Why I think the last choice in season 2 is fundementally flawed (Spoilers season 2 and early ANF)
We all know what happens at the end of season 2, Kenny and Jane gets into a fight over Jane "killing AJ", and after a while, it becomes obvious that they cannot be seperated without violence, this is where Clementine decides that her only option is to shoot Kenny or look away.
Im sorry what? Not only do I think this choice does not make a lick of sense, since it would make just as much sense for Clementine to shoot Jane, since she has known Kenny for longer, and being an (admittedly very mature) eleven year I dont think she would shoot Kenny the way she does, or at least not without considering shooting Jane first.
This choice was apparently originally designed to allow the player to shoot either Jane or Kenny, but it was changed, I assume because they felt the percentage shooting Jane over Kenny would be way too high. What we ended up with, is a scenario where Kenny is overpowering Jane and Jane having no way to fight back except try to hold off the knife, already we see the clear writers bias against Kenny, Kenny is completely made out to be the villain here, with Janes villainous intent only being revealed after the fact. It is not only in that instance that Kenny is made out to be the villain either, throughout the season, everyone keeps telling you how crazy Kenny is, and how is a danger to everyone, meanwhile, Jane gets a pass almost instantly on everything she does, such as having sex with Luke, leaving the group, and when she returns to the group, she is even depicted as the hero saving the day.
You get the option to shoot Kenny not once, but TWICE, you never get the option to shoot Jane, you never even consider it, despite her just making you kill your best friend in the whole galaxy, the only thing you can do is "fuck you I am leaving", you have no option at any point to kill Jane, other than letting Kenny kill her, again showing Kenny as the villain, and Jane as the victim, there is no way to uncover her plot before after the fact, not to mention how Kenny is magically completely fine after killing Jane or getting shot
To me it seems like the writers wanted to make the conflict happen no matter the integrity of the writing, characters or story, and they didnt manage to write a compelling enough reason to side with Jane, so they had to make the choice heavily biased against Kenny to even get a semblance of a split in that choice, its like if you are given the option of making a chocolate or a strawberry cake, but you are only told that there is strawberries in the kitchen after refusing to use the chocolate twice.
Personally I think that part of the fault lies in bringing Kenny back for season, which I think was a mistake (I obviously enjoyed him being there, but I felt it weakened the story), but I really think for a game that boasts choices, the ending choice in season 2 feels heavily skewed, and feels like the writers are herding you into making the choice they want, as evident by the 50/50 split in that choice, despite a huge part of the playerbase despising Jane, and most of the same people loving Kenny (obviously the choice is gonna be skewed more towards 50% later in life, but compare with something like A New Frontier (I know its not great, but its the example that counts here), where "Shoot Conrad" has 90% stil, which is closer to what I imagine "Shoot Jane" would have if it was an option rather than being biased against Kenny”)
Thoughts?
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LoL....the writers wanted a fight at the end..and it should have never included Kenny as he should have stayed dead in S1. The problem with S2 is that there really was no real antagonist. Carver is over and done with so quickly that he does not count. So what did that leave the writers with for 2 episodes?
Episode 4 was a fight against nature...birth...winter and lack of resources which in other writer's hands would have been a neat counter point to the authoritarian yet easier life of Howes...but of course the s2 writers were not up to that task....so they needed to fill the episode with drama...such as killing off Nick...off screen....killing Sarah...just because you need death. Killing off Rebecca because dead moms are sad.
Episode 5 is all about prisoner abuse...which is sad because it had one of the best scenes in the game...when the group is around the fire talking...getting to know each other...it was nice. Up to this episode...there really was a sense that Luke and Kenny were going to have a fight...people had guessed as much even in episode 2 when they just met. The writers were upset that it was guessed so soon....so certainly they would have to work harder to make it feel earned....LOL...oh god no. Instead they went with the least likely scenario.
Consider in the last 2 episodes...who was the one character that was pushing Clem to help Kenny....who helped ease some tensions on the way to the cabin and played peace maker? Jane....so out of the blue she turns on Kenny for the one thing that was not his fault...Luke drowning. I mean really writers? Clem gets shot...that could have at least been somewhat laid at Kenny's feet as being his fault given his abuse of Arvo and how Mike felt about it.
So we needed a fight because you know...drama and the writers were too lazy to come up with something else....so they decide that Jane was going to stick a baby in a car to provoke a fight to show Clem how unstable Kenny was. Let that sink in....the "writers" big idea is so convoluted that it boggles the mind at how bad the idea is. But they went with it.
