My Reasoning For My Disgust at Nick and Sarah's Treatment
Sarah:
A sweet girl, sheltered from the horrors of the outside world by Carlos. She suffers from fits of deep anxiety as seen when she says she can't breathe when Carver visits the cabin. It is hinted at that she wants to help the group more and become more aware of what's really going in "A House Divided" when you have the opportunity to "distract" her. You can teach her how to shoot a gun. You can become her friend. This could have led to some interesting possibilities for her character arc which I feel was left unresolved and ignored. For example, when she falls off the deck in "Amid the Ruins", it could have led to a scenario where she has to defend herself and depending if you taught her to shoot or not, she survives. The only way to force her to move is to slap her in the trailer which I feel is just as much a slap to the face of Sarah as it is to players who want Sarah to survive. The developers of that episode are saying, "This girl is worthless. Why are you trying to save her? She sucks so much. Screw your feelings." And the fact that she dies in the same episode is even more them laughing at such a character. Why would she be standing out there? Why wouldn't she be inside with Rebecca? No one even tries to save her when everyone has a gun. The circumstances surrounding her death seems like the writer of Ep. 4 completely disregards everything we ever did to help Sarah early in the season. Poor fucking kid, she deserved better.
Nick:
Suffers easily from depression and unsure of himself, seen in "A House Divided" if you go with him instead of Pete. "Luke can go from place to place, he can just keep moving. I'm not...built like that." You can convince him that life is worth living, give him Pete's watch, save him from Walter, and it's all for nothing. After having much of the focus in Ep. 1 and Ep. 2, someone decided he wasn't worth it anymore and condemned him to die a meaningless death when he gets stuck in a fence in Ep. 4. I understand he was a determinant character after Ep. 2 and determinant characters are doomed to die, but his death was meaningless. Luke sends him out for help, the injured guy, his best friend of 20 years with no weapon? That seems so far-fetched and just so stupid. Luke would think logically and realize that Nick shouldn't be moving. If anything, Luke would go himself. Saving him in "A House Divided" has absolutely no impact on anything at all. Again, the guys who wrote Ep. 4 told us that Nick was useless and not worth saving. Oh and having to hit walker Nick 3 times, and splitting his skull was the final slap in the face, as if they were saving, "Look this is the guy you saved back then. Say bye to him, he was the T-Dog of Ep. 3!" EDIT: Nick and Sarah were two very real people suffering from very real emotions that people suffer from all the time in life.
Saving Sarah does nothing. Saving Nick does nothing. J.T. Petty and Eric Stripe made sure of that when they died.. At least when you save this guy, we get this awesome scene of awesomeness where Ben finally grows a backbone.
I miss Sean Vanaman. And I miss Season 1 writing. Season 2 could have been spectacular. Instead, it was just ok.
Comments
I understand where the complaining is coming from but I personally don't think it made the season bad.
Never said it made it bad. It just wasn't as good as it possibly could have been imo...
I meant it was still great to me.
Opinions, I guess.
EDIT: Nevermind, carry on
Oops. My bad. Just got a little too angry about it lol, I'll edit it out.
Good points here, they were pretty bad but I wasn't too bothered with it as for me Nick died in the second episode and I didn't think Sarah would snap out of it during the moment and left her (also part of the dark Clem route I guess)
Never meant to start anything. I don't usually get like that. I don't know what happened.
Thank you.
Oh. This again.
I take it this was a really big deal when the fourth episode came out?
Sorry! I wasn't around on the forums when Amid the Ruins came out. You don't have to comment on this anyway if it bothers you...
Probably the most talked about subject other than the gunfight. I think this was talked about more than the cliffhanger, and I believe it was rightly so.
Lol sorry, how do you save Nick? Do you have to say he's a good man? Cus I stayed Silent and was hoping Nick would explain himself just to see him get eaten by geeks literally a couple min. later
Sarah's death was good. Nick's death was awful
Yup. Telling Walter that Nick is a good guy will make Walter shoot the walker Nick is struggling with. Of course, this has little impact as Nick does nothing for the rest of his lifespan.
Oh okay. I just joined yesterday so I have no clue what went on before I joined so thanks for explaining it!
Yes he does too! Didn't you read the fine print in the forum rule stickies?
It says: "If a topic bothers you you MUST comment on it, on penalty of having your save files erased."
Ah. Well shit, oh well lol I guess it was a better death than the one he got in episode 4.
To be honest, I was sadface when Sara died and I thought it was well done.
With Nick, I didn't really care. When I saw him I think I remember actually saying (or thinking): "Awe man!... Well... it's probably for the best."
I basically never got over him killing Matthew, but since it was him being a fuckup I didn't want to see him offed outright for it. I also promised Pete I'd look out for him, so I couldn't feel right about practically saying "You should kill the fucker."
You have the right to have your own opinion, this doesn't bother me, I actually support it. Sorry if I was rude.
Nah, its all good. Like you said, we all have the rights to have our opinions here.
Sarah's death was quite amusing i agree. She was like AAAAAAAAAAH CLementine. AHhh Daddy., Good times.
