Well, you said TWDG, so I assume that means both Seasons. Also, ten’s a lot, so I’m going to limit it to one (big) paragraph per character.

FAVORITES: (In no particular order)

Carley: I know as a character she lacks a lot of the depth most of the S1 cast had, but she felt like a shining example of an “Ideal Hero” archetype done right, and her placement in the story felt very effective. The writers didn’t overuse her and giving us this all around heroic person is very uplifting, which makes her being senselessly cut down that much harder to watch. Also, they used her reporting background to give her an analytical element, where she helps Lee navigate the group politics. And her telling him to tell his secret to people he trusts is one of the few times I remember a video game character changing my mind with nothing but calm well-reasoned arguments. I actually valued Carley’s trustworthiness more than anything. She confronts Lee about his past in the first episode, but is willing to give him the benefit of a doubt due to their circumstances and afterward it was always reassuring he had her to talk to about things without fear of judgement. And again, all the more horrible whe she’s taken from us.

Lee: Way back when before there was even 400 Days, I argued that despite being a player character, Lee was actually a great character regardless of our choices. His story is a classic redemption tale, and our choices color it but after playing the game over a dozen times I don’t think I ever found any “version” of him uninteresting. The writers did an excellent job keeping our choices consistent to his established character as a well-meaning man whose anger can push him to dark places when faced with the gross injustices of the world. He’s also an excellent tragic hero. Lee’s smart, strong, charismatic, and yet he can’t save anyone, which makes the despair of the setting that much more crushing, and him parting ways with Clementine, to have no choice but to let her face the same horrors that doomed him, without him, it’s just as heartbreaking for Lee as it is the audience.

Clementine (S1): It’s easy to misread Clementine’s moral objections as just childlike naivete, but talking to her you see she does have a firm grasp of the situations she’s in, sometimes more than the audience even. It’s most evident with the Ben/Crawford situation. She’s not unaware of Ben’s shortcomings, she even expresses doubt in the classroom to Lee (”You’re leaving me with Ben?”) but she doesn’t hesitate to speak up for saving him anyway. And if you drop him, she either shows a lot of clarity in understanding the concept of Ben wanting to be left behind (”Because he was thinking of others, and my mom says that’s what makes someone a good person.”) or she spots Lee’s bit of hypocrisy if he tries to assert that he personally had to leave Ben for everyone else because Ben was one person (”I’m just one person.”) Her character was truly a shining light in a bleak world, and her nobility combined with her relative maturity seemed to demonstrate the best elements of humanity, which the end of the story asserts would now have to be tested against a the worst parts of the human race. She was truly an amazing and intriguing character.

Lilly: I do want to make it clear: as a person, I sincerely hope Lilly is rotting in a ditch somewhere, as a character in a story, she’s incredible. As I explained in another ask, Lilly was an amazing tragic villain, with her interactions with her father and other characters subtly hinting a the Shakespearean tragedy that has likely been her whole life which reaches its zenith when the misery and fear and isolation finally push her to commit cold-blooded murder. I think it’s most poetic with Carley, who being an ideal heroic type represents everything Lilly’s not. Carley’s resolved, brave, and isn’t dependent on others, while also being sociable and well liked by others, and Lilly can’t stand it. And making great use of the medium of being a video game, we’re allowed to even give her a second chance, and the writers used that to just twist the knife further when Lilly uses her shot at redemption to abandon everyone before they can abandon her, AFTER they chose to not abandon her on the side of the road. Likely the product of a lifetime of Larry insisting Lilly should be cold and ruthless, and it’s tragic in that any good left her likely died with the same man who spent so long ripping it out of her. Like I said, amazing tragic villain, but I do hope she’s rotting in a ditch somewhere. =P

