Mass Effect 3 (2012) Review: Beating a Dead Horse Edition

Lucas Versantvoort / February 11, 2015

After the success of Mass Effect and the even bigger success of Mass Effect 2, everyone was awaiting with baited breath the game that would conclude the story of Commander Shepard in stunning fashion. And in 2012, the game hit store shelves and sure enough, the game was memorable, though for other reasons than an ardent Mass Effect fan might hope.

            The story starts with Earth being attacked by the Reapers. You escape Earth in the SSV Normandy with your crew and spend all efforts on gathering as many allies as possible. Depending on your decisions in previous games, this might prove easier/more difficult than anticipated. It is up to you to try to make everyone see the bigger picture, that focusing on their own little quarrels doesn’t matter much if the Reapers wipe everyone out in the process. This amounts to you helping the other species and garnering favors and securing promises of aid against the final assault against the Reapers. Meanwhile, Cerberus, the organization you helped in the previous game, has turned against you, its leader (TIM) having a plan of his own of ‘ending’ the Reaper threat. Eventually, you are informed of an ancient Prothean superweapon that might prove key to wiping out the Reapers and saving the universe.

            So…the story. Is it any good? I’m going to go with the always highly useful answer of ‘yes and no.’ It is true that several sections are incredibly potent, but it’s offset against a plethora of narrative issues: drivel like Shepard’s nightmares about the one kid he couldn’t save on Earth. Puh-lease… You mean to tell me that after two games of allowing you, the player, to decide Shepard’s character through dialogue options and so on, now you’re going to actively write him as a dramatic character? I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. What if someone’s renegading? After pragmatically killing of hundreds of enemies—and sometimes entire species— in cold blood over the course of two games, making Shepard go all emo about one boy just doesn’t work dramatically. I also remember this clichéd missions featuring a bomb on Tuchanka where the Turian Lieutenant Victus sacrifices himself to redeem his honor and save the rest and of course he goes out with a one-liner: “Victory, at any cost.”  I can almost hear the solemn trumpet solo in the background…

On the other hand, what the game does positively nail is the feeling of things coming to an end now that the Reapers have finally showed up. Even when I was just strolling through the Citadel, I had the feeling that I should get my ass moving and save the Universe. There was this constant air of melancholy permeating every second of the game. And that’s precisely the feeling that, for better and for worse, BioWare was going for with this entire game. It’s the same deal with Final Fantasy XIII: there’s little to no exploration, because the main characters are fugitives. In Mass Effect 3, the Reapers are killing everyone, so there’s little to no time for sightseeing (no exploring the homeworlds of the Turians and Asari); there’s only a race against time to gather as many allies as possible and defeat the Reapers.

            All in all, the story is flawed (to speak nothing of the ‘radically different’ endings), but there are times, as I said, when it gets it completely right. The perfect example is the chapter involving the Krogan. This is where everything comes together, where the gameplay is tense, the storytelling is tight and the choices are meaningful. You can let Mordin sacrifice himself for the good of the Krogan future, or, if you did certain things beforehand, can save him as well. You can confront Mordin with your worries about future Krogan aggression and fatally wound him, etc. The great thing here is that it feels like a self-contained chapter that has a clear beginning-middle-end structure and builds on the themes connected to the Krogan and Salarians. It all comes together wonderfully. More importantly, it’s emotionally satisfying.

