Teaching Sarah how to shoot was...
...pointless.Why the hell we even taught her how to use a gun ? It was simply unnecessary ._.
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...pointless.Why the hell we even taught her how to use a gun ? It was simply unnecessary ._.
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For JT Petty it was pointless but not for Nick Breckon.
I don't why did we defend Carley when she was being accused by lily (it was basically pointless)
It wasn't unnecessary it was a way for them to reference Lee
"It's not a toy, it's a thing be careful with it"
Yep, 5/5 gun teaching, the whole thing was just a waste of the episode.
Because the whole point of that scene was that Carley's death was intended as a shock, abrupt and with little warning. It wasn't a case of bad writing. The fact that every aspect of Sarah's story arc up until Episode 4 was jettisoned entirely and had no impact upon the story whatsoever was. The two examples are very different kinds of "pointless" if you ask me.
Just like it was pointless to give the watch back to Nick, and keeping the watch, and trying to catch that racoon, and shooting Carver (Since his bloody shoulder is not even mentioned, making Alvin's determinant death pointless.), and choosing when you want to leave with Rebecca, and the list goes on...
I feel like Telltale has to get themselves together with the choices, some of these are minor, but they have to start giving us more outcomes to our choices.
It was there to trick you. It was there to give you hope and for Telltale to slap you around the face and say "Hey! No matter how hard you try! Everyone you love will die! Either get used to that, or die yourself!"
It wasn't pointless.
Sarah and Clem didn't know that it was pointless. Clem did all kinds of things to help and protect Sarah and in the end all of that was pointless. With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to say that nothing could help Sarah and she was doomed to die in Episode 4.
Every aspect of her story arc up until Episode 4 was jettisoned? Aside from meeting her in Episode 1, all of our interactions with Sarah have been entirely based around looking after her for her dad. "Clem watch Sarah." "Clem look after Sarah." "Clem take care of Sarah." And Episode 1 basically had Carlos telling us exactly what eventually happened to Sarah in Episode 4. She was written just like Ben was: to be a tragic character that gave insight into the morals of those around her.
In fiction, there's a principle called "law of conservation of detail". You can't mention everything the characters do and say, or this season would already be several hundreds of hours long, most of it being boring and pointless. When you have a limited time, you only show what will be relevant and useful to the plot - thus the five days skip when they flee from Carver. Episodes are already short enough like that, they really don't have time to waste with this kind of red herrings "you thought the whole gun teaching scene would matter at some point ? Well it won't lol".
Allow me to amend my statement: every aspect of Sarah's story arc which was not painfully defeatist was jettisoned. I'll stipulate to the fact that Sarah did indeed "cease to function" and there was allusion to that in Episode 1, and that does constitute a degree of continuity. What I should have said was that all of the POTENTIAL that had been built up regarding Sarah's story arc was jettisoned; none of the interaction with her, be it making friends or vowing to rectify Carlos' coddling of her by teaching her to be essentially what Lee was to Clementine in Season 1 after Carlos died, was made use of. Instead, Sarah was simply killed off in a rather insulting fashion, given that her second potential death was rather ludicrous and that nothing that was built up or hinted at previously was fulfilled, other than her "ceasing to function" and a subsequent gruesome death, which I don't think is good enough. Whereas Ben's demise was (ostensibly) a fitting end to his storyline, well-written and, as you say, tragic, Sarah's was by no means well-done in my opinion, especially as there was so much that could have been done with the character considering her development through Episodes 1-3.
I think that while that scene was supposed to make us think "Oh, she's just like Clem way back then," there were hints in the way that she approached the gun training and handled the weapon that was supposed to plant a seed of doubt in the back of our minds as to whether or not that belief was really true.
Episode 4 dispelled that belief entirely. There's a particular exchange you can have with Sarah in the trailer if you tell her "You can be stronger" that really drives home the message here.
Clem: "I hate that I've lost so many people. But it's made me stronger. I learned take care of myself. Things aren't like they were before. Everything is hard now."
Sarah: "....You say that like it's so easy....Not everyone can be like you."
Clem: "But you can be too, Sarah."
Sarah: "...I wish that were true."
Well i guess it was a fun little scene.
