S1E4 Spoilers: To Telltale - I've been thinking about this bit a lot
Hey guys, I apologise if this has been brought up before - I've not seen it on my time here so I figured I'd make the post.
Right before the decision to drop or save Ben is brought up, there is are camera shots of Lee's very worried face and the zombies reaching the top of the stairs. This gave me the impression that saving Ben would put Lee in danger and presumably, since he was the main character and couldn't die yet, someone else would end up dying to save them both. Even Ben explicitly states "There's no time..."
Hence in my original playthrough I let him drop because I didn't want anyone else to die. Imagine my reaction when I watch a Let's Play, he just pulls Ben up no problem and I'm like "WHAT, WHY WAS IT EVEN AN OPTION!?". Hell, had I known that, I would've saved Ben no question.
I love the TWD games and I think a lot of the big decisions were very cleverly set-up so I'd just like to make it known to you guys this one bit that bugged me.
Comments
Both Ben's deaths are heroic if you think about it , If you dropped him just imagine there was no time to pull him up and he died protecting the group and redeemed himself , the good thing about saving him is that he reveals a part of the story we never knew and Kenny trying to save him is a powerful scene , So don't kill yourself over it
The quesion of saving Ben is more if you think you should kill him after everything he's done. Many people jumped at the chance. Also I feel in playtesting barely anyone dropped Ben and as such Telltale tried their hardest to make people drop him by making the circumstances as dire as possible.
I have to admit when picking to save Ben I thought he would fall anyway.
I don't see how this is a problem. Lee doesn't know that he actually has time to save Ben.
That's the whole point! You just left Crawford, where any weakness or uselessness meant you were dead. Ben was the group's burden and having the chance to drop him tests how much like Crawford you really are. If you drew a benefit out of dropping Ben, then that was your "excuse", so that wouldn't work. Instead, dropping him was a purely selfish choice. Either you kill him or you don't, no benefit, no punishment, just that.
I saved Ben every time, but when i finally let him drop, it was actually sadder than i thought. So Clementine gets mad at you for letting Ben die and you're forced to explain how he died and why. Lee: "It was a very brave thing Ben did." The feels keep coming
OP, that is exactly the reason I dropped him. I thought someone else would get killed, and didn't want to risk it. Especially since he was begging to be dropped. I felt like shit when I saw the end screen with all the group configurations and discovered that EVERYONE could have survived.
I read the plot of Episode 4 before I played it, so I knew that Ben would die regardless, and I decided to drop him, so there wouldn't be any problem later. Reasons OP listed didn't come into it, maybe due to me finding out before I should have.
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Well, then they could have made it more close-cut I suppose. He literally is just like "you know what, fuck no" and yanks him up in one easy swing. It just was very dissatisfying for me to have made such a tough decision and find out the other option was just flat out better (imo anyway).
Yeah, I do understand that Telltale was trying to make that the main option for the scene - which I'm actually totally fine with.
It's just that for me it was ambiguous - it felt like I was choosing between leaving Ben to die or trying to save Ben and putting the other group members at risk which was not the case at all.
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Well, the problem is the set-up makes the choice ambiguous.
Presumably the choice they intended to give us was "Leave Ben to die here and lose the burden of the group or save him". The set-up, however, gave me the impression that the choice was "Leave Ben to die here or put the rest of your group in a crazy risky situation by trying to save him."
That's my problem with the scene. Plus, if you choose to save Ben, Lee just yanks him up no problem - that was incredibly frustrating to see. He could've done that shit no problem without all the drama, it should have at least been close-cut.
Unless what you mean is that dropping Ben to keep yourself safe is the intended choice, in a real life situation I'd drop Ben to keep Clementine safe. Not because I had to lose the dead weight and save my skin, but because I have a responsibility to take care of a little girl in a group where I wouldn't trust any of the others to take care of her.
Exactly! It's a total bummer once you find out there was no consequence. Still going on with my drop-Ben playthrough though, I like to pretend there was no way I could save him without endangering the other group members.
Oh, I agree. I actually really, really enjoyed the first time I saw Ben's outburst with Kenny. He becomes so much more of a character once that happens and he's jumped the charts on my character 'ranking' since then.
I have no regrets man! Just hoping Telltale avoids making a similar misguided set-up in Season 2, though from the responses in this thread it seems like I'm in the minority.
This guy is obssesed with all this crap , Sick bastard get a real woman lol
Gosh yeah. I personally prefer saving Ben because my perception of Ben's character completely flips following his outburst with Kenny, but dropping him gave us a great emotional and meaningful scene. I really hope it matters in the 2nd season because it's the first sacrifice-others-to-save-yourself situation that Clementine deals with.
Same here. At the time I thought someone else would die if I took the time to save him, so I don't beat myself up too much over it because I made the best decision for myself at the time with the information available. I just think there should have been some consequences if you had chosen to save him, even if they were relatively minor.
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What kind of SICK PSYCHO posts this shit everywhere !!!!!!!!!!!!???
Some calming image:
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I get what you said. Personally, when I saw I had the choice to pull him up or drop him and that no one but Kenny knew about my situation, I undestood it as simply choosing exactly what the game said (no unexpected deaths or whatever). I guess you didn't see it that way The walkers comig were to make the situation more desperate, not to mention they were chasing you only half a minute ago and are too inconsiderate to wait for you to sort things out.
Maybe it was intended for people to see the walkers closing in and feel scared and I just assumed Lee had time God knows why. This way, people would be more afraid to pull Ben up and would drop him out of fear. Then you felt like crap when you watched a Let's Play and realized you didn't really win or loose anything, as it happened to you.