TWDS203 Review

Welcome back to my review of The Walking Dead: Season 2. So after an okay but flawed start and a small step down in quality in the second episode, episode 3 is where season 2 takes a massive nosedive in quality. Many of the season's biggest problems show up here, and they're a lot easier to notice when they show up in such large volumes as they do in this episode. Remember what I said about telltale cutting down on interactivity in the last video? Well this is the episode where season 2 really starts to feel more like a movie than a game. I'll also be covering some behind the scenes aspects of the game because I think it's relevant at this point, but let's not waste anymore time talking about talking about episode 3, let's actually talk about episode 3, there's a lot to say about it.

So in the last episode after a member of Clementine's new group was bitten and killed, a man they were on the run from came looking for them causing them to leave their cabin. In their travels they came across a ski lodge where Clementine was reunited with Kenny, and things seemed like they were gonna be okay until the man they were on the run from shows up to capture them all and take them back to his base of operations.

So instead of starting with the group being on their way to the base we see a shot of Clementine outside, not captured and looking at a butterfly. Uh what? Well it turns out she was just looking out for Sarah who needed to pee. After Sarah's finished the girls get tied up again and put back in the truck.

Inside the truck, Kenny tries to form a plan of escape in spite of everyone's protests, but is unable to go through with his plan when he's knocked after the truck comes to a stop. As the group arrives Clem meet a guy named Reggie, someone who helped the cabin group escape from Carver's compound but lost his arm afterwards when was bitten by a zombie and needed to it cut off. We also sort of, but not really met a guy named Mike, and this woman who Carver's group found sneaking around covered in walker guts.

The next morning the group gets put to work and Clem is assigned with helping Bonnie, who tries to convince Clem that Carver's not a bad man, and gives her a new jacket. After that she's sent to the roof to work with Sarah and Reggie in cutting berries.

Carver shows up and is unhappy with the results and then kills Reggie for his incompetence. Clem is then ordered to give some nails to Kenny and Mike and when she gets to them they're fighting.

Walkers then immediately break into the shop even though they shouldn't, I'll get into that later, forcing them to defend themselves for a bit before getting back to work. Clementine begins to head back, but then she's suddenly grabbed by somebody who turns out to be Luke. He asks Clementine to get him a communications radio so he can tell the group about when a herd of walkers that's on it's way there arrives so the group can use it as an opportunity to escape.

After the meeting with Luke, Clementine is called into Carver's office who has a talk with her. Basically giving her a generic "we're more alike than you think" villain speech, Jesus Christ. Anyway after that little talk Clem returns to her group who are discussing a plan for escape. The woman from before joins in and tells the group that they can sneak past the walkers by covering themselves in their guts, or their smell as she puts it, so they decide to do that, after using the PA system to draw the herd of zombies to the place. And just so they can also be in contact with Luke, they decide to have Clementine sneak into storage all by herself and steal walkie talkies. Holy shit, and I thought all the stuff they had her doing in episode 2 was bad.

Well she manages to pull it off, and the next morning they talk about who should be the one to give the radio to Luke, and surprise surprise it's Clementine, didn't see that coming. Clementine tries to locate Luke but is unable to find him, and it turns out it's because he was found by Carver, who demands to know where the missing radios are.

Kenny takes the blame for stealing the radios, and after being called a "fucker" to his face, Carver proceeds to beat the fuck out of Kenny. Clementine can fruitlessly try to help Kenny- Oh you are a dead man Troy. Dead.

Anyway at night time the group decides that it's time to leave but it seems that Kenny's too injured to go with the group. But despite his injuries he manages to wake up and is able enough to go along with the group's escape plan, but they need someone to activate the PA system first, and who else are they gonna get to do it but Clementine? Ugh.

Clem activates the PA system and if Alvin's alive he stays behind so Clementine can escape. When she reunites with the group she finds them being held at gun point by Carver but helps them get the advantage and hold up Carver at gun point. However Kenny suddenly shoots Carver in his knees and then proceeds to kill him with a crowbar which Clementine can choose to watch.

The group prepares to make their escape by covering themselves in walker guts but then Troy suddenly comes out wanting to know what's going on. But Jane manages to calm him down and shoots him in the dick to use him as bait so the group can escape. As the group walks slowly through the herd Carlos gets shot by a stray bullet causing him to get bit, and Sarah freaks out over her father's death. This of course causes the whole plan to go to shit, and now the group has to fight their way through the herd and Sarita gets bit leaving Clementine to either kill the zombie that bit her or cut off Sarita's arm. Holy shit. Wait a second, isn't that the exact same scream from the woman in the street in season 1? Yes it is.