Speaking of which, that’s another problem with ME3, the fact that it has to tie everything together and make sure your that all your choices made in the previous games matter. It sounded ambitious when BioWare first announced its plans of letting you transfer saves from one game to the next, but in practice, it’s clear BioWare bit off more than it could chew. Rather than having all your previous choices make a real difference, they don’t mean a lot in the end, a fact emphasized by their being given a number of War Assets. Remember the huge decision at the end of ME2? Whether or not to destroy or save the Collector base? All that does in ME3 is give you a measly few War Assets…whoop-dee-fuckin-doo. That’s the problem when you’ve created a canvas as big as this: it becomes impossible to make all the player’s choices matter without most of them feeling inconsequential in the bigger scheme of things. The direct consequence is that you become more easily aware of the underlying machinations of what triggers what event. You quickly identify certain short scenes as being a little reward for you having done something in one of the other games. It doesn’t exactly enhance the narrative flow when you’re like “oh okay, he shows up, because I did this in ME2.” You instinctively realize it doesn’t really matter. Minor characters make little more than glorified cameos for one scene and are never seen again. It’s the same thing that plagued ME2. To save or not to save the Council; that was the big question at the end of ME and all it meant in ME2 were a few pointless scenes featuring the Council, that’s it. It didn’t change anything substantial.

In terms of gameplay, the game suffers from/enjoys the same features that separated ME2 from the first game. Just like ME2 was more of a shooter than an RPG, ME3 symbolically does away with all RPG elements and goes into full-on Gears of War mode and never looks back. Oh sure, BioWare may have claimed they’d introduce “added RPG elements,” but the simple fact is that no one in their right mind would consider this an RPG. Even the classes themselves aren’t truly unique enough to provide for radically different gameplay styles. In the end, it all boils down to moving and shooting, getting behind conveniently placed cover and shooting, and so on…

Ugh...

            And don’t even get me started on War Assets, a feature with which you can keep track of the support you’ve gathered throughout the game (individuals, armies, technology and so on). What baffles me is that it flat out tells you the minimum number of points necessary to even get access to one of the main endings. It’s so immersion-breaking it defies belief. So let me get this straight, you spend three games immersing yourself into this universe and all these characters and prepare for the coming onslaught of the Reapers and now you get a system that blatantly tells you when you are ready to defeat the Reapers, the almighty species against which victory is nigh impossible? Yeah…do you see how that doesn’t really fit into an emotional storyline where you desperately fight to save the universe and everyone in it? What kind of computer is even able to predict this, anyway!? I understand that a game in the end is entirely ‘technical,’ that it takes into account certain variables and that you are assigned a certain ending as a result and all that, but how about we don’t confront the gamers with this emotionally inert nonsense? You’re supposed to effectively suppress aspects of game design, not shove it into people’s faces. Right after reaching the minimum amount of points necessary, I remember thinking, “well, no matter what I do, I guess I’m now able to defeat the Reapers.” Not exactly the kind of emotional response you’d want to get out of a dramatic narrative. What's worse is that you need to compete online for assets, otherwise you can only gain 50% of all assets. So, 50% is gained through single player, while the rest through online multiplayer and iOs/Android apps. I was furious when I first discovered this, cuase it felt my single player experience was being fucked around with by needless online components.

            Other things that left a bad taste in my mouth are little things like BioWare’s decision to increase Ashley and Liara’s cup sizes for what I’m sure was a very valid reason with lots of narrative implications. Even worse is the inclusion of Jessica Chobot as reporter Diana Allers who you can take with you on the Normandy, so she can ‘broadcast the truth to the people’ and all that. You can romance her, but it’s just a fling, so why would you? For those of you who don’t know, she was involved with IGN at the time, which casts an all the more dubious light on not just her casting, but on the notion of ‘objective video game journalism.’ Just this casting choice alone can easily make me dislike the game as a whole, depending on my mood. BioWare also screwed up side quests, more specifically the giving of objectives. Most side quests involve only going to some planet and find some object or something, but the objectives don’t necessarily state which planet you’re supposed to go to and even when they do, you’re not told exactly where it is. Apparently, you’re supposed to just wander the galaxy and hopefully stumble upon the right planet at some point. How do you screw up something as simple as side quests? Another “new and exciting” feature was that you could give voice commands through Kinect with a headset. How anyone could think this is what gamers want is beyond me. Because you know…sometimes I look at my controller and I think, “man, I wish I could just do away with all those buttons and just talk to my TV, because that would definitely increase my immersion into the game world and raise my enjoyment levels by at least 100%.” The entire notion is just ridiculous, a failed attempt at blurring the lines between your living room and the game world.

