I know, her writing was very realistic until episode 4 and even then I could still relate to her and comprehend why she acted the way she did. It was the other characters and the way they suddenly saw her as nothing but a burden to the group who irked me because it was so out of character for all of them. I also don't understand how Luke didn't know how to react to Sarah's meltdown back in the trailer, I mean they all lived together in the cabin for a long time and even though Sarah was pretty much sheltered there I'm sure she still would have had a meltdown there from time to time from things way smaller than the walkers outside. What also really baffled me was how none of the characters cared about any death at all in the episode, like they just moved on without even mentioning the people they lost seconds or hours ago. Except for Kenny whose grieving nobody understood. I feel that if any character shows even the slightest emotional impact of the things happening they are suddenly considered a liabilty in the game. I hated how Kenny blamed Clementine for what had happened to Sarita, I really did, but his reaction was still more real than for example Luke's reaction towards Nick. Once people reach a point where simply caring for others is frowned upon and considered a danger to the group you can tell that something's going terribly wrong and I truly hope it won't last. In survival games the mere act of surviving means nothing if you don't feel the loss and the impact of the fate of the characters who don't. That's why season 1 worked out so incredibly well where sesaon 2 starts to lack.
Even though i didn't enjoy very much episode 3 (though now it's way better than episode 4), I really liked the characterization of Sarah in … morethat episode. Actually I liked her since the beginning of the season for beeing such a realistic, positive and naive (in a good way) character, but it's only since episode 3 that my feelings towards her started to become the same that i had for Clementine while i was playing Lee in Season 1. Plus, I really liked the concept of Clementine trying to teach and protect her like she was acting as Lee and it really seemed that Sarah's friendly attitude was going to be usefull for Clementine mental sanity.
I was hoping for a deeper Sarah's characterization and, of course, for a "hug choice" (that trolls..) and now I just feel angry.
You were not the only one feeling so attached to her character and I really think that after Telltale's way to handle Sarah in this episode they lost a lot of fans (one for sure!)
I posted a few days ago with a response that agreed with this and explained why it's harder to care about episode 5 coming out. But one thing I am curious of now is....
How would you guys have killed Sarah and Nick? I see a lot of "the way it happened sucked" posts and I'm curious what everyone would've had happen differently to be happier with it.
I'm not being a smartass or anything I am genuinely asking.
i agree with you also @Reusou after the previous episodes this was a real slap in the face for real fans of the series. there is so much gar… morebage written in the episode,it's more like a fan fic.
The episode has minor good points,the racoon family is a nice touch and brought out the characters emotions,that there is still some humanity left,and the conferderate jacket was a funny thing,because the characters would dance around the subject and it wasn't written in any way offensive to anyone.but you touch on 'written obnoxiously ' it sure feels like it, any pact or friendship was rubbished to the point where it was unrecognisable from the previous episodes,im not even sure if anyone has mentioned how artificial making the deck fall was? it was just pathetic like most of the episode.
@TT247 mentioned in another post how Sarah was out of her shell somewhat when Carlos wasn't around and stood up to Troy for slapping Clem,they must of forgot i… [view original content]
I'll still play this game, I wouldn't call it money wasted, but I'm not gonna look in detail in Season 3 so I don't see this poor writing... in case it doesn't improve. Fingers crossed we see improvement in Episode 5 already. We know that the most problematic episodes are 3 and 4 which weren't written by Nick Breckon, though he should have had at least some control over them.
We'll see how much he'll be able to salvage this Season. If it ends up as Episode 3 and 4 I'd be highly disappointed.
Most proud of in this Season I'm at this thread, where people put a lot of time to improve this game.
I really wish that people would stop saying stuff like this. "If you don't like it, don't play it."; "If you don't like it, don't eat it."; … more"If you don't like it, leave."; etc.
Whenever there are political issues and people complain about the unjust laws, there are always morons who simply tell people to move to another country if they don't like it here. Except the problem with that is that other countries have issues as well; so no matter where you go there will be problems. Thus, what needs to be done is that people actually stay to fix their problems at home.
If you go out to dinner to a restaurant and you get crappy service and food do you not have a right to complain? You've invested your time and money into this restaurant by driving there, waiting for the food, and paying for the food. So are you saying if the chef completely botches your meal that it's just tough luck for you and you can either suck it up or starve? No, you kin… [view original content]
First I would try to slowly build up and strenghten their character arcs to at least give them some sort of conclusion before their deaths. For Sarah I would have loved to see her make clear that no matter what the group thinks, she is not a liabilty. She is a survivor like everyone else and I'd have her speak up for herself if only once. No matter how shaky her hands and words, no matter how quiet her voice - a bit like she spoke up to Carver when he hit Clementine in front of her eyes. (It was such a brave thing to do considering how scared she was. I wanted the writers to allow her to be brave and still show us how scared she is.) You can only listen to people talking about you as if you were already dead or a danger to the group for so long before getting fed up with it. I would avoid forcing her to make a U-turn which would erase her disabilty in the process because that's not how the world works and not how I would want it to work. I would make her gather strength very slowly, one step at a time, and I would want her death to have some meaning when it comes, or at least make her go down fighting. The falling-to-one's-death scene worked with Ben because we didn't see it coming and it wasn't yet done before, so it worked in my opinion. Doing the same to Sarah, another considered 'liability' seemed not only cheap, it felt wilful. Like a punishment for not behaving 'correctly'. Sarah is strong in her own way, and if I were to write her death scene I would not blame it on her and her being disabled like it was done in the trailer or turn it into a cheap accident in her alternative death scene later on. I would develop her character up to the point where she is able to protect herself well enough to survive and then let her die to show that even if you are strong, even if you are prepared and willing to live, you can still die. And I would allow the other characters to actually grieve her death because it was shown that they cared for her well-being in the previous episodes, especially Rebecca.
When it comes to Nick I would defintely avoid writing an off-screen death. It made it really hard to care for him in this scene especially since you were forced to shift focus too quickly to bashing his brain and scalping him instead of actually feeling something and realising that someone you know died. Altogether the whole scene was very unfortunate in my opinion.
Something else that felt really off to me is the fact that most of the characters who died this episode had little to no lines shortly before their death. In most cases this could have been avoided, especially in Sarita's (if you didn't choose to cut off her arm). If you let your main characters die at least grant them some last words.
My biggest problem with all deaths this episode is that they felt rushed and were rapidly shoved aside for the next one in line, almost the way an assembly line works. Also I would have made the deaths more personal for the characters who died and not only for the ones left behind (which only happened in Sarita's and Kenny's case anyway this episode. We had his family die for his character development in season 1 already. I really didn't want to see the same thing happen to Sarita because she deserved to be more than just the emotional provider to fuel Kenny's character arc).
I posted a few days ago with a response that agreed with this and explained why it's harder to care about episode 5 coming out. But one thin… moreg I am curious of now is....
How would you guys have killed Sarah and Nick? I see a lot of "the way it happened sucked" posts and I'm curious what everyone would've had happen differently to be happier with it.
I'm not being a smartass or anything I am genuinely asking.
If we saw Nick actually dying/helping after he was bit. Alot of Nick's character development was that He had low self esteem and saw himself as causing more trouble than helping. It would have been a great turn around if he found you to help at the yard, got bit running through the fence but fought alongside you to get back to Luke and Sarah whilst insisting that he isn't dead yet. This would go around and come back to the notion that when you chose either Pete or Nick, that Nick was no longer the guy who use to give up so easily. We could have had some last minute moments with Nick and maybe he DOES die in the trailer house but Sarah lives if you fail to slap her.
And had Luke actually react to the news of Nick's death hard because they are friends for 20 years.
For Sarah if she WAS to become a determinent character at the balcony to atleast have the gun fall off too and have her shoot a few walkers (miss if clem didnt teach her) and she'd die atleast putting up some sort of fight. Or survive but get bitten and die the night Rebecca's baby is born and have some last minute words with Clem. Because their friendship was being built up yet we saw none of that.
I posted a few days ago with a response that agreed with this and explained why it's harder to care about episode 5 coming out. But one thin… moreg I am curious of now is....
How would you guys have killed Sarah and Nick? I see a lot of "the way it happened sucked" posts and I'm curious what everyone would've had happen differently to be happier with it.
I'm not being a smartass or anything I am genuinely asking.
Sarah is a pretty avid book reader, way moreso than Clem who probably hasn't read a book properly in 2 years since the apocalypse happened. Sarah would have been VERY useful for clementine just knowing small things of what she's read. (when you meet her she's reading, she stays inside all the time because of zombies I imagine 70% of her days are spent reading books they find or that Carlos passed down to her) Hence why having to do puzzles with her would be great and similar to how Lee would sometimes have clementine help him solve puzzles in Season 1 (or in the Jurassic Park game, teamwork).
Of course Clem would be doing most of the protecting but Sarah probably doesn't miss alot of details when she isn't in a state of Zombie chased panic. Maybe adapt to outsmarting plenty of them.
i agree Anna,the possibilities would of been endless,i don't think they ever realised how to write for a character such as Sarah,and was eas… moreier just to kill her off without thinking,i bet they didn't bank on this can of worms that they opened....,it would be nice if Telltale replied to this thread and everyone in it.
I'll still play this game, I wouldn't call it money wasted, but I'm not gonna look in detail in Season 3 so I don't see this poor writing...… more in case it doesn't improve. Fingers crossed we see improvement in Episode 5 already. We know that the most problematic episodes are 3 and 4 which weren't written by Nick Breckon, though he should have had at least some control over them.
We'll see how much he'll be able to salvage this Season. If it ends up as Episode 3 and 4 I'd be highly disappointed.
Most proud of in this Season I'm at this thread, where people put a lot of time to improve this game.
