THE WALKING DEAD SEASON TWO CLEMENTINE SERIES
THE WALKING DEAD SEASON TWO CLEMENTINE TV
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Lee is gone one way or another and, because at least some of the players will have put him down themselves, there’s no way Telltale can narratively retcon this one for shock twist value.

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON TWO CLEMENTINE SERIES

There is no downstream impact on how the rest of the series plays out. Whatever choice the player makes - and they are both horrific - is played out instantly, with a few seconds of devastation, before an abrupt fade to black. After a few words of tender, parental advice, and a final hurrah of point-and-click puzzling, Clementine is left with a choice: to leave Lee behind to turn into a mindless member of the walking dead, or to shoot him in the head. Clementine, having just found her parents zombified in the ruins of Savannah, Georgia, drags her surrogate father figure and only friend in the world into a locked up shop. Here’s the scene: Lee Everett has collapsed, weak and febrile from the effects of a zombie bite.

What if I told you that one decision - that decision, right at the end of the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead - is the only one that matters in the series? Keep that hair short Everyone is having the same steak, no matter what.īut there is one choice, maybe in the history of nearly arbitrary video game decision making, that sticks with the player precisely because of its blunt delivery and lack of visible consequence.

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON TWO CLEMENTINE FREE

There’s no free will at play here it’s like saying your choices at dinner matter, but you can really only reach for the salt or the pepper. Each player begins at the same place, makes a few decisions that may or may not change how they walk down the path, and then they all end at the same place. There needs to be a careful balancing act the game has to have some visible way of letting you know the choice mattered in some way, but it can’t matter so much that it impacts the game’s endings or overall narrative. The slate, and any pretense of choice, is wiped clean once more. The various cutscene flashbacks, including car crashes or suicide, neatly end the stories of former companions. The net result is that Clementine and the baby must start season three alone. There are five distinct choices faced by Clementine at the end of season two - one with Kenny, one with Jane, or three variations of setting out alone with the baby - that must be homogenized for the sake of continuity at the start of the third season. An emotional, irrational Lilly still ultimately shoots whoever you choose to save.ĭid you choose to abandon Lilly to fend for herself among the walking dead after the shooting, or keep her with the group as an extra pair of hands? It makes no difference you still find yourself without Lilly - either in exile, or having stolen the RV from the group in a fit of rage - stuck at a railway crossing, trying to get a stubborn locomotive to move.Įven seemingly major story beats - like what happens to Kenny, or who Clementine sides with at the end of the second season - need to be sanded down to irrelevance to ensure a cohesive central plot that all players, regardless of their individual choices, can follow together. So much of The Walking Dead hangs on decisions that feel important at the time, but don’t actually matter.ĭid you save Carley or Doug in the drug store? Doug had proven himself useful, while Carley and Lee had some obvious chemistry, but it doesn’t change anything. The story itself continues on the rails that were laid down by Telltale long before you began to play. Your choices are really mostly about the illusion of power. It’s a reminder that - for all the song and dance in their delivery, or supposed consequences on the story - every one of these decisions is superficial, or can be undone, or both.

We’re reminded throughout the game that our decisions matter, but when we reach the game’s climax it becomes clear that, for all of the switches and levers we pull to change route, the tracks have all led to the same destination.

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON TWO CLEMENTINE TV

The Walking Dead comic and TV show, along with the Game of Thrones books and also later TV show, had already popularized the idea that anyone can die at any time in pop culture, so why not play a game where you had at least some control over those shocking moments? It’s the entire point of the series, in fact. The first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead adventure game contains several strong examples of this focus on player choice. We like feeling as though we’re in control, at least to some limited extent. From the butterfly effect in Until Dawn to David Cage’s infamous 2,000-page ‘script’ stunt for Beyond Two Souls - and yes, Telltale’s ubiquitous “ will remember that” mechanic - developers take great pains to remind us we have choices to make, and that our actions shape the experience we’re about to have with their games. Choice is often one of the central squares of video game buzzword bingo.

The walking dead season two clementine