The Stranger: Bordering almost on more of a myth than an actual man due to how little we learn about him, the Stranger represents that the very worst of humanity exists in all of us. As he explains himself, he’s not some power starved villain or gleeful psychopath, he’s just a man, a man utterly broken by despair, and that alone is responsible for the majority of the death and tragedy that makes up the end of the story. He didn’t have to be a monster to destroy Lee and the other’s lives, he accomplished it all just by abandoning any pretense of morality in lying to and kidnapping an innocent girl for his own selfish reasons, while rationalizing as it being for HER good. Whereas Clem exemplifies the strength of people caring for and trusting each other, the Stranger is a personification of the far-reaching damage a lack of love for your fellow man can create, made more potent in that he exists because of the group’s lack of concerns for that station wagon’s original owners. And in the end he manipulates the trust of the one person who had thought of him before herself. And we’re left wondering, will the Stranger’s actions taint Clem and cause her to abandon her trust in people, or will she overcome and break the cycle, being able to still trust in others? Because we saw with Lilly earlier, some people don’t repay trust, they use it, and every time they do, it makes it that much harder to trust again.

Runner Up Favorite - Sarah: Ultimately Sarah was about as inconsistent and confusing as the rest of the S2 cast. (Going from being petrified from Carver in EP2 to not even noticing him in EP3) But her character potential when paired with where we left Clem, this older, more naive, more trusting sweet young woman interacting with this younger, depressed, embittered girl who was used and kidnapped, seemed like a perfect starting point for a long and complex relationship that explored both the original story’s themes of trust and family, while also providing us with an interesting character dynamic. That’s why I wrote a whole story about it.

LEAST FAVORITES: (Again, in no real order.)

Carver: I don’t hate Carver because he’s a villain, I hate him for being a shitty villain. As I’ve mentioned in previous asks, his villainy is so petty, arbitrary and overall stupid, it’s impossible to take anything he does seriously. And this supposed criminal mastermind is defeated by a brain damaged redneck and an eleven-year-old about a day after he captured them. The only redeemable thing about Carver is Michael Madsen’s performance, who never seemed to take the character seriously (I can’t blame him), which gives him a little entertainment value as a joke. (“You need funny people. That’s why I threw ours off a roof!”) Carver is also a great example of S2’s off-screen character arcs, because the way this guy ran things, it’s surprising Howe’s survived for more than forty seconds with him in command. It’s only because it was off-screen is there anyway Carver could still be in charge, as his ass backwards leadership would have lead to the destruction of his society in no time (like we see on screen) or one of his subordinates would have fragged him long ago. Speaking of which…

Troy: Much like his boss, Troy is piss poor excuse for his role. It’s actually kind of shocking how bad you could fuck up something as simple as “one-dimensional asshole minion” but the S2 writers pulled it off! Troy is simultaneously eager to beat sweet girls, but apparently socially conscious enough to feel awkward about calling Sarita “Indian Lady”. It’s indicative of S2’s toothless nature, putting in a middle-schoolers version of a “bad man”, while refusing to have him do anything all that bad outside of slapping girls, which feels comical. I created Consuelo in YaYaH as a response to Troy. You want a petty sadistic sack of shit with no redeemable qualities, HERE’S your petty sadistic sack of shit with no redeemable qualities! Not this PG-version crap. Troy also manages to reach brave new heights of idiocy when his response to seeing everyone covered in gore standing in front of a million zombies. First he threatens to shoot them (ZOMBIES MORON!) and then is even dumberer enough to fall for Jane’s cheap seduction ploy. Really shooting his dick off did the world a favor, the last thing we needed were more Troys. The final cherry on the shit cake is the same actor who voiced Omid voiced Troy. Oh, so we can’t have a funny charming character, but we can have this dull ass waste of space.

MuhClementine (S2 Clem): I’ve covered it more thoroughly in other asks why I don’t like 11-year old Clem, but the short version is she’s just a shell of her former self and at times even a bad knockoff of the character we all fell in love with. And to be absolutely clear, I’m not opposed to seeing Clem become more cold and detached. I had her becoming less noble in my own story. Her innocence effectively died when she had to shoot the Stranger, or watch Lee kill him. But characters are most interesting when they’re in a state of transition. S2 SKIPS the transition, and just resets Clem as a new person in a clunky and pointless time skip. I wasn’t interested in Clem becoming a “survivor”, I was interested in CLEMENTINE. How’d she survive, what she would do, who’d she met, who she’d grow up to be. The how and why is everything they should have given us but instead they skipped ALL of Clem’s story so she could stumble into the Cabin Crew’s story, and their story goes nowhere because then Kenny takes over the story.