Just...wow...

            For what it’s worth, there were enough good moments to warrant my purchase of Mass Effect 3. The attempt here was obviously to create a stunning, emotionally compelling, cinematic finale and they somewhat succeeded. But for every compelling moment, there were things that annoyed me: the fact that ME2’s teammates can’t join you on your ship (BioWare instead obsessively focused on ME’s cast and gave ME2’s cast a couple of cameos for good measure), the lack of conversations with your teammates, the immersion-breaking War Assets, the lack of differences between classes, Diana Allers, the fucking cup sizes, the relatively boring new characters, the obvious appeasing of the LGBT community by shoving gay romances into the proceedings (I have nothing against gays, but it’s weird how Shepard and Kaidan can all of a sudden ‘bat for the other team’ even though this was never implied in previous games, not to mention how underwritten Steve Cortez was), EVE’s hot cyborg body, the dream sequences, not to mention the endings themselves…and that final screen... BioWare tried and occasionally succeeded, but they bit off more than they could chew here.

Mass Effect 2 (2010) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / February 4, 2015

After the incredible success of the first Mass Effect in 2007, developer BioWare knew it had a franchise on its hands and merrily went on its way to develop the sequel. Mass Effect 2 was released in 2010 to even more critical acclaim than its predecessor. Though fan debate still persists as to which one of the two is better, it was undeniable that it was a success.

            The story kicks off several weeks after the ending of the first game. Our ship, the SSV Normandy, is attacked by some kind of enemy ship and everyone’s forced to evacuate. Commander Shepard is unable to escape in time, however, and so dies from suffocation. Naturally, this being the beginning of the game, nobody’s doubting Shepard’s eventual return. (So much for dramatic purpose…) Shepard’s body is recovered by Cerberus, a pro-human organization. Cerberus, as opposed to the bureaucratic fuckwits on the Citadel, are very aware of the threat posed by the enemies (Collectors) that attacked the Normandy and, realizing Shepard’s immense charisma and leadership, spared no expense in recovering and reviving Shepard. This is two years later. Shepard awakens and hesitantly joins Cerberus. He is told by its leader, TIM, that the ship emerged from the Omega-4 Relay and that no ship has ever returned after passing through. Shepard is thus tasked with crafting a team of talented individuals, passing through the Relay and kill the Collectors that want to assume direct control over humanity.

"I'll relinquish one bullet. Where do you want it?"

            What first has to be said is that while this storyline sounds interesting, it really isn’t. In fact, it’s a typical BioWare placeholder while you complete the parts of the story that actually are interesting, the side quests involving your teammates. This is both the game’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness from a narrative point of view: while the recruit and loyalty missions of your teammates are great and allow for some great characterization, it also strips the main storyline of any tension and complexity for the most part, turning it into ‘here are the big bad aliens with some master plan that you don’t care one iota about, now go kill them.’ Overall, it’s quite a far cry from Saren, the first game’s antagonist who at the end is revealed to be a more complex character than you thought and whom you could actually reason with at the end. And what do we get in Mass Effect 2? Giant enemy crabs… Even worse is that the main threat mentioned in the first game, the Reapers, are pretty much AWOL in this game, only revealing themselves at the very end, like a friendly reminder, ‘hey guys, yep, we’re still here and we’re still invading.’ Particularly now, when the third game’s been released and we can judge the trilogy in retrospect, do we see how the Collectors storyline is pretty much filler in the bigger scheme of things.