I wouldn't of killed them off,they had too much potential,i wanted to learn about their characters more,with Sarah we were just getting to know her,Like Anna said she was too smart to die a stupid death,maybe she didn't calculate a 700 lbs canon collapsing under it's own weight when thousands of tourists have been stood on the same civil war site spot before without anything like this happening.... When Nick was trapped with Clem on his own he really came into his own,also the voice acting of these 2 are incredible,so much potential wasted.
I posted a few days ago with a response that agreed with this and explained why it's harder to care about episode 5 coming out. But one thin… moreg I am curious of now is....
How would you guys have killed Sarah and Nick? I see a lot of "the way it happened sucked" posts and I'm curious what everyone would've had happen differently to be happier with it.
I'm not being a smartass or anything I am genuinely asking.
No matter what game you play there is always going to be some sort of pre-set story fixture that is never going to change, period. TT just decided to make enticing interactive narratives instead of a always the same never changing linear story. The point I'm trying to make isn't that we've been given colossal story altering choices, but instead that we've been given choices that carry MORE weight than we have seen before. Maybe not as much weight as I, and we want, but they still matter MORE than they ever have in S1 and TWAU. With episodic games and especially interactive ones, I'd imagine, it's quite hard to ad a ton of variation due to the fact that the game is practically released, yet you're still working on it over some odd months. Again, not saying it's a lot, just saying that it is still, indeed, MORE. S'MORES are delicious by the way.
It's been more difficult for me to decide what language to use in defense of Sarah's character from anything but a literary POV because I really don't feel qualified to judge what kind of condition she's meant to have (such as in the debate between DomeWing333 and I on page 2).
I mean, I have personal experience in some ways but other than that I'm really not qualified to speak about it.
Your POV is extremely valuable and important here. Thank you so much for giving your honest & personal evaluation and contributing to the thread. I completely agree with everything you wrote. Everything rings very true and well said.
At last I decided to join this discussion as well because I feel very strongly about Amid The Ruins and I think what happened to its charact… moreers is very problematic.
The thing about Sarah is that having her, as a disabled female character in a video game, to me, was simpy groundbreaking. It's just something I have never had before and to finally get some actual representation of my own disability, I can not even begin to describe how happy it made me. To see her being treated with actual respect in the the former episodes is so rare for in media people like me are seen as the greatest liabilty there is. I have never seen a disabled or mentally ill character survive without either being dsrespected and hated, becoming the villian, or simply being killed off for the sake of other characters.
We are thrown under the bus constantly, being left to die or slapped and screamed at in trailers for reacting to what society, survivor’s groups, and wr… [view original content]
Even if you bring up Lee, talk her out of the panic stage and get her responsive, she still doesn't try to get up, she doesn't ask for help moving, she just sits there and says "I can't do it" in a dejected voice. It's not freezing behavior as that occurs only briefly and she is shown to move her arms and upper body just fine.
No. As the story portrays it, Sarah is continuing to be in this panic attack mode UNTIL you slap her. The thing that breaks the panic mode is Clem's slap. Even tho this is a completely false and offensive portrayal of how you stop a panic attack, the story shows that it "worked" when Sarah suddenly stares at Clem and proceeds to move out of the trailer. Being UNABLE to save yourself or ask for help does NOT = deathwish.
In her '2nd death scene' she is screaming in fear and screaming "Clementine, please!", but because the plot demands her death, she can't move or be rescued.
So all this means she had "given up", and didn't want to be saved? BS.
For the sake of argument, let's say that you ARE right, and that Sarah IS supposed to be "unWILLING to be saved".
That does not excuse the fact that the story in ep4 constantly PUSHES this false belief that Sarah has no value to the group, PUSHES you into believing that she's hopeless, PUSHES you into believing that you should leave her.
It does not excuse the fact that she is USED as a weak prop to support the backstory of a character that immediately afterwards WALKS OUT of the plot with no further impact, effect, or purpose.
It does not excuse the fact that NO ONE in the story gives a damn when a teenage girl suffers a painful and unfair death and is EATEN ALIVE.
Telltale started out in portraying Sarah as valuable and relevant to the story. Fans recognized this.
Meanwhile, there were other fans on the opposite end of the spectrum. Fans like you, who saw no interest or value in Sarah. Fans who saw her as "stupid", "useless", a "waste of space", with no value to the story or the characters.
This point of view is completely false. Sarah had value, she had initiative, she had relevance to the story.
But it's about more than that.
Telltale owed it to their fans to continue portraying Sarah as she had been from the beginning: a rare perspective and an honest portrayal of a young girl with a mental condition.
People who live with similar conditions to Sarah were immensely grateful for the fair and honest representation. They were amazed with the fact that Sarah was treated with respect, when
people like her in this genre and all forms of media rarely even appear, let alone are treated fairly and honestly.
But there was no nuance or respect shown in episode 4. She was doomed to die from the start. Telltale Games blatantly ignores and alienates a large part of their fanbase who had great solidarity and affection for her character. We are barely able to express a trace of the nuance that her friendship with Clementine had been prior to this. Her condition was portrayed with barely an ounce of the prior realism and respect. And when she finally dies, NOBODY EVEN CARES.
Telltale chose to blatantly ignore their own writing, and instead turned around and proved everyone like you to be correct.
THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT.
That does not make her life worthless.
Really? Then why is it that every time you talk about Sarah, you have shown a complete lack of respect and compassion toward her character? The only time you finally admit that you do in fact "feel sorry" for her is when you have to backtrack in order to not be proven wrong.
All the times that you've spoken about Sarah in this thread, you have taken a patronizing tone, you treat her as being worthless, or at best a prop, but then you turn around like ooh no. You claim that you actually "feel sorry" for her, and actually yes, her life IS worth something. Stop.
You either see value in her, or you don't. It's as simple as that.
Even if you bring up Lee, talk her out of the panic stage and get her responsive, she still doesn't try to get up, she doesn't ask for help … moremoving, she just sits there and says "I can't do it" in a dejected voice. It's not freezing behavior as that occurs only briefly and she is shown to move her arms and upper body just fine. She just can't will herself to make any attempt to survive.
For the last time, the fact that someone is a burden does NOT make them worthless. Rebecca's baby is an incredible burden on her and the group, but it's safety and well-being is still seen by the group to be paramount. "Worthless" and "useless" are different words with different meanings. Sarah is useless. Her inability to care for herself or contribute to any aspect of survival encumbers the group. That does not make her life worthless.
No matter what game you play there is always going to be some sort of pre-set story fixture that is never going to change, period. TT just d… moreecided to make enticing interactive narratives instead of a always the same never changing linear story. The point I'm trying to make isn't that we've been given colossal story altering choices, but instead that we've been given choices that carry MORE weight than we have seen before. Maybe not as much weight as I, and we want, but they still matter MORE than they ever have in S1 and TWAU. With episodic games and especially interactive ones, I'd imagine, it's quite hard to ad a ton of variation due to the fact that the game is practically released, yet you're still working on it over some odd months. Again, not saying it's a lot, just saying that it is still, indeed, MORE. S'MORES are delicious by the way.
Telltale have just written someone who feels like my best friend out of the story is such a cheap way,trolling everyone who was attached to … moreher,with the message:shes' weak,she dies!....enjoy the new fans...because your losing the ones who put you there...
@Anna_Faye, @Krazehcakes, @Clemmy1
I agree & these are all great suggestions. Fans like you who recognize Telltale's mistakes and come up with ways of improving them are great & are honestly more deserving of praise than Telltale here.
First I would try to slowly build up and strenghten their character arcs to at least give them some sort of conclusion before their deaths. … moreFor Sarah I would have loved to see her make clear that no matter what the group thinks, she is not a liabilty. She is a survivor like everyone else and I'd have her speak up for herself if only once. No matter how shaky her hands and words, no matter how quiet her voice - a bit like she spoke up to Carver when he hit Clementine in front of her eyes. (It was such a brave thing to do considering how scared she was. I wanted the writers to allow her to be brave and still show us how scared she is.) You can only listen to people talking about you as if you were already dead or a danger to the group for so long before getting fed up with it. I would avoid forcing her to make a U-turn which would erase her disabilty in the process because that's not how the world works and not how I would want it to work. I wo… [view original content]
I'm still going to keep playing too, but I honestly don't see how Episode 5 can redeem their past mistakes. I mean, even if it is extremely well-written it still can't take back what happened in episode 4. I've just lost faith in Telltale at this point, & it's just sad to me how it turned out.
I'll still play this game, I wouldn't call it money wasted, but I'm not gonna look in detail in Season 3 so I don't see this poor writing...… more in case it doesn't improve. Fingers crossed we see improvement in Episode 5 already. We know that the most problematic episodes are 3 and 4 which weren't written by Nick Breckon, though he should have had at least some control over them.
We'll see how much he'll be able to salvage this Season. If it ends up as Episode 3 and 4 I'd be highly disappointed.
Most proud of in this Season I'm at this thread, where people put a lot of time to improve this game.
"Even if the cabin group had never actually witnessed Sarah having a panic attack, you can bet that Carlos, as a dad and as a doctor, knew enough to let them know IN DETAIL how to properly respond." UMMMMMM you sure are jumping to a lot of assumptions on who knows this or that. We don't know shit about what everyone knows about Sarah. Yes your using good LOGIC, but that doesn't make it right. The way i see it, the perspective that is GIVEN and shown is all that we know. That is my own personal opinion, but you can keep making assumptions if you like. Also, shit changes when your life is on the line. Let me take the time to comfort you while we're LITERALLY 7.8 seconds away from being eaten alive? I agree with you on the panic attacks and they are uncontrollable, but there was no time for hugs and kisses.
He does KNOW that she was completely sheltered, but who says hes ever seen her seen her in this condition before.
