Rushed deaths can make it seem more realistic
Everyone is saying "Sarah and Nick's deaths were rushed." Well, maybe thats what makes it seem more realistic. In a real apocalypse, people you care about will be practically ripped in half right in front of you, and you won't get a "meaningful goodbye."
At first I was disappointed at how rushed their deaths were, but then I realized thats what probably makes it more realistic. For instance, in ep.3 in Carver's office, Alvin is half beaten to death. He is bleeding all over the place then gets shot. Then he still manages to kill the guy before dying. It was a nice heroic death, but completely impossible.
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I guess not everyone could have a heroic death. In real life and in games.
Exactly. We're lucky we could get somewhat of a heroic death with Alvin. This far into the apocalypse, you're either dead or alive. Not every death can mean something.
You're right. I thought about this over time, sometimes people just die. -_-
There's rushed and there's expedient. I agree with you in the case of Sarah, but in Nick's case it felt like an easy way to get rid of a determinate with minimal editing either way. If he is alive in episode 3, he shows up as a zombie. If he's dead, the model is simply replaced with a generic zombie. At least for me, it wasn't the way Nick died, but the way the writers seemed to avoid branching aka having choices actually matter.
Yeah makes sense actually. Not everyone can have a dramatic death like Lee had
This is the bright side of their deaths.
Anti-climactic character deaths are realistic, yes. But anti-climactic character deaths with barely any reactions to them from people who've known them for years? That's just rushed.
I was personally fine with the way Nick and Sarah died. It was fitting to their characters (Sarah died helpless and afraid, Nick died failing to do much of anything). But there were things that Telltale could have done to give their deaths a bit more closure.
I'm sad we didn't get to talk to Nick one last time, but I'm okay with how he went because I can think 'hey he died trying to do some good in trying to get help' although having to chop his head open was terrible! Jane, could you have handed me that screwdriver maybe, like, before? I swear Telltale were just torturing us on that. I was fine with Sarah's first death, but the second made me feel a little hopeless. Couldn't she have survived at least until the shootout and died then?
But I guess the problem is if you have EVERY character go out with a tragic stretched out death scene or them dying heros, that in itself would just get really old. I think Nick and Sarah's deaths were to show how often death happens in that world and characters have to just deal with it, or they'll break down and die too. But also too that Clem and the others aren't always going to have the chance to say goodbye [look at the tv show for example, wasn't there that really nice guy in season 3 that suddenly got shot in the head? or the sister in season 1 that just chomped and died moments after?]
You see all these films and games where the person is slowly dying in someone's arms and they get to say all their last words before lights outs. Sometimes the fact is, you don't always get that, or somebody will die before they can get even a word out, or like even poor Lee who had more to say to Clem, but never got the chance to :S
http://youtu.be/anqS-YA3v-g
This is a terrible example of this, but Kingdom Hearts did a death scene a couple years back where Xion just keeps talking and talking and talking, and even though it's a sad scene, all I could think was "Are you done yet? clearly you're turning into crystal ice stuff, is it patiently waiting for you to finish?"
"I wanted Axel's death to be pretty abrupt and final... like things would be In real life. No speech, no moment of heroism or sacrifice ...just a sound and a fallen body. Probably didn't live up to what you wanted but most deaths wouldn't in real life. Not many people really get to go out in a grand style." - Robert Kirkman.
To be honest - I like deaths like that. It was gret when Pete died a heroic death, because, well... he was a hero. But I was a little bored when they did the same with Al.
I'll be honest, I really don't give two shits about realism. I understand that people feel differently about Nick and Sarah's deaths, and that's fine, but for me the idea that a fitting, story-complementing death is less preferable than a "rushed, realistic" death is ludicrous.
It can be done, of course; I'd suggest Carley's in Season 1 as a good example. Her death was sudden, but it evidently had an impact upon the other characters, made sense from a story perspective (she didn't have a detailed story arc as both Nick and Sarah had) and was ostensibly satisfying. Same goes for Ben; his death was a fitting conclusion to his part in the story and yet it didn't involve him mowing down fifty walkers in a tidal surge of machine gun fire. But that's the very crux of the matter: you don't have to kill everyone off in a HEROIC way but it damn sure had better be well-written, when I'm purchasing a video game mainly for its story. And I'd argue that Nick and Sarah's were neither.