I would say somewhere in the writing process someone said..."Why are we working so hard....they will gobble it up no matter what we write....who wants some cocaine?"...and the rest is history.
It comes down to Carver not being a strong enough villain/killed off too early and the fact the Kenny was purportedly supposed to BE Carver early in the game's conception. Some players have argued that the same could be said of Kenny as Jane though. In that it means jack all to the rest of the group how much Clementine disagrees with Kenny. Arvo still shoots her, Bonnie and Mike still leave her, and Jane still has to prove her point. The more time passes, the more I see the appeal of the alone ending impractical as it is.
Yeah, seriously.
I know that choices dont matter for jack shit, and that the story has to follow the path with a certain amount of rigidity, however with season 2 episode 5, much like episode 5 in a new frontier, they have a conflict happen, even if they cant justify it with their writing, this is especially true with season 2, where they artifically create the conflict of shooting Kenny vs not, simply because they couldnt create a compelling reason to not shoot Jane if that was an option
While I wouldn't say that bringing back Kenny was a mistake, how his character was handled and thus giving him an abundance of screen-time and importance over the Cabin Group, who were introduced first, was definitely a mistake.
The conflict between Kenny and Jane was also giant mess that had ended up forcing the player to take sides between two controversial and arguably unlikable characters, and the conflict occurs because adults didn't have the common sense to communicate with one and other like proper grown-ups.
I think we can all agree that the latter part of Season 2 was a pile of horse shit except for the Wellington ending which the majority of the fanbase felt emotional over
Pretty much.
Then that just makes all of New Frontier look like a pile of horse shit drenched in horse piss. Because season 2 at it's worst parts still sounded better than New Frontier.
While I dont think that A New Frontier is terrible, and think that Season 2s latter part was for the most part pretty good (although it would have been so much better if it had continued the bar that the first few episodes set, specifically I would have much rather explored the tensions and politics at howes more, specifically Carvers interest in Clementine, and having the possibility to either side with the Cabin group or side with Carver, or stuff like that), A New Frontier was very weak, felt like a big action movie rather than a Walking Dead game, it completely lacked the subtlety and slow pace that made previous installments so amazing
Kenny's not unlikeable though
Oh I couldn’t agree more! Season 2 was wayyy weaker than Season 1 in terms of quality such as episode lengths, gameplay, character development etc. But Season 3 made Season 2 look like one of the best games in history!
Kenny as Carver should of been explored I think, then make him feel conflicted to do the right things only because of Clem's sake and his past with her and Lee. Perhaps based on how Lee's relationship with Kenny went as either friend or more so foe. Kenny would treat Clem a bit different when she aligns herself with the cabin group to escape. But if Kenny ultimately leaves with Clem due to the herd taking over Howes he can reluctantly join Clem and the Cabin group for New sanctuary at Wellington where just before you can have the Luke versus Kenny sequence take a place so Clem can feel more stressed about who to save. Though I wouldn't have Clem make a choice to shoot either. Maybe who to help save from a fall or burning Truck/building etc to make her feel less directly in control over someone else's life and less like a murderer when she shoots Kenny when really she became a murderer when she determinately shot the Stranger from S1.
I am not of the opinion that he is, but he was written to be way more of an asshole in season 2 than he was in season 1, as well as the game pretty much telling you at every turn "Hey you see Kenny over there? he is fucking crazy, you really shouldnt be hanging out with that guy"
Yes how do they not learn from past mistakes? Before S3 I felt if anything they'd take into consideration everything wrong with S2 make the next game close to S1 as possible but instead they somehow concocted a even worse abomination of a story. It's like if S1 is a 10/10 then S2 is half at 5/10 and then S3 is almost at 0 like a -1/10.
Well here's an opportunity for an evaluation of term: Define unlikable and exactly why you don't believe that applies to Kenny?
Eh...disagree.
Though I suppose that depends on what criteria you're rating and where you stand on certain things.
It would've been a hundred times more interesting than Carver was, yes.
Speaking as someone who likes the Stranger, he was kinda in the middle of strangling a determinately one-armed Lee. It was in defense of someone who was in legitimate danger. So really, she became a killer when she determinately shot him.
Same applies to Kenny, at least depending on when she shoots him. The officially alone ending is debatable.