Well that was quick, and I think it's because episode 3's plot is a lot more straightforward than the last two episodes. I'll talk about that more later, for now let's start with this: I didn't mention this in the plot synopsis but Carver can actually slap Clementine if she's rude to him at the beginning of the episode. It makes me want him dead even more after what he could potentially do to Clem in episode 2. If Telltale wanted to create a villain that would be hated based on his treatment of Clementine, well good job, it certainly worked on me.

Kenny is understandably angered by this, but he reacts this way even if Carver didn't slap her, and it makes no sense. Carver didn't slap Clem my first time playing episode 3 so when I saw him act this way, it left me confused and it wasn't until a subsequent playthrough where she did get slapped that I understood why he was angry.

Reggie was.... Reggie. I'm not sure what to say about him because he's alive for such a short period of time that I can't really form a strong opinion on him. He's voiced by an Pakistani comedian, the same guy who voiced Prismo on Adventure Time, and a few of his lines are chuckle worthy, but again he's killed off too soon to really leave an impression on me, or consider him a memorable or noteworthy character.

Speaking of which, the way he dies is really stupid. When Clementine has to work in the greenhouse with Sarah, she's given a choice to either help Sarah with her chores, or do her own work. If you help Sarah then Clementine doesn't do any of her own work and Carver kills Reggie for his incompetence, if you do your own work then Sarah does an utterly terrible job causing Carver to kill Reggie for his incompetence. Why aren't I given an option to help Sarah, without completely abandoning my own work? They gave us a choice, and the result of it is that Reggie dies regardless of what you do, making the choice completely pointless. Especially since Sarah doesn't even give a shit. If Sarah showed appreciation for you helping her, then the choice would at least be somewhat justified by having it affect your relationship with her, even if it would be just a small dialogue change later on in the game. But no, this choice doesn't even trigger a "Sarah will remember that" notification.

So I didn't think much about Reggie, but Troy was another story. I hated this fucker, and I get the feeling that that was the entire point of his character. He didn't even have any dialogue in episode 2, but now he's a character who gets a bunch of screentime and interaction with Clem. The parts that really make me hate him the most are of course when he smacks her down with his rifle when she runs to help Kenny while Carver's beating him, and a little earlier when he smacks her after he finds her looking for Luke. They're determinant, but even without these scenes Troy's just an asshole without any redeemable or likeable qualities. Overall he's not really much of a character. Just someone who gets screentime and interactions with Clementine so we can hate him, and be happy about his death when it happens at the end of the episode.

Speaking of which, while I was happy to see Troy's death, I think it would've been more satisfying if Clementine actually played a part in him dying. Not by killing him herself obviously, that would be out of character for her and we're already going to get that later on, ugh. But Clementine can't really get any retribution for his treatment of her if she doesn't at least play a part in his death. They could've had her kill him in self-defense, and even then, having her only trying to injure or incapacitate him, and she just happens to kill him instead. That's really the only way they could've done it without breaking her character.

The part where the walkers break into the store where Kenny and Mike are uh, working, is forced as the walkers shouldn't have even been able to get in to the store in the first place. You see them just outside the barrier before it happens and none of them break through allowing them to get in, and you don't even see any damage to the wall after the fact. So how did they get in? It doesn't make any sense.

I suppose while I'm talking about this I might as well mention that episode 3, as I said at the beginning of this video, is where it starts to feel more like you're watching a movie than playing a game. There are very few action sequences, this being one of them, and hubs are basically not even a thing, the hub where you walk around after meeting Reggie is pretty much the only one in the whole episode because there's next to nothing to do in the others. As a matter of fact, Carver's compound, as a whole, had it's potential as an actual central hub world completely wasted. They could've easily made this a place that the player could explore to learn more about Carver's group, and have to actually walk around in in order to get to the places where Clementine has to perform her daily tasks. Instead all that happens through cutscenes, we don't even get to deliver the nails to Mike and Kenny despite being able to directly control Clementine after the walkers attack.

Like in episode 1 there's a stealth sequence but also like in episode 1 you can't fail it at all. It's actually even easier than the stealth segment in the first episode. If you take too long to take the walkie talkie then Clementine just hides before she's caught, so all that happens is you have to start that prompt over. I was expecting something like this in this episode and I was really excited for it, so I was disappointed when it turned out to be something that requires no effort. In hindsight, it was unrealistic of me to expect it to be something more than what it is given how the stealth segment in episode 1 was, but that doesn't stop this from being really underwhelming.

And while we're on the subject of this, isn't it great how the group is still relying on Clementine to do everything for them? She pretty did everything for them in episode 2, and now they're having her risk her life sneaking around the compound by herself. This is just flat out reckless, I find it really hard to believe that Clementine is the only one who could've done the things they needed to have done in this episode, and they ask her to do these things with no regards to her safety. They just believe in her enough that they think she'll pull off these tasks and no harm will come to her, and unfortunately, they're not wrong. There's even a dialogue choice to acknowledge that they ask her to do everything, so the developers were fully aware of this glaring flaw.

