Was the Larry/meat locker choice ambiguous enough?
Deltino
Moderator
While this is a choice that has been a controversial one since day one, and has played a pivotal role in the reception and direction of Kenny's character, let's stop beating around the bush and ask ourselves a simple question: was the Larry choice too black and white and lacking in ambiguity, or was it adequately presented as a grey choice?
I've always been back and forth with this scene. On the outside, it seems pretty well-handled. But at the same time, I feel there's elements that could have been handled much better than they were. Case in point being the 'breaths' Larry takes if you give him CPR. At the absolute base, they were undoubtedly intended to be ambiguous: were they really breaths, or the beginning of a walker? But the problem is that with the way they're implemented in the scene (the fact that they only trigger if you reach 4 chest compressions), it ends up making it look more like he's alive than anything, which just breaks the intended ambiguity of them in the first place
So that brings us back to the main question: was this choice handled and represented well enough so that both sides could be seen and argued as being reasonable, or did it inadvertently end up becoming too cut and dry, seeming to be in favor and in support of one outcome over the other?
Comments
The "breath" was actually said to be a sort of glitch at the time of release, even developers seemed a bit surprised at it.
However yes it is one of the better choices, Kenny is asking you to do something rash however whatever the playstyle Kenny has done more for you at that point. Lilly was more neutral and Larry outright negative.
All the options and characters behaviours seem rational to or at least understandable.
Kenny's overeaction to that moment was maybe a bit on the down side (everything in the choice and episode 2 perhaps but being negative from that moment on was ridiculous)
Also no I dont think the argument is cut and dry, Larry is dead or isnt nothing proves that.
Even if the breath was a breath that just got larry breathing, the heart attack would still be happening and likely kill him anyway, there are dozens of factors and rationales
It the "breath" was really a glitch as Firewallcano says (I hear that for the first time), than it was ambiguous enough for me. I didn't see him breathe, because I tried to give him a proper heart massage, which wouldn't have been so fast as to press more than four times in this short amount of time. Or maybe I was just slow.
But if the breath was meant to be seen by the player ... this would take out much of the ambiguity and lasting impression of this situation. Kenny could have never stopped his strike, even if he did see it. And no matter if it was intended to be as ambiguous as you say - real breaths or the beginning of walker - people would tend to interpret it as "Larry was alive", because wishful thinking.
Overall I think the choice was well done - I had more problems with Kenny's behaviour afterwards. He would let you get caught later in the shed, because you tried to revive Larry? Kenny valued it if you support his family, but trying to revive Larry was no direct choice against his family and more a sign of Lee's selflessness - so his deeply insulted and backstabbing behaviour was a bit too much there.
I've said this a million times, and I'll say it again since I'm apparently a broken record. It's not only what happened in the meat locker that makes Kenny a condemnable murderer, but the actions that transpired afterwards if you choose not to aid him.
-He apologizes once immediately after the incident, most likely not out of any remorse but a simple defense mechanism to further himself from the crime and absolve himself of any further guilt. Much like a child who breaks something that he knew would happens but thinks it's ok because he apologized.
-He then indiscriminately turns on Lee and pits blame on him for not helping his homicidal plan.
-He completely shuts out any advice or judgments Lee passes if he chooses to pass them, ignoring all manner of direct interaction with him.
-He sits behind a barn stall while Lee is not only attacked but is about to be gunned down in cold blood. Kenny sits back trying to get rid of any evidence of the incident because although stupid, he knows what he did was wrong. Yet never makes any strides to amend the pain he's caused. Also; and I've stated this as well, but if Kenny's actions in the meat locker could be linked to him wanting to free his family. Why then does that ruthless apropos stop at him helping take down a threatening individual who is ready to harm his chances of freeing his family?
-He then tries to single-handedly claim that he was the one who freed his family and continuously buds heads with Lilly and refuses to show any remorse for his actions. Snidely signing at her sorrowful reminder.
All these things are what make him, and to an extent, the scene very black or white and show Kenny to be little more than a violent bully to anyone who doesn't kiss his ass.
The mention of Kenny was a bit of an offhand comment on my part, but I was really looking to focus on the meat locker scene exclusively, and whether or not the scene and choice on their own were both handled and presented well. Kenny's behavior that follows this scene is an entirely different beast to tackle
I think it did really well in being a 'grey' choice to this day I still don't know what the best choice is as for the breath he takes even if it does show that he's alive you don't see the breath until after you've made a choice.
You had asked for the opinion in which the scene was presented, I'm simply stating that in order for the scene in it's entirety to be dissected and discussed on, the actions of Kenny as a whole have to be understood first.