I also liked both characters and tried to pick options that helped them, I thought Nick confessing what he did on the bridge was a really touching scene and at that point he was one of my favourite characters. The most disturbing moment in the series for me was when Carlos was forced to hit Sarah, that scene really stuck with me and made me feel for sarah. Did they die for no good reason? Yes, but thats often times what happens, people die and its usually with a whimper instead of a roar. I would of liked to see more of both of them but then what? Have telltale be afraid to kill off anyone likable or if they do only when its some big emotional sacrifice to save the group? If they did that I think this series would lose a lot of the suspence it has. You could say that the point of their deaths was to make you as the player feel as if noone is safe. Also the fact that you got so angry with their deaths in my opinion shows that the writers knew at least a little of what they were doing to provoke such an emotional response. Now I have to admit that I normally don't pay attention to which writers write which episodes so I judge the season as a whole and as a whole I enjoyed it, including the deaths of Sarah and Nick.
Rekt.
I mean, what were you expecting from Sarah? To climb out of insanity and become badass like Clementine?
What would've been better is having Sarah died before Carlos. That way we can see Carlos on the brink of insanity.
Too bad they screwed that up. It would have been perfect had they continued Carlos's character from Ep. 2, when Luke said, "Don't worry Sarah. Your dad is one of the nicest guys I know. Which is why he won't do anything mean or not nice, right Carlos?"
This heavily implies that he had anger and temper problems in the past. It would have been good to see him change. Unfortunately someone decided Kenny should suffer all over again, so they killed off Carlos.
Let me show you something odd about Sarah's death that @nadir-of-humanity pointed out a while ago.
Did you read the Amid the ruins Masterpost (especially NIck and Sarah parts)? you might change your point of view after reading it.
and Kenny being a dick to clem.
I wrote an analysis on this back when episode 4 came out.
Needless to say I agree with you a lot.
In my opinion. You couldn't tell Season 1 was written by different people, it felt like one cohesive effort as if writers took into consideration other's ideas and kept pushing forward the ideas and themes the previous episode has set into motion. For me, there is a noticeable drop off in quality and quantity when we jump into Episode 3 of Season 2. We stop this great development of Carver as a great threat, an intelligent human being who might be right, to his transformation to the Governor 2.0. We lost the great feelings previous episodes had set into place, like Nick's depression. Consistency was off and there was a noticeable imbalance between character hubs and action. Compare this to Season 1 where each episode felt like another installment into the story of Lee, and "In Harm's Way" felt like a completely different person wrote it, and I feel it's another reason why Season 2's writing was just not up to par like Season 1's was.
As disappointing as Sarah's deaths were, and disgusting and lazy as it was that they only exist because the then current writers apparently did't like her character, the deck death inadvertently did serve one purpose for me at least. It helped me understand Kenny's motivation in S1 when he stays behind with Ben. Watching Sarah die is so horrible that I had the overwhelming urge just to make Clem leapt down there and make a doomed last stand if just because, in the moment at least, the alternative actually seemed worse to me. I'm wondering if Kenny felt the same way in that alley. That after everything he had done, he couldn't stand the idea of living with himself if just let something like that happen again.
Yes season 1 was much more focused, you always knew what was coming and season 2 didn't have that same drive, but is that really such a bad thing? I mean one of my favourite moments in the last episode was just spending time around the campfire talking with the people still alive. I liked the fact that it was the final episode and I had no clue what would happen in that episode and while some of the things that happened were a bit off for me (crossing the ice for example) it all ended with me definitely entertained. It felt like watching Breaking Bad in a weird way, that in the second season of the show stuff didn't always have to happen, that they could allow their characters to be in a room and just talk and that be the whole scene. Now about Nick he pretty much disappeared in episode three but that was probably due to the fact that he could have died in the previous episode, so yes about Nick in episode 3 I agree with you. As to Carver, he was shown to be pretty ruthless in the second episode so I honestly thought he was consistent in the third of course he was extreme but so is tracking Clementine's group and killing people to get back Rebecca who is obviously terrified of Carver and who has a baby that's probably not even his. My point is he was already governor 2.0 I guess I just wanted to say is that while this season did feel less focused I actually enjoyed that fact.
I hope this doesn't escalate into a colossal circlejerk again. The amount of arguing had me exhausted last time.
I think you kinda missed my point. I said Season 1 was consistent in its writing. Season 2 wasn't as consistent. It felt as if the writer for the 3rd episode didn't even look at the stuff the writers of Ep. 1 and 2 did and just decided to do whatever the heck they wanted by changing characters personalities quickly (Made Carlos meek and focusing less on the cabin group and more on Kenny. And Nick disappeared in the 3rd episode but remember Ben? If you save Ben in Ep. 4, he still plays a large role in the 5th episode by standing up to Kenny. It's not that hard to just have Clementine talk to Nick, ask him how he's doing, little things like that. In Ep. 2, Carlos says "William Carver is a dangerous man. He is extremely intelligent and very dangerous." Carver even looks at the chess board, saying "whites three moves from checkmate," implying he was very smart. However the dude we meet in Ep. 3 is motivated purely by force and violence, just pushing further and further, killing Reggie, torturing and killing Alvin, bashing Kenny's eye in until it comes back to bite him in the face. He's not a very smart or intelligent man by his actions, yet prior to Ep. 3, it was hinted at very strongly that he was a force to be reckoned with and not just the Governor 2.0. It's just a shame how badly they screwed up consistency wise.
Sarah: should have survived the season.
Nick: same place as his ep 4 death, but barely alive. To make it more emotional.
Yes, I feel the same. Hard to find something original here recently, but I guess that makes sense after Season 2 came to an end.
Also, I like your new profil picture.
I felt worse about Sarah's death than Clementine. Even though i don't show it.
I probably would of said something insensitive, like " Sarah needs a bandaid."
Also Bonnie & Mike (Or Luke, not sure) would have AK-47s & then shoot only like 2 walkers going into Sarah, then they stop shooting suddenly..