SARAH's STORY EXPLAINED
hey friends what up before i start it would be foolish of me to not mention my youtube channel DapperDuelist
So a lot of people are having trouble understanding Sarah's death and understandably so.
The character was developed to mirror Clementine, what would happen if you could not adapt. She dies not being able to deal with loss, so big whoop right? The choice to save her was pointless then if she just dies in a silly, albeit sad, way.
Sarah was also meant to flesh out another character, Jane, essentially an older version of Clementine, just like Molly. What happened to Jane's sister is exactly what happened with Sarah. Do you let her die on her own accord, her death in the cabin, or do you save her for a death later on, her death by walkers. many people felt cheated with her second death but it was inevitable.
Also a quick shout out to Nick's death, I remember listening to Telltale's conversation online a while back and they said something along the lines of that not every character gets a hero's death. Sometimes it is more realistic to die off screen.
Comments
Was advertising the only point for this thread?
Nope but it doesn't hurt, I'm not sure why people are turned off by that kind of thing, if I continue making free content then who cares.
I dont know I just felt that they were trying to say something with Sarah, they really tried to get Jane's sister's story accross
No death is inevitable. Absolutely no one was ready when the plague started. Everyone had to adapt. Even if someone starts adapting late, it's still never necessarily too late. Sarah's death was an unwillingness to create content for Epiaode 5. We shouldn't accept post hoc rationalizations that some people are unkillable, who give us "Game over" if they die, and everyone else will die, period.
one thing alot of people think is clem cant die and i might get hate for saying this but clem could die just like anyone i mean were talking about TT here i just wanted to point that out.
Clem dies pretty often when I am playing
Its not really a spoiler if you tell people what this thread is about.look at the title
From the very moment we're introduced to Sarah, I knew this was someone who would not survive to the end of the Season. It was more than just her being sheltered from the reality of the apocalypse that prevented her from adjusting to this new world; her mannerisms and discussions hinted at a young woman who was suffering from some kind of mental disorder. Like it or not, people like Sarah are a huge liability to other survivors (case in point - what happened in the trailer. Three people came very close to losing their own lives because Sarah refused to budge).
Her death was inevitable.
You spoiled in the thread title, oh intelligent one.
I think many of us have a problem with just that though. Sarah was only a throw away character to progress Jane's story along while they were trying to give a sense of hopelessness to Sarah's character many of us did not see her as completely hopeless. Sarah was a child who obviously didn't understand the outside world, most likely because of her coddling father, but she showed that she was willing to change, The fact that she disobeyed her father to help Clem when she needed it and the fact that she had Clem teach her how to use a gun shows she wanted to adapt. The problem is because of what we knew previously of her character (said examples above) it made her character less hopeless and nothing like how Jane described her sister. Jane's sister just gave up one day but Sarah just didn't know what to do because her main support was gone. (Her father the man who forced her to rely only on him.) Sarah at least should have had the chance to adapt without her father's influence until it was taken away for story development for Jane which doesn't even logically make sense/ applies to Jane other than Jane's word about Sarah being hopeless. We can't just have Jane's word that she is hopeless with previous evidence showing otherwise. Well I hope I made what I was thinking clear.
Stop justifying telltale's lazy and flawed writing.
Let's not forget, when it came to the gun thing, that Sarah just as quickly forgot about it when she spotted someone approaching the house.
The girl had a very flighty attention span.
And it's funny how people forget how Sarah acted under stress. How she panicked when Carver showed up at the house (hyperventilating and begging Clem to make him go away while she hid). How she blabbed when someone else was being questioned.How she'd freeze in place when given simple instructions, because she was too scared of screwing up even the most mundane tasks.
I'm not forgetting how she acted under stress. People keep forgetting she was coddled to the point that she didn't know how to act other than to just be a kid. Carver's authority was above her father's a very scary man that would kill a person if he considered them detrimental to his group. She is a kid and knows nothing beyond that because of her father. Think about it... a child who was up against a tyrant. How many children do you know who just learned how to use a gun would be willing to shoot another person? They may be willing to say they will but they won't or will not be able to. I know when learning martial arts I wasn't willing to spar with my opponent because I was afraid of hurting them and the same when it came to physical bullying I was unable to fight back because I was afraid I would hurt them. I was taught that it was wrong to hurt someone else. The most important thing that every one forgets is that she was taught to be a child, that she was willing to learn to be an adult but no one gave her the chance other than Clem.
Sarah was a key to opening a new path and a new friendship, but nope they just decided that she was dead weight and killed her off, even though she didn't have any reason to die apart from influencing Jane's decision to leave, either way I think she would've left anyways.
We get it. But Nick was basically non-existent. He deserved dialogue..
I still call BS on Jane automatically comparing Sarah to her sister. She tells Clementine that "people don't change," when she knew Sarah for like half a day, and yet she keeps trying to cement this nihilistic message about her not wanting to be saved while the kid is in shock.
Also more unsatisfying.
While I agree with the points on Sarah, Telltale still got lazy with Nick's death, and "dying offscreen being more realistic," just sounds like a crappy excuse to me. I'm sure if they killed Kenny offscreen, they wouldn't try and pull the same crap.
the walkers should have not eaten sarah but bitch slapped her to wake the fuck up.
