The Walking Dead

Housekeeping:  I finished the previous post with all the pictures.

My internet has been down for four or five days, and I've pissed off my boss again, so I have been insanely busy and therefore unable to answer all e-mails.  I'll get round to them, I promise.

Rugby:  The whole country had Friday off, so Lion had an all day rugby training session which meant about three hours of meetings, and three hours of training (total).  I damn near crocked myself with the amount of work I put in, but it was worth it on Sunday when the gaijin had a game against the representative team for our league (the best of all the other teams combined).  We won, I scored three but, frankly speaking, I had a shocker in defence.  I just couldn't do anything right.  Luckily I set up a try within seconds of the game starting, along with a few other setups and the aforementioned scores, so the two I let in were made up for with positive contributions elsewhere.  Alongside that, I actually managed to stop a couple of definite scores, one by dragging a poor guy over the try line, holding him up, over the dead ball line.  Poor guy.

Anyway, onto the actual beginning of this post:

The Walking Dead

This game.  This goddamned game.  Holy jesus.

I've never read the books, nor have I seen the T.V. show, I have no intention of doing either until there is a concrete resolution (something that will never happen, there's too much money at stake after all) which means I'll probably fail to start, let alone finish, either entry.

This game though.  I see most people regard it as a story of survivors in a post-apocalypse.  I don't.  I see it as the story of Lee Everett, a convicted murderer on his way to prison as the zombies start roaming.  This isn't a game review so the spoilers will come thick and fast from this point onwards.  You have been warned.

The second I became aware that Lee was an actual murderer with actual (as opposed to zombie) blood on his hands, I knew he was destined to die.  Our Christianity laden (/burdened) society seeks redemption exactly one way, no matter the literature you read.  First comes the great, humanistic redemption through a goodly deed (in this case, saving a girl) followed promptly by death.  Having taught the girl how to survive, then loosed her into the wild with tools and experience, you work is done and your fate sealed.

It is absolutely unthinkable, a physical impossibility, that a murderer lives a normal life, with no repercussions for his actions.  Remember that this game is marketed towards one of a tiny minority of advanced countries that still practice the death sentence, so expect comeuppance (rather than reality) to be the modus operandi.  What kind of message would it send the children if bad people survived?!?!  That would border on real life.  Unacceptable.  We must live in a world of dreams, fantasy and delusion.

The fragile american grasp on reality, leading to an inevitable conclusion (worked out some two hours into the first of five episodes) aside, the game is excellent at manipulating your emotions throughout and despite the transparent, face value choices (save him, her or neither) the time you spend with everyone is time well spent.  The only reason this works is because the writing and voice acting are quite good.  It's not the best, other games nail the acting better, while the dialogue doesn't quite flow at times due to tech constraints.  The game is all about choices.  You choose responses to almost every piece of text (all voiced) and choose who to save, which supplies to take etc.  The reason this causes problems is relatively obvious.  With every choice having multiple outcomes, it's difficult to react to every conceivable permutation.  To combat this limitless branching, they bring the dialogue back to a set point every couple of decisions.  While the end result is nowhere near as clinical as the process sounds, there will be times when your companion is happy at a choice you made (giving them food for instance) and they they'll jump straight back at you with an insult that doesn't fit the conversation path you chose, does does fit another where you told them to shove it.

This game is custom built for anecdotes.  While they story is every bit as linear as a novel, the name and by extension the interpersonal relationships vary drastically.  In reality the changes are minor, with the protagonist dying no matter what.  A lot of people die no matter your choices.  But that fact that I, me, you choose who dies and quite often how, in what order, makes a personal story unavailable with other mediums.

A bit went crazy and shot one of the guys I'd saved earlier (choosing him, a defenceless man, over a woman armed with a pistol).  I decided to outright leave her on the side of the road, zombies shambling towards the sounds of our gunfire and shouting.  Her fate is undecided as are a few others, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her in the inevitable sequel, whether that's alongside Lee in a photo memorial or as a survivor, that's something that I can't predict.

Seriously though, that bitch shot the guy who rigged up an early warning system for the encampment our group survived for three months in.  Who would shoot someone so useful?  In fairness it was accidental, she was trying to shoot a different survivor (not much better really, now I think back on it).  She'd lost her shit weeks ago, so it was probably better this way, but as she was disappearing into the distance via the cliche rear-view mirror shot, I did feel guilty.  Her and her dad were scum that deserved to die; it was therefore a guilt born of empathy for the person at having to portray such a person.  Bear in mind that this is a computer game and they are not, in any way, physical human beings.  This kind of meta-empathy is an extremely impressive feat that overcomes written and technical limitations.

I don't like the art style.  I find it difficult to look at the washy textures that were lifted directly from 2004, particularly the faces.  Pro-tip: if you're writing a human drama based upon which emotional connections are all important, spend a decent percentage of your technical budget on the faces so that you can form bonds beyond the realisation of this being a human within a game.  Also, so away with load screens on the PC.  My box has sixteen gigs of ram, this game is four gigs, so why don't you just load it all up front?  One three or four minute load is preferable to twenty seconds loads that happen at every single crucial juncture.  Yes this game is made for consoles that have two hundred megs of ram, but it wouldn't be difficult to make this happen when porting it over to the PC.

Complaints aside, this story is brilliant.  The decisions are brutal as are the depictions of the results.  Obviously there can never be a perfect game - as much for the impossibility of accounting for taste as for accounting for the innumerable genres within 'gaming.'  This is a bloody good adventure game however, and I recommend it for anyone who likes a good story, a good adventure game, or good games generally.