            Thankfully, the missions involving your teammates pretty much save the day and they’re effective enough to make you forget about the main storyline’s weaknesses. Whether it’s helping Garrus get revenge or convince him not to, or helping Jack deal with her past life in a Cerberus prison facility, or defending Tali when she unfairly faces exile, etc., it’s all pretty engaging and forms the emotional core of the whole experience. Indeed, this game is a very good example of what people mean when they say that characters are what define BioWare’s games, which is indeed the case here as they draw attention away from the poor main storyline. Though the main story does feature the excellent final suicide mission, it is mostly due to the bond you’ve developed with your teammates that the mission is as tense as it is.

            Now, the gameplay. This is where things enter Your Mileage May Vary territory. It’s obvious BioWare took the gameplay of the first game and streamlined it, reducing various RPG elements and turning the whole deal more into an action-packed third-person shooter. If that’s your thing, then it won’t bother you at all. In fact, you will probably appreciate combat more now that the experience has been ‘tightened.’ On the other hand, if you belong more to the RPG crowd, you’ll spend combat lamenting the presence of regenerating health and the reduction of things like talents. One need only compare this and this to see what I mean. Personally, I can’t help but feel BioWare, now that EA was their publisher, either wanted or was told to look to Gears of War for ‘inspiration’ so that they might hope to widen their audience. Unfortunately, decisions of this nature in the end mostly serve to anger the series’ loyal fans as they start bemoaning the loss of RPG elements and what not, so you have to wonder what’s the preferred option here: alienating your fan base for a few extra copies sold, losing sight of your game’s unique aspects in the process or just ‘be Mass Effect’? As for me, I’ve never really loathed the gameplay so much as tolerated it.

Oh man, this is way too fun for me...

            Something concerning gameplay that’s always baffled me was the positive critical reception of scanning planets for minerals and what not. This basically boils down to accessing a computer, selecting a part of the planet that the scanner indicates is rich with minerals, launching a probe and automatically collecting the spoils. That’s it. Why online critics praised this mind-numbingly boring busywork continues to mystify me, especially considering that in the first game you could actually control a vehicle and explore planets. Sure, there was extremely little to do there, but at least you were out there, exploring. Instead, you get to analyze every single planet in search of various types of minerals in a way that anticipated BioWare’s embracing of endless ingredient farming in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The criticism that in that Inquisition you’re a leader reduced to gathering item farming is also valid in Mass Effect 2. Why can’t I tell some of my subordinates to gather minerals while I tend to some of the more important matters at hand, like saving the universe: “Sorry guys, I’m a bit busy with recruiting and psycho-analyzing my teammates and saving the human species from the Collectors, so could you do me a solid and take on the almighty task of gathering minerals by yourselves?”

            Also, the morality system returns. Like the first game, you’re allowed to engage in conversation and depending on your responses and actions, you’ll either fill your Paragon or Renegade meter, aka good guy or bad guy. This is all fine and dandy, but the main problem is twofold: first of all, due to the dialogue wheel you’re always aware that the upper right options are the Paragon options and the bottom right the Renegade options. As a consequence, you can basically shut your brain off during conversation, because if you’re paragoning, all you have to do is always select the upper right option. Mass Effect 2’s story throws all kinds of tough moral subjects and questions at you, so it’s disappointing that responding to these things requires no intellectual effort on your part. Secondly, a handful of times the upper right option doesn’t ‘feel’ like the Paragon option, like at the end of Legion’s mission, where you decide between rewriting the Heretics’ code or destroying the base, the first option being the one that grants you Paragon points even though it seems like the artificial intelligence version of brainwashing. Another example is when you romance Miranda and she, towards the final suicide mission, begs you to promise her that you won’t die, as your death would be too devastating for her. The upper right option causes Shepard to say, “I died once already. I don’t plan on doing it again” while the middle option makes Shepard tell Miranda that he can’t promise her such a thing. Obviously, a great deal of gamers felt the middle option to be the more realistic one, the first option reminding of the scene from Team America where Lisa tells Gary that if he promised her that he will never die, she would make love to him right then and there, to which he unsurprisingly responds, “I. Promise. I. Wrisingly responds, “I. t of your time bonding with your teammates, the final mission is incredibly tense.ill. Never. Die.” Many gamers felt that telling Miranda he can’t promise such a thing was the more mature thing to do, so you can imagine their confusion that the ‘I will never die’ option was the Paragon option. Dragon Age: Origins handled conversation options much better with its simple list of options, because the order of options was always random and not listed from nice to evil. This naturally forced you to think carefully about your responses.