Even in episode 1 … morewhen Carlos was not convinced that Clem was trustworthy, he still had the sense to let her know that Sarah was not like her. You can bet that he would have told the same to the cabin group when they had known each other for months beforehand. Even if the cabin group had never actually witnessed Sarah having a panic attack, you can bet that Carlos, as a dad and as a doctor, knew enough to let them know IN DETAIL how to properly respond.
Luke KNEW sarah had panic attacks. The writers KNEW she had panic attacks. And before episode 4, they had shown them in a realistic and logical manner. You do not yell at someone on sensory overload and you do not smack them to "snap them out of it". The fact that this actually worked (ESPECIALLY after Carver forced Carlos to slap Sarah in episode 3) is completely ridicu… [view original content]
Luke can be heard saying to Sarah in the trailer before you come in "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you." And you just agreed with me that Luke obviously DOES know "what the hell is wrong". Sarah's father just died. Luke obviously knows that's why she's having a breakdown.
Just because there's not enough time does not change or excuse the fact that the only possible way to get Sarah to move in a completely disrespectful way. It does not change the fact that Clementine as she slaps her has an expression of anger and disgust. And it does not excuse the fact that we are never given the chance to RECOGNIZE that there was no time to properly respond to Sarah's panic attack, or to show an effort to comfort her after it happens.
"Even if the cabin group had never actually witnessed Sarah having a panic attack, you can bet that Carlos, as a dad and as a doctor, knew e… morenough to let them know IN DETAIL how to properly respond." UMMMMMM you sure are jumping to a lot of assumptions on who knows this or that. We don't know shit about what everyone knows about Sarah. Yes your using good LOGIC, but that doesn't make it right. The way i see it, the perspective that is GIVEN and shown is all that we know. That is my own personal opinion, but you can keep making assumptions if you like. Also, shit changes when your life is on the line. Let me take the time to comfort you while we're LITERALLY 7.8 seconds away from being eaten alive? I agree with you on the panic attacks and they are uncontrollable, but there was no time for hugs and kisses.
No. As the story portrays it, Sarah is continuing to be in this panic attack mode UNTIL you slap her. The thing that breaks the panic mode is Clem's slap. Even tho this is a completely false and offensive portrayal of how you stop a panic attack, the story shows that it "worked" when Sarah suddenly stares at Clem and proceeds to move out of the trailer. Being UNABLE to save yourself or ask for help does NOT = deathwish.
As far as I know, panic attacks don't prevent people from moving or asking for help. Sometimes people report their legs feeling weak and shortness of breath, but Sarah wasn't hyperventilating or saying she couldn't breathe like when Carver came. And again, she didn't say "I can't do it" in a panicked or fearful manner. She said it in a defeated manner. (Also note: sudden distractive stimuli is known to help people escape depersonalization and ground them in the present when they're having panic attacks. So that portrayal was in fact not completely false.)
That does not excuse the fact that the story in ep4 constantly PUSHES this false belief that Sarah has no value to the group, PUSHES you into believing that she's hopeless, PUSHES you into believing that you should leave her.
If you're referring to practical value, yes, then it pushes you into believing that Sarah holds no practical value to the group in the same way it pushes you into believing that Kenny is mentally unstable, that Nick is a good person at heart, and that Bonnie is genuinely sorry for what she did. The game portrays people as they are. How dare it.
If you're referring to value as a person, then I think Luke and Nick risking (and giving) their lives to look after her and get her to move to safety would seem to show that they cared a great deal about her.
And it's only one character in your group that actively push you to leave her: Jane. The pragmatist and embodiment of everything that my Lee didn't want Clem to become. The setting and symbolism in the game do everything they can to tell you to save her, as I have already explained.
Then why is it that every time you talk about Sarah, you have shown a complete lack of respect and compassion toward her character?
Again, you seem to be conflating the acknowledgement of a person as having no practical value with the belief that they have no value whatsoever. And that says more about you than it does me.
Really?
Even if you bring up Lee, talk her out of the panic stage and get her responsive, she still doesn't try to get up, she doesn't… more ask for help moving, she just sits there and says "I can't do it" in a dejected voice. It's not freezing behavior as that occurs only briefly and she is shown to move her arms and upper body just fine.
No. As the story portrays it, Sarah is continuing to be in this panic attack mode UNTIL you slap her. The thing that breaks the panic mode is Clem's slap. Even tho this is a completely false and offensive portrayal of how you stop a panic attack, the story shows that it "worked" when Sarah suddenly stares at Clem and proceeds to move out of the trailer. Being UNABLE to save yourself or ask for help does NOT = deathwish.
In her '2nd death scene' she is screaming in fear and screaming "Clementine, please!", but because the plot demands her death, she can't move or be rescued.
So all this means … [view original content]
Thank you very much, both for what you just wrote and for starting this dicussion in the first place! It's such an important topic to talk about and I probably wouldn't have dared to do it myself.
Since I first saw Sarah in the cabin, being alone in her room with her book, very isolated yet so happy to see Clementine and instantly asking her to be her friend I just felt she was autistic, I sensed it somehow. You know, most people believe that people with autism are isolated because they want to be alone but mostly, and very much in my case, it is because we and the things we do are vastly misunderstood and that usually leads either us or the people around us to withdraw at some point. And I instantly felt how lonely she was and why. Many people blamed her father for her condition but I think the way he treated her, the way he never overwhelmed her because he knew and respected her limits so well, made him a very good father. And that's why I actually felt her despair when he died, because she had just lost the only person who really understood her (which would be terrifying even in our current world), who loved her for who she was and not for who he wanted her to be. And the way she froze when having a meltdown is quite common for autistic people, which is why I was so shocked when Clementine slapped her with an expression so angry that it truly made her look like Carver. Because being slapped in a state like this would only make it worse. Much worse. When I have a meltdown myself it is usually a reaction to being highly over-stimulated and in my case it can be triggered by various things such as certain noises or even seemingly normal things like someone touching or moving things I own - and being touched even slightly in order to calm me down would make me panic. And then imagine something truly terrifying happening such as losing your own father and what it would do to you in a world like that. I just don't understand why they even added the option to hug her in the trailer which obviously made her flinch and shriek in fear and then assumed that a slap in the face would help. It doesn't make any sense. You can't just snap out of it like that, it's not possible, because sudden and intensive things are the most common cause to trigger meltdowns in the first place. Clementine's speech however, when she talked about Lee in such a calm tone, very quietly, and compared him to Sarah's father, I really think should have had a far bigger impact on her and should have been the reason for her to move - at least that's what would have made me move.
By no means do I expect everyone to know all these things considering the fact that often I do not even understand myself but when you write a character with a disabilty (and it is quite obvious with Sarah) I expect them to treat them with respect and in episode 4 I really missed that.
@Anna_Faye wow, you put it beautifully.
It's been more difficult for me to decide what language to use in defense of Sarah's character fr… moreom anything but a literary POV because I really don't feel qualified to judge what kind of condition she's meant to have (such as in the debate between DomeWing333 and I on page 2).
I mean, I have personal experience in some ways but other than that I'm really not qualified to speak about it.
Your POV is extremely valuable and important here. Thank you so much for giving your honest & personal evaluation and contributing to the thread. I completely agree with everything you wrote. Everything rings very true and well said.
OK then, let's get someone other than me who has had REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE with panic attacks and let them explain to you how the "slap" was completely disrespectful.
When someone she cared about was forced to slap Sarah in episode 3, Sarah almost had a breakdown. So why does the slap in episode 4 magically work?
Why does Clementine look ANGRY as she slaps her?
Why is there no opportunity to be like "Hey, I'm sorry I had to do that, but it was the only way I knew how to save you" ?
Again, you seem to be conflating the acknowledgement of a person as having no practical value with the belief that they have no value whatsoever. And that says more about you than it does me.
Do I really have to spell this out for you?
Sarah becoming weak and irredeemable
.
That being said, Sarah is a liability that should be abandoned for the sake of survival.
.
You're right that there was nothing indicating that you shouldn't just give up on her. Everything indicated that she was hopeless.
.
I don't recall anyone belittling or being abusive of her.
.
This wasn't a deep friendship based on commonality or mutual affection.
.
It came about because Sarah wanted a friend and Clem wasn't in any position to say no. After that, it became a dependency.
.
The only use I can see a gun being to her would be to help put her out of her misery.
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Sarah was a complete waste of space in Episode 3.
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I just didn't see much in Sarah that was very interesting or complex in the first place.
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She did nothing to demonstrate to me that there was any more depth to her character than kindness and weakness.
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You can't just take a flat character, add in a disorder or two and make them dimensional.
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Sarah's cry of "Don't hurt my friend!" didn't strike as being any more brave or selfless than her cry of "Don't hurt my daddy!" back in episode 2. It was an emotional outburst triggered by someone she cared about being hurt. That's nice and all but it doesn't really communicate anything about her inner strength.
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I just didn't see Sarah's action here as being all that impressive.
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She's given up. She's not savable. Not for any significant period of time.
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Sarah had detrimental weaknesses that prevented her from moving past trauma.
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Some characters are just not intended to be anything more than victims.
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If you're referring to the story treated her as if she were a completely hopeless wreck without the strength to stand on her own two feet, it's because that's what she was.
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There is no nuance to be shown for someone in her state. She was a shell of a person, showing little attachment to anything but the reality she refuses to let go.
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Are you arguing that Sarah wasn't a liability? Because she was. Inarguably, she was.
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She was a broken human being. And she was written as a broken human being.
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She had worth as a human life (which is why I saved her), but absolutely nothing to offer beyond that.
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In providing no use to the group, Sarah was, by definition, useless.
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The entire trailer sequence was Sarah relegating herself to die.
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Having no regard for the safety of others because your condition makes you unable to have regard for the safety of others is still having no regard for the safety of others.
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And depending on the severity of the condition and the situation, that does make them a burden.
All of these statements are belittling, hurtful, oversimplification, and misunderstanding of Sarah's character.
At worst you see her as weak, hopeless, a liability.
