy. There is too many good guys. People should not be so much shocked as hating themselves for the terrible things they've done to survive.
I think the best example for the tone of the game's decisions is the St. John's brothers. A lot of players killed the first one. They didn't kill the second one, Andy, because of Clem guilting them. And I think that's real.
Look, people should be growing darker. When at the end of ep 2 a vast majority of people aren't stealing the food then you've failed as a story teller to convey how dire the situation is b/c no human alive would do that. Our brains won't allow us to starve.
I think the job of the writers should be to try to subtly keep people from growing too dark but as a trend people should be bad if not full blown crazy. There is too many good guys. People should not be so much shocked as hating themselves for the terrible things they've done to survive.
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Comments
When it comes to the car at the end of Ep 2, there should be direct consequences to not taking the food, in Ep 3 they should be starving. Instead there are none, the group takes the food anyway and the choice becomes impotent. If you establish that there will be serious consequences to your actions, then you'll see what people really do. That to me is more interesting.
I think that was a bad decision period b/c it's hard to get players to understand what starvation feels like. They are starving and despite all the references in the beginning of the episode it still didn't sink in people's brain.
Ninnuendo is right there should be consequences because it kind of made the choice pointless, i took the food because i didn't consider taking abandoned (and desperately needed) food to be stealing, i may not have taken it if we actually saw that it belonged to living people
true they did it anyway with the 'good bye she quietly says' section.
but to have the same thign twice in row would be a bit lame froma gameplay standpoint ?
considering how lame/repetative the gameplay was in ep4, how many times did we have to click on the dirt pile to bury the kid ? 4 or 5 times...
all the checking of the ground floor of the house...
constantly telling ben to do something only for him to shrug it of as no big deal and then giving us an bad tude for getting up is his face for not doing it..
then the search of the upstairs for clem, and no one can be bothered to help, yeah we care about clem yeah we'll watch out for her, oh when you need to find her we can't be bothered...
The story is tailored to everyone, but is still the same story. Also getting a game over for not being a bro with kenny with ep is kind of detrimental to your point as that would mean there would be a "right" way to respond
That's basically one example why I find the people on their high horses morons when they say the game "reflects you" lol.
Heck, even the fact that a starving Lee who hasn't eaten anything in well over a day somehow having the strength to beat both st john brothers who obviously eat well and even just finished filet of mark is laughable at best.
I find it weird that a load of people agreed with lilly, saying stealing from the group was basically the same as killing them, but they had no problem doing that to someone else.
My only guess is because its the start of the apocalpyse, he like everyone else doesn't really know what they are up against. If you remember its about 3 months till episode 2, hes becoming more ruthless over time.
For the car scene, it's not like Clem was particularly hungry or weak. If she had been as hungry as you say, she wouldn't have given a speech about how it's wrong. She would have taken the food. So ... they must not have been that desperate yet.
Regardless of the writing for that scene, TWD knows that many people will be good guys. So, TWD creates many opportunities for players to lose their humanity and go down a darker path. And people crack at various points.
Ben is a great example. People, maybe people who spared cannibals and murderers and refused to take supplies from a mysteriously abandoned car and clung to their humanity elsewhere, murdered Ben because they could, because they hated him, he was useless, or they wanted to revenge for their bro Kenny. It's true that some thought it was too dangerous to save him, but they still didn't put their life on the line for one of their group. And it took a lot of work for TWD to convince people to make that choice. TWD had to make Ben more and more unlikable, then finally give people an opportunity to kill him ... and 1/3 people did.
That's pretty good. Most people consider themselves a good person, and yet TWD convinced 1/3 of them to murder someone.
Another example is that 60% of people let a women be eaten alive by zombies when they could have helped her.
So ... I think it's better to look at the stats as though people are going to resist being bad guys, and then give TWD credit for convincing them to go dark sometimes. Also, TWD has to balance the opportunities with going dark with getting people to play the game. If every episode of TWD was simply 2 hours of the most dark and depressing material, not many people would want to play it. There has to be a balance, or you lose your audience. Whereas people couldn't escape a real ZA if they were sick of it, people can always stop playing TWD if it's just one continual downer.
I think the woman being eaten alive is another good example. That's how should be reacting. It was a case of my life or your life and player chose their own life, most of the time, but it wasn't so skewed.
The problem is Clem. When she isn't around, like in that case, people tend to have less qualms with going into survival mode. Further evidence of this is how many killed the first St. John brother but not the second, after seeing Clem's reaction.
I'm curious of those that left Clem behind, how many let Ben die. If I'm right, people would be more likely to kill Ben.
that would also change the results ?