            All in all, you could argue that the downfall of Mass Effect, culminating in Mass Effect 3, started here in pure gameplay terms if nothing else, but it’s the characters that save Mass Effect 2. The characters are the sole reason why I’ve played through Mass Effect 2 over and over again. It’s my favourite game in the series. I like to compare it to Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, where The Dark Knight, though featuring a narrative with zero connections to the overall storyline, is almost everyone’s favourite. Similarly, Mass Effect 2’s story is of almost no consequence in the bigger scheme of things, but is nevertheless a lot of people’s favourite game in the series.

Telltale's The Walking Dead: Season Two (2013-2014) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / February 10, 2015

You know, once you've played quite a few recent Telltale titles and review one of them, you realize you've basically reviewed the other titles too. In a sense, reviews of Telltale games are somewhat interchangeable. Think about it. Let's say I reviewed a Telltale title and talked about how emotional and dramatic the storyline is, how many characters are quite likeable and how your decisions occasionally make a real narrative difference, am I then talking about their Game of Thrones series or The Walking Dead or both? It makes reviewing all their titles feel a bit superfluous when you realize you're basically repeating yourself. 

Now, this all sounds like I'm bashing these games which is not my intention at all. Despite how you might feel about Telltale's use of the Choice & Consequence system, the fact is these games' popularity derives from their emotionally engaging stories. Especially these days, when a lot of AAA titles feature emotionally inert stories and lazily developed, uninteresting characters, I'm particularly inclined to cut Telltale some slack whenever I feel their Choice & Consequence system feels contrived. 

Clementine has had enough of your shit

Anyway, the story. If you've played Season 1, then you already know that you get to control Clementine as she struggles to survive not just the zombie horde, but some of mankind's less shinier examples of human decency. Like every great zombie story, it's not about the zombies; they're simply set-dressing. Instead, it's all about group dynamics and human behavior. Season 2 embraces this theme even more fervently than the first. Honestly, I'm not inclined to reveal anything more about the story, because everything I say would just spoil the experience. Suffice to say, familiar faces return as well as new ones.

            Like the first season, season two succeeds in presenting stories that are dramatic, emotional and incredibly tense. Even if the first season’s Lee/Clementine relationship is superior to anything on display here, there’s a lot to like: Clementine’s relationship with a certain returning character from season 1; the new characters, some of them more likable than others; the game’s focus on how group dynamics are enough to cause a group to implode. Indeed, there were a few points in the story where I could connect an event with a previous one. It lends the story some cohesion instead of making it feel like a disjointed bundle of melodramatic scenes.