The scene where Carver talks to Clementine in his office is stupid. He gives his generic "you and me are more alike than you think" speech and how exactly can Carver tell that an 11 year old girl that he just met a day or so ago is just like him? Clementine can even agree with this stupid speech and agree to help Carver, another example of her acting out of character. By the way, remember when I said in the last video that the scene with Carver in the cabin didn't change anything? This is the scene that demonstrates that. Carver mentions what happened in the cabin, but he says the exact same shit regardless of how you handled it. In this way, Carver technically remembers that but nothing changes based on what you did, so your choices during that part were completely worthless.

Before I move on, I'd like to point out that before this scene we see Rebecca leaving Carver's office crying. This makes perfect sense if Alvin lived because as soon as we enter his office, we see that Carver beat the shit out of him and he's all bloody and beaten up. But if Alvin is already dead then why would she be crying? Because of whatever he told her? That's hard to believe when we don't know what he said to her and we sure as hell don't ever find out. It would've been better if this little bit didn't happen if Alvin is already dead, it would've also given Alvin's death something that adds a change to the game which is something it's severely lacking in.

Also, Carlos said in episode 2 that Carver was a very smart man, and yet, in a world where he knows people come back to life as zombies unless you destroy the brain, he beats the shit out of Alvin, keeps him in his office, and on top of that he isn't even tied to the chair. Seems pretty dumb if you ask me.

Since I've already brought him up I might as well talk more about Alvin and while I'm at it, Nick since these two have something in common, namely having no significance in this episode if they survived the previous one. You might have noticed that I didn't bother mentioning them during the plot synopsis, and that's exactly why. Nick gets only a few lines of dialogue the whole episode, and Luke doesn't even seem to notice if he's dead. As for Alvin? After the group arrives in Carver's compound he's called into Carver's office and we don't even see him again until Clementine is called into Carver's office, and again at the end of the episode when everyone attempts to escape, and Alvin stays behind so Clem can leave.

Now to be fair, I think what little dialogue Nick has is good, especially with Kenny. And despite being absent for pretty much the whole episode, I think Alvin at least gets a decent send off if he dies this way. If he's already dead then you can search the desk in Carver's office to find the gun Alvin uses, and you use it to shoot Carver in the face when helping your group while he holds them at gun point. Otherwise Clementine just jump kicks him. Ironically, this means Alvin's determinant status has more impact on this episode than Nick's despite the fact that Nick gets more screentime.

And speaking of this scene. I haven't mentioned any of the game over scenes in this game yet, but I figure I might as well talk briefly about this one since it's so lazy. First of all, how the hell did Carver even know that Clementine was there? What did he have Spider-Sense this whole time and it just never activated until now? Second, there's no reaction from anyone about this. Noone, not even Kenny seems to care that Carver just shot and killed Clementine. And lastly, there isn't even any blood when Carver shoots her. She just goes limp and falls, there's no blood or bullet wound on her whatsoever.

I get that it's a game over scene, it's not something that's supposed to happen, and it's very hard to get a game over in a telltale game to begin with. But come on, previous episodes don't have game over sequences that are this lazy, even if some of them are stupid. They could've at least put a little more effort into this one.

The scene where Kenny kills Carver is another example of Clementine potentially acting out of character. Never before has Clementine been shown that she can revel in someone's death, not even in season 2 until up to this point. One could argue that it makes sense given what Carver has done, especially if Carver hit Clementine, but even then, I don't Clementine would be happy to see someone die. Clementine walking away from watching Kenny kill him is more in line with how she would act. I think the option to watch Kenny kill Carver could've worked better as Clementine trying to stop Kenny from killing Carver but failing to do so, which gives implications that Clementine cares about Carver for some reason never mind scratch that. My point is, this choice should've been reworked into something that fits Clementine's character in both options.

On top of that, watching him be killed is what Carver wants you to do. It may be satisfying to watch Kenny kill him, but you're also giving Carver what he wants. Denying him that can be satisfying too. In that regard, I think this choice could've worked as something that gives the player something to feel conflicted about. But of course Carver was built up as such an unlikable asshole that most people opted to watch him be killed instead.

The episode's final choice, confused me at first. I thought I was still in a QTE so I just killed the zombie that bit Sarita and wondered why there was a target on Sarita's arm. I'm not sure if I would've acted differently if I knew it was the episode's final choice at the time, but ending the episode by cutting off Sarita's arm is more dramatic, even if they do blatantly reuse a sound bite from season 1. This choice does and doesn't have changes next episode. I'll explain what I mean by that in the next video.

So this is the part where I summarize my thoughts and say "see you next video" right? Well no, I'm still not done talking about this episode. There's still plenty of other things for me to mention here, and I honestly don't know where begin.

