The Walking Dead

[subbes]

Ugh. Dammit. This game. This gaaaaaaaame. I didn't cry, but I got sad. Clementine's story is so heart-wrenching.

I had a bug at the beginning where the game forgot my choices and started me with the wrong group; I quit and restarted and that fixed it.

welp next stop Fables.

[Twig]

god

damnit

[Brannigan]

whoops played the whole thing in about a day. I swear I just got dust in my eyes, yup, just dust.

[Upthrust]

God, the arm. Does it even make sense to cut it off? How many diseases can you actually treat by cutting off a limb? But I didn't hesitate one bit. Obviously the arm had to go.

The number of emotions that ended up tied up in that little stump, it was like the mascot of Episode 5.

[Brannigan]

God, the arm. Does it even make sense to cut it off? How many diseases can you actually treat by cutting off a limb? But I didn't hesitate one bit. Obviously the arm had to go.

The number of emotions that ended up tied up in that little stump, it was like the mascot of Episode 5.

In the Walking Dead fiction, it does prevent the bite infection if the limb is severed quickly enough, for Lee it was too long after.

[subbes]

[CaptainFish]

Holy shit. Amazing..

They really managed to make me feel like shit. Here I thought I was taking the moral high road, but I still ended being a terrible person and not even noticing.

And the ending was just sequence was fantastic

[CaptainFish]

Oh, did anyone else think that

that the gun struggle with Stranger would end with Clementine getting shot? The way the gun wildly swings around, and the sound cue if you struggle and fail to press the last button for a while had me scared. I actually failed on purpose after I saw the motion of it, because I was more worried about Clem, and had to take a little break to work myself up to succeeding at it.

[TurboPubx-16]

When I had the stranger up against the wall I purposely failed the prompt so I wouldn't strangle him to death in front of Clem. When Clem ended up killing him for me I felt like the biggest idiot.

Did anyone get Clementine to shoot Lee at the end? If so, what the fuck is wrong with you?

[Brannigan]

When I had the stranger up against the wall I purposely failed the prompt so I wouldn't strangle him to death in front of Clem. When Clem ended up killing him for me I felt like the biggest idiot.

Did anyone get Clementine to shoot Lee at the end? If so, what the fuck is wrong with you?

I did, I thought about it as much as I could for sure. But she's going to have to be tough if she's going to survive, and that means making tough choices like that.

[Korax]

When I had the stranger up against the wall I purposely failed the prompt so I wouldn't strangle him to death in front of Clem. When Clem ended up killing him for me I felt like the biggest idiot.

Did anyone get Clementine to shoot Lee at the end? If so, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Maybe I missed a cue, but it wasn't clear to me whether I was just choking him into unconsciousness or actually strangling him to death, but at the moment, it didn't matter. I actually bared my teeth and muttered something to the effect of "You're going down, you motherfucker!" as I pounded on the button. I kept waiting for him to get up before we left the room, but he never did.

[Reusable-Box]

I'd like to add another to the sea of tears confirming that the Countdown to tears is completely and totally over. Burst like the dam holding back the roaring stream of tears that were produced. GOTY 2012.

[Twig]

Maybe I missed a cue, but it wasn't clear to me whether I was just choking him into unconsciousness or actually strangling him to death, but at the moment, it didn't matter. I actually bared my teeth and muttered something to the effect of "You're going down, you motherfucker!" as I pounded on the button. I kept waiting for him to get up before we left the room, but he never did.

He was shot in the head. Lee taught Clementine well. ):

[Erkki]

Off topic: the countdown to tears actually ended for me last year with To The Moon. And The Walking Dead was the second ever game to make me cry. So if you want to spray some more tears on your keyboard, at the moment To The Moon is 50% off on Steam (4€).

[a purple future]

goddammit Vanaman. I didn't cry but I feel sick to my stomach. In a good way I guess? But yeah, I mean, shit,

SOME catharsis wouldn't have hurt

Only if it's the gift of awkward family moments and obesity! :rimshot:

My one complaint about episode 5:

The "desperate person in bed who shot himself rather than live in a world of zombies (bonus if it's two people holding hands) isn't this aftermath striking and poignant" is groan-inducingly cliche to me. I almost didn't believe it was happening.

strangely, that didn't bother me, but I also had one moment that kind of bugged me.

when the stranger started talking to the head in the bag. I feel the writing was effective enough already that I didn't need to be smacked in the face with "HE'S CRAZY" to make my decision on how to act. I guess that's a weird backhanded compliment. Have faith in your writing and in your audience's ability to respond to subtle cues. It worked just fine without that.

[Frenetic Pony]

Finally got this, the entire "season" in the Amazon sale.

It's a wonderful adventure game when it's not being an adventure game! I loved the beginning, (so far, Episode 1) the kind of blurry action sequences and exploration and decision making. But then, of course, it goes into "adventure game mode!" Where I basically hunt for what the heck it is I can interact with and try rubbing a piece of shit against a piece of crap to make some sort of golden unicorn appear.

Normally I really just can not stand this about adventure games. But I'm pretty sure I'm willing to stand it here to get back to the parts I enjoy. I guess I'm trying to say "excellent job, even from someone that normally despises most adventure games!"

