Telltale's The Walking Dead series has stood as a shining example of how player choice can affect storytellin💃g in a game. Faced with four options of dialogue as a time bar slowly shrinks, players experienced the panic of trying to say the right thing at the right moment to achieve a better outcome for their character, be it Lee, Clementine, or, more recently, Javieꩲr. In an even more harrowing situation, you are faced with two actions to choose from and each action can lead to a person's death.
But do your choices ultimately matter? Is player agency an illusion that these games trick you into believing? In each episode, we're reminded that this game is about player choice and that our choices will have consequences. But have you ever looked back on your playthroughs (or actually played the game again) and realized that making a different choice led to the same conclusion? We now have three completed seasons of The Walking Dead to play through, but the formula has roughly stayed the same: make choices, see tᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚhe consequences, realize that your choices were meaningless and destiny plays a larger part in these games than we would like to a꧟dmit.
We're go𒈔ing to examine several choices that players are confronted with in the course of all three seasons. Each of these choices might have filled you with dismay at the thought that your actions would negatively impact the game's outcome. Never fear. Each of these choices, in the end, did not affect your story, whatever you chose.
20 ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ Which One Should You Save? ꦗ
One of the first choices we're faced with in Season 1, Episode 1, is deciding whether to save Shawn, son of Hershel, or Duck, son of Kenny. Walkers have attacked the two, one grabbing Shawn as he is pinned underneathꦉ a tractor and another clutching Duck's shirt as he is perched on top of the tractor.
Lee met Shawn as he was escaping Clementine's house. Shawn good-naturedly offered you a ride to his father's farm, saving you and Clementine. He was a good man who showed no hesitation in helping a fellow human being. Duck was... well, Duck was Duck. If you need more of an explanation on Duck's character check out 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:this list. He was the young son of the family you just m༒et at Hershel's farm, exuberant and playful as all young children should be.
No matter who you decide to help, Shawn will die. If you go to help Duck, Kenny will rush forward to assist you, leaving Shawn to struggle alone. If you help Shawn by trying to move the tractor, a 🥃walker still manages to munch on his neck.
19 L☂eaving Sarah Behind
Clementine makes a "friend" in Season 2, and boy, does this friendship require a lot of work that ends up being pointless. We meet Sarah as Clementine is sneaking inside Luke and company's house, searching for basic medical supplies to treat her dog bite. Sarah immediately comes across as immature for her age, especially given Clementine's mat🐭urity level. And when she asks Clementine to be her friend, the wince if you accepted was practically universal.
Sarah ends up in a downward spiral after the death of her father, refusing to🐲 carry on without massive amounts of encouragement. It all comes to a head when Clementine, Luke, and Jane are escaping from a walker-surrounded mobile home, and Sarah refus✤es to stand up and leave with them. You, as Clementine, are faced with the choice of convincing her to join you or abandoning her in the soon-to-be infested mobile home.
However, if you do make the choice to save her, you find out you were merely prolonging her death. Sarah falls from the observation deck of a Civil War site the group was taking shelter in. She's surrounded by walkers, and gets eaten no m꧋atter what 🌱steps you take to try and save her.
18 ꦅ ꧙ Choose Wisely...
The meaninglessness of this particular choice is bl🥃atantly obvious. In Season 3, Javier is forced to choose who should live between Ava and Tripp. Big man Tripp has been plucking your heartstrings with his talk of love for Eleanor, and Ava has been showing time and again that she is one hardcore bada*s. So when Joan, the evil leader behind the New Frontier presents this choice to Javier, you feel that the repercussions of making it will haunt you for a long time.
However, the choice is ripped from your hands, as Joan shoots whoever it is that you chose to spare, all to teach Javier the lesson of "betrayal." We can only watch in horror as our chosen character recei♎ves a bullet to the head. This leaves us with a very unhappy survivor.
17 ⛎ 💟 Poor Puppy
This heartrending choice (especially for dog lovers) in Season 2 has no consequence to it besides hurting sensitive players. Separated from her companion Christa, Clementine has to fend for herself alone in the wild. She comes across an abandoned campsi🃏te with a disheveled but friendly dog lingering nearby. It's name tag reads "Sam," and it reminds us of a time when pooches and kiddos✅ were not left alone to fend for themselves. As she searches the camp for food, Clementine comments to the dog on their situation and can play a small game of fetch with it as well.
Things go downhill when Clementine finds a can of beans. We can de🧸cide to feed the dog or leave it to stare at Clementine as she eats, but either way, hunger prevails and the dog attacks Clementine, desperate for food. Clementine꧑ manages to push the dog off of her, but it lands on spare tent poles, impaling it on impact. We are then forced to choose to put it out of its misery or to leave it to die as it is. This choice does nothing for the plot. Its sole purpose seems to be to make us feel bad for either killing it or leaving it to suffer.