Well I have to start somewhere, it might as well be with this. 400 Days was a DLC for The Walking Dead and depending on your choices in it, the protagonists would or wouldn't come with Tavia, the final protagonist, to what turns out to be Carver's camp. This is the episode where these characters make an appearance, but I didn't mention any of them in the plot summery because all of their appearances are 5 second scenes featuring only one or two lines of dialogue per character. I am not kidding, that's literally all they do in this episode.

Telltale promised us that our choices would matter in this regard, and instead what we got was extremely short cameos that don't matter in the slightest. In the end, Bonnie, the character who goes with Tavia no matter what, is the only one in the whole season who actually has any significance. After this blatant display of dishonesty, I will never trust Telltale again when they say you should play something before playing something else. And can you imagine how pissed off the voice actors must've been, when they were called into the studio to do some new voice work, only to find out that it was only for a few lines of dialogue? I'd certainly be upset about it, makes me wonder why they even bothered including these characters at all.

In the last video I mentioned that if you surrendered to Carver that you would hear about a man named George, who Alvin supposedly killed. Well guess what, we never learn anything about that. If Alvin survived the last episode, he's taken away from the group at the beginning and don't even get to talk to him until just before he dies. And we never learn anything about this through Carver either, despite the fact that George apparently meant so much to Carver that it's the name he uses when he introduces himself to Clementine.

Why was this even brought up if it was never going to be elaborated on? This is part of a problem with the season as a whole of plot points getting brought up and dropped with no resolution. It's implied in earlier episodes that Alvin, Carlos and Luke all have some dark secrets or at the very least that they're not as nice as they seem on the surface. But come this episode, Alvin and Carlos die without anything bad being revealed about them, and Luke doesn't turn out to have any dark secrets either. Though he's still a fuck up.

I have to wonder, why are there so many dropped plot points and inconsistencies in this episode, well season 2 as a whole really? Well one answer for that could be, this episode has a different writer than the previous two. The last two episodes were written by Nick Breckon and Andrew Grant. This episode was written by Pierre Shorette. Perhaps the ideas the Nick Breckon had for this episode, got lost when the writers were changed. Either due to a miscommunication between them, or an outright lack thereof.

It would explain why Nick and Alvin have no significance in this episode, and why none of the foreshadowing concerning the cabin group has any payoff. But the dropped plot points don't stop there, you might've noticed that Mike, and new character in this episode, looks remarkably similar to one of the bandits that attacked Christa in episode 1. Well originally, he was. Mike's voice actor confirmed in an interview with a Tumblr user that Mike was in fact supposed to be one of the bandits that attacked Christa, and that part of episode 3 would've been about Mike trying to convince Clementine that he's not a bad man, and Clementine would have a choice to forgive him or not. It was also supposed to be explained that the gun shot we heard when Christa was killed was actually Mike having his ear shot off. But since Mike and the bandit aren't the same person, how Mike lost his ear, is never even asked by anyone, let alone addressed.

And this isn't really related to the game itself, but the achievements for this episode are part of the reason why I noticed the pacing is so bad. The pacing in season 2 in general is bad but this is the episode where I noticed how bad it was, partially because of the achievements. They not only describe the events that take place in the episode, but the achievement image for "witnessed a murder" is of Reggie, so as soon as I saw him in a prerelease video, I knew it was him who was gonna die so that's probably why I didn't develop any strong feelings towards him.

Also, two of these achievements seem like they were written from Kenny's perspective. "Got beaten down" in particular made me anxious about what was gonna happen in the episode. Sure this is where Clementine gets hit in the face with a rifle, but that's determinant and it's actually Kenny who's taking the beating here. The same goes "gave what you got". It's not Clementine who gets revenge on the person who beat her, it's Kenny. Maybe these achievements were written from his perspective to surprise players, but there's a problem with that, and it's the reason why I brought up the achievements in the first place.

All of the prerelease material telltale put out before the episode's release, pretty much spoiled the entire episode. Between the preview in episode 2, the achievements, the prerelease screenshots, and finally the trailer, I pretty much knew everything that was going to happen in episode 3. This is the reason why I noticed episode 3's pacing is bad, I think it could've been a good episode given what was expected to happen, but it all happens too quickly and doesn't get enough time to develop into something compelling. One set of events described in the achievements happens, then the next set of events described by the achievements happens, with nothing added to make it deep or interesting. Although to be fair, that's pretty much the whole season.

So yeah, this episode could've been good, but between a spoiled plot, minimal interactivity and cut content, it turned to be pretty bad instead. And guess what, it's not even the lowest point of the season. We still got two more episodes to cover folks, and the next one is considered by many to be the worst episode of the season. But we'll see just how bad it really is next time, when I talk about episode 4, Amid the Ruins. Thank you for watching, see you in the next video.