Kenny 2.0 (S2 Kenny): Whereas MuhClementine is just a hollow shell of the real Clementine, Kenny 2.0 is more of a bad caricature of the real Kenny. All of his more likable attributes are either forgotten (Like his sense of humor) or are horribly managed into something barely recognizable. Kenny’s pro-active and determined nature is translated into suicidal idiocy and his concern for family becomes sudden and inexplicable swells of overwhelming concern, when in S1 he tended to be more guarded about his feelings. And his negative attributes are just ballooned out into utter absurdity. One comment about Lee being “urban” and therefore able to pick a lock, something he said while incredibly hungry and not thinking straight, suddenly changes to him spewing crap about Arvo being a commie. And his anger towards people who hurt his family, like Ben admitting he was involved with the bandits who attacked which lead to his wife and child’s death, is now just him blaming everyone for everything, including blaming an eleven-year-old for not saving Sarita, while they’re still surrounded by zombies no less! Kenny 2.0 is basically just an object of worship for selfish stupid dicks who think they should be able to do whatever they want and be respected for. And the real Kenny was a lot more complicated than that.

Luke: Yep, Luke again. As I’ve said in a some other asks, he just annoys me to no end. His character is horribly inconsistent, his actor stinks, he disappears and reappears from the story in strange ways, he seems to have no real personality or motivation, he never seems to care about anyone dying or have any hesitation forcing Clem to risk her life for stupid things, and yet the writers INSIST everyone loves him. I hate that the meanest thing we can say to Luke after the deck disaster, where he’s insisting he NEEDED to fuck Jane, was a very meek and quiet “Shut up, Luke.” How bout “You needed it? WE FUCKING NEEDED YOU, YOU SORRY ASS SACK OF SHIT! No, I apologize, it’s our fault for thinking such a brain-dead moron like you could ever handle something as complicated as looking in one direction and saying something if you saw zombies! You know who DID manage that? Fucking Sarah! And she was in the midst of a mental breakdown at the time! And now she’s dead because YOU needed a booty call? Why don’t you do all of us a favor and FUCK OFF! And by fuck off, I mean figuratively, not literally, because you already did that!” Seriously, I just wanted to tell this guy to hit road all damn game, and yet Clem’s responses are almost always friendly no matter what. How is it MuhClem can be ENRAGED by Sarah politely thanking her for waiting up, but not Luke for his various annoying crap. This really contributes to me viewing him as a Marty-Stu, no one in-story is allowed to dislike him, except Kenny 2.0, because he’s a dick to everyone.

I’m pretty sure if Luke looked and sounded like Reggie, nobody would still be talking to him, other than how annoying he is, as him being ‘cute’ is the only thing I can think of that makes Luke appealing to some people. In my limited experience, Cluke fics seem to outnumber any other kind for TWDG by a wide margin. I don’t see that happening if Luke was anything other than a stereotypical looking handsome farmboy.

I’m sure Click fics would also be much rarer if Nick didn’t have his trademark dreamy blue eyes. But unlike Luke, Nick does have an actual character. His character is a mess, but it’s not fair to hold that against him when almost every character in S2 is a mess. He stood out from the otherwise hivemind of the cabin crew, and like Sarah, seemed like one of only two people who mostly-ish acted human, having a more emotional reaction to killing Matthew at dinner than most of the cast to watching the rest of the cast die.

Really the only thing that make people think Luke is in any way a decent character is him likely literally being designed to be jerk-off material combined with his bloated screentime. There was even a recent TWDG confession that kinda illustrates my point.

This person who made this confession also made a point to say “especially Nick and Sarah” have a lot of potential, over Luke. I don’t know who they are, but I’m always curious to what Luke’s supposed potential was. Again, other than Clem, who is our player character, Luke is the ONLY character in all five episodes, and usually has two scenes per episode where either he’s a major part of it, or is even interacting with Clem alone from everyone else.

Luke had MORE focus than ANYONE (Clem is often irrelevant to the scenes she’s in) all game… and yet he still had no real character development, or character arc, or… anything that makes him interesting. Even his “conflict” with Kenny is born out of Luke’s inability to do ANYTHING, in that both times he wants to sit around and do nothing when Kenny wants to do something.