16 𒉰 Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
This is one of your first big choices in Episode 1 of Season 3. Javier and his family come across a seemingly abandoned trailer stocked with--of all things--pudding. It seems like a dream come truꦯe for young Gabe and Mariana. Kate, forced into the evil stepmom role once again, insists that it isn't safe to stay and that they should all get back in the van and vamoose. Gabe demands that they stay and enjoy a single night away from the apparently dreaded van. We are faced with the choice of siding with Kate or siding with the kids.
You either make Gabe happy or you make Kate happy. Momentarily. The consequences don't extend beyond that. While Javier finishes siphoning some gas from a car (regardless if you decide to stay the night, he still siphons the gas), he's caught in the act by the New Frontier, who 𝐆claim that he's stealing their gas. The encounter ends with Javier getting clocked out and separated from his family.
15 🅰 Sheltering Clementine (Or Not)
In Season 2, the moment🉐 for escaping Carver's domineering community arrives, and you think you will be able to sneak away from the hardware-store-turned-camp without getting caught. Unfortunately, Carver catches your group on their way out. Due to some quick thinking on Clementine'🧸s part, Carver is disarmed, and your group has to think on what his fate will be.
Kenny takes matters into his own hands when he shoots Carver in the legs, and when he picks up a crowbar, we all know what he plans to do. Sarita, Kenny's girlfriend, urges C꧑lementine to leave the building so she doesn't have to watch. We get to choose what to do at this moment, and beyond a few comments other characters make to Clementine, there are no repercussions for watching Kenny pound a crowbar into Carver's face.
14 ♓ But Who Should You Help?
In an eventually hilarious look at our own values, Season 1 presents us with the choice of helping Omid or Christa onto a moving train. A herd of walkers shambled toward members of the group already on the train, so Lee and Omid, having removed an obstacle from an overpass to clear the wa🦋y, have to leap onto a moving train. Lee makes it without injury, but Omid lands on the roof of the train at a bad angle and then flops down to the ground. Seeing this, Christa jumps off of the train to help her boyfriend.
Lee then has to choose who to help back onto the train first. No matter who you pull up,🥂 the other manages to climb up without you, and whoever you assisted berates you for not helping the other first. It ends up being a▨ choice without consequence. Who needed your help more: the injured man or the woman?
13 ไJoin Me For Dinner
When Clementine and her new group meet up with old friend Kenny, it is a very touching reunion. Players had thought Kenny dead in Season 1, and to see him alive was an unforgettable moment of Season 2. However, the meeting of two sets of people, especially in the environment of The Walking Dead, is always fraught with tension. Kenny and his group don't know if they can trust Luke and his group and vice versa. With assurances from Clementine, we see thꦫe two groups sitting down to dinner together.
Almost as if Clementine is in a clique-filled high school cafeteria, she has to choose who she sits next to for the meal, Kenny or Luke. The decision, while made awkward by the hurt looks the grown adults inexplicably throw at Clementine 💃if she does not sit with them, does not affect the plot in any way.
12 🌳 To Keep The Arm, Or Not Keep The Arm ဣ
Some will argue that the decision to chop off Lee's arm after getting bitten by a walker in Season 1 does indeed affect the outcome of the story. Depending largely on who Lee is able to convince to come along with him to rescue Clementine at the end of Episode 4, the act of cutting Lee's arm off can fall to several persons. If Lee is by himself, he will have the opportunity to cut his limb off all on hi🐎s lonesome.
If you chop it off, Lee is less likely to have those fainting spells that he suffers from if you leave it attached to your body. However, the hope that Lee will not turn into a walker if you chop it off ꦐi꧑s a false hope. No matter what you do with that appendage, Lee is set to die by the end of the game.
11 🔥 Who Needs Th🦹e Medicine More?
When Clementine and Jane scope out the observation deck at the Civil War site known as Parker's Run, a young man carrying a bag of medical supplies limps towards them. This is Arvo. Jane and Clementine surprise him and are able to take a look into his bag. With a very pregnant Rebecca desperately needing mediciꦿne, when we are given theဣ choice to steal the supplies from Arvo, it is sorely tempting.
Some of us may have taken the high road and allowed him to leave without lifting the medicine from him. At the end of the episode, we find that our magnanimity didn't matter in the slightest. After leaving Parker's Run, Clementine and her group run into Arvo and his. A stand-off takes place, guns pointed at everyone. Whether you ꧋stole from him or not, Arvo does not attempt to stop the fighting. Nope. He seems to have forgotte🍃n that you let him take his medicine and doesn't do squat to help you when the shooting starts.