What I've Learned from The Walking Dead: Season One (PC)

Let me first say that I love The Walking Dead franchise (comic, TV show and now video game) and the game is a great accompaniment to both the comic as well as the TV show.  While I have noticed some crossover with at least one character from the TV show and comic, I really hope that at some point a character from the game makes it into either the show or the comic.  I am now going to move away from gushing about how great this game is and how well the voice acting and art is, and instead talk about one of the main story telling aspects in the game.  The act of choosing how the story unfolds and your choices in that story.

The Walking Dead warns you upfront that the seemingly random and meaningless choices you make will affect the other characters in the story as well as the outcome of the game.  From what I could tell, the large story points are going to happen no matter what your choice is, but it is how the other characters react to your earlier choices is what I am trying to get across. 

In the game you play as native Georgian by the name of Lee who is charged with taking care of another survivor named Clementine.  Throughout the entirety of the game, which is comprised of five episodes told in roughly two hour increments, you play as Lee, making his decisions and sometimes influencing the choices and opinions of others. I was thankful that I was never asked to play as Clementine as I do not feel that my reactions to these situations would be accurate compared to that of an semi-orphaned eight year old girl during a zombie apocalypse.  Often times, text will pop up on the screen following a response you made that says "Clementine will remember that" or "Kenny will remember your loyalty."

It is these situations that make you start to really question your responses.  Add on top of that that most of your responses have to be made within a certain amount of time (decided by a varying speed decreasing timer-bar at the bottom of the screen).  There was a short time while playing that unless I saw that my response had some kind of impact on the other characters, I would be disappointed or felt that the situation did not really matter as to what my stance/response was.  I had become spoiled by the very game while I was playing that game.  These important choices are later shown to you at the end of the chapter and compare your choices to everyone else who has played the game.  

This is where I feel the game gets interesting.  I first heard about this aspect of the game from Gus Sorola on one of the Patch Podcasts (although I do not recall which specific episode) where he said that he likes finding out when his choices were not in the majority with what everyone else chose.  While I too am excited to find out that a choice I made was only made by 6% of other players, I am not going to tailor my playthrough with only this thought in mind.  Some choices I can guess what most other people have chosen, but pretty early on I was able to establish the kind of person I wanted to play Lee as being.  I would like to think that I was able to maintain his integrity throughout the entire game.  

There were two instances that I reloaded the game because the response I gave was not how I thought Lee was going to deliver the line.  In one instance, I yelled at Clementine to do something when I read the response as a calm suggestion.  This was only one of two times that I doubled back from a choice that I made.  The second time was when I thought I was backing up one character with a particular response, but ended up supporting someone else, so I reloaded.

What I have found to be great about this game is watching someone else play through, which is what I did with Conklederp after I had started playing.  However, what I quickly realized was that we made a lot of the same decisions, including the important story choices that showed up at the end of the chapter.  Out of the 26 possible choices that the game tallied, Conklederp and I differed in only seven instances.  70% similarity is fairly significant, at least I think so.

I would eventually like to share what my choices were, but that might have to be saved for a later time as everything would end up being a spoiler.  If you know about a key event coming up, that knowledge might lessen the emotional impact of having to make a decision within only a few seconds.  It could be the difference between saving one person instead of another or deciding who to trust and who could be detrimental to the survival of the group.  That will be a spoiler heavy post.

The Walking Dead contains three separate save files so I think I may decide to go through the game and make all the opposite choices that I made the first time through just to see how much the story differs, but I do  not think that my emotional stamina is up for it at this point.  Maybe after I finish The Walking Dead: Season Two, which I just started a few days ago.

I now leave you to have a wonderful weekend with a scene from happier, simpler times.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'm So Worried About Everything That Can Go Wrong

TV Review: Revolution Season One

Today I move away from video games and will be discussing a TV show.  A show created by Eric Kripke, produced by J.J. Abrams, Jon Favreau, Bryan Burk et cetera, and with music by Christopher Lennertz.  For me, that's a pretty decent line up.

Revolution is a post-apocalyptic science fiction drama that takes place on Earth with the primary story happening 15 years after the "blackout."  Now if this didn't sound like a concept that would be cancelled halfway through the first season (especially if it had been on Fox), then I'm not a TV consumer.  Which I'm really not, mainly due to my rotating four-on-two-off 2pm - 10pm schedule, which doesn't allow for consistent on-air program watching.  But that's why I don't work in television, because I would greenlight the first season and order at least two additional seasons of the show, just based on the premise.

Everything in the (long) following article is all just speculation and I'm not pulling anything from chatrooms, message boards, forums or other forms of internet chatter.  This all comes from me watching the first season, minus three episodes (episodes 13, 14 & 15) and drawing my own conclusions, none of which are groundbreaking or revolutionary (eh, eh!?).  On with the show, but be warned, THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Let's get to the meat.  The primary story of the show takes place 15 years after the "blackout" (the night all power on the planet Earth seems to have disappeared. "All power" meaning anything that runs on electrical, battery power, anything operable by solar power, ALL power.  One of the characters even brings up the absurdity of this in the first episode in a "school-lesson-type" scene saying something along the lines that physics went wrong and stopped working when it shouldn't have, for no reason.  I like that the show acknowledges this fact.  So yes, 15 years after the power goes out is when the TV series starts.