Nick effectively dies at the end of the second episode as there’s no scenes for him after that, he’s just there until he dies again, and off-screen. And yet I found his conversation with Pete on the way to the river more interesting than anything Luke ever does, as was his conflicted feelings about killing Matthew, where initially he insists he didn’t do anything wrong, only to later feel overwhelmed by the guilt. And Sarah was fascinating, and became tied with Christa as the second most important character in the massive rewrite I made.

Luke? The only marginally interesting thing about him is when he completely blows off everyone he supposedly cares about so he can fuck a stranger, who less than twenty-four hours ago blew off a man’s dick with a gun. Between that and him never caring or even noticing people’s death and suffering, implied to me he was some kind of sleazy amoral whore who fakes being a  ‘nice guy’. And people ship him with Clem, all the fucking time…

Ideas are easy. Execution is hard. Anyone can have a good idea, but putting it to practice and making it work is what separates a success from a failure. This is precisely one of the things that make S2 so frustrating, it constantly fails at things TWDG succeeded at. The first game actually created a great blueprint for Telltale to use going forward for their titles, and they completely botched it anyway! =P

I’m torn on this issue. As I noted before, the limitations imposed on the original The Walking Dead Game, along with the lack of expectations for it to become a breakout success, may have been what enabled it to succeed in the first place. Despite being a licensed work, TWDG didn’t have much to connect it to the franchise other than a few minor character cameos in the first episode, which were insignificant, a character from the comic so minor she was little more than a name, who was later declared not the same character anyway, and then zombies and a theme of family, both of which are common in modern fiction and aren’t exclusive to The Walking Dead. Even being set in Georgia is fairly irrelevant, it easily could have been anywhere. 

The fact that the game was just some side project allowed to run off on its own, free from any hard connections or expectations from the franchise, is one of the reasons ended up great. It wasn’t just some adaptation or expansion of some other well-known work where people would demand certain characters show up or certain plot points. It was free to be its own story and the creative staff could pursue their own characters and their own themes in their own controlled environment.

The irony of course is TWDG’s massive success meant it suddenly created the same expectations and demands that likely would have doomed it had they been there in the first place. “You have to have important choices!” “Lots of people need to die!” “We want Clementine!” I’ve actually seen people on TTG boards, even people I normally respect, say “No Clem. No Sale.” Where I can certainly understand people wanting to see more of her, it feels so tone deaf to say you won’t even entertain the idea of playing another game in the series without her when before TWDG, she didn’t exist. Is it not possible the same people who created a character you loved, can’t also create other characters and other stories you’d fall in love with?

I remember I became very worried for the series the moment 400 Days was announced. Them pushing a new singular episode so quickly after TWDG racked up the accolades reeked of an attempt to cash in on the series as soon as possible. TWDG, even though episodic, felt complete as a single work. Suddenly saying there will be one more special episode seemed counter-intuitive. The title was concerning, casually announcing a massive jump in time from where TWDG ended. And the fact that 400 days was the last thing the S1 staff did was deeply disappointing to me. I was shocked to see Sean Vanaman himself, S1′s head writer, had written the awful Russel & Nate section, which felt like an exercise in inexplicability.

Prior to the announcement of 400 Days, I, like a lot of fans, speculated about what a sequel could entail. Personally, I didn’t want to see Clementine in a sequel, at least not so soon. She was such complex and great character, further complicated by her input with her as Lee, that it felt like it would be nearly impossible to continue her story without the most careful of planning. And her popularity would demand any story she was involved with be about her, severely limiting the creative staff’s options to tell a new story.

The crazy recommendation I had, and even sent to Telltale (or at least one of the email addresses they listed on their website) in the form of a fan letter, was to simply do another story with a wholly original cast, whose only connection to the first game would be that it’s set in the same universe. But, the hook would be two of the characters in this story would be revealed to be the people Clementine saw on the hill, shown at the end by having them simply spot Clementine where we last saw her in the first game.