Nick died on a fence, as a stand-in for a generic walker model (provided he wasn't killed earlier in your playthrough), with no lines in the episode and minimal reactions from other characters. Sarah fares better in that her death, provided you leave her in the trailer, seems fitting as a case of "oh, she was never cut out for the apocalypse, thanks a lot Carlos." But in my playthrough she fell off the decking and had her oesophagus torn out after a plank fell on Jane's head. A plank. Cue Yakety Sax. And no-one really seems to care.
I think that's what's insulting; the fact that these deaths seem to have been written by Telltale with no greater purpose than to get rid of extraneous characters as a means of convenience for them. They don't advance the story and that's all that matters (to me). If they'd been killed off with any degree of nous or impact upon the other characters then you wouldn't hear me complaining. As it is, "realistic" is pretty much the only thing they have going for them because they sure as hell don't have "good-quality" or "well-implemented."
I co-sign all of this.
Forget this post.
I agree with all of this.
Funny how "realism" only applies to Nick and Sarah. Come on people. Telltale lost inspiration and quickly killed them off for Episode 5. And by fan reaction, it wasn't handled well or realistically.
Actually. On second thought. Fuck the 'realism' when it comes to Nick/Sarah
Sarita dying if you chopped off her arm? That's realistic and it still was a powerful RUSHED death.
Carlos dying like he did? Perfectly alright, makes sense.
You know who validates these demises though? Sarah heavily mourns for her dad. Kenny heavily mourns for Sarita.
If people I've known for 4 Episodes die and no one cares, and I'm not even allowed to express that it made me sad? That's not realistic. That's lazy writing.
Yeah. You now what though? It goes further than that for the two examples that you listed. I, too, would have liked some development for both Sarita and Carlos. As it stands right now, they are only important because their deaths affect someone else (and not really us), and I consider that lazy, too. Especially on Sarita's case, who felt like the token disposable woman for Kenny to relive his arc from a season ago.
I'd like a whole lot of things to be different in Season 2.
Initially I had hopes that Sarita would outlive Kenny, that Kenny and Luke would get along unlike Kenny and Lilly, that Nick could survive to Episode 5 and still have some minor relevance, that Carver could be killed or be a begrudging member of the group, that Carlos would tell us if there was any medical concerns about Sarah (Prone to anxiety attacks? What about her mom?)
Those were the days of wonderful dreams.
But the topic's on death, even if Character Development does play a role in making them more satisfying.
Maybe, but Nick's death was just stupid.
People just cant' seem to grasp this at all.
So, I was listening to an interview with George R.R. Martin, and thought I might share some of his words.
When asked about how and why the heroines in his books were not "historically accurate" (read: realistic) he said that one could find examples that mirror his feminine characters throughout history and that, they were the exception, not the norm. However, he later said: "The exception is what you want to write about. You don't necessarily want to write about the typical example..."
This is a work of fiction. A world not much unlike ours, but still fiction. I find that the hollow deaths throughout the season to be disappointing and I don't think that is completely the point. As said above, you can have a sudden death. The go to example in my mind is Carley. However sudden it was, it was still impactful and had meaning. Plus, it didn't hurt that the killed person actually had more development and interactions with our protagonist, thus making us care. Oh, and the group reacted to it.
In my opinion rushed deaths have their places in games, novels and other kinds of stories. These type of deaths can serve as a great way to end a character arc or even to advance the plot-line, but the way Sarah and Nick died wasn't "realistic" as much as it was unsatisfying and pathetic. For Sarah, I can see how someone could consider the way she ended acceptable, especially if you decided to leave her in the trailer. If you choose to leave her it actually proves a point about survival and making tough choices while also forming a pivotal point in Clementine's personality. For those like me who actually decided to take her away from the awful fate of being devoured by walkers with nowhere to go, however, Sarah's death wasn't nearly as satisfying or useful for the sake of the plot. Sarah falls off the deck, Jane "tries her best" to save her until a random board hits her in the head and results in Sarah dying in the same terrible way as before. Did this teach Clementine a lesson about letting people go? Maybe. Is this lazy writing by a group of developers who had no idea what to do with the character they had set up so well throughout this entire season? Most definitely, yes.
Nick's death is no different. We simply encounter him as a replacement for a generic walker stuck to a chain-link fence. Meanwhile, Clementine does her best to look hurt while Jane tries to squeeze in a lesson about having to kill the ones you love. Seriously, Telltale? This is what you give to the players who worked so hard to keep a character they cared about alive? You turn him into a mute for two episodes until you finally find a place to kill him. That's just sad, Telltale.
