Clementine: Making Sense of her "Negative" Dialog Choices
I was thinking, some of the dialog choices available to Clementine seem...atypical...for Clementine. Clementine is...was...a friendly child. Some facts I considered (in no particular order)
- She was 8 to 9 years old in Walking Dead - Season 1, while she is 11 years old now.
- The hard life of avoiding zombies has made her more...mature.
Still, some of the possible dialog choices seem...dark...for her. Blackmailing Alvin and/or Rebecca, telling the group to "screw off".... then I realized.
She's known Christa longer than she has known Lee . She's known Lee for about a year or less (she met Lee when she was 8 and then lost Lee at 9), but she's known Christa about less than 3 years, probably two years (she met Christa when she was 8, though she was close to being 9, and lost Christa at 11).
With this in mind, some of Clementine's colder and harsher dialog choices reflect her life experience with Christa, while her other dialog choices reflects her life experience before Christa.
Comments
You need to do some research on your timeline,she knew Lee for about 3 and a half months and known christa for about 2 years
Season 1 began roughly three and a half months before Clementine's 9th birthday. Clementine was probably nine years old as of at least Season 1 Episode 3. Season 2 probably begins around.. I'd say 7 or 8 months after Season 1. Probably closer to 8. Then the 16 month timeskip happens. Personally, I think after this that Clementine is still 10, but that her 11th birthday is in a week or so.
So..
Clementine w/ Lee: 3 months and 3 weeks? (Episode 1 was 2 days, three month timeskip, Episode 2 was a day, barely mentioned 1-3 week time ship (who knows how long this one was), Episode 3-5 was 3 days)
Clementine w/ Omid and Christa: Episode 3-5 was 3 days, and then 8 months?
Clementine w/ Christa, maybe some others along the way: 16 months
Clementine alone and now new group: who knows
Personally, since in Season 1 we were Lee and in Season 2 we are Clementine, I see the dialogue choices as the options that the characters see present for them to do. Like an internal "how do I go through with this" kinda thing.
In terms of conversation options I always saw the first/top-left option as the default choice for the character.
Oh and the reason why I assume Clementine was 9 by Episode 3 is because the stranger told Lee that Clementine turned 9 a week ago or so and Episode 3-5 took place in around 3 days.
I believe that any negative or "dark" dialog choices for Clem come from the influence of Lee, or, the player. The player was Lee, and now the player is Clementine, so that can fit in with the explanation: she is remembering what her caretaker would have done, A.K.A: you.
Even some of the darker dialogue options weren't really that dark. When she blackmails Alvin, she repeatedly tells him that she's only doing this because she doesn't have any other choice. (And, yeah, she actually does have another choice but she doesn't know that.) One of my favorite dialogue branches is actually when you threaten to blackmail Alvin but then have Clem admit that "I wouldn't actually do that." I find the idea of her trying to play hardball and just not quite being able to do it to be really endearing.
EDIT: I also like it when she says "Screw you guys" when they find her in the shed. You can tell that she's angry enough to want to swear but she still forces herself not to. The end result just sounds kinda fussy.
Telltale doing the big time leap and letting Christa "brainwash" her in the meantime was one of the most annoying things for me in this episode. Indeed Christa has had much more influence on Clem than our Lee.
When the bottle rolls into the cubicle Clem will say shit if you said shit in episode 1 of the first season,nice little tie in I thought
I suppose she would given Christa has been with her for over 2 years
It's not that Clem's not being Clem, it's that the cabin group's not Lee. Clem never would have told Lee to screw off because Lee would never have locked her in a shed with an serious, untreated injury waiting to see if she'd die.
That just makes the fact that she knew Christa longer than Lee more so.
Yea, because we have proof of Christa "brainwashing" anyone.
Clem's choices seem fairly normal for anyone that survived that long in the zombie apocalypse.
And do you fail to remember? We are Clementine now.
I did say one year or less.
I know. But what i mean is, Christa has an effect on her. She's known Christ far longer than she knew Lee, even when they don't seem that close after Omid's death (but that's another story).
Who needs a Christa influence? Take a sweet, innocent child. Murder her parents, then her beloved guardian, plus virtually everyone else she knows and loves. Show her her dead parents as shambling corpses, and possibly have her shoot her own guardian in the head immediately after. Have her start to think she was responsible for her guardian's death through her decision to run off. Have her also start to feel responsible for another of her caretakers dying through her negligence. Have her spend the next two years scrambling through the wilderness with her sole remaining guardian, a meal away from hunger and constantly in fear of bandits and walkers, without enough clothes or shelter and without much perceivable hope for the future.
Do all of this and what are you likely to get? A child that is no longer quite so sweet and no longer quite so innocent. Such would be the understandable result with or without Christa.
Although I agree with this, I already accounted for some of this in my post. What I'm saying is Christa might have some influence, not that she is only the only or the major influence.
Oh, not this again...
Still doesn't change the fact that Christa has had more influence on her than Lee. Clementine's actions in S2 (stitching up her wound and everything) are the result of Christa's training.
But what about my S1 savegame? What happened to all of those "Clementine will remember that" messages?
Now I'm supposed to let her act however I want and pretend that it's due to my Lee's influence. But that's the whole point: It's just pretend. I don't need my S1 savegame in order to do that. I want to see HER reflecting my S1 actions and not ME having to reflect my S1 actions.
This is a lazy solution by the developers.
You still aren't getting it.
You are Clementine. Do you remember what Lee did and honor that and follow in his footsteps, or do you do things differently from how he did it?
But you don't want to be Clementine. You want to see Clementine make her choices based on how Lee taught he, you either want to have little influence with what she does, with all of her dialogue choices pretty much being the same thing, or you want something else, like having different options based purely on how Lee acted. But do you understand how crazy hectic that would be to accomplish? People complain about games not coming out fast enough, but then when they finally come out, they have the gall to complain about the perceived quality of them. You can't rush someone expecting the work to turn out as best as possible.
Or in the end you just don't want Clementine to be a playable character. Or you want her to be a protagonist and you just want it to be a movie. That's cool, I guess, but this isn't a movie.
I want to see her reflecting my S1 choices in some way, yes. I want to see that my S1 savegame actually influences her. I want to see that all of those "Clementine will remember that" message, which actually caused me to replay S1 multiple times, were not just pure fake.
Well, maybe they shouldn't try to make like 4 games at once then and rather concentrate on one project at a time?
I don't think either of you are wrong. For example, if say "Shit" to Clementine, she says "Oh Shit!" instead of "Oh Shoot!" She also remarks that cutting your arm off is useless if Lee does it.
My Lee was assertive and when the situation called for it down right ruthless . I'd say Lee was pretty influential to my Clementine..
Well, you should have guessed that the choices in the end of season 1 won't really matter. Choices in this game never truly mattered and thats fine. TTG have said that you're co-telling the story not shaping it in any significant way apart from a few instances.
They've made quite a few callbacks to season 1 already and honestly thats more than I expected. Besides, it's still episode 1.
EVERY company has multiple projects going on at once...
I get the feeling that a crapton has happened since we left Clementine. All sorts of stuff happened in Season 1, and it was bleak enough that one can understand how she would have changed. Then, she spends 6 to 8 months with Omid and Christa. The pragmatist. The one who understood why Clementine needed a gun, the one who was most skeptical of the group. Then Omid dies, and 16 more months with a mourning Christa. Who loses her baby during that time. Then, Clem gets lost, while being chased by bandits, followed by being knocked into a river, and getting bitten by a dog. Did I mention all this happens during the apocalypse? I'll bet anyone could become that dark very quickly. Clem can be played as kind, even then. I feel her being nice after all that is more of a surprise than anything else.