I guess it sounded insane, but I thought it may have been the best compromise between financial and creative demands. This suggestion would put Clem’s story on hold and give the creative staff some much needed time to plan out the next part of her journey. It assures there’s another TWDG product to financially capitalize on the first game’s success. Deliberately divorcing it from the first TWDG installment would avoid expectations that would be created by caving to fan demand, allowing for more creative freedom to make another story, while ending on a promise to ultimately give fans what they want in the next installment, which the creators might be better prepared for with two characters they can craft now to play a role in Clem’s story later.

Ultimately an outlandish suggestion on my part (and purely dreaming that some random fan letter would convince anyone of anything). But I did make more reasonable ones on the forums. I suggested having Clementine as just part of the follow-up’s cast. Whoever our player character was wouldn’t have a special relationship with Clem, so as not to undercut Lee’s role in Clem’s life, and our decisions as Lee would affect some of Clem’s actions and dialogue, effectively letting us see how our tenure as her guardian changed her. This keeps her in the story, our S1 decisions color her a little in a way that could be meaningful, but she’s kept in an NPC role where her growth as a character can be kept consistent but intriguing, possibly ending with setting Clem up as a protagonist in the third installment.

I guess the momentum was impossible for Telltale to ignore, although I doubt they even wanted to ignore it, despite their claim of not wanting to be known as “The Walking Dead” company. I only found out later the original writing staff had left the company before S2, and speaking with a friend who had followed Telltale from their earliest point and click days, he told me members of the company’s old guard had slowing been dropping out over the years, and after TWDG the last big names still there moved onto their own companies and projects.

So between fan demands, likely new pressure from Kirkman or Skybound, and a business seeing money on the table, while the people who made it possible walk away, I guess all the pieces were in place for TWDG’s follow up to be a disaster, where Clementine is unceremoniously shoved into the role of player character where she wandered through a broken and cut up story that ultimately succumbs to cheap pandering by resurrecting Kenny when Clementine alone didn’t have enough nostalgia to carry the weight of S2′s failings.

Before playing S2, or even hearing about it, I was dead set on us not playing as Clementine, at least not yet. She had just been thrown into the world alone, barely able to fight off a single walker with Lee’s help, and as intriguing as I might find playing a game that realistically depicts a nine-year-old in a horrible world, I figured Telltale would never sell a game where our PC is so powerless. It just seemed like there was no way to make it work without wrecking Clementine’s character in the process or breaking my suspension of disbelief. And I didn’t want a repeat of S1, with someone adopting Clem for a while and Clem leaning on them for everything. They already did that.

The irony is while I could claim S2 proved all my greatest fears to be well founded, it suddenly made me realize how another story with Clem could both be believable but without a need to repeat S1′s formula of partnering her with an adult. Sarah, or a character like her, was the answer. Another “child” character, relatable to Clem while being distinct from her. Someone physically older but more emotionally naive, allowing a natural way to empower Clem with her relative wisdom to Sarah, while having an ally who could help her overcome her size limitations, but isn’t so strong herself that she’s a guardian to Clem but a peer, which allows for a completely different relationship than the one she had with Lee.

It… it was right there. It was the missing piece of the puzzle and it was right next to the rest of the puzzle! It just needed to be put in the right place. I could not stop thinking about the possibilities of these two characters. It’s why I wrote my own version of S2 over the winter. It’s why I’m planning to write a follow-up to that story, because there’s so much more that can be done. …and S2 just threw Sarah away like rotten fruit that couldn’t be gladder to be rid of, the exact thing they needed, and even CREATED, and they didn’t see it.

So I guess to answer your questions: A sequel was never needed for TWDG, it was a complete work in itself that stands on it own. Even if not needed, a sequel need not be a disaster as there were numerous ways to continue TWDG’s story in ways that not only satisfy but expand on the first game’s creative and commercial success. But a sequel to TWDG was likely doomed before it started by the overwhelming success of the first game, because the actual sequel we got seemed like it did have the components needed to succeed, but a combination of executive meddling and possible lack of foresight on the creative staff prevented them from ever coming together.

I guess you could say, there was a small but still realistic chance a sequel to TWDG could have navigated the pitfalls that would prevent it from being everything it should have been, but it didn’t happen…

Well I’m glad someone finds my ranting and rambling useful. =P

I did think about doing an in-depth breakdown of S2 in its entirety. I used to have a gaming blog where… well, where I mostly bitched and complained about things that had been bugging me for years. I had done a complete breakdown of Metroid: Other M and the movie Prometheus for it. And my biggest inspiration WAS the Plinkett reviews. So what you’re suggesting does feel like it’s squarely (roundly?) in my wheelhouse.