All I'm saying is that when you write any kind of story things like death should have meaning and impact. Instead, we get about one scene of characters caring about the dead person they "loved so much" after which we just move on. Saying things like: "Well, this is The Walking Dead, people will die!" does not make up for the fact that the consequences behind these deaths were basically non-existent. Perhaps the worst in all of this is that Telltale has actually shown that they can make their choices matter and their deaths meaningful in the first installment of this series, which makes me wonder, where did it go wrong?
This. There's rushed, and then there's just being lazy.
And then there's both.
I don't know. I see the reasoning. It just does not convince me.
Rushed deaths, fine. But meaningless ones? No. Especially the sheer number of meaningless deaths in Episode 4.
Pete's death could be seen as Rushed, but WE the player get the option to choose to stick by him and see that the death is more than just a cheap death shot. Same with Nick. Nick COULD have died by Walter quickly and tragically, but saving him should have given us some satisfying merit of SOME sort especially when he had Episode 3 to interact with yet Telltale robbed us of even a minute worth of dialogue from him.
Especially if you compare BEN's death (and death options) to Nick, it doesn't even come close to compare.
What about Katjaa vs. Sarita? We know much more about Katjaa and her involvement in the story with Lee than we did Sarita. Katjaa was a vet, she was a mother, she was from Belgium, she actively did things (patched up Ben's friends leg but failed, Nursed a cow, watched children, she had opinions of other characters and the other characters had opinions of her) Her death was tragic and unexpected and quick but we could tell this woman was not the same inside and out. What do we know about Sarita? All we know is she saved Kenny and stuck by him, that's it.
Of the quick and Empty deaths in chapter four we had Sarita (who if you decide to not cut her arm off, she doesn't give any meaningful dialogue or change and it's all completely centered around kenny), Sara and Nick. All of which was left unsatisfying.
It's also ridiculous to say "Hey its realistic" when this is still a work of fiction. Quick death or not they should be written accordingly with some weight to their character having an impact on Clementine, or the other survivors around clementine which never happened.
I also thought it was pretty appropriate to the setting if you let Pete die in the first episode - the most competent, trustworthy member of the cabin group dies simply because he makes a momentary mistake and pays for it.
"Wait Xion who will I have Ice cream with?" Xion dies
BEST LAST WORDS EVER!
It honestly would be fine to have some unexpected deaths if it didn't happen to every determinant character.
This game scares me.
It scares me with it's confusing plot that's more tangled up than a tumbleweed, and all these side games without an actual real sequel for ten damn years. I gave up on it years ago.
I never played it, being a guy its hard to act manly and play Kingdom Hearts, so i had to pass on that franchise.
Because they probably know that it's just an excuse for lazy writing.
yea i agree but they should have handled nick a little better but lets talk serious here guys did everyone really expect sarah to have a badass heroic death? cause that was never going to happen and the way sarah was acting in 204 there was no way there was time for goodbye
The thing is, if it were like a manga, where every character death had a ten minute monologue it wouldn't be very realistic and would probably start to be a bit of a drag.
I think Mike might bite the bullet in the fire-fight just to make stuff feel more random and to establish Luke as a more permanent character. If it were the other way around I think it would just screw up the cohesion.
I think it's okay to have many seemingly random (if not true random) deaths as long as they contribute to the strength of the overall story. I think there is a danger of making deaths seem meaningless in a way that would detract from the narrative rather than strengthening it.
It's a video game about character interaction and building. So no, "realism" isn't necessary. Also they have like 5 total zombies in this game so I think they lost credibility with "realism".
The thing is if you removed all realism we'd be left with dream state imagery and surrealism so it's important to a certain extent for the player to be able to identify with the characters and the world of the story. I personally like as much consistency, cohesion and believability as possible.
Also, Zombies basically break reality altogether, more-so because they've given a scientific explanation for their existence which mean the Zombies should be subject to the laws of Physics, with regards metabolism, starvation etc. but they all seem to be immortal.
At some point, to stay alive, the zombies should have to turn on and eat each other to remain alive and that would mean their numbers diminishing quite rapidly.
remove realism? I don't understand what you're talking about. Nothing about this game is realistic, like at all. Only the drama that goes on.
I guess ultimately it's a matter of perspective but I think it has a lot of realism even if none of it is particularly realistic.
Realism doesn't necessarily mean good story telling.
Exactly. Carley/Doug's death was shocking and unheroic, but it still had a meaningful impact on everyone in the group, resulted from a conflict with a clear escalating build-up, and didn't suddenly abandon the plot threads that the last few episodes had been building upon.
Nick and Sarah's character arcs had potential, but they're just glossed over. If they had to die in Amid the Ruins their deaths should have been a major focal point, not an afterthought.