At best, you see her as pitiful, a tool to test whether or not you're still a good person, and a narrative device to showcase other themes or characters in the story.
No. As the story portrays it, Sarah is continuing to be in this panic attack mode UNTIL you slap her. The thing that breaks the panic mode i… mores Clem's slap. Even tho this is a completely false and offensive portrayal of how you stop a panic attack, the story shows that it "worked" when Sarah suddenly stares at Clem and proceeds to move out of the trailer. Being UNABLE to save yourself or ask for help does NOT = deathwish.
As far as I know, panic attacks don't prevent people from moving or asking for help. Sometimes people report their legs feeling weak and shortness of breath, but Sarah wasn't hyperventilating or saying she couldn't breathe like when Carver came. And again, she didn't say "I can't do it" in a panicked or fearful manner. She said it in a defeated manner. (Also note: sudden distractive stimuli is known to help people escape depersonalization and ground them in the present when they're having panic attacks. So that portray… [view original content]
When I first saw Sarah in episode 1, I really identified with her (shy & lonely but wanting to make friends, a bookworm, etc). It's almost like.... I feel like Sarah is my past self and Nick is my current self......
Yes I also got the feeling she was meant to have a specific mental condition but I am not as educated as I would like on such things so I could never put my finger on it. Everything you pointed out makes perfect sense.
Thank you very much, both for what you just wrote and for starting this dicussion in the first place! It's such an important topic to talk a… morebout and I probably wouldn't have dared to do it myself.
Since I first saw Sarah in the cabin, being alone in her room with her book, very isolated yet so happy to see Clementine and instantly asking her to be her friend I just felt she was autistic, I sensed it somehow. You know, most people believe that people with autism are isolated because they want to be alone but mostly, and very much in my case, it is because we and the things we do are vastly misunderstood and that usually leads either us or the people around us to withdraw at some point. And I instantly felt how lonely she was and why. Many people blamed her father for her condition but I think the way he treated her, the way he never overwhelmed her because he knew and respected her limits so well, made him a very good father. And that's why I… [view original content]
Forgive my being blunt but the fact that you have had experiences with panic attacks does not make you the foremost expert on how to deal with it. (Not to say that I'm an expert either) Are you aware that some people who have chronic issues with panic actually carry a rubber band on their wrist to snap against their skin whenever they're in the throes of an attack? It's because the sudden sting of pain allows them to refocus their mind on something other than their panicked thoughts. If you don't believe me, just look it up.
Why did Clem look angry? Because she had to be forceful. Another one of the tricks people use to calm down their panic attacks is to actually yell out-loud at themselves to stop. There was no opportunity to apologize to Sarah because everybody involved including Sarah knew that it was the only way to help Sarah get moving.
You should understand that there's a distinction between my points about Sarah as a character, Sarah as a survivor, and Sarah as a person. I have stated that, as a character, she didn't interest me very much. And as a survivor, she was clearly dragging the group down. But these are distinct from my viewpoints on her as a person.
The closest season 1 example I can think of is Duck. I was not at all interested in Duck as a character, I saw no value in him as a survivor, and yet I still count his suffering and fate as one of the saddest in the series. Because he was a person. He was a normal, sweet little kid who was made to suffer and die. I cared about Duck because I saw him as a human being in a place of pain. My opinions on how interesting or useful he was did not matter. I would have done whatever I needed to help him.
OK then, let's get someone other than me who has had REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE with panic attacks and let them explain to you how the "slap" was … morecompletely disrespectful.
When someone she cared about was forced to slap Sarah in episode 3, Sarah almost had a breakdown. So why does the slap in episode 4 magically work?
Why does Clementine look ANGRY as she slaps her?
Why is there no opportunity to be like "Hey, I'm sorry I had to do that, but it was the only way I knew how to save you" ?
Again, you seem to be conflating the acknowledgement of a person as having no practical value with the belief that they have no value whatsoever. And that says more about you than it does me.
Do I really have to spell this out for you?
Sarah becoming weak and irredeemable
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That being said, Sarah is a liability that should be abandoned for the sake of survival.
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You're right that there was nothing indicating … [view original content]
This is the exact reason why Sarah and Nick were such important characters. People of all kinds and with various conditions could relate to them and this kind of representation is so important and yet very rare to find.
From what you wrote you seem to be very educated about topics like these, more than most people, so please don't censor your thoughts out of fear you could anger someone. I for one really appreciate your opinions and like I said without you this discussion most likely would have never happened.
Well said!
When I first saw Sarah in episode 1, I really identified with her (shy & lonely but wanting to make friends, a bookworm, e… moretc). It's almost like.... I feel like Sarah is my past self and Nick is my current self......
Yes I also got the feeling she was meant to have a specific mental condition but I am not as educated as I would like on such things so I could never put my finger on it. Everything you pointed out makes perfect sense.
Thank you so much, really.
This is the exact reason why Sarah and Nick were such important characters. People of all kinds and with vario… moreus conditions could relate to them and this kind of representation is so important and yet very rare to find.
From what you wrote you seem to be very educated about topics like these, more than most people, so please don't censor your thoughts out of fear you could anger someone. I for one really appreciate your opinions and like I said without you this discussion most likely would have never happened.
How many times do I have to say this?
Powerlessness in the face of death has never been emphasized or presented as a theme in this season… more's story.
Every time somebody says this, it is simply being used as excuse to explain away the writing and to get critics to stop talking.
Telltale specifically builds their story talking about "important player input" and "choices that radically change the outcome". But instead, this season has turned into "here's a completely railroaded and nonsensical plot with wasted potential. Have fun!"
I agree completely. Episode 4 was so messy, and this whole season has felt really disjointed.
You touched on all the major points, but a couple more things that bothered me:
Sarita had next to no character development apart from being a nice lady who is concerned for Kenny, and even in the end her death was not about her--it's just to give Kenny more pain. I looked up a video of what happens when you don't chop her arm off, and all she does is just silently lay in Kenny's arms, too weak to say anything against him ranting at Clementine on her behalf. Sorry, but when Lee was bitten he was climbing ladders and tearing through zombies and fighting the Stranger, and even when he was nearly dead he was still talking to Clementine and giving her advice. Sarita's whole character just felt like a prop for Kenny, and that highlighted it more than ever.
Why was it understood that Crawford was a bad thing in season 1, but now Jane embodies everything Crawford was about and is made to look like she's in the right? It really bothers me that Sarah's portrayal went from respectful and endearing to becoming a burden to be killed off, just to prove Jane's point (which wasn't even right; she was autistic, not suicidal), and none of the characters even care. Even Luke is kinda supportive of leaving Sarah behind, when he was always the one trying to take the nonviolent 'good guy' route for everything. If his character is changing, then there's been no real focus on that development.
Kenny switches between being mentally unstable and totally fine depending on what's plot-convenient, with zero notice.
Kenny, in general, just feels really recycled. I DO like Kenny, but he had a complete arc in season 1, and now in season 2 he's just been basically doing the same arc all over again and taking a tremendous amount of spotlight, when there are so many less developed characters hanging off in the sidelines (some of them with unknown fates, who I kinda wish had come back instead--Molly, Lilly). This is starting to feel more like Kenny's story rather than Clementine's.
The more this season goes on, the less I'm sure of what the actual plot of it is. Christa has almost never been mentioned since her disappearance, Carver was built up to be a big baddie and then was killed off, so many of the built-up characters have now been killed off (or brushed off, with 400 Days), and now... uh, Russians? In season 1, it was so consistent: Clementine wanted to find her parents, the group wanted to get to Savannah, Kenny wanted to escape on a boat, and even as there were a ton of sub-plots happening, none of these things felt forgotten. Everything was resolved in a way that made sense and had proper weight.
The "weight" of episodes 1 and 2 was really good, got a little iffy in 3 but was still mostly good, and now in 4 we see Clementine hacking into Nick's head like she didn't even know him and Luke reacts to his best friend's death like he just dropped his ice cream cone on the floor. What the hell?
Also, I'm sorry, but as a female player it's a little hard to not feel disappointed about writing out four female characters in one episode, and almost all were WOC...
It's not that season 2 hasn't had a lot of great moments in it or anything, but as time's gone on it's gotten more apparent that its construction is a little clunky. Episode 4 was just what made it really glaring. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was bothered.
I don't know why you guys are so upset about this episode, I loved it. I felt like it went back to season 1 where it was genuinely difficult to make a decision, and then agonizing over whether or not you made the right choices. Is it because Sarita, Rebecca, Sarah and Nick died? That seems to be what has people losing their shit over on Tumblr at least. I guess I could understand why people are mad about Sarah(though I had a hunch she wouldn't make it this episode), but Nick was kinda a given if you ask me. He was determinate, and was able to killed off in a playthrough of episode 2, and as much as I hoped he would live, deep down I knew he wouldn't. I also had a bad feeling that Rebecca would either die in child birth or become sick afterwards, and that also happened. It was really sad but it also made the situation they were in all the more realistic and heart breaking. The group is falling apart, and they are all losing hope now. All they have is the baby, and who knows if they'll even be able to keep the baby if the Russians don't take it. At first I thought there was a possibility of saving Sarita, looking back I prolly shouldn't have cut her hand off, but for some reason I though we could stop the bleeding before the walkers got her. Again, wishful thinking. Overall this was a great episode imo, I liked all the interaction with the characters, the scenery was great, and the tension and problems we were given felt realistic to me. Can't wait for episode 5.:D
another great post in this thread @erenr ''but now Jane embodies everything Crawford was about and is made to look like she's in the right?'' exactly,the writers must have very little experience at this,because i can't for one minute imagine season 1's writers would even entertain this script for episode 4,it's horrific,this is not an attack on the writers,they just seem to have written something that should not of even have been a draft and went with it.
