Tertiary Characters; or 'Wait who's that guy? Am I supposed to know him?'
I'm sort of curious why Telltale introduced a bunch of new tertiary characters this episode rather than re-using ones from episode 1.
For instance, the random Whitehill soldier who blocked the steps to the Great Hall could easily have just been Britt from the previous episode. And Damien seemed tacked on to that scene with the merchants just so that we had already seen him before he tried to kill Mira. I really feel like he should have featured in episode 1. Why not use the goldcloak that kept watching Mira last episode in some capacity, even instead of Lucan the other guard, perhaps? If Lord Andros and his companion turn out to be just a red herring, appear once more or not at all, and then are never seen again, that'll feel like a waste as well.
Elaena and Gwyn were fine obviously because they're hopefully going to become key players as the story progresses, and I'm glad you could chat briefly with Erik at the Wall, if you sent him there. But I feel like Telltale would be better off making use of the characters they have by building up multiple appearances, not just having them disappear and replacing them with new randoms who then in turn probably never get mentioned again either. It's difficult to care about an individual character's trajectory if you've never met them before and may not again.
Comments
I could be wrong but I think Britt is a Bolton soldier not a Whitehill. So him not being there would make sense.
I think its good, in reality its meant to confuse us and make it seem bigger as a world. Again its only episode 2 there is still more than half the game left, they are still introducing characters
No, Britt has to be a Whitehill. In Episode 1 Gared tells the Maester he met 'two Whitehill soldiers and a Bolton' at his farm. The first guy you kill is the Bolton, so that no matter if you kill or spare the second guy, you've still killed a Bolton soldier. Otherwise Ramsay might not have cared. Duncan clarifies later that it was a Bolton soldier you've killed, so that can't be Britt.
I don´t get why it´s supposed to be a bad thing. More characters make the world seem bigger. It also makes is more like the TV show since there are a lot of characters with barely any screen-time in there.
They are not supposed to be important characters with interesting personalities. For us they are just "The Whitehill soldier asshole", "The Lannister guard" and "The Whitehill marchant". If they used the same people it wouldn´t be very realistic since Westeros is a big place and meeting the same random people would be kinda weird.
Actually that makes it more like the book series than the TV show, given the books have hundreds more minor characters that are only referred to once. The TV show's adaptation has merged a number of those characters together so as keep them relevant and involved in ongoing storylines (Ros, Locke, Gendry, Loras to name a few examples), which is exactly what I'm suggesting should happen in the game. The series is actually compounding the storylines and the world as it goes along, rather than expanding it.
A character being two-dimensional or clearly just a plot device, to the point that we refer to them as 'the Lannister guard' as opposed to 'Damien', or 'the Whitehill Merchant' as opposed to 'Lord Andros' is never something desirable in writing. If you want realism, you need to take into account that every character is an individual and thus should be considered as having their own backstory and motivation, even if we never actually find out about it. They should not seem like just an auxiliary to the main characters/playable characters that blinks out of existence whenever you're not around, even though functionally that's there role within the game. You don't want it to be obvious.
You're right, it would be weird if we kept meeting the same people, and yet despite how big a place Westeros is, in the TV show and the books, the characters keep coincidentally crossing each others paths all the time. If Brienne can meet Cat, then Jaime, then Roose, then Cersei, then Pod, then Arya and the Hound etc. - then there's no reason why Britt can't meet Gared, and then also meet Rodrik. Not to mention if you did keep meeting the same random people in different contexts, they wouldn't actually be 'random' anymore, and that's exactly the point.
I think we just have different opinions and neither of us is really right.
I literally don´t remember any of the characters you just listed
. I just remember them as "that guy from that scene". And I haven´t read the books so I guess you´re right there.
I agree, but how does more characters mean they don´t have this backstory and motivation? If we never find out about their story, the only way to get to know them is through their actions. If they had the Whitehill soldier asshole from episode 1 in that Rodrik scene in episode 2, it wouldn´t add much to his character since he´s still just being an asshole.
At that point Telltale would have 2 options:
Add another scene with that guy in another episode where you get your revenge or make peace with him or something. I don´t think that would work very well since we already have a lot going on at Ironrath and making another plot-line would just be confusing and unnecessary.
Or he doesn´t appear at all. That would feel cheap since at that point he would become an important character and then just disappear.
I don´t think it´s a good idea to draw a line between important characters and background characters (like all the nameless people at Ironrath or the sellswords in Yunkai). These people are something in between. They are not important enough to appear more than once (not saying they won´t/ can´t) but important enough to have a personality and motivation.
Well that is the most ridiculous part of the TV show in my opinion. The only way I can imagine that would be a good thing is that
it is interesting to see her interact with all these people. But most of them are really important POV characters. If Britt met more POV characters it wouldn´t be very interesting because he´s no Brienne. If they wanted to give him enough screen-time to become as cool as Brienne, he would have to become a main character. At that point it wouldn´t be worth it since we already have a lot of those.