Well I am no lawyer and laws hold little to no weight post apocalypse without enforcers, but i want to say that the first time could of been self defense even though all her incidents were technically premeditated and in season 1 Clem and then did strike and attack the Stranger first he could felt ganged up on and was acting retaliation for self preservation at that point.. now when getting to Kenny and Jane it's more complicated of which side she may of truly been on and trying to protect from harm since possibly both survivors she was friends with depending on versions of playthroughs.
Both were trying to kill each other and Jane withdrew her ? knife first and wanted to provoke Kenny into attacking even telling Clem to stay out of what she hoped and knew would likely go down with Kenny. If still nothing else Clem would be at a minimum.. guilty of manslaughter.
After that Eli incident which is very close to murder and not much better. He never charged at her or attacked first at anyone until she drew her weapon and fired not caring if one of those bullets were not a dud.
I mean, if we are talking about A New Frontier, he did stab Javier
Wasn't that after Clem had pulled the trigger on Eli and Javier made it kind of known he was working with Clem at the very least and her body guard at the most?
And that would be because..?
Sigh...that scene alone is one of the few places where people saying ANF is a terribly told story is completely understandable/justified in my eyes. It's more in line with what I've seen/heard about the comics, minus the gratuitous sexual themes.
Spoilers: That scene gets a considerable dose of tweaking in my rewrites.
Yes. He was basically [over]reacting in self-defense at that point and Javier caught him in time, earning a gash over his eyebrow in the process.
And Javi had already disarmed and determinately punched him for him. And he was already subdued and yielding to her demands at that point. Clementine really was out of control at that point.
Clementine had killed the man Eli without much malicious forethought but rather spontaneous endangerment by repeatedly pulling a gun trigger without knowing for sure each bullet would be a dud. She likely only did it to scare the man with no intentions of actually killing him to not risk getting in trouble with Tripp and hanged. Another thing about New I hated that they took out was Tripp's supposed original obsession with public example hangings. Would of been funny if Joan actually ended up getting Tripp publicly hung along with David or in place of David after his hang fetish.
Clementine did however think about killing Kenny with a gun known to reliably work for a little while before shooting him of course based on choice. Now the Stranger danger deal possibly was to just save Lee in self defense of Lee.. though Lee probably would of defeated the Stranger on his own somehow without any aid.
S2....Kenny should not have been in it at all. It basically made his brilliant arc in S1 a waste of time. They should have taken time to work out their Villain...and the final fight should have been Carlos versus Clem with Sarah holding a gun. That would have been balls to the wall writing there....that would have been hard work there. Carlos was a man with extreme anger issues and over protective...what if the writers had done the hard work and written an arc where Jane and Clem basically bond with Sarah and try to teach her how to survive.
So many ways they could have done S2.
I agree, not only does Kennys sacrifice in S1 feel way cheaper to me when he gets away (even if there was signs that he had gotten away), but it also severely weakens the season 2 characters and plot when they spend half the season focusing on Kenny
You’re right and i think the writers are fucking awful for doing that. I see what they were doing but all it had done is cause endless arguments between fans. They deliberately made him a lot worse, they forced that feeling amongst fans because they wanted people to hate him so that they would eventually be tricked into shooting him and for those who didn’t, they rewarded them with an ending worthy enough to actually be appreciated. Thankfully i didn’t fall through Telltale’s trap door.
Again i could not agree with you more. I wanted to be able to actually play a game and be deeply immersed with that game, characters and story. Instead we got lied to by the company saying that Clem and Javier would be playable characters and be played EQUALLY when in actual fact we didn’t get to play as Clementine at all throughout the entire game! And by that i mean that we didn’t get to control and move her around to explore an area or talk to people. For me the Q and E’s or dialogue choosing is not considered gameplay. They also lied saying that Episode 1 was soooo big that they couldn’t fit it into 1 episode which is why Ties That Bind had 2 parts, yet both episodes barely scraped a fucking hour. Each episode from there onwards was around the same length, we sat through most episodes filled with nothing but cutscenes and choosing pointless dialogue which had little to no effect, Episode 3 had ONE TINY AREA OF GAMEPLAY IN THE WHOLE EPISODE! How do they think that was acceptable? There was also no character development with ANY character in this game except for arguably Javier and David but even that was piss poor. Little to no character interaction, lack of hubs, no optional extras like fun puzzles to be involved with. They forced a stupid romance on you, even if you did everything to avoid it, you still had to virtually accept it by the end. The so called “villains” of the game were all over the place and quite ridiculous. Choices felt like they didn’t matter like they always did in Season 1. If you sided with Conrad in Episode 2, Clem is furious with Javier and i think calls him a traitor, yet the following episode it is not EVER MENTIONED AGAIN!! She still treats him like he is her best friend! Same as with Episode 4, she gets upset with Javier if he decides not to kill Lingard, yet later she neve refers to it again and still acts the same. Whatever happened to the contrast in personalities? Kenny, Lilly and Vernon treating you differently based on your earlier actions?? And i don’t mean just one or two scenes and then forgotten about like they had in S3, i mean that relationship strained or good lasting through the entire game like Season 1 did.