I didnt really mind, i mean Sarah's never even shot a gun so she'd probably mess up or get nervous and drop the gun. Anyways i bet Nick wanted it to come into use in episode 4.
It was character development, just because they added detail to a character doesn't mean they have plot invincibility.
i've never seen a topic with so many defeatists before, why even bother getting out of bed and doing anything? paint your face with you mommas make-up and shoot yourselves in the head you emos.
I would agree with you if not for the fact that Episode 4 made a big deal out of the "fact" that Sarah was never going to last for long without Carlos. While Sarah's previous eagerness to learn how to shoot suggests that she was at least partially willing to learn how to survive, something which the story structure never allowed for. I can't help but feel that the plot itself would have been more cohesive if Sarah had never show the willingness to handle a gun, or if this event had been made use of at some point, or even referred to again.
You know that your comment makes no sense with this thread's topic.
Remember Sarah could have moved when she was under all the rubbage when Jane lifted it up, but she choose to scream and say that she cant.
Maybe that's because she couldn't
This. That second death... it came out of nowhere. This wasn't her being "weak", or ceasing to function, this was a middle finger. Notice how Ben's second death is similar to this one, but I think that separating those between episodes 4 and 5 was crucial in maintaining the illusion of choice.
You can find parallels, but I agree with DomeWing down there in that she really is not like Clementine.
Her first death I was okay with, I detest the way the second one was handled, but ultimately, I did not like how Sarah "developed". Perhaps, once again, we can find that this stagnation of her character was actually part of her character development; unable to grow to this new life of death and brutality, "ceasing to function", etc.
Sarah was baggage to me. As a character, as a person within the group. That seems to be the point. Many people consider their Clementines and Sarah to be friends. I cannot see her like that. I am like a babysitter. While she won the sympathy of some people over the course of what little she did and said in the first three episodes, I needed more, I did not care much for her and still practically don't. She was never going to be the focus of the season, to the level that Lee and Clementine were, but I think think that some more could have gone into the character. It is tragic to see a person trying his or her earnest to improve and not be up to the challenge. Sarah, to me, did not seem to even try. Thing is, she did try, ("Leave her alone", among others, including her outlook if you convince her to come with you) but it was never going to be enough.
I look back and see what is what the writers were probably going for.
Why then, does her character arc seem so... unfulfilling? Maybe it is all personal preference. Maybe I can't name what is bothering me. Maybe it was the execution, like many things this season. Maybe they accomplished what they were trying to do.
why are you even commenting, everything you do is pointless remember?
I suppose he thought that concept was petty like his last name, (couldn't resist) and he had help from someone a co writer named Eric Stirpe too. And I thought all the writers usually would come to agreement about how the overall seasonal story should run? I felt Nick and Pierre did a decent job so far this season with A House Divided and In Harm's Way and maybe should've been the only two writers for all 5 episodes. Especially Pierre I love how he handled Episode 1 "Faith" of Wolf Among Us and Episode 3 "In Harm's Way" of S2 Walking Dead. I've never read of JT Petty or Eric Stirpe until now.
Nick Breckon(The guy who wrote S2EP1 and S2EP2) is writing the finale, so it should be good.
In the game maybe but in real life is whole other story sir.
I would hardly call what we did "teaching". You kind told her how to hold it a bit, and to shoot a walker in the head. That's basically it. She didn't actually fire the thing; she had no practice. It was just there to be a callback to season 1.
The whole scene where Clem took Sarah's picture, taught her to use the gun and then talked to Carver while Sarah was hiding had a purpose. It gave the player an opportunity to learn more about Sarah and helped to build relationship between Clem and Sarah. We learned that Sarah was childish, didn't know how to use weapons (Sarah's attempts to learn were clumsy and childish) and that she could become really scared. We had seen some of these character traits already in Episode 1, but that chapter really expanded her character.
I know that people who don't like Sarah may not like the fact that Season 2 spent considerable amount of time exploring her character and gave her a lot screen time. But I think that many others enjoyed that chapter.
... I think the opposite of those things. I was ready to actually like Sarah and not simply feign sympathy and feeling sorry for her. I very much liked her scene at the beginning of A House Divided, which ended with Carver's arrival. She is practically forgotten about until the end of that episode and I wouldn't call her involvement and development during In Harm's Way substantial... at least not before.