This is just a guess and i don't know if it's right or wrong,but i suspect Nick Breckon handed the reins over for the past 2 episodes so he could concentrate on the backlog of Telltale projects currently in the pipeline? We shouldn't be making excuses either for Telltale,it's shoddy,and only threads like this and massive criticism which episode 4 has recieved should be a wake up call that fans won't just accept turned out drivel. i know season 1's writers left Telltale and at that time there was a lot of concerned fans on here to which Jake Rodkin even posted a few times reassuring fans that the WD was in good hands,well if your reading this thread Jake i would love to know what you thought genuinely of episode 4 because i can't imagine you or Sean writing this garbage.
It's great that you personally loved the episode, but you have to understand that not everyone had the same expectations going into it as you. You need only read over the numerous insightful responses by people on this forum to get an idea of why they're "upset" as you put it.
I personally agree with you in regards to the difficulty of the in-game choices; I thought that they were reasonably difficult to make. I also had no particular issue with how Rebecca was dealt with or the ending, which I thought was tense and impactful. But pretty much everything else about this episode (for me, at any rate) was disappointing, and many people seem to agree. Much of the focus does seem to be upon Nick and Sarah's deaths (and Sarita's, I suppose) but much of the criticism is upon the amateurish handling of the characters, their being killed off despite having a great amount of narrative potential and in rather insulting fashion, rather than because people are annoyed that their favourite characters were disposed of. There would be far less "upset" had these deaths not been lazily-implemented means of getting rid of characters whose impact upon the overall story of Season 2 had been built up, only to find that the writers weren't interested in resolving these story arcs in a climactic or satisfying way.
I would argue that Nick, Sarah and Sarita are by no means the only issues with the episode (the laughable "hub" areas, the lack of any sort of meaningful development for Mike and Bonny, the fact that numerous themes in previous episodes- such as whether you can trust the cabin group or they you- have entirely fizzled out, Jane's being seemingly identical in many ways to Molly, etc.) but they are the most prominent for many people. I don't want to call it "nitpicking" because that implies pettiness, but I'd say that a lot of the underlying issues such as the inconsistency with themes between episodes, which are shameful nonetheless, are less immediately noticeable than the embarrassingly-poor character deaths, which are evidently more "in-your-face" in terms of inadequacy as events in the storyline.
Regardless, though I understand what you are saying and respect your right to an opinion (no-one is asking you to condemn the episode or Telltale if you legitimately enjoyed it), I hope you can also respect our qualms with this season and Episodes 3 and 4 in particular and understand that it's largely a criticism of the quality of the episode and the season, rather than because people simply wish that Nick or Rebecca or Sarah hadn't died. If you still have any questions then the creator of this thread has given a more in-depth outline of these issues above that I think would be very beneficial to your understanding of why some individuals are rather irate about the whole thing.
I don't know why you guys are so upset about this episode, I loved it. I felt like it went back to season 1 where it was genuinely difficult… more to make a decision, and then agonizing over whether or not you made the right choices. Is it because Sarita, Rebecca, Sarah and Nick died? That seems to be what has people losing their shit over on Tumblr at least. I guess I could understand why people are mad about Sarah(though I had a hunch she wouldn't make it this episode), but Nick was kinda a given if you ask me. He was determinate, and was able to killed off in a playthrough of episode 2, and as much as I hoped he would live, deep down I knew he wouldn't. I also had a bad feeling that Rebecca would either die in child birth or become sick afterwards, and that also happened. It was really sad but it also made the situation they were in all the more realistic and heart breaking. The group is falling apart, and they are all losing hope now. All they… [view original content]
Please stop. I know you're attempting to be understanding towards those who struggle with mental illness but instead you're coming off as extremely condescending and treating people who have first-hand experience with what Sarah struggles with as less knowledgeable than you on the subject. Kindly stop talking about neuroatypical people like they're some kind of sad, wounded puppy, it's incredibly insensitive and humiliating.
Forgive my being blunt but the fact that you have had experiences with panic attacks does not make you the foremost expert on how to deal wi… moreth it. (Not to say that I'm an expert either) Are you aware that some people who have chronic issues with panic actually carry a rubber band on their wrist to snap against their skin whenever they're in the throes of an attack? It's because the sudden sting of pain allows them to refocus their mind on something other than their panicked thoughts. If you don't believe me, just look it up.
Why did Clem look angry? Because she had to be forceful. Another one of the tricks people use to calm down their panic attacks is to actually yell out-loud at themselves to stop. There was no opportunity to apologize to Sarah because everybody involved including Sarah knew that it was the only way to help Sarah get moving.
You should understand that there's a distinction between my points about Sarah as a character,… [view original content]
Re: the writers, I feel the same. It's like the new writers were only given an outline for the character arcs/ original meanings but it wasn't enough. You can see this in places like certain character's behaviors making sense but the development is missing. For example Luke's character has been pretty solidly written for the most part. In areas where it feels off such as when he suggests leaving people behind or "taking sides" instead of keeping the group together, it feels like this is maybe supposed to have been character progression/development, but nothing ever happens to SHOW that it's supposed to be purposeful.
another great post in this thread @erenr ''but now Jane embodies everything Crawford was about and is made to look like she's in the right?'… more' exactly,the writers must have very little experience at this,because i can't for one minute imagine season 1's writers would even entertain this script for episode 4,it's horrific,this is not an attack on the writers,they just seem to have written something that should not of even have been a draft and went with it.
This is just a guess and i don't know if it's right or wrong,but i suspect Nick Breckon handed the reins over for the past 2 episodes so he could concentrate on the backlog of Telltale projects currently in the pipeline? We shouldn't be making excuses either for Telltale,it's shoddy,and only threads like this and massive criticism which episode 4 has recieved should be a wake up call that fans won't just accept turned out drivel. i know season 1's writers left Telltale and at that time th… [view original content]
I apologize that I'm coming off as condescending. But the fact of the matter is that even someone who has had first-hand experience with what Sarah struggles with isn't necessarily privy to all the information there is to know about it. I don't know what the other user knows. It's very possible that the other user is fully aware of everything I've said and has good reasons for disbelieving in it. I just wanted to make sure that we had a common knowledge base to work off of.
As for my perceived insensitivity when talking about neuroatypical people, I apologize for that as well. My intention was to talk about Sarah as a sad, wounded person as that is how I saw her. And I don't see her that way because she's neuroatypical. I saw her that way because she's just lost the most important figure in her life in one of the worst possible ways imaginable. Even normally functioning psyches are shattered by the type of trauma she's experienced. That she has an anxiety disorder and perhaps some impairment in her cognitive development certainly exacerbates the effect of the trauma on her and impedes her ability to deal with it, but I wouldn't say that I'm talking about Sarah as being sad and wounded because she's neuroatypical.
I hope these clarifications of my viewpoints are taken well. Regardless, since it seems like my continued involvement with this conversation is resulting in more harm than I had anticipated, I'll bow out now. It was nice talking to the both of you.
Please stop. I know you're attempting to be understanding towards those who struggle with mental illness but instead you're coming off as ex… moretremely condescending and treating people who have first-hand experience with what Sarah struggles with as less knowledgeable than you on the subject. Kindly stop talking about neuroatypical people like they're some kind of sad, wounded puppy, it's incredibly insensitive and humiliating.
Finally got the time to read this thread and I loved it. This is exactly how I've been feeling since episode 3 came out. Very similar to the thread i made about episode 3 a while back
Everything that Lee did in season 1 is being made pointless. Telltale keeps reminding us of his fight to protect Clem and his struggle to teach her to be strong and brave but also to preserve her goodness, then Telltale takes that and shits all over it.
This makes me so angry because of how important Lee is to all of us and how we have him in our memories but they're kind of playing with those memories in a really poor way that will eventually make us not care much whenever Lee is mentioned again. It's like with the "i thought about Duck today" part in episode 3, it's so badly done that it worries me they'll fuck up the Lee dream/hallucination scene everyone wants to see.
At this point i've already given up with Season 2. They should have an entire year to play and fuck around with borderlands and game of thrones. Hopefully they learn from their mistakes and don't do them again in Season 3.
Thanks for taking the time to read this monster, lol. Your thread makes great points, I remember seeing it right after ep3 came out and completely agreeing, all the problems ep3 had are only made worse with ep4.
Finally got the time to read this thread and I loved it. This is exactly how I've been feeling since episode 3 came out. Very similar to the… more thread i made about episode 3 a while back
http://www.telltalegames.com/community/discussion/69906/people-finally-starting-to-wake-up-and-accept-that-working-on-4-games-at-once-is-hurting-twdseason2
Everything that Lee did in season 1 is being made pointless. Telltale keeps reminding us of his fight to protect Clem and his struggle to teach her to be strong and brave but also to preserve her goodness, then Telltale takes that and shits all over it.
This makes me so angry because of how important Lee is to all of us and how we have him in our memories but they're kind of playing with those memories in a really poor way that will eventually make us not care much whenever Lee is mentioned again. It's like with the "i thought about Duck today" part in episode 3, it's so badly done that it wo… [view original content]
It's great to see how this thread in a week got double the amounts of comments that my thread got in 2+ weeks. Also the amount of thumbs ups. It goes to show that the title of my thread is becoming a fact, the problems are just way too hard to ignore.
Thanks for taking the time to read this monster, lol. Your thread makes great points, I remember seeing it right after ep3 came out and completely agreeing, all the problems ep3 had are only made worse with ep4.
I mean, even if it is extremely well-written it still can't take back what happened in episode 4.
I've gotten to the point where i just don't care about anything big happening. When i saw zombie Nick i said "meh, shitty writers", when Sarah died at the observation i said "meh, shitty writers". I know that if they kill Kenny in episode 5 i'll feel like shit and probably tear up the moment that I play but i'll probably snap back to reality again and say the same "meh, shitty writers" and then wonder if this is what Vanaman first had in mind as canon for what Kenny was supposed to become when they deleted the "death sounds" in season 1.
