A review on the succeses/failures of determinant characters
Okay so this is kind of long but may as well look at the pros and cons of each attempt at this. I think (almost) each attempt has positives and as such to improve in the future it would be good to look at it. what was good to repeat and what wasnt. Read if you want and give your opinion
Before anything I get how hard it is to do this, doing entirely different things for stuff many people will never see and any variations are cool
Carley/Doug
This is the first one and in many peoples eyes the best. the main reason for this is that in this case it isnt alive/dead its one or the other. This makes it much easier to give them more scenes/ a bigger death,reactions etc as it has to be part of the story. I would like to see more of these and it dosnt have to be such a generic, two people are in trouble thing. A good idea could be if you save someone like Sarah the timewasting causes someone like Jane to die, therefore you have one of the other. This makes it easier for developers (i think) as it means you dont need different scenes just variations.
Alvin
He was the most succesful save/not save in my opinion. The reason for this is that Alvin was always a quiet character who kept in the background and as such him saying less didnt feel out of place, he was also removed for sometime for a legit reason to the plot (carvers beating) and the alternative for him to be dead gives us lots of alternative dialogue. Also both his deaths have a point, in ep 2 it is a legit mistake on the player if he dies and while he does die anyway he goes out in a much cooler way. Also the fact it wasnt an actual choice but an effect of your actions was in my opinion better.
Ben/Sarah
I put these two together as there roles are pretty simaler. Okay so unlike many I didnt really have a problem with how these two played out, yes saving them didnt make all that much of a difference but in reality that would be the case for many people in this world so I dont mind that. They also did sort of stay in the story with enough interaction that it didnt feel odd along with the fact that like Alvin they didnt speak up much before hand . Even though that said both died in a slightly odd way with little reaction and there were several scenes they just stood like statues but it was still a variation on the story.
Justin/Danny/Leland/Boyd/Sarita
These quick snippets were brief yes but i feel they mattered as I permanently changed something, and as lame as it sounds in the future if we can change some minor characters fate it would be cool, even if they never showed up again.
Nick
This is one that i dont think anyone can claim wasnt a complete failure, both his deaths were poor and one was offscreen. His character was too loud and opinionated to be shoved into the background. The one pro is that again it not being a choice but an effect from before is some thing I prefer.
What i really would like is just perhaps once have an Alvin like character that just lives till the end or perhaps like 400 days have them go somewhere else, I know if the main character has to be alone this isnt possible but if not who knows?
Again sorry for the length but i felt it had to be explored in depth
Comments
I feel like the difference between Ben and Sarah was that, unlike Sarah's second death, Ben's second death actually made sense. Ben died because the balcony went out and when he fell he got impaled. Sarah died because when a balcony feel some wood landed on top of her that she couldn't lift up and no one decided to help her, except for determinately Jane.
I actually liked Nick even more than Carley. Hell, even his few stray lines in EP.3 were gold. Too bad he was given the least favorable detrimentality mechanic.
Nah, Ben's second death was really well done and was built up fantastically. His yelling at Kenny was pure gold. It made his death even more heartbreaking.
Sarah's death was handled considerably more poorly than Ben's.
If you save Ben, the end of Episode 4 and Episode 5 actually has plenty of opportunities to interact with him. You can convince him to come help you save Clementine or tell him to stay behind. He talks all during the scene in the hospital basement. He has different interactions with the different people in Lee's group depending on who is present. If you go with him alone, he passes out when you cut your arm off. You can talk to him on the hospital roof and see how he's doing. He gets in a fight with Kenny over Kenny blaming him for his family's death. And on and on right up until his death, which serves as a grand act of redemption for Kenny, who seemingly dies trying to save the useless kid who got his family killed.
In every facet of the story after you save Ben, he contributes. He effects the dialogue and the reactions and everything else. He isn't forgotten at all.
Compare that with Sarah, who doesn't even last until the end of the episode in which you can leave her to die. Whenever she dies, no one in your group really cares. You, as Clem, aren't really given the option to care that much either. She doesn't talk much and her death later in the episode seems like an incredibly lazy plot contrivance to avoid having to write around her character being in Episode 5.
No, Ben was handled much better.
Ben had a chance to develop as a character. Sarah on the other hand did not which is dissapointing.
If he goes alone with you, he also saves you if you fail to make the jump from the bell tower.
Also this can happen if you go with him all alone:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iykWqcXjtH0
And Ben provides some obscure determinant things to happen.
-If you don't shoot any bullets in the hallway, when Ben picks up your gun, you can give it to Kenny when he tries to help Ben if you say "Okay".
-If you don't give it to Kenny and manage to strangle the stranger you can shoot the stranger to prevent him from reanimating.
I'll just sum this up as, everyone had a better death than poor Nick, one of the, arguably, most well developed characters.
Ben also was shot in the head to prevent being eaten alive by zombies, while no one did a mercy kill for Sarah for her later death.
Hmm i guess there is a difference between Sarah and Ben but in reality I was more saying they still were in the story to a point. Both went from wanting to die to not wanting to die
Yeah, this might sound sick and twisted, but I was glad that they screamed for help. Not to see them miserable. But.....I dunno, It's good that they progressed at least a bit before they died.