            There are some things fundamentally wrong with the game, however. When it was announced you would play as Clementine, I immediately began to worry about the possible implications. While it would present an interesting opportunity to play as a kid in a group of adults, it could also mean that your ‘parental’ decisions as Lee regarding Clementine would be rendered irrelevant. The great thing about season 1 was that everything you did and said had an impact on Clementine (“Clementine will remember that”). Your decisions affected how she would grow up and come to understand the world around her. You could either give it to her straight or try to be gentle and sympathetic, etc. But playing as Clementine negates the psychological impact of those decisions. Now, Clementine is no longer an autonomous person, but at the mercy of the player who gets to decide her behavior completely. The game tries desperately to link back to events of season 1 for the sake of continuity, but the fact is that you, the player, get to decide if Clementine will be colder towards those around her or friendlier. It’s up to you to either remain sympathetic to the plights of others or accelerate her maturation process by maintaining a cynical view on things and so on. In other words, you are responsible for psychological continuity which feels wrong with player-controlled characters. For instance, if you have Clementine say things that reveal a more hardened nature, then you are deciding for yourself that Clementine is somewhat abandoning Lee’s philanthropic teachings (if you behaved that way in season 1). Also, early in the game you can have Clementine burn the photo of Lee. The same problem applies here. Clementine isn't deciding this herself based on Lee's actions, but you are. You either burn the photo or don't, so you basically enforce your idea of Clementine's character development, thus negating your actions as Lee. If you controlled someone else, it would be great to see Lee’s decisions from season 1 affect Clementine’s behavior (can you imagine how awesome that would feel, to see Clem ‘doing the right thing’ because Lee taught her right?), but deciding for yourself how Clem acts just doesn’t work. On the other hand, I understand why Telltale did it, as season 2 would just feel like a rehash if you would play the surrogate father again, aka Lee 2.0.

My other complaint is more obvious and centers on the Choice & Consequence system. Telltale of course tells us that the game will adapt to your choices, but this is a half-truth. Just look at the endings of which there are five. Which one you’re rewarded with isn’t established by decisions made throughout the story, but only by a few decisions at the end. And if you’ve played season one several times or read about the impact of your choices, you’ll quickly realize that your choices mostly decide two things: who lives or dies and how others behave towards you and each other.

What always cracks me up are the synopses available on wikis, etc. Read a few and count how often you encounter lines like “regardless of your choice” and “regardless of what you do,” etc. Most people stumble across these lines when going online to figure out whether a certain event can be avoided, only to be confronted with something like, “regardless of your actions, character X will die.” Those are the times gamers silently condemn Telltale: “the story adapts to my choices, my ass! That’s some false advertising right there!”

The fact is that you have to temper your expectations on how much ‘the story is tailored by how you play.’ The reason why isn’t because of laziness on Telltale’s part (not necessarily anyway), it’s because too much freedom can cause stories to become unfocused and lose dramatic impact. Season 2’s main theme is obviously how human beings are compelled to stay together on the one hand and the danger of group dynamics on the other. You and others try desperately to keep the group together and yet it feels like it will inevitably go downhill no matter what. This means that most parts of the story are inevitable,  since the story has to make its point and it can’t do that when you’re given too much control. This problem also affected Mass Effect 3. That story deliberately made a big deal about how ‘you can’t save everyone’ and the only way it can convey that point is to limit the impact of your choices and have some characters die. Choice has to take a backseat for the sake of Drama. As for this game, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: while it’s undeniably disappointing to find out how much your choices really matter (or don’t), the game is incredibly tense when it needs to be and it’s thrilling to engage in conversations with what are overall well-written characters. So, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether a flawed Choice & Consequence system will prohibit from experiencing a dramatic story and well-written characters.

Clem telling it like it is

I am glad I played it, although I doubt I’ll do so again soon. I’ve never thought it worth it to go through all that emotional torment again for a few minor story variations. Either way, Telltale definitely didn’t screw up the sequel and I can’t wait for Season 3. For various spoiler-ridden comments on the game, see below.

Warning: spoilers

-I mentioned earlier I noticed certain parts of the story that felt connected to each other and that they lent cohesion to the proceedings. I'm referring to the notion of slapping. Take William Carver, the antagonist who forces Carlos to slap his daughter, Sarah, to teach her a lesson. While a nasty scene, Carver’s intention is to instill in Sarah the idea that it’s all about the group, the underlying assumption being that any weakness could mean the eventual dissolution of the group. Naturally, Sarah not being a mentally tough cookie can’t deal with this and quickly retreats into her own private world. And we especially condemn the action now that parenting that includes violence is being regarded more and more as incredibly to a child’s emotional development. But then something else happens, the game proves Carver’s point. After Carver’s killed and lots of shit has gone down, you team up with Jane to rescue Luke and Sarah, who are trapped inside a house. Naturally, they can’t leave because zombies are busy bashing their door down. You distract the zombies and quickly enter the house. You all try to leave, but Sarah has gone into a catatonic state. She doesn’t move no matter what you say to her. At the very last second, you’re given a choice to either leave her or slap her. Slapping her snaps her out of her catatonic state and she survives. The fact that she dies later no matter what you do is something we’ll leave out of this for the moment. The fact remains that Carver’s method symbolically ensures her survival for the moment.