At the time of writing these words, I ask myself if maybe what was done was really enough for her character. There is still something, however... something that does not click with me. Perhaps if seen in the context of how Season Two has handled its characters, the bolded statement above is true.
It was fully lifted up. Her arms were fine they needed to crawl through. She choose to scream and cry instead of trying to survive.
You showed her how to hold a gun not shoot it, at which point she was acting immature and not really listening (she starts waving it around seconds later.
Having re-watched the scene, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the "fully lifted up" front; she still had rubble on her lower half. She probably would have been able to crawl out eventually, I agree, but I think it's a bit unfair to say that she "chose to scream and cry instead of trying to survive." I might be wrong, but I don't think that she wanted to be eaten by walkers. I think the fact of the matter is that she panicked given that a number of undead hellspawn were baring down on her as she was trapped and so she wasn't thinking rationally, which I think can be excused given that I think many people would do the same thing in that scenario. Whether or not she could wriggle out or not, she obviously believed that she couldn't and was screaming out for someone to help her. In either situation, she clearly hadn't given up and she clearly didn't make a conscious choice not to survive.
I'd be nothing but appreciative of the idea of "Futility" being the main theme of the episode if it had been implemented well. As it is, the only element of futility present in the episode which I believe was well-executed was the scene which the screen cap above is from: Kenny's feeling "beaten", and his appraisal of the hardships that were relentlessly befalling him. That felt right, and it was well written. But at the end of the day, though it's possible that Telltale really were trying to impart a sense of futility through the seeming "meaninglessness" and abrupt nature of Sarah and Nick's deaths (I put it down to lazy writing but I understand the other side of the argument as well), what I care about in these episodes is, above all, the quality of the storytelling, and I think it would have been much better storytelling if, for instance, we'd been allowed to try and "toughen Sarah up" or what have you, had some sort of pay-off with the aforementioned gun and friendship choices, however diminutive, even if it was simply a few lines of dialogue, and then killed her off in a satisfying way (which her "second" death definitely was not). As things stand, any potential that Sarah may have had as a character was dropped entirely, never even touched upon in this episode. Futility as a concept is all well and good, but if it comes at the cost of good storytelling then I don't want any of it.
Yes , i think about that too. But this is telltale world...everything matters.
Not everybody can be a great zombie-killer, especially all at once. The fact that Sarah didn't learn how to be brave and kill zombies in the very short amount of time we'd known her is perfectly understandable, she'd been coddled all her life by her father, there was a lot of negative training that needed to be overcome. We, as Clementine, were helping her overcome that, it wasn't going to fully happen overnight but given time it would've happened. It should've played out a lot differently, we should've gotten to see her shoot a zombie or two, and eventually we should've been able to save her and keep helping her become the survivor that Clementine became, probably not as awesome as her of course but still a strong and capable survivor. It's a shame all that potential, along with all the choices we made to help her, was wasted.
The story has been thrown out the window already; its spine is crushed.
Kinda difficult to repair it after what episode 4 did to it and its characters.
It's not anything unusual in The Walking Dead -universe that first they spend time building the characters and then BAM!, they are killed off just like that. It's a world where no one is safe and random deaths just happen.
The only part which I find too predictable and bit lazy is that you never can really save someone. Even if you save someone he/she is just killed off bit later in the story. But that problem has existed since the first choices of the first episode of the first season.
There's also a possibility that she was seriously injured. In falls like that serious back injuries (including spinal cord injuries) and broken ribs aren't uncommon.
It was more of a filler.
It was pointless because TTG decided to kill Sarah off instead of letting us try to snap Sarah back to the real world. I kind of find it mean that they could off someone with anxiety who experienced a near death, was abused by her dad unintentionally and her dad died, but everyone dies in the end, just goes to show that no one is safe... not even the main character.
I think Sarah's fate would have been a lot easier for most to swallow if she didn't die in such a stupid manner in the very same episode and have it barely acknowledged afterwards. Take Larry for instance, he dies no matter what you do, but what you did is at least acknowledged by other characters and changes their view of you.
Amid the Ruins was such a sloppily written mess.