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The Illusion Of Choice in TWD

ClemsHatClemsHat
in The Walking Dead

Season 2 of the walking dead was amazing.
However the more players play the game the more coy they are to fake choices.
I totally understand that for budget/ narrative reasons characters have to die, but some of them in season 2 could have been handled better.
Here are two examples
Nick: First off, it should have been harder to have him die, as only a small minority failed. His death was handled badly because A) the player had no input in it. B) It was totally random and didn't enhance the plot. C) It followed directly after another two characters (Sarita and Carlos) died in a similar random manner that the player had no control over. These three factors compounded made his death feel cheap and meaningless, and it could have easily been solved.

The end of episode 4 was a cliffhanger shoot-out. When at the start of episode 5 the player found out no-one in clementine's group dies, it felt unrealistic and disappointing. If Nick had died here instead, it would have made the scene climactic instead of anticlimactic and the following dialogue over whether or not your Clementine wants to kill Arvo a lot more morally grey. Episode 4 all happens in one place aswell so it would have been quite easily to have him barely present, only maybe showing up a few times in the course of the episodes (maybe to chase the racoon with Mike and Bonnie.)

Sarah: You can't have a determinant to save a character half way through an episode for them only to die at the end. The choice is made arbitrary, the player doesn't feel any emotional after effects from the decision. The player could have pondered her fate after leaving the keyboard for hours, instead of fifteen minutes. I'm not sure how you could have sorted this but she should have at least remained until episode 5.

Also: You can get away with this a few times (you just about did in season 1) But the more it happens the more aware the player gets. It happened to many times in season two where it seemed like a character died just to advance the plot or to reduce production costs (Pete, Alvin, Carlos, Sarita, Nick, Sarah, Rebecca). It's important to find clever way's round this so the audience doesn't feel cheated. Your game's are about questioning your decisions and what the right thing to do is, but this is nullified if the player believes there choices doesn't matter either way. Sometimes the inability to change what happens is impactful (Luke's death) but no-one likes to feel the game is playing itself. Towards the end of season 2 I just ignored the "They will remember this" sign.

Moments like in season 1 when the kidnapper commented on how you looked after Clementine, or Vernon getting angry at me for letting go of ben ( I was thinking about spaces on the boat alright!) or Luke telling me he didn't understand how I watched Carver's death (I regretted it afterwards too :S) make you really feel like an active force in the story.

It is expensive to create content that only some of your players will actually see, but you can make it seem as though there is more of it than there is.
If you have any ideas of places in season 2 where they could have disguised inevitable events as impacts from previous decisions the player made or advice on how they could avoid the illusion of choice being broken in season 3 then suggest them below, because this one thing is holding the series back from being one of the greatest narrative games ever made.

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