Sarah was foreshadowed from the start to end up the way she did.
The whole idea is that you think Carlos is wrong, you think Carver is wrong, you think Jane is wrong but in the end their sadly right; some people are just not cut out for it. I liked Sarah and wanted her to make it but she was traumatised to the point of losing her mind.
Carlos should have taught her but she was naturally immature and scared, Her end was a bit unfortunate accident but again it was due to her freezing up on the deck.
"hey friends what up before i start it would be foolish of me to not mention my youtube channel DapperDuelist"
I just laughed so hard after I read that. Idk why I just did xD
'the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing' = episode 4
I do lets plays too bro, i don't need to beg for subs.
It's predictable, and lazy at this point, to write off characters with such potential as having "inevitable" deaths because of "realism". If realism was a concern, then Clementine would have died long ago. If realism was a concern, Kenny would have stayed dead. In real life, the strongest can die by stupid freak accidents and the weak can turn out to be surprisingly resilient. Real-life isn't always dictated by what's most predictable or likely, which is why the surprising deaths of good, smart, strong people like Lee or Pete or Carley had such a shock. It's why Carlos' death made perfect sense. Life is also balanced with ups and downs, which makes skewing it all towards hopelessness cause me to call bullshit.
I guess I'm annoyed because I was hoping for Clementine to actually find a friend, and that Sarah's death seemed more like it was mandated by the writers rather than believably written. Her second death in particular is so contrived and badly paced that it felt coldly cynical rather than a meaningfully written demise. And maybe I'm bothered by the fact that it validates a wannabe-tough-guy portion of the fan-base which glorifies being a sociopath and hating children and de-valuing human life rather than allowing the players to prove that thought wrong and let Clementine/Walter's philosophy prevail. Maybe I'm disappointed that we couldn't prove Carlos' overly-paternalistic attitude wrong by showing that Sarah could adjust - and she WAS coming around, only her contrived death prevented her from ever proving her strength. And maybe I'm bothered by the fact that Sarita and Sarah both got marginalized in favor of furthering Kenny 2.0 and Molly 2.0's stories (though she was a better character than the original), when they both could have been stories about underdogs sharing Clem's journey of surviving unexpectedly. And maybe I'm bothered by how Sarah is so maligned when she's possibly the nicest person to Clem in the entire first episode - people can forgive Carlos and Rebecca for being willing to let Clem die painfully, yet hate Sarah for being socially malformed.
I think I can understand the motivation behind making the messianic Clem feel jaded and powerless and the only life among the dead. I'm actually fine with grimness and misery, provided there's enough lightness for the evil to really feel its impact. But it just hasn't worked, and I think it's partly because the writers just haven't given us enough time to properly care about the characters and it seems to validate the cynical philosophies of Jane and Carver - I found it ridiculous that Clem pulls a "Carver" face when she slaps Sarah. I pity Sarah and lament the fact that she as a character deserved much more. I just worry that the writers will just make the entirety of episode 5 completely grim, rather than bittersweet, because a story about growing up in any life is about discovering the things that make continuing on worth it.
Sarah's ignominious death is a blow to me, but I hope it's not a sign that HOPE IS FOR LOSERS. I know Telltale would never dare kill Clem, but making literally everyone else around her die (except for the assholes) is way more stupidly unbelievable than, say, a sheltered girl beating the odds and thriving.
The actual reason why both Sarah and Nick died:
loose ends...gimme a break..the game is made up of loose ends..Jane...Christa...man with water....400 days group....Lilly..,it's just cheap
Which is why their deaths felt 'off'. I wouldn't mind if they both died, but they should have had more thought put into their character arcs.
Perhaps Nick could have "grown up" and died trying to protect the group during the 'All Fall Down' scene. Perhaps if Sarah hadn't been left behind, she could have tried to take Clem's advice to heart and fight and die because she was unprepared rather than because of a silly plank of wood. Or if we could at least have put her out of her misery. We already got the "teenaged liability dies by falling down and getting eaten" beat with Ben; we honestly didn't need to repeat it with Sarah.
But Season 2 is written by the type of guys who believed that Clementine agreed with Lee about Ben being "a screw-up" rather than actually the only friend who constantly stuck up for him.
@Bokor great post
i rember TT awhile back i think they said something like sometimes its more realistic to have
deaths off screen then on screen or something like that
There's nothing wrong with advertising since it's really hard to grow on Youtube these days
Agreed. I felt they slopped on Jane's back story last minute to justify something that was perhaps a last minute change.
"people don't change" is bull in that context. Just look at Clem. She's a perfect example.
that backfired then
Well, I don't think she necessarily had a mental disorder. I mean, maybe, but I don't think that was the intention of the writers. I think she was just meant to be sheltered and vulnerable, and not able to learn to cope quickly enough.
The Right hand is on Jane and the Left on Luke.
Sarah and Nick were brought up as important characters and given a lot of development in the beginning episodes. To have them immediately killed off in Episode 4 as if they never were important or given development was just terrible. It really seems like Telltale completely lost inspiration for them and decided to remove them at the last minute for Episode 5.