At the time I played S2, I had stopped blogging for about a year and seriously thought about making an exception for just it. I had even started writing my introduction, but trying to piece it all together in my head and realizing I’d probably have to replay it again to do a proper analysis felt overwhelming and for something I wanted to stop thinking about. Ultimately I didn’t want to put myself put myself through all this misery of reliving such a crushing disappointment and all probably for an audience of next to nobody. (Where were you then! =O)

But I was still reeling from the disappointment and had to do something about it. In the couple of months after No Going Back came out, I spent a lot of time on Telltale’s official message boards, discussing all the problems of S2. And as I did that I’d often suggest better ways they could have handled the story. And after a while I had made so many of these suggestions that I had pretty much constructed an entire outline for a rewritten Season 2 in my head. So I was like:

“Why am I bothering making these suggestions to a company that doesn’t care and couldn’t do anything with them even if they did care? Screw it, I’ll just write it all down as my own version of the story.”

And I spent the first three months of this year doing exactly that. Now I’m back to complaining about and dissecting S2 somewhere else, so I guess that didn’t cure me. Maybe some day, once I move past the emotional aspects and can look at its failings a little more detached, I could do a full start to finish examination of EVERYTHING that was wrong with S2. But I don’t think I have the energy or patience to take on the subject as a whole at this time.

Still, feel free to send me asks though, as I’m an attention whore at heart and I usually get worked up enough to dive into certain aspects of S2 just by having someone bring up part of it. Or even ask me about S1, because what started this whole endeavor was I loved discussing S1 so much that I couldn’t help discussing S2 as well, which I’m still doing apparently. I’m just glad it’s helping someone. =)

S2 was definitely a bigger kick in the nuts for me, but it is important to note the context of how I viewed these things. I was fourteen when The Phantom Menace came out, not exactly the refined and enlightened bitter crank I am today. As a young man viewing the first new Star Wars movies in fifteen years in theaters, a lot of what’s wrong with The Phantom Menace went over my head, which was much closer to the ground back then.

I remember leaving the theater and thinking “That was okay,” and it wasn’t until many years later I realized what was wrong with an excitable kid who loved Star Wars at the time thinking the start of a new trilogy was only “okay”. It wasn’t until years later when Attack of the Clones (which contrary to popular opinion IS the worst of the prequels) came out did the then ongoing failure of the Star Wars prequels finally start to dawn on me.

I went to see AOTC with my cousin, her kid and my little sister. About an hour or so in, my sister and my cousin’s kid, who were ten and six at the time, told us they wanted to leave, because they were BORED. And the sad thing was, so were me and my cousin, and our only argument to stay was “It’s gotta get good soon.” And they weren’t stupid, they didn’t buy that, so we left. And I found out when I saw the whole movie later, no, it never really gets good.

By the time Revenge of the Sith came out I went to see it mostly to complete the experience, and afterward me and a bunch of friends went to eat and discuss it, mostly coming to the conclusion it felt like a big joke, with Darth Vader’s comically over the top “NOOOOOOOO” being the punchline of the last six years of this long-running disappointment, and probably one of the reasons why I’m such an overly analytical freak today.

But even accounting for my perspective, I’d still say TWDG S2 was much worse than the Star Wars prequels. The clear disregard for quality, continuity and the story that’s evident all throughout both is more damning for TWDG because S2 followed shortly in the massive breakout success of the first game, where the Star Wars Prequels came over a decade after an original Trilogy of successful films. The Prequels were the big “RETURN” of Star Wars to the big screen after long absence following its initial success, whereas S2 was dropped on us before the dust of TWDG’s success had even settled.

Telltale’s crude exploitation of the very thing that elevated the status of their company, won them over 80 Game of the Year awards, and was famous for moving people to tears, by making such a cheap, clumsy, cash grab, and so quickly, was a move so cynical that even a long jaded skeptic such as a myself never would have predicted it. It’d be like the original Star Wars being followed up by releasing The Star Wars Holiday Special in theaters instead of The Empire Strikes Back.

You think with the overwhelming critical and commercial success of TWDG, Telltale would be extra careful about a sequel, at least for a while. Instead, they crapped out 400 Days and S2 for a quick buck, and now the series has stalled because they’ve destroyed everything the original game worked so hard to build with Clementine’s character and the themes it conveyed. Like a friend of mine said, Clementine’s story barely got out of the womb before they ruined it.

And Telltale’s terrible management passing around the story and constantly changing things on a whim made S2 into a full-fledged clusterfuck. At least with the Star Wars Prequels they were a consistent failure of being thoughtless crap leveraging the Star Wars brand for money and for George Lucas to experiment with making movies with CGI. Going into the Revenge of the Sith, I pretty much knew what to expect by that point. S2 constantly found new ways to annoy and disappoint me right up to the shoddy multiple choice endings.

And the progression of the prequels showed Lucas isn’t entirely tone deaf to fans as he parses Jar-Jar down to eventually nothing and tried to go “darker” like some fans wanted. I’d say his attempts to “improve” were about as successful at his attempts to “improve” the original trilogy with the Special Editions, but at least it was an effort to improve.

S2 seems to flaunt how little a shit it gives, killing off people in stupid and pointless ways, even killing Nick off-screen because they probably didn’t want to pay his voice actor for one more episode. Them making you hit zombie Nick like four times while their Mary Sue glibly remarks how often Clem’s hatchet gets stuck felt like a deliberate attempt to rub it in the audience’s face how much they hate us. (And Jane pointing out the hatchet sticking if Nick’s not there shows their laziness as nothing prompts that observation then).

But the most frustrating thing about S2 is, for me, it signaled the video games industry’s inability to evolve as a medium, even when there are proven successful formulas that show how to both expand certain types of games to new audiences, while still maintaining an appeal to the traditional audience.

TWDG’s incredibly simple gameplay coupled with its fantastic storytelling felt like a veritable blueprint on how to do meaningful interactive drama in a way that doesn’t require intimate knowledge of playing modern day video games. My brother, who usually only plays fun arcade style games, compared playing The Walking Dead Game to “reading a really great book”. And after I played Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale’s last game before TWDG, it felt like the natural trajectory of their brand would be to further simply the gaming element, focusing the interactive elements for when they’re most effective to letting the audience interact with the story in some way.

What’s most heartbreaking about S2 is it not only completely failed to understand the story of TWDG, it also missed the greater opportunity of Telltale further honing their style of games into something that helps transcend the barriers that normally keep out non-gamers or non-traditional games. Instead, they opted to put in new “dynamic” elements to the gameplay, like having to hit left or right during certain action scenes or you get a Game Over, something that was as novel as when it was first introduced back in Dragon’s Lair…

And the lack of thought and maturity in the writing really makes it clear just how little Telltale appreciated The Walking Dead Game’s often subtle and nuanced approach to things. And the fact that S2 mostly got the same reviews as the original TWDG, also signals how little most of its target audience appreciated it, suggesting that a lot of them only viewed the game as a novelty where you can kill zombies and be an asshole to people you don’t like.

Such a massive drop in quality going mostly unnoticed by a big chunk of the audience is deeply dishearting, especially since it proves Telltale and really any company can keep cranking out half-thought-out junk and there will be enough people to eat it up to keep things profitable.

S2 is much bigger disappointment than The Phantom Menace to me because TWDG actually raised my hopes about something I was very cynical about, only for those hopes to be used to sell some godawful half-ass piece of crap that if it weren’t for nostalgia for the first game, would already be forgotten about because it’s connection to a much better work, which is only in that it crudely exploits both Clem and Kenny’s images, is the only thing that elevates it in some people’s eyes, and in my case, serves as a constant reminder to what COULD be instead of what was.

I always kind of figured after the Star Wars Prequels, I’d never face a crushing personal disappointment of that specific kind again, where some outstanding work I want to immerse myself manages to completely shut me out with its bafflingly spectacular failure. I assumed the Star Wars Prequels were a once in a lifetime kind of disappointment. S2 proved me wrong…