[pabosher]

There is basically 0 of that post Episode 2, and Ep 2's implementation of that isn't super hard to complete.

[Noyb]

Holy shit. Just finished episode 5. Great writing. Great acting. Great virtual camera work. Well done all around.

The *only* thing that bothered me about the ending was that I wasn't able to tell Clem to kill the zombie instead of trying to steal from it while it was still alive. *Only* thing.

@Frenetic Pony - There are *some* puzzles in later episodes, but it's by no means the focus. Most of them make sense, are situated within a logical, physical world. It also helps immensely that the game's design usually only allows you to perform actions or use held items when it's useful to do so (or funny with the remote control + padlock from episode 1). I was a bit worried about pixel hunting after the battery/food (optional?) puzzles from episode 1, but that isn't an issue in later episodes.

I don't know what to think about the Kenny and Ben thing, it's kinda strange that he went from "I hate you, Ben!" to "I'll die for you, Ben!"

Major episode 5 spoilers:

That made more sense in my playthrough, where he saved Christa and her unborn child as an atonement of sorts for not being able to save Hershel's son or his own wife and child.

[mjukis]

Ugh. I feel awful.

[Frenetic Pony]

Episode 2 was still good, but didn't have the interesting choices of 1, and made you feel like you had less freedom. I suppose it's because you aren't railroaded as much, but the end stats seem to support the whole "less interesting choices" as the vast majority of people lined up with me on every decision.

Starting Episode 3, and the splaschscreen reminds me only of:

[vimes]

Like I said before, this is an important game, but there really needs to be some kind of tool to reconstruct lost savegames: I just switched from win7 to 8 and my existing state is being ignored.

It's been since last week that I'm trying more or less random stuff to make it work. I don't think I want to see the last episode with a randomly generated state.

[Kolzig]

Holy shit. Just finished episode 5. Great writing. Great acting. Great virtual camera work. Well done all around.

The *only* thing that bothered me about the ending was that I wasn't able to tell Clem to kill the zombie instead of trying to steal from it while it was still alive. *Only* thing.

@Frenetic Pony - There are *some* puzzles in later episodes, but it's by no means the focus. Most of them make sense, are situated within a logical, physical world. It also helps immensely that the game's design usually only allows you to perform actions or use held items when it's useful to do so (or funny with the remote control + padlock from episode 1). I was a bit worried about pixel hunting after the battery/food (optional?) puzzles from episode 1, but that isn't an issue in later episodes.

Major episode 5 spoilers:

That made more sense in my playthrough, where he saved Christa and her unborn child as an atonement of sorts for not being able to save Hershel's son or his own wife and child.

Was it ever confirmed that Christa is pregnant as I didn't get anything of that during my playthrough and in my opinion she definitely wasn't pregnant as when they escaped to the attic and while Lee, Kenny and Christa were sitting on the couches, Kenny started drinking and offered a drink to Lee and to Christa. She hesitated for a moment but took a really long drink from the bottle. You wouldn't do that if you were pregnant, am I right?

In my playthrough Kenny also saved Christa and then got himself killed in the room with the zombies.

[Tanukitsune]

Was it ever confirmed that Christa is pregnant as I didn't get anything of that during my playthrough and in my opinion she definitely wasn't pregnant as when they escaped to the attic and while Lee, Kenny and Christa were sitting on the couches, Kenny started drinking and offered a drink to Lee and to Christa. She hesitated for a moment but took a really long drink from the bottle. You wouldn't do that if you were pregnant, am I right?

Lee said to Christa that she was doing something for two, I can't remember what, but I do know that's what Americans say when that person is pregnant? It happened right before crossing the metal sign.

By the way, did anybody NOT cut Lee's arm off? What happens?

[Laxan]

Lee said to Christa that she was doing something for two, I can't remember what, but I do know that's what Americans say when that person is pregnant? It happened right before crossing the metal sign.

By the way, did anybody NOT cut Lee's arm off? What happens?

I was really impressed when Lee said that. It was fairly obvious that Christa was pregnant in Episode 4 (maybe 3 too, I can't remember) and kept waiting, in episode 5, for Lee to add up the clues and have a video game character "VERBALISE PLOTPOINT" moment. So when he just naturally dropped it, I was reminded that Lee was supposed to be a real person that would actually pick up on these things too. (While also acknowledging that the player is sentient and has probably guessed it by now).

I guess this comes back to that weird divide between character knowledge and player knowledge that the first episode played around with.

Usually in video games, it's either the character has inferred something and has to verbalise it to the player ("This map looks like the ancient city of X!"), or the player has guessed something and gets frustrated at not being able to communicate this to a character: ("No! He's obviously the bad guy stop working for him you idiot").

It was rad that TWD allowed players to infer things and not have to hold the characters hands and walk them through it, while also not feeling the need to shout out every thought a character would have.

[youmeyou]

I got a lot of that "character knowing stuff player doesn't and teasing knowledge out through dialogue options" in the conversation between Lee and the Stranger. After five episodes of Lee being secretive about his past, this was the chance to lay it all out. Or to let it remain a secret forever. And it's as much for the player's benefit as the Stranger's. More so, even. So details inferred become reality, but not in a hit-you-over-the-head way.