Comments
I know, her writing was very realistic until episode 4 and even then I could still relate to her and comprehend why she acted the way she did. It was the other characters and the way they suddenly saw her as nothing but a burden to the group who irked me because it was so out of character for all of them. I also don't understand how Luke didn't know how to react to Sarah's meltdown back in the trailer, I mean they all lived together in the cabin for a long time and even though Sarah was pretty much sheltered there I'm sure she still would have had a meltdown there from time to time from things way smaller than the walkers outside. What also really baffled me was how none of the characters cared about any death at all in the episode, like they just moved on without even mentioning the people they lost seconds or hours ago. Except for Kenny whose grieving nobody understood. I feel that if any character shows even the slightest emotional impact of the things happening they are suddenly considered a liabilty in the game. I hated how Kenny blamed Clementine for what had happened to Sarita, I really did, but his reaction was still more real than for example Luke's reaction towards Nick. Once people reach a point where simply caring for others is frowned upon and considered a danger to the group you can tell that something's going terribly wrong and I truly hope it won't last. In survival games the mere act of surviving means nothing if you don't feel the loss and the impact of the fate of the characters who don't. That's why season 1 worked out so incredibly well where sesaon 2 starts to lack.
I posted a few days ago with a response that agreed with this and explained why it's harder to care about episode 5 coming out. But one thing I am curious of now is....
How would you guys have killed Sarah and Nick? I see a lot of "the way it happened sucked" posts and I'm curious what everyone would've had happen differently to be happier with it.
I'm not being a smartass or anything I am genuinely asking.
So laggy..
Except a lot of fanfics in this Forum are better than the actual story.
I'll still play this game, I wouldn't call it money wasted, but I'm not gonna look in detail in Season 3 so I don't see this poor writing... in case it doesn't improve. Fingers crossed we see improvement in Episode 5 already. We know that the most problematic episodes are 3 and 4 which weren't written by Nick Breckon, though he should have had at least some control over them.
We'll see how much he'll be able to salvage this Season. If it ends up as Episode 3 and 4 I'd be highly disappointed.
Most proud of in this Season I'm at this thread, where people put a lot of time to improve this game.
Truer words were never spoken.
First I would try to slowly build up and strenghten their character arcs to at least give them some sort of conclusion before their deaths. For Sarah I would have loved to see her make clear that no matter what the group thinks, she is not a liabilty. She is a survivor like everyone else and I'd have her speak up for herself if only once. No matter how shaky her hands and words, no matter how quiet her voice - a bit like she spoke up to Carver when he hit Clementine in front of her eyes. (It was such a brave thing to do considering how scared she was. I wanted the writers to allow her to be brave and still show us how scared she is.) You can only listen to people talking about you as if you were already dead or a danger to the group for so long before getting fed up with it. I would avoid forcing her to make a U-turn which would erase her disabilty in the process because that's not how the world works and not how I would want it to work. I would make her gather strength very slowly, one step at a time, and I would want her death to have some meaning when it comes, or at least make her go down fighting. The falling-to-one's-death scene worked with Ben because we didn't see it coming and it wasn't yet done before, so it worked in my opinion. Doing the same to Sarah, another considered 'liability' seemed not only cheap, it felt wilful. Like a punishment for not behaving 'correctly'. Sarah is strong in her own way, and if I were to write her death scene I would not blame it on her and her being disabled like it was done in the trailer or turn it into a cheap accident in her alternative death scene later on. I would develop her character up to the point where she is able to protect herself well enough to survive and then let her die to show that even if you are strong, even if you are prepared and willing to live, you can still die. And I would allow the other characters to actually grieve her death because it was shown that they cared for her well-being in the previous episodes, especially Rebecca.
When it comes to Nick I would defintely avoid writing an off-screen death. It made it really hard to care for him in this scene especially since you were forced to shift focus too quickly to bashing his brain and scalping him instead of actually feeling something and realising that someone you know died. Altogether the whole scene was very unfortunate in my opinion.
Something else that felt really off to me is the fact that most of the characters who died this episode had little to no lines shortly before their death. In most cases this could have been avoided, especially in Sarita's (if you didn't choose to cut off her arm). If you let your main characters die at least grant them some last words.
My biggest problem with all deaths this episode is that they felt rushed and were rapidly shoved aside for the next one in line, almost the way an assembly line works. Also I would have made the deaths more personal for the characters who died and not only for the ones left behind (which only happened in Sarita's and Kenny's case anyway this episode. We had his family die for his character development in season 1 already. I really didn't want to see the same thing happen to Sarita because she deserved to be more than just the emotional provider to fuel Kenny's character arc).
If we saw Nick actually dying/helping after he was bit. Alot of Nick's character development was that He had low self esteem and saw himself as causing more trouble than helping. It would have been a great turn around if he found you to help at the yard, got bit running through the fence but fought alongside you to get back to Luke and Sarah whilst insisting that he isn't dead yet. This would go around and come back to the notion that when you chose either Pete or Nick, that Nick was no longer the guy who use to give up so easily. We could have had some last minute moments with Nick and maybe he DOES die in the trailer house but Sarah lives if you fail to slap her.
And had Luke actually react to the news of Nick's death hard because they are friends for 20 years.
For Sarah if she WAS to become a determinent character at the balcony to atleast have the gun fall off too and have her shoot a few walkers (miss if clem didnt teach her) and she'd die atleast putting up some sort of fight. Or survive but get bitten and die the night Rebecca's baby is born and have some last minute words with Clem. Because their friendship was being built up yet we saw none of that.
we made a few suggestions here:
http://www.telltalegames.com/community/discussion/77449/improve-s-death-updated/new
Sarah is a pretty avid book reader, way moreso than Clem who probably hasn't read a book properly in 2 years since the apocalypse happened. Sarah would have been VERY useful for clementine just knowing small things of what she's read. (when you meet her she's reading, she stays inside all the time because of zombies I imagine 70% of her days are spent reading books they find or that Carlos passed down to her) Hence why having to do puzzles with her would be great and similar to how Lee would sometimes have clementine help him solve puzzles in Season 1 (or in the Jurassic Park game, teamwork).
Of course Clem would be doing most of the protecting but Sarah probably doesn't miss alot of details when she isn't in a state of Zombie chased panic. Maybe adapt to outsmarting plenty of them.
I want Season 3 to be great. I really do. I'll be reading up on it and checking reviews when its released to see if it has returned to what it was.
The thing I won't be doing is buying it until I'm sure it isn't going to make the same mistakes Season 2 did.
I wouldn't of killed them off,they had too much potential,i wanted to learn about their characters more,with Sarah we were just getting to know her,Like Anna said she was too smart to die a stupid death,maybe she didn't calculate a 700 lbs canon collapsing under it's own weight when thousands of tourists have been stood on the same civil war site spot before without anything like this happening.... When Nick was trapped with Clem on his own he really came into his own,also the voice acting of these 2 are incredible,so much potential wasted.
No matter what game you play there is always going to be some sort of pre-set story fixture that is never going to change, period. TT just decided to make enticing interactive narratives instead of a always the same never changing linear story. The point I'm trying to make isn't that we've been given colossal story altering choices, but instead that we've been given choices that carry MORE weight than we have seen before. Maybe not as much weight as I, and we want, but they still matter MORE than they ever have in S1 and TWAU. With episodic games and especially interactive ones, I'd imagine, it's quite hard to ad a ton of variation due to the fact that the game is practically released, yet you're still working on it over some odd months. Again, not saying it's a lot, just saying that it is still, indeed, MORE. S'MORES are delicious by the way.
@Anna_Faye wow, you put it beautifully.
It's been more difficult for me to decide what language to use in defense of Sarah's character from anything but a literary POV because I really don't feel qualified to judge what kind of condition she's meant to have (such as in the debate between DomeWing333 and I on page 2).
I mean, I have personal experience in some ways but other than that I'm really not qualified to speak about it.
Your POV is extremely valuable and important here. Thank you so much for giving your honest & personal evaluation and contributing to the thread. I completely agree with everything you wrote. Everything rings very true and well said.
Really?
No. As the story portrays it, Sarah is continuing to be in this panic attack mode UNTIL you slap her. The thing that breaks the panic mode is Clem's slap. Even tho this is a completely false and offensive portrayal of how you stop a panic attack, the story shows that it "worked" when Sarah suddenly stares at Clem and proceeds to move out of the trailer. Being UNABLE to save yourself or ask for help does NOT = deathwish.
In her '2nd death scene' she is screaming in fear and screaming "Clementine, please!", but because the plot demands her death, she can't move or be rescued.
So all this means she had "given up", and didn't want to be saved? BS.
For the sake of argument, let's say that you ARE right, and that Sarah IS supposed to be "unWILLING to be saved".
That does not excuse the fact that the story in ep4 constantly PUSHES this false belief that Sarah has no value to the group, PUSHES you into believing that she's hopeless, PUSHES you into believing that you should leave her.
It does not excuse the fact that she is USED as a weak prop to support the backstory of a character that immediately afterwards WALKS OUT of the plot with no further impact, effect, or purpose.
It does not excuse the fact that NO ONE in the story gives a damn when a teenage girl suffers a painful and unfair death and is EATEN ALIVE.
Telltale started out in portraying Sarah as valuable and relevant to the story. Fans recognized this.
Meanwhile, there were other fans on the opposite end of the spectrum. Fans like you, who saw no interest or value in Sarah. Fans who saw her as "stupid", "useless", a "waste of space", with no value to the story or the characters.
This point of view is completely false. Sarah had value, she had initiative, she had relevance to the story.
But it's about more than that.
Telltale owed it to their fans to continue portraying Sarah as she had been from the beginning: a rare perspective and an honest portrayal of a young girl with a mental condition.