And yes, it all had to do with the St. John brothers. Well, probably. I was one of the people who killed Danny but spared Andy. Clem seeing it made me realize I had done the wrong thing. And not killing Andy didn't have to do only with Clementine, really, but with the whole group. After the first punching sequence, when the group gathers around Lee, I just felt like they were judging me, watching as if Lee had become some sort of monster, so I just stopped there.
Probably had some big influence on making me try to keep my humanity a lot more seriously, especially because of that slip-up with Danny and the pitchfork.
Edit: not taking food from the car was sort of an attempt of trying to balance things after killing Danny. If I had spared both brothers, I would have gladly taken the food from the car.
I'm one of the ones that spared both of the St. Johns brothers on my first save file. I'm also playing as a Good Guy Lee, not because I "want" to, i mostly do the GGL choices because that's what I do in lee's place. I know it wouldn't be the best long-term survivor when it comes to fast-thinking choices, I would nearly always choose to do what I think is right completely forgetting about survival; but we're going to die anyways, Zombie Apocalypse or not. If we're going to die anyways, I'd like to die as the guy I was before the outbreak.
What do you mean with that? (slow thinking, sorry :P)
or a teacher you choose.
It was a "fight" thats all lee says
I remember at the beginning of Episode three, if you choose to tell Clementine about your past, lee explains it was an accident. I don't see why Lee would lie, if he (the players) got to trust Clementine about his past. It seems like we won't get to know what happened for real, anyway...
Edit: I just got -for real- what you meant with "a killer". I said I'd want to die the way I was before the outbreak.. And I (Lee) was a killer. Heh, I feel even more stupid right now.
Interesting. I don't consider sparing either of the brothers to be part of saving humanity or being a good guy, but rather being unwilling to stand out from others and do what's right when they won't. Saving humanity in that situation was standing against the St Johns, against how they preyed on other people, and saying that even though there are no cops, no justice system, that people cannot prey on each other. For that, and to ensure the brothers could never harm anyone again, Lee killed them.
I regretted that Clem saw it done, but not that she knew it happened. I knew people might judge Lee as a murderer, but everyone needed to see that there is no civilization to protect humanity, and that it's up to each person to take responsibility for protecting it. It's wrong to simply do nothing but watch humanity end, and it's wrong to abandon humanity and join the St Johns and Crawfords of the world.
Imagine if you had let the brothers live and the farm wasn't destroyed. Would you have still thought you were being a good guy if the St Johns had lived to lure in and kill more people? Assuming the farm hadn't been wiped out and the St Johns could have still lived there, how would you have punished them or would you have simply left, not caring what they did in the future? Would you have brought the St Johns along to keep an eye on them since you can't kill them but you also can't leave them alone to hurt more people? Would you trust your life to them when zombies attack your group?
It's interesting that people value the old world moral that killing is always wrong ... when that moral was designed for a world with law and order and a justice system, where people could be dealt with in meaningful ways besides forgiveness or death.
Still, maybe I'm wrong. Could you have dealt with the St Johns in a way consistent with old world morality and humanity?
It doesn't make sense on any level to let them live. Nobody is going to escape death only to leave themselves in danger. If they don't think they'll be safe they'll kill them. What other choice is there?
I think TT can step it up in the writing. For sure they have room to grow. If they can make it more realistic and compelling then they'll have game of the year for sure.
They can argue that players can go that route but they're not because of that disconnect between the game and reality. So to minimize that I think they should be nudging players in that direction as story tellers.
If they could make us pull a Lilly then they've really done something amazing.
It's because of that fact you can assume that even though you can have 8 different groups for the start of ep5, it will all end up the same in the end. Sure your choices affect the characters personalities within the game (kenny as a complete dickwad vs your bff) but in the grand scheme of things it changes nothing. I wish our choices could have a resounding effect on the outcome instead of being more of a guiding light on characters personalities that TTG's has been wanting to do. It would improve the game even more dramatically and create something truly memorable.
One example is Katjaa's death. If the player didn't kill Andy St. John then he kill's Katjaa in the raid and Duck gets bitten. And if the player did kill Andy then things played out with her suicide.
Or a walker version of one of the St. John's bites Duck. That would rack the player with guilt.
That's an idea ... So in order to protect humanity, you would take on responsibility for imprisoning and provisioning 2-3 people who are threats to the group while you are also barely surviving. You'd probably need one person to stand guard on the meatlocker at all times, which means you'd need a rotation, so you'd effectively always be 1 person down for doing chores and defending the farm.
It's a high price to pay to try to maintain the old way of justice. It has some interesting ideas to explore ... How much are people willing to sacrifice to maintain a prison? There could be some arguments with people who want to kill them, exile them, and the moral implications of each. What happens if zombies attack ... do you free the prisoners or abandon the farm and leave them there? What happens if the prisoners escape during an attack and later confront the group? And what if someone (on their own) poisoned the prisoners or killed them so that they wouldn't be a resource drain?