by Jake Doolin
[Warning: spoilers for Telltale's The Walking Dead Season One]
If there is one moment from gaming that will stay etched in my mind for years to come, it's the scene in the third episode from Telltale's Walking Dead where the player must stop an argument after fleeing the hotel that you had called home for the last few months. Lilly, the group’s leader, seemed to believe that one of the members of your crew has stolen supplies and sold them to bandits. Her gaze quickly comes to Carley, a young TV news reporter, who up to that point, had been a great asset to the player. I remember trying my best to quell the argument. No one had any evidence at the time and I just thought that the best course of action was to worry more about getting away from the now destroyed hotel.
But things just kept escalating, accusation after accusation came flying till I had to side with Carley to get things to calm down. Thinking things were over I turned around ready to walk back into the RV and get driving, but then a gun shot rang out and Carley was dead with a bullet between her eyes and Lilly was holding the smoking gun. It was in that moment that I set the controller down, mouth agape, questioning what had just happened. I was positive I had done everything to stop the argument getting to that point. Sure I sided with Carley, but the way things ended no one seemed too hurt by the outcome. But there she was, dead on the ground beside an RV that was leaving in the next few moments, too quick for a burial, and all I could think was that she wasn't supposed to die.
This got me thinking about why the deaths in The Walking Dead game mattered so much and had so much more weight compared to the demises of most game characters. I came to realize that it was not the deaths themselves that got to me, but who Telltale decided to kill. In most games there is this sense of security in place when it comes to you and the NPCs that work with you. It’s because these characters are important, and their place within the story is secure. But The Walking Dead takes that security away by making every character as unimportant as the last. And in a way that makes them matter more; it’s much easier to relate to people who are just trying to live day by day, than super soldiers who wipe out small nations before lunch. When someone inevitably dies in The Walking Dead it's almost always in a quick and brutal fashion, holding no secrets to the last seconds of your friend's lives.
In turn, this gives the death a better essence of believability. Most of the time you can’t choose who lives and who dies, instead the game asks you to deal with it in a way of your choosing. That freedom to feel that way about these deaths connects me in a way that I haven’t felt in a game before. All too often, someone dies in a game and the character has already decided how to feel without any kind of response by the player. It’s the minor thing, but it disconnects me from the emotion, especially when it’s one I don’t personally feel.
One of the last scenes of The Walking Dead second season premiere episode ended with our protagonist Clem surrounded by zombies. One man was dead, and another was close to death, and if there is a perfect image for the game, it’s this. In the Walking Dead death is all around you, and when that moment finally comes, you can bet it will be felt by everyone playing.
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Image: VideoGameBlogger