Jeez i could go on forever! I’ve already said too much and yes i have repeated this many times before in which I apologise but it makes me so fucking mad!
He means that not everyone agrees with RichWalk’s opinion. Kenny is likeable as well as unlikeable which is the whole purpose of his character
You can disagree but S3 WAS a pile of shite. It did not give me the feels i felt in the past nor the excitement of the story, characters, gameplay etc. This was virtually not even a game. Just a cutscene show
I just think its bad design, there was no indication at the time that Kenny would calm down after killing Jane, there was no indication that AJ was alive, an Jane is made out to be the victim by having Kenny be on top of her, that choice was designed to make shoot Kenny, it was not made to make it a possibility to shoot Kenny, almost everything in that scene and alot of the stuff happening before then was made to make shooting Kenny seem like a good choice, which is why I hate it, its terrible writing, and thats why they removed the choice to shoot Jane, because even with how much the game biases you against Kenny, its still a 50/50 split, just terrible writing
In the game, as soon as you hurt Clem intentionally then you're unlikeable. Kenny has never hurt Clem besides when he got mad over saritas death but Kenny was just at the "anger" stage of grief and did apologise once he was over it. He had reasons for every single one of his actions and none of them are selfish. So he's not unlikeable in that way.
Thank you!!!! I have said the same thing in the past.
Yes again i totally agree. Imagine if they had left the original idea of Luke vs Kenny in the final scene instead? I still would have hated it though. The writing in the final 3 episodes of Season 2 were terrible and just got worse
Not what I asked about, but okay.
Holy shit, that is [another] missed opportunity!
Ah, I see.
Also, nice one.
Agreed.
Um,...no.
Granted, I suppose that would check off the Clementine personal bossfight box and I can see the appeal, but then again, there's still the issue of Sarah having to shoot Carlos potentially being determinant. Basically, if you were a supreme dick to Sarah, Clementine can and most likely WILL die!
I mean, it would be somewhat cool if Clementine actually manages to defeat Carlos herself and Carlos being another Shadow Archetype of Lee can also thematically make it both a rematch with the Stranger and/or a fight with Lee himself, but I can't really say that with any confidence considering she has yet to engage in a straight physical battle that hasn't gotten her curbstomped.
That likely would've redeemed most of the fault with Season 2.5. But then again, that would'v been great fitting storytelling, now wouldn't it?
You got that right. But I suppose that can be said about almost every story.
Yeah, this right here is what ruined what amount of toleration I had for ANF!Clementine.
She was fine in the first twoparter since her character derailment into a more unlikable(might not be the right word) person was actually kinda the point and, minus one or two moments where they took it too far( * coughElicough * ), there was actual some purpose to having her exist in that form in what was nomimally Javier's story, some mysterious backstory to be explored(huh--deja vu), and interesting character interaction to be had with Javier, Gabe, Eleanor, and especially Ava and Conrad.
But halfway through Above the Law, most of that was either checked off or simply rendered moot and she then stuck around in the rest of the story to do little to nothing beyond find out where AJ is and be there to fulfill the obligatory fanservice and trailer shots. Oh, and piggyback off Gabe's arc with some unnecessary and/or excessive ShipTease to hastily glue her on with the thin illusion of being "important"--and this somehow became even more obvious with each remaining episode!
Still, the word has been somewhat overused in recent years in various places, so I think it's worth deconstructing what some people actually define the word with.
True.
Fair enough. I was just pointing out that there are things to for [some] people to like and appreciate it for over Season, that's all.
Glass Half Full, y'know?
...Or would that be 15% full here?
Okay.
Eeeh...up to interpretation. but I see where you're coming from.
What you asked came off as vague and thus your question could of applied to nearly all and any remark I previously made in my wall of text.. so I'd made a guess ( which I shouldn't have to do) that you were asking about the last text in bold about manslaughter..