What have people been doing for the last 15 years?  They've been building communities/hamlets and trying to get by without the use of "power."  Revolution does a good job keeping away from Mad Max imagery although it does bear some resemblance to The Postman, which isn't a bad thing.  Apparently 15 years after an apocalyptic event is when people start getting their shit together.  This is one thing that I had a problem with.

Episode one (Pilot) starts with some members of the Monroe Militia (antagonists) assaulting the little village where most of our main characters live.  The Militia is looking for Miles Matheson, brother of Ben Matheson and uncle to Charlie (F) and Danny (M).  Ben is killed, Danny is taken as "payment/hostage" and before dying, Ben tells Aaron (school teacher-guy who has the problem with physics hiccuping) to find Miles who might be in Chicago.  The word is that this Miles guy might know something about how to get the power back on. So Aaron, Charlie and Charlie's step-mom Maggie set out to Chicago to find Miles to help them get Danny back.

So where is the problem that I have with this show?  Season One is essentially a character building story for Charlie, who is roughly 19-20 and very, very naive in how dangerous the outside world is out there.  She has a very optimistic and unrealistic view of how "real" people act in this world.  "Because we're family!" quickly becomes her mantra/catch-phrase for the first half of the season and becomes a bit annoying at times.  She almost comes across as a Pollyanna-type, trying to help everyone along the way who needs help, which doesn't work when you're trying to save someone who is constantly on the move and away from you.

I feel I know why the creators had the story take place 15 years after the blackout.  So that out protagonist, Charlie, would be old enough at the beginning of the blackout to have lived a life with all of our modern conveniences for those memories to be distant, almost dreamlike.  But because this is a character building story, she now has to be old enough for the audience to believe that a woman would travel out in search for her brother with the very probability of ending up dead.  And for her to eventually fall in love with the obvious love interest as well as kill a fair amount of people (when she reaches that level in her development) without the viewing public giving outcry about children murdering others.  I get that.  I get that it's easier for an audience to follow a 20 year old woman than following, say, a nine year old.

So in the Pilot, Charlie and gang set off for Chicago.  They encounter some dangers, but ultimately make it safely.  And in the same episode, they find Miles Matheson.  Whom the Monroe Militia has been looking for, apparently for a number of years.  In the first episode.  No build up.  I personally would have liked it if the journey to Chicago had taken a couple of episodes since they were travelling on foot, you know, to help establish the perils of this world and to show some scope.  While there were some nice vista shots, ultimately Chicago was reached, Miles found, Miles joined the party ("because we're family!") and successfully defended himself and party against a squad of Militia members in order to establish that he's a bad-ass.  I get that by finding Miles so early on, that the audience is immediately thrust into the world and the surrounding conflict.  I personally would have liked to have spent some time getting to know our initial characters, the world a bit more and not have it so easy for someone to be found right off the bat, especially in a world that is being established.

Back to the 15 year thing, in episode 5, "Soul Train," it is introduced that the Militia are bringing steam locomotives back into use.  15 years without power and no one thought to use trains?  I don't remember if it was in this or an earlier/later episode that it was mentioned that trains/boats/planes were dismantled to be used for their parts to build. . . other things I guess, I don't remember. 

One last thing, is that apparently, in 15 years, aside from the children, no one appears to have aged at all.  I'm not saying that different younger actors should have been brought in for Ben, Miles, Monroe, Rachel (Ben Matheson's first wife), you know, the adults, but it doesn't seem like there was made any effort to made the actors at least appear 15 years younger.  Flashbacks are obvious because there are lights on.

Well, after ragging on Charlie for the better part of the article, I feel like she deserves some praise, which she does.  By the end of the first season, she's a much more likeable character.  I do not think that I would have believed she was capable of where she is at now if she did not have the journey that she had.  I just had to sludge through half a season of being annoyed with her before she started to grow on me as somewhat likeable.  Her journey is necessary.

I also want to mention Christopher Lennertz's score for the show.  I was honestly a little disappointed that there weren't as many melodic pieces, but I think that might be more a TV thing than his personal style.  Maybe it is his style as the only music of his that I am familiar with has been the score from Gun, which was pretty awesome epic-western themed.  I can pick up hints of that particular style here-and-there, but overall, the music fits as atmospheric and driving music for those scenes and the world.

I admit I was surprised that this show wasn't cancelled, partly because I liked it and because the last pseudo-post-apocalyptic show I was watching, Flashforward, and the last Bad Robot Production's show, Alcatraz, were both cancelled after their respective first seasons.  I am very happy that Revolution was renewed for a second season of 22 episodes.  The DVD/Blu-ray will be released on September 3rd of this year with the second season premiering on September 25th.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental