The Walking Dead: How Telltale Games Broke My Heart.

Time for something a little bit different. My blog seems to have taken a swing towards becoming a beauty blog. While that's all well and good (I enjoy writing about that stuff a lot) I do want to be able to go off on a tangent and write about something unrelated every now and then so here it is. I've been into video games since I was young. I remember going to my aunt's house and my cousin was playing Crash Bandicoot on his Playstation. I had a go but the neanderthal like hand-eye co-ordination only a toddler could possess got in the way of success. A couple of years later I owned a Playstation of my own. I started by watching my mum play the Tomb Raider series which, as a kid, I loved then in my early teens I moved onto Silent Hill, a franchise which I adore. Back then I just wanted games to scare me or challenge me, I'd never imagined a strong emotional connection with characters of a game. However, here I am writing about why playing The Walking Dead was potentially one of the most emotionally traumatic experiences of my life...



It's currently 1:38 in the morning of the 5th of February 2013 and I have just completed Journey. I bought Journey as every review I'd read of the game said it was an extremely emotional experience. I'd also read that a lot of people had cried at the ending. To me, bizarrely, weeping at a video game sounded like an experience I'd enjoy. Don't get me wrong, it was emotional but it didn't bring me to tears and that's what prompted me to write this.

The first and only game to make me cry was Telltale Games' adaptation of The Walking Dead. When I say it made me cry, I mean it turned me into a quivering wreck. I was expecting similar effects upon completion of Journey but, even though you're meeting real people in the game, it just didn't manage it. I've never cried at an episode of The Walking Dead tv show. I've never cried at any other video game. How did The Walking Dead accomplish it? Well the answer is simple.

Lee and Clementine.

If you haven't played this game all the way through I suggest you stop reading now as spoilers are ahead. The characters of Lee and Clementine have a bond unlike any of the other characters. They have no family (Lee becomes aware of this in the very first episode, while Clementine, despite holding onto some thread of hope, spots her parents as walkers in the finale). They both went through the beginnings of this zombie outbreak alone. Clementine is very endearing (her story about her hamster escaping and eating a whole box of cookies warmed my heart) and Lee, depending on how you play him, feels responsible for Clementine and he adores her. While the other characters came and went (the only one I was a little sad about was Kenny and I think that's probably because he was the only other original character left) I prayed nothing would happen to Clementine.

I think it's very easy to become so attached to Lee because you make his decisions. For a lot of people, the decisions they make Lee choose are a reflection of what actions they would choose to do in this situation. That is perhaps, until you have the option to cut off his arm or not...

At this point in the game I think everyone wanted to save Lee. I chose to amputate his arm. I had hope that this would stop him turning, after all, it happened when Hershel had his ankle bitten in the TV series... I was confident that Lee would survive because I'd made this decision so, when he started feeling groggy and turning a shade of grey, I knew what was coming.

The final scene was well and truly heart wrenching. I particularly liked how it was so isolated, once again it just being you and Clementine. With Clementine pleading with me to not 'become one of them' I actually felt guilty that I had let myself be bitten, even though there is no way to avoid it in the course of the game. So there I was, telling Clementine to look after herself, telling her she'd be fine and then it came, the knock out
blow. I told her I'd miss her. At this point the dams burst and I sat silently sobbing at my TV screen. My face resembling a window during a thunderstorm I pushed through making the final decisions. That was it. Lee was dead. Clementine was alone. I was heart broken.