            Another mention of slapping occurs near the end, when the group has gotten hold of a working car and the group starts angrily arguing about the best course of action: Kenny wants to leave right away for Wellington, while others think the better option is to return to Carver’s warehouse which must now be abandoned. They decide to do nothing for the moment. Kenny angrily gets in the car. You also get in to talk with him. The following is a part of their conversation about Rebecca and Alvin’s infant son:

Kenny: We’ve got maybe a day’s worth of food for that kid left. That’s it. Clem, think about Rebecca and Alvin. I mean, what if Lee hadn’t gone tearin’ across half of Georgia lookin’ for you? A lotta folks died to make that happen. A lotta folks died to get us this far. We owe it to them to see this done.

Clementine: Maybe they shouldn’t have.

Kenny: Don’t say that. I oughta slap you.

Now remember that Kenny is overall a 'good guy' and this last line only occurs if you say ‘maybe they shouldn’t have.’ What’s interesting is that Kenny’s response is in line with Carver’s way of thinking, where a kid gets slapped if they’re out of line. Though only a short line, it fits in with the notion that Kenny’s becoming more and more like Carver. Carver’s the type of antagonist who proves his point beyond death. If you agreed with some of Carver’s points despite not wanting to, you know what I’m talking about. Despite his methods, he sees through everyone, sees Kenny for what he is and mocks everyone for thinking they know better. So, when Kenny kills Carver, he symbolically starts transforming into Carver which makes his use of the word ‘slap’ more telling. It also fits with what is a large part of the game: the question whether or not Kenny’s losing it and will become an unwilling danger to the group and thus to Clem. His use of the word ‘slap’ is thus a nice way of tying his character development back to Carver. It’s little things like this that makes the story feel 'tighter.'

-There’s also the case of some of the more dreadful examples of the writing in season 2. The examples I could name off the top of my head are Arvo and Luke’s death. What I think ruins the Arvo character is that he hates Clementine, because she shot his sister and doesn’t realize she had already ‘turned.’ Okay, this is a simple misunderstanding that can be resolved with a conversation or two, right…right? Not really. Telltale doesn’t allow you to really engage in conversation with Arvo. If they did, it might’ve impacted his decision to leave with Mike and Bonnie. You’re forced into this mode where you think it’s best to keep him safe solely because you assume it’ll pay off eventually. But it doesn’t. He just shoots you, thus enforcing the theme of how groups will eventually fall apart. Maybe he’ll return in season3, but as it stands, the way his character was handled was quite weak.

            As for Luke, that’s just a pointless death. The most effective deaths are centered around having to leave someone behind so you can save someone else or something and group dynamics and all that, but this just feels random. Seems strange for someone who’s been there since episode 1 to die so randomly.

-I also wanted to discuss Jane, as I noticed by glancing through YouTube’s ever so tasteful and well-articulated comment sections that she gets a lot of flak, many of them ending with a hashtag like #TeamKenny4Life. These comments tend to focus on how Kenny is badass, all about family and would never hurt the baby and Clementine, and since the final conflict centers on Kenny vs Jane, people automatically choose between the two and are quick to condemn Jane for being a 'crazed sociopath' who tricked Kenny into losing his mind. This is missing the point however.