Since these characters aren't truly good or evil, their portrayal is that of regular people stuck in the ZA, the situation they were stuck in leaves you wondering. So many elements can cause you to choose killing Larry or helping him, but I'm sure few people did not have the mindset of "scumbag Lee" when doing this choice the first time around. Telltale just wanted to make it so you would pick what you thought was the right thing to do for whatever reason: playing favorites, survival, getting rid of a threat. To me it's a very grey choice and lol proof of that is us still discussing it long after this game has come out about justifying why we chose our choice. Siding with Kenny or Lilly or doing nothing does not make Lee a monster.
Larry's such an irredeemable asshole that helping Kenny kill him felt like the right choice. It was better than risking a giant zombie coming back to life while 3 others, including a child, are trapped in there.
That said, though, since apparently most people chose to help Lilly from what I recall in the choice statistics, many people probably felt conflicted about committing murder in such a brutal way. It is a gray choice, but I still think helping kill Larry is the better choice. Why would anyone WANT such a short-tempered angry old asshole around anyway? Especially since he was more than willing to leave us for dead in a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, after we risked our necks getting the freakin' pills he needed to live. Ungrateful bastard deserved it.
I'm a Saltlick, and I'm pretty sure most people on here know my opinion on this
The "save or kill Larry" choice is one of the best in the entire game, IMO. It's a question of taking a precaution to stop a potential threat to the entire group, or preventing the death of someone whose hysteric daughter is right in front of him. Do you try to help Larry because it's morally correct, or kill him because you think he might reanimate? The scene is very tense.
Even if it was a glitch, I think the breath Larry takes is brilliantly ambiguous too.
Gameplay wise it couldn't be ambiguous, because somehow most of us knew that trying to revive Larry wouldn't get us killed.
I agree with it being the best choice in the game. It shows how people's morals change when they find themselves in life-threatening situations. It was the first time I remember being unable to decide what to do.
Remember when Larry was asking "You must really hate me" and it had me like "Bruh, you fucking knocked me out and left me to die when I gave you your fucking pills" but ya know, he didn't have to die in the locker but if he were caught in a zombie situation, I'd leave his ass
Definitely one of the best. It broke the group. Sure them bandits set everything in motion, but this incident turned a group of well educated fully capable adults into ZA survivors. Hooray!
White, Black, Grey, Ambiguous.. to me are all meaningless.. I helped Kenny kill Larry for one simple reason. Survival!
I see so many people question if Larry actually took a breath or not, I don't care.. Was he already dead? Was the CPR working and he was going to live? I don't care! Why? Because Larry tried to kill Lee. I told myself at the end of episode one, after that scene in the drug store and the talk with Larry and his "you watch your ass" comment, that Larry had to go the first chance Lee got.. In the Meat Locker, was the first chance.
I was not going to allow Larry another chance to try to kill Lee again.
It was ambiguous enough for me. Eventually I chose to help Kenny because of survival reasons and I didn't care for Lilly much.
I'm still wondering why people always forget that the infection starts taking over the brain as soon as the person dies. And he was dead for a while too...
Why does it have to be ambiguous?
Sometimes people make the wrong call. This is one of those times for Kenny and determinantly Lee.
He only breathes if you push on his chest 4 times.
Pushing on someone's chest does not make them reanimate faster.
It was a breath.
Walkers dont breathe and make all sorts of mouh movements?
If we're going by accuracy then it takes a shit ton more pushes... Not just a mere 4
He was gone.
You appear to have ignored what I said.
Walkers do make mouth movements, yes. That doesn't contradict what I was saying at all.
Regardless of whether you push on Larry's chest, the exact same amount of time passes before Kenny drops the saltlick.
Pressing on someone's chest does not speed up reanimation.
Thus, there is no reason why he would only reanimate if you push on his chest 4 times.
i think it was the choice to immediately kill larry or not which was the ambiguous choice not whether lary would live or not
larry was dead, CPR doesn't start a heart, TV has given the impression that it does, so that made deciding whether larry was dead confusing for some people.
however it's is kinda pragmatic/cold to dispatch him immediately, so that was the real decision, do you kill Larry (stop resurrection) immediately (reducing any danger to zero) and agree with kenny, or do you go through the motions of trying to save larry and give lilly some time to come to terms with his death before sensitively and discreetly stopping Larry's resurrection, which you could call siding with lilly.
i dispatched larry, better safe than a humongous brute zombie in and enclosed room full of people (including clementine) to deal with
Seriously, what the hell are you trying to say?
Flog was saying that you can't tell if Larry was dead just because of his mouth movement. We couldn't tell and it's still ambiguous to this day. We will never know regardless.
It's inconsistent when they reanimate. It was fast for that band director, it was slow for the officer in Vince's story in 400 Days Later yet the black guy reanimated faster than he did. I think it's the first groan that sounds raspy in the throat that indicates a zombie transformed.
Everyone talks about these breaths that Larry took when you give him CPR and what it looks like to me when I see his mouth move is it looks like nothing more than a glitch in the matrix.
But if it was not a glitch then i think it was ambiguous enough b/c Larry is killed before there's a chance to know for sure
It just didn't really have much to do with what @Clem_is_awesome was saying. It was a total aside to the point that he was making.
Even if the CPR did in fact work, that still doesn't necessarily mean crushing Larry's skull was the wrong call to make. The chances of the CPR working were low, and even if you were able to save him in that instance, he wouldn't have lasted much longer without medical treatment. So with that said, I think it could still be argued that avoiding the risk of Larry turning is a good thing to do.
Not really looking to discuss this topic too much as we've obviously beaten it to death, just thought I'd toss this out there.
Larry was alive though. Not really much you can argue in defense unfortunately. He took a breath, walkers aren't capable of breathing and as we've seen people have definitive signs of transformation. If you've noticed, Larry had no skin discoloration and no muscle spasms or violent twitches that could be linked to him being dead.
Also... people need to be dead for longer than ten seconds so there's that. Heart attack deaths don't happen immediately so then there's that too. Overwhelming evidence would favor that he was alive.
No it wasn't. He was making two points, and the second was irrelevant. See below.
Sigh. It's really not hard.
Walkers do make mouth movements.
Larry makes mouth movements IF AND ONLY IF you push on his chest 4 times.
The EXACT SAME AMOuNT OF TIME expires regardless of how many times you push on his chest.
Since this is true, and since reanimation takes the same amount of time regardless of whether you push on someone's chest, it couldnt have been reanimation. He would have taken the breath regardless of whether you push on his chest, if he was reanimating.
If we're going by accuracy, the zombie virus makes no scientific sense at all. That doesn't mean that in the context of the game the zombies aren't a real threat.
We have to take what the game gives us. The fact is that he takes a breath, after a set amount of time happens, provided you have pushed on his chest rather than leaving him alone.
Whether you think him surviving is realistic or not is an entirely separate matter.
Whether his wrong decision was understandable is an entirely different issue to whether it was wrong.
I understand why he is rude to Lee on the train. That doesnt make him being rude morally right.
It's been confirmed to not be a glitch. It would be an extremely weird one, if it was.
I guess it depends on how you want to take the word "dead" in his statement. It kind of felt like splitting hairs to debate over him being 100% dead or not (in terms of being able to resuscitate him or not), as I think the guy's point was simply that we had a guy on the ground who wasn't breathing, had no heartbeat, and the infection could have been at work to bring him back as a walker. I don't believe he was saying that it was impossible to bring Larry back, only that the infection was probably gaining control (speaking in regards to his original post, of course).
Who said anything about understandable? I was saying that there is a legitimate argument that what Kenny did was a good choice to make. Just because Larry may have been miraculously resuscitated by four chest compressions (which makes no sense, but alright) doesn't mean that the initial thought of making sure he wouldn't turn is incorrect.
"Even if the CPR did in fact work, that still doesn't necessarily mean crushing Larry's skull was the wrong call to make. The chances of the CPR working were low, and even if you were able to save him in that instance, he wouldn't have lasted much longer without medical treatment. So with that said, I think it could still be argued that avoiding the risk of Larry turning is a good thing to do."
I wasn't even arguing over whether or not he could be declared officially dead. I was only saying that the chances of resuscitating him were very low, and even in the case of miraculously bringing him back, there was literally nothing to sustain him. So with all of that in mind, it could be argued that the risks outweighed the unlikely rewards.
The implication of his original post 'people keep forgetting that the zombie process begins' etc etc implies that this is relevant in deciding whether, all things considered, the scene is ambiguous.
I was showing that the scene, if you take all evidence we have into account, is not ambiguous.
We know, if we're meta gaming, that Larry was revivable.
Kenny does not know that for certain. He was also under a lot of stress and so couldn't think properly. Therefore his assumption that Larry's brain must 100% be destroyed was perfectly understandable, just as Lilly being upset was understandable.
He made the decision that seemed best to him. It turns out this decision was wrong. I understand why he made the decision. That doesn't stop it being, objectively, the wrong call in the end.
Are we not looking at this in the sense of the "correct" decision making being ambiguous..? That's how I perceived the topic, and I would guess that's how Clem_is_awesome addressed it as well. That thought would be independent of whether or not Larry was totally, 100% savable.
How can the chances of resuscitating be low if he could be resuscitated within only four measly chest compressions? He was taking a breathe, that means the CPR obviously worked to revive him... if for at least the time being.
The risks did not outweigh the unlikely rewards in this instance.