(TWD Discussion) Clem and Jane VS the World

Disclosure a la Kyle Bosman: I am a person with ideas and feelings about stories n’ shit, and I’m just expressing them. I am in no way trying to play “backseat game designer” because I’m actually really enjoying TellTale’s stories lately. I’m just inspired to express my ideas that ep. 4 popped into my brain.

I’ve seen episode 4, Amid the Ruins, three times now (played twice). So now I can express some thoughts and ideas about things without fearing that they’d be impossible if X or Y decision was made.

SO I WILL BE DISCUSSING THE WALKING DEAD GAME SPOILERS from up until Season 2, Episode 4.

So here’s the thing: Jane is fucking awesome. She is exactly the kind of character that is needed right now. Molly from Season 1 was similar but Jane is more fully realized, is a bit older, and is in a much better position to actually have the potential for longevity, in the same sense that Kenny has. Kenny is a morally gray character. By that I don’t mean, “Oh, he’s shady,” I mean, he’s a fictional human being. His decisions aren’t entirely predictable. His attitude, however, is. And that’s just the thing.

Jane is like that, too. The attitude she puts on is consistent because, like Kenny, that’s how she deals with shit. But, like Kenny, the actual decisions she will make aren’t entirely consistent. They’re more subtle than Kenny’s, I’d even argue.

When you confront Arvo up on the observation deck, she shows no hesitation…yet the SECOND he’s gone, she’s about to shed tears over what she just did — what she just became. And that’s such a core aspect of this post-apocalyptic stuff that the TV show has really been drilling home but the game hasn’t explored yet, which is a shame, because the game is even better equipped to do so by virtue of its dialogue choices.

Clementine even calls Jane out on her inconsistency — when Jane’s talking about how it’s always best to be alone, Clem asks, “Then why did you take me with you?” and Jane dodges the question. Because it’s illogical. Clementine is influencing her to act in ways that her built-up walls of security and safety (which is how she has survived this long) have told her is dumb and stupid. But she’s doing it, anyway.

Because human beings don’t exist in an emotional vacuum. They are capable of feeling two different things at once, and will not always act the same way to the same situation, even if it’s repeated over and over.

So here’s what I would do. This is just me expressing my personal ideas, not trying to tell anyone else what to do.

But if it was me? Season 3, which was just announced, would have a different structure than Seasons 1 and 2. BTW? Seasons 1 and 2 have the same structure. The same one the TV does (or did, up until the second half of its 5th season). You follow a group of people, with new people joining and other dying, as the group is pushed onward by circumstances of survival.

If I was directing Season 3, I’d mix it up. It wouldn’t be about the same old stumbling into a group and seeing the fallout. It’d be about Clementine and Jane, having each other’s backs, just two against the world.

Let’s dig into what sort of things that could entail.

So why Jane?

I’d bring Jane right the fuck back, because she’s too engaging a character to have just disappear. She’s not predictable as much of the others are, and even when she is, you can tell that she’s often internally conflicted. That’s the heart of what makes post-apocalypse stories engaging, is the INTERNAL struggle, not the outward. Jane has so much potential for that in ways that other characters haven’t shown.

We brought Kenny back, so come on, now. She could’ve just not gotten that far. It’d be much less of a stretch than Kenny if it was written well. Maybe she’s even still hovering around the group from a distance. Keeping tabs on Clem, because what else does she have to live for right now? Maybe she helps Clementine of this shootout that just happened, or helps rescue her from the aftermath.

Why would Jane do that?

Because obviously, Jane has a soft spot for Clementine. That the exact reason she had prominence in “Amid the Ruins.” It wasn’t said outright, but it didn’t need to be. Jane has nothing to live for but herself, and in this kind of world, people cling with everything they’ve got when they find reason (See: Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us). They will do and say things that aren’t consistent with the survivor they’ve forced themselves to be.

Because in that kind of world, it is a rare goddamn thing to find something positive to hold onto. Jane used to be a big sister, and she obviously feels shaken up that she fucked that up.

Clementine could be Jane’s personal redemption, a way to be a good Big Sister. Someone to take care of, someone to actually survive for.

And from Clementine’s perspective, Jane could be an anchor, a human being she allows herself to really attach to, as she did with Lee. Someone to look up to, someone to actually survive for.

So there’s the plot reason. There’s the excuse for why Jane wouldn’t leave “for good.” Just make it more apparent if we feel the desire to explain what I just said, though at this point we don’t even need to bring up Jamie anymore. Kinda beat that dead horse as it was, so we get it. The audience will be smart enough to understand Jane’s motivations if the writing, voice acting, and body language carry it.

Have Jane swoop in, make it clear she’s been tailing Clementine, maybe even have Jane confess that she can’t seem to let Clem go by herself. Have her be conflicted by it, the same way she showed conflicting feelings about Arvo, or about leaving when Clem confronted her. Hell, give players the choice to call her out on it, “You actually care about me.”

That could be how Season 2 ends, with those two pairing up after everyone else dies in whatever is about to happen.

Because let’s face it, as Jane said in the promo for episode 4, “They’re all going to die, Clementine. Don’t let them pull you down with them.” (a line that seems regrettably cut/altered in the final product)

Season 3 could rely on a similar parent-child kind of relationship that Season 1 did, (also: The Last of Us, BioShock Infinite, etc.) but with the paternal character actually being a woman for a change. And the child, too. That just doesn’t happen (except for Amy, which unfortunately looks like it just wasn’t a good game). Plus, if the parent-child relationship — or, really, a Big Sister/Little Sister relationship — was disconnected from the drama of a group, it’d make things more personal.

Rather than being about traveling with a group of survivors who we already know are going to all die, anyway, keep the focus on just two characters and their relationship. Introduce other characters, of course, but if we’re traveling, just Clem and Jane, we don’t expect any other characters we meet will stick around. This could work really well in an episodic context because we can run into different circumstances or situations without needing to worry about how permanent things could be — with