People who live with similar conditions to Sarah were immensely grateful for the fair and honest representation. They were amazed with the fact that Sarah was treated with respect, when
people like her in this genre and all forms of media rarely even appear, let alone are treated fairly and honestly.
But there was no nuance or respect shown in episode 4. She was doomed to die from the start. Telltale Games blatantly ignores and alienates a large part of their fanbase who had great solidarity and affection for her character. We are barely able to express a trace of the nuance that her friendship with Clementine had been prior to this. Her condition was portrayed with barely an ounce of the prior realism and respect. And when she finally dies, NOBODY EVEN CARES.
Telltale chose to blatantly ignore their own writing, and instead turned around and proved everyone like you to be correct.
THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT.
Really? Then why is it that every time you talk about Sarah, you have shown a complete lack of respect and compassion toward her character? The only time you finally admit that you do in fact "feel sorry" for her is when you have to backtrack in order to not be proven wrong.
All the times that you've spoken about Sarah in this thread, you have taken a patronizing tone, you treat her as being worthless, or at best a prop, but then you turn around like ooh no. You claim that you actually "feel sorry" for her, and actually yes, her life IS worth something. Stop.
You either see value in her, or you don't. It's as simple as that.
But the choices DON'T carry more weight! They don't even offer the illusion of it! I honestly don't understand how you could think they do???
I feel the same way. It's very sad
@Anna_Faye, @Krazehcakes, @Clemmy1
I agree & these are all great suggestions. Fans like you who recognize Telltale's mistakes and come up with ways of improving them are great & are honestly more deserving of praise than Telltale here.
I'm still going to keep playing too, but I honestly don't see how Episode 5 can redeem their past mistakes. I mean, even if it is extremely well-written it still can't take back what happened in episode 4. I've just lost faith in Telltale at this point, & it's just sad to me how it turned out.
"Even if the cabin group had never actually witnessed Sarah having a panic attack, you can bet that Carlos, as a dad and as a doctor, knew enough to let them know IN DETAIL how to properly respond." UMMMMMM you sure are jumping to a lot of assumptions on who knows this or that. We don't know shit about what everyone knows about Sarah. Yes your using good LOGIC, but that doesn't make it right. The way i see it, the perspective that is GIVEN and shown is all that we know. That is my own personal opinion, but you can keep making assumptions if you like. Also, shit changes when your life is on the line. Let me take the time to comfort you while we're LITERALLY 7.8 seconds away from being eaten alive? I agree with you on the panic attacks and they are uncontrollable, but there was no time for hugs and kisses.
Luke can be heard saying to Sarah in the trailer before you come in "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you." And you just agreed with me that Luke obviously DOES know "what the hell is wrong". Sarah's father just died. Luke obviously knows that's why she's having a breakdown.
Just because there's not enough time does not change or excuse the fact that the only possible way to get Sarah to move in a completely disrespectful way. It does not change the fact that Clementine as she slaps her has an expression of anger and disgust. And it does not excuse the fact that we are never given the chance to RECOGNIZE that there was no time to properly respond to Sarah's panic attack, or to show an effort to comfort her after it happens.
As far as I know, panic attacks don't prevent people from moving or asking for help. Sometimes people report their legs feeling weak and shortness of breath, but Sarah wasn't hyperventilating or saying she couldn't breathe like when Carver came. And again, she didn't say "I can't do it" in a panicked or fearful manner. She said it in a defeated manner. (Also note: sudden distractive stimuli is known to help people escape depersonalization and ground them in the present when they're having panic attacks. So that portrayal was in fact not completely false.)
If you're referring to practical value, yes, then it pushes you into believing that Sarah holds no practical value to the group in the same way it pushes you into believing that Kenny is mentally unstable, that Nick is a good person at heart, and that Bonnie is genuinely sorry for what she did. The game portrays people as they are. How dare it.
If you're referring to value as a person, then I think Luke and Nick risking (and giving) their lives to look after her and get her to move to safety would seem to show that they cared a great deal about her.
And it's only one character in your group that actively push you to leave her: Jane. The pragmatist and embodiment of everything that my Lee didn't want Clem to become. The setting and symbolism in the game do everything they can to tell you to save her, as I have already explained.
Again, you seem to be conflating the acknowledgement of a person as having no practical value with the belief that they have no value whatsoever. And that says more about you than it does me.
Thank you very much, both for what you just wrote and for starting this dicussion in the first place! It's such an important topic to talk about and I probably wouldn't have dared to do it myself.
Since I first saw Sarah in the cabin, being alone in her room with her book, very isolated yet so happy to see Clementine and instantly asking her to be her friend I just felt she was autistic, I sensed it somehow. You know, most people believe that people with autism are isolated because they want to be alone but mostly, and very much in my case, it is because we and the things we do are vastly misunderstood and that usually leads either us or the people around us to withdraw at some point. And I instantly felt how lonely she was and why. Many people blamed her father for her condition but I think the way he treated her, the way he never overwhelmed her because he knew and respected her limits so well, made him a very good father. And that's why I actually felt her despair when he died, because she had just lost the only person who really understood her (which would be terrifying even in our current world), who loved her for who she was and not for who he wanted her to be. And the way she froze when having a meltdown is quite common for autistic people, which is why I was so shocked when Clementine slapped her with an expression so angry that it truly made her look like Carver. Because being slapped in a state like this would only make it worse. Much worse. When I have a meltdown myself it is usually a reaction to being highly over-stimulated and in my case it can be triggered by various things such as certain noises or even seemingly normal things like someone touching or moving things I own - and being touched even slightly in order to calm me down would make me panic. And then imagine something truly terrifying happening such as losing your own father and what it would do to you in a world like that. I just don't understand why they even added the option to hug her in the trailer which obviously made her flinch and shriek in fear and then assumed that a slap in the face would help. It doesn't make any sense. You can't just snap out of it like that, it's not possible, because sudden and intensive things are the most common cause to trigger meltdowns in the first place. Clementine's speech however, when she talked about Lee in such a calm tone, very quietly, and compared him to Sarah's father, I really think should have had a far bigger impact on her and should have been the reason for her to move - at least that's what would have made me move.
By no means do I expect everyone to know all these things considering the fact that often I do not even understand myself but when you write a character with a disabilty (and it is quite obvious with Sarah) I expect them to treat them with respect and in episode 4 I really missed that.
OK then, let's get someone other than me who has had REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE with panic attacks and let them explain to you how the "slap" was completely disrespectful.
When someone she cared about was forced to slap Sarah in episode 3, Sarah almost had a breakdown. So why does the slap in episode 4 magically work?
Why does Clementine look ANGRY as she slaps her?
Why is there no opportunity to be like "Hey, I'm sorry I had to do that, but it was the only way I knew how to save you" ?
Do I really have to spell this out for you?
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All of these statements are belittling, hurtful, oversimplification, and misunderstanding of Sarah's character.
At worst you see her as weak, hopeless, a liability.
At best, you see her as pitiful, a tool to test whether or not you're still a good person, and a narrative device to showcase other themes or characters in the story.
Well said!
When I first saw Sarah in episode 1, I really identified with her (shy & lonely but wanting to make friends, a bookworm, etc). It's almost like.... I feel like Sarah is my past self and Nick is my current self......
Yes I also got the feeling she was meant to have a specific mental condition but I am not as educated as I would like on such things so I could never put my finger on it. Everything you pointed out makes perfect sense.
Forgive my being blunt but the fact that you have had experiences with panic attacks does not make you the foremost expert on how to deal with it. (Not to say that I'm an expert either) Are you aware that some people who have chronic issues with panic actually carry a rubber band on their wrist to snap against their skin whenever they're in the throes of an attack? It's because the sudden sting of pain allows them to refocus their mind on something other than their panicked thoughts. If you don't believe me, just look it up.
Why did Clem look angry? Because she had to be forceful. Another one of the tricks people use to calm down their panic attacks is to actually yell out-loud at themselves to stop. There was no opportunity to apologize to Sarah because everybody involved including Sarah knew that it was the only way to help Sarah get moving.
You should understand that there's a distinction between my points about Sarah as a character, Sarah as a survivor, and Sarah as a person. I have stated that, as a character, she didn't interest me very much. And as a survivor, she was clearly dragging the group down. But these are distinct from my viewpoints on her as a person.
The closest season 1 example I can think of is Duck. I was not at all interested in Duck as a character, I saw no value in him as a survivor, and yet I still count his suffering and fate as one of the saddest in the series. Because he was a person. He was a normal, sweet little kid who was made to suffer and die. I cared about Duck because I saw him as a human being in a place of pain. My opinions on how interesting or useful he was did not matter. I would have done whatever I needed to help him.
Thank you so much, really.
This is the exact reason why Sarah and Nick were such important characters. People of all kinds and with various conditions could relate to them and this kind of representation is so important and yet very rare to find.
From what you wrote you seem to be very educated about topics like these, more than most people, so please don't censor your thoughts out of fear you could anger someone. I for one really appreciate your opinions and like I said without you this discussion most likely would have never happened.
Thank you very much, I really appreciate that.
I agree completely. Episode 4 was so messy, and this whole season has felt really disjointed.
You touched on all the major points, but a couple more things that bothered me:
Sarita had next to no character development apart from being a nice lady who is concerned for Kenny, and even in the end her death was not about her--it's just to give Kenny more pain. I looked up a video of what happens when you don't chop her arm off, and all she does is just silently lay in Kenny's arms, too weak to say anything against him ranting at Clementine on her behalf. Sorry, but when Lee was bitten he was climbing ladders and tearing through zombies and fighting the Stranger, and even when he was nearly dead he was still talking to Clementine and giving her advice. Sarita's whole character just felt like a prop for Kenny, and that highlighted it more than ever.