Consider her backstory. She had to carry around a sister, Jaime, who had no desire to live anymore, just like Clementine and the others are carrying Sarah around. Jane realized there was no possible way she’d survive with someone like that, so she left her and saved herself. This is the origin of her pragmatic, cynical loner outlook on life. When she starts interacting with Clementine, however, she quickly bonds with her. For all her talk about how it’s best to survive on your own, people are social creatures by nature and will eventually seek out human contact. (Just look at Cast Away for an extreme example.) Jane bonds with Clementine and starts to see her like another sister. By this time, it’s already too late for Jane. She’s gone into full-on surrogate sister mode. She subconsciously realizes this and tries to leave, but it’s only a matter of time before she returns. Many detractors like to refer to the fact that Jane left the group in episode 4, seeing it as a surefire sign that Jane will undoubtedly leave Clementine when the shit hits the fan. But guess what? She returns precisely when the shit hits the fan and plays a crucial role in the ambush by the Russians, saving Kenny’s and everyone’s lives in the process. She tells Clementine that she’s 90% of the reason why she came back. By this time, she’s completely attached to Clementine and would do anything to prevent losing her ‘sister’ a second time.

            This is why she starts seeing anyone who could harm Clem as dangerous, including Kenny. The story does a good job of suggesting his mental and moral breakdown, leaving you to doubt whether it’s just a phase (“I’ve seen that look before”) and that he’d never screw up too bad or that he’s simply losing it. About halfway through season 2, he’ll have lost two wives and a son. Once he has to take a leading role in nursing the baby, he sees the baby (and to a slightly lesser extent Clementine) as the one good thing worth living for, a chance to start over. All you have to remember is he accidentally called Clementine by his dead son’s name (‘Duck’) to know why he symbolically sees the baby as his resurrected son, a chance to do what he couldn’t do for Duck. But despite these good intentions, Kenny keeps suffering more and more and the group starts to distrust him and his volatile temper. In fact, he’s most likely the reason Mike and Bonnie tried to leave with Arvo. Combine his increasing temper with Jane’s cynical view on humanity and she assumes that sooner or later, Kenny will unwittingly cause Clem to get hurt. This is why she stages the scene at the rest area the way she does. She wants to show Clem what Kenny really is/has become and what he’s capable of. After Jane tells them in so many words that the baby’s dead, Kenny flips, naturally. Though from a rational standpoint it’s stupid he talks to Jane as if she outright killed the baby, he cannot help but see her as solely responsible for his death and attacks her. If (depending on your decision) he kills Jane, he’ll come to regret it, claiming he’s lost it, and ask Clem to shoot him (which you can refuse, of course). Like Carver in death proved his point about Kenny, so does Jane’s death prove her point about him. In her mind, Kenny is a ticking time bomb who, when he explodes, will indirectly bring harm to Clem in the process and now that she sees Clem as a sister, she will do anything to prevent this from happening.

            Others also speculate that, provided you have the ending where you stay at Howe’s with Jane, Jane will eventually leave Clem when things go sour and her own life is at stake. While I’m not denying this is possible, I feel that she had her chance to leave in episode 4. She knew she was getting too emotionally attached and tried to leave, staying true to her ethos, but in the end couldn’t bring herself to stay away. She’d gotten too attached to Clem. Now, she’s fully committed to seeing her as a sister, so I highly doubt she’ll leave in season 3, as the anguish of losing her ‘sister’ a second time would be too much, I think.

            In fact, when you think about it, the entire ending involving Kenny and Jane seems very much inspired by The Last of Us! That story revolves around a father, Joel, who symbolically resurrects his dead daughter through a teenage girl, Ellie. As he lost a daughter once, losing his ‘daughter’ (Ellie) again would be unimaginable. So, he kills the doctors and rebels at the end who regard her immunity as the key to saving what’s left of humanity. For Joel, that’s too high a price to pay for losing his ‘daughter’ a second time. In the same way, Kenny regards the baby as his dead son Duck, while Jane sees Clem as a second Jaime. And both are prepared to take drastic measures to prevent them from dying.