How morality and pragmatism works in this series
When it comes to TWD, I noticed a trend with choices between a moral and pragmatic choice. In these choices, the pragmatic choice makes you look like an a-hole but when you choose the moral choice, you keep your morality while giving something up.
The problem that I noticed was that it is possible to choose the moral choices and never suffer the consequences that come with it. In the series, one of the themes is choosing to either do whatever it takes to survive or keep your humanity and suffer for it. That isn't as prevalent in the game. For instance, choices that are moral and would make the group suffer don't have a big impact on you.
For starters, you can choose not to take the food which would normally mean the group would endure starvation and would likely lose some members to hunger yet Kenny takes it anyway which means you kept your morality but didn't suffer for your choice. Another example is the St. John brothers. You can be moral and spare them both which never comes back to bite you. They never reappear regardless of whether you choose to spare or kill theme so you never have to deal with the consequences of sparing cannibals who would likely have a vendetta against you. To add on, another instance is choosing to shoot the woman in ep. 3. If you shoot the woman, you have less time but can still gather supplies which lessens the consequences of that choice since you didn't pay a big price for morality.
However, this seems to have gone a different direction in 400 Days where choosing the moral option winds up hurting you. If you side with the apparently moral Danny and shoot the apparently apathetic Justin, it is revealed that Danny apparently wasn't the good guy we thought and Vince won't go with Tavia. If Shel spares the captured man, he goes back to his group which attacks the diner and kills a member of Shel's group. If Wyatt leaves the car, he becomes suspicious of outsiders and won't go unless Tavia persuades him.
Anyone else want people to actually pay a price like in 400 Days for their morality since S1 had a lack of any real consequences for choosing morality over pragmatism.
Comments
actually Danny was convicted for rape so that wasn't exactly the moral choice..
choosing between Danny and Justin was supposed to be a "they're both bad dudes but which guy do you take with you."
But when the characters were shown, Danny was for helping the guy getting choked while Justin wanted to stay back and let the cop deal with it. That would give the impression that Danny may be a rapist but is apparently more moral which turns out to be wrong in the end.
Kinda agree with Jexx21 here. But do you think the decisions of Vince should be interchanged? I mean, if he went with Justin and ended up leaving him, doesn't that make him feel not trusting anyone and not join Tavia's group?
Well, it's easy to look back in hindsight at the results of the decisions, but I don't think that was ever the point. IMO, the game just wanted to see what kind of person you would be in a ZA and if you were to ever deviate from either path.
I'd rather take the guy who isn't a conniving weasel. And from the way they spoke in the bus I inferred that Danny had sex with a teen - which is statutory rape. Meaning, whether or not the younger party consented in the eyes of the law they did not have the emotional maturity to make the call and were thus ''taken advantage of''.
It was partially budgetary reasons and also the fact that you're just a guy. You're not Jesus Christ Shepard or a Jedi Knight. You're just a dude. And your opinions may or may not change the opinions of someone else. And Kenny, being the hard headed bastard (whom bro-love to death) he is wouldn't really change his opinion if you disagreed. It's actually realistic.
Yeah I agree, there should be at least some negatives for being moral.
I believe 400 Days did it right with some of the moral choices coming back to bite you like with the diner prisoner. Wonder if S2 will have similar decisions.
Okay, so then he's just a pedophile. That's okay then.
In case it isn't obvious, this is sarcasm.
It could have been a girl that was literally 1 millisecond away from her 18th birthday.
An ephebophile actually. If he were a pedo I doubt he'd be sitting surrounded by other prisoners without them strangling him.
I hope theirs some repercussions that are absolute bitches and make you hate your choices.
In my opinion it should go both ways. Yes, their needs to be more repercussions for making moral choices, but there should also be repercussions for making bad choices. Stealing the watch, for example, should cause at least one cabin member to be really pissed with Clementine.
There should be considering pragmatic choices are sometimes scumbag choices, such as Clementine seeing you skewer Danny.