Why was it understood that Crawford was a bad thing in season 1, but now Jane embodies everything Crawford was about and is made to look like she's in the right? It really bothers me that Sarah's portrayal went from respectful and endearing to becoming a burden to be killed off, just to prove Jane's point (which wasn't even right; she was autistic, not suicidal), and none of the characters even care. Even Luke is kinda supportive of leaving Sarah behind, when he was always the one trying to take the nonviolent 'good guy' route for everything. If his character is changing, then there's been no real focus on that development.
Kenny switches between being mentally unstable and totally fine depending on what's plot-convenient, with zero notice.
Kenny, in general, just feels really recycled. I DO like Kenny, but he had a complete arc in season 1, and now in season 2 he's just been basically doing the same arc all over again and taking a tremendous amount of spotlight, when there are so many less developed characters hanging off in the sidelines (some of them with unknown fates, who I kinda wish had come back instead--Molly, Lilly). This is starting to feel more like Kenny's story rather than Clementine's.
The more this season goes on, the less I'm sure of what the actual plot of it is. Christa has almost never been mentioned since her disappearance, Carver was built up to be a big baddie and then was killed off, so many of the built-up characters have now been killed off (or brushed off, with 400 Days), and now... uh, Russians? In season 1, it was so consistent: Clementine wanted to find her parents, the group wanted to get to Savannah, Kenny wanted to escape on a boat, and even as there were a ton of sub-plots happening, none of these things felt forgotten. Everything was resolved in a way that made sense and had proper weight.
The "weight" of episodes 1 and 2 was really good, got a little iffy in 3 but was still mostly good, and now in 4 we see Clementine hacking into Nick's head like she didn't even know him and Luke reacts to his best friend's death like he just dropped his ice cream cone on the floor. What the hell?
Also, I'm sorry, but as a female player it's a little hard to not feel disappointed about writing out four female characters in one episode, and almost all were WOC...
It's not that season 2 hasn't had a lot of great moments in it or anything, but as time's gone on it's gotten more apparent that its construction is a little clunky. Episode 4 was just what made it really glaring. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was bothered.
I don't know why you guys are so upset about this episode, I loved it. I felt like it went back to season 1 where it was genuinely difficult to make a decision, and then agonizing over whether or not you made the right choices. Is it because Sarita, Rebecca, Sarah and Nick died? That seems to be what has people losing their shit over on Tumblr at least. I guess I could understand why people are mad about Sarah(though I had a hunch she wouldn't make it this episode), but Nick was kinda a given if you ask me. He was determinate, and was able to killed off in a playthrough of episode 2, and as much as I hoped he would live, deep down I knew he wouldn't. I also had a bad feeling that Rebecca would either die in child birth or become sick afterwards, and that also happened. It was really sad but it also made the situation they were in all the more realistic and heart breaking. The group is falling apart, and they are all losing hope now. All they have is the baby, and who knows if they'll even be able to keep the baby if the Russians don't take it. At first I thought there was a possibility of saving Sarita, looking back I prolly shouldn't have cut her hand off, but for some reason I though we could stop the bleeding before the walkers got her. Again, wishful thinking. Overall this was a great episode imo, I liked all the interaction with the characters, the scenery was great, and the tension and problems we were given felt realistic to me. Can't wait for episode 5.:D
another great post in this thread @erenr ''but now Jane embodies everything Crawford was about and is made to look like she's in the right?'' exactly,the writers must have very little experience at this,because i can't for one minute imagine season 1's writers would even entertain this script for episode 4,it's horrific,this is not an attack on the writers,they just seem to have written something that should not of even have been a draft and went with it.
This is just a guess and i don't know if it's right or wrong,but i suspect Nick Breckon handed the reins over for the past 2 episodes so he could concentrate on the backlog of Telltale projects currently in the pipeline? We shouldn't be making excuses either for Telltale,it's shoddy,and only threads like this and massive criticism which episode 4 has recieved should be a wake up call that fans won't just accept turned out drivel. i know season 1's writers left Telltale and at that time there was a lot of concerned fans on here to which Jake Rodkin even posted a few times reassuring fans that the WD was in good hands,well if your reading this thread Jake i would love to know what you thought genuinely of episode 4 because i can't imagine you or Sean writing this garbage.
It's great that you personally loved the episode, but you have to understand that not everyone had the same expectations going into it as you. You need only read over the numerous insightful responses by people on this forum to get an idea of why they're "upset" as you put it.
I personally agree with you in regards to the difficulty of the in-game choices; I thought that they were reasonably difficult to make. I also had no particular issue with how Rebecca was dealt with or the ending, which I thought was tense and impactful. But pretty much everything else about this episode (for me, at any rate) was disappointing, and many people seem to agree. Much of the focus does seem to be upon Nick and Sarah's deaths (and Sarita's, I suppose) but much of the criticism is upon the amateurish handling of the characters, their being killed off despite having a great amount of narrative potential and in rather insulting fashion, rather than because people are annoyed that their favourite characters were disposed of. There would be far less "upset" had these deaths not been lazily-implemented means of getting rid of characters whose impact upon the overall story of Season 2 had been built up, only to find that the writers weren't interested in resolving these story arcs in a climactic or satisfying way.
I would argue that Nick, Sarah and Sarita are by no means the only issues with the episode (the laughable "hub" areas, the lack of any sort of meaningful development for Mike and Bonny, the fact that numerous themes in previous episodes- such as whether you can trust the cabin group or they you- have entirely fizzled out, Jane's being seemingly identical in many ways to Molly, etc.) but they are the most prominent for many people. I don't want to call it "nitpicking" because that implies pettiness, but I'd say that a lot of the underlying issues such as the inconsistency with themes between episodes, which are shameful nonetheless, are less immediately noticeable than the embarrassingly-poor character deaths, which are evidently more "in-your-face" in terms of inadequacy as events in the storyline.
Regardless, though I understand what you are saying and respect your right to an opinion (no-one is asking you to condemn the episode or Telltale if you legitimately enjoyed it), I hope you can also respect our qualms with this season and Episodes 3 and 4 in particular and understand that it's largely a criticism of the quality of the episode and the season, rather than because people simply wish that Nick or Rebecca or Sarah hadn't died. If you still have any questions then the creator of this thread has given a more in-depth outline of these issues above that I think would be very beneficial to your understanding of why some individuals are rather irate about the whole thing.
Please stop. I know you're attempting to be understanding towards those who struggle with mental illness but instead you're coming off as extremely condescending and treating people who have first-hand experience with what Sarah struggles with as less knowledgeable than you on the subject. Kindly stop talking about neuroatypical people like they're some kind of sad, wounded puppy, it's incredibly insensitive and humiliating.
I also had those exact thoughts, but I didn't write them up in detail. TLDR's and all etc. Very well said!
Re: the writers, I feel the same. It's like the new writers were only given an outline for the character arcs/ original meanings but it wasn't enough. You can see this in places like certain character's behaviors making sense but the development is missing. For example Luke's character has been pretty solidly written for the most part. In areas where it feels off such as when he suggests leaving people behind or "taking sides" instead of keeping the group together, it feels like this is maybe supposed to have been character progression/development, but nothing ever happens to SHOW that it's supposed to be purposeful.
I apologize that I'm coming off as condescending. But the fact of the matter is that even someone who has had first-hand experience with what Sarah struggles with isn't necessarily privy to all the information there is to know about it. I don't know what the other user knows. It's very possible that the other user is fully aware of everything I've said and has good reasons for disbelieving in it. I just wanted to make sure that we had a common knowledge base to work off of.
As for my perceived insensitivity when talking about neuroatypical people, I apologize for that as well. My intention was to talk about Sarah as a sad, wounded person as that is how I saw her. And I don't see her that way because she's neuroatypical. I saw her that way because she's just lost the most important figure in her life in one of the worst possible ways imaginable. Even normally functioning psyches are shattered by the type of trauma she's experienced. That she has an anxiety disorder and perhaps some impairment in her cognitive development certainly exacerbates the effect of the trauma on her and impedes her ability to deal with it, but I wouldn't say that I'm talking about Sarah as being sad and wounded because she's neuroatypical.
I hope these clarifications of my viewpoints are taken well. Regardless, since it seems like my continued involvement with this conversation is resulting in more harm than I had anticipated, I'll bow out now. It was nice talking to the both of you.
Finally got the time to read this thread and I loved it. This is exactly how I've been feeling since episode 3 came out. Very similar to the thread i made about episode 3 a while back
http://www.telltalegames.com/community/discussion/69906/people-finally-starting-to-wake-up-and-accept-that-working-on-4-games-at-once-is-hurting-twdseason2
This makes me so angry because of how important Lee is to all of us and how we have him in our memories but they're kind of playing with those memories in a really poor way that will eventually make us not care much whenever Lee is mentioned again. It's like with the "i thought about Duck today" part in episode 3, it's so badly done that it worries me they'll fuck up the Lee dream/hallucination scene everyone wants to see.
At this point i've already given up with Season 2. They should have an entire year to play and fuck around with borderlands and game of thrones. Hopefully they learn from their mistakes and don't do them again in Season 3.
Thanks for taking the time to read this monster, lol. Your thread makes great points, I remember seeing it right after ep3 came out and completely agreeing, all the problems ep3 had are only made worse with ep4.
It's great to see how this thread in a week got double the amounts of comments that my thread got in 2+ weeks. Also the amount of thumbs ups. It goes to show that the title of my thread is becoming a fact, the problems are just way too hard to ignore.
I've gotten to the point where i just don't care about anything big happening. When i saw zombie Nick i said "meh, shitty writers", when Sarah died at the observation i said "meh, shitty writers". I know that if they kill Kenny in episode 5 i'll feel like shit and probably tear up the moment that I play but i'll probably snap back to reality again and say the same "meh, shitty writers" and then wonder if this is what Vanaman first had in mind as canon for what Kenny was supposed to become when they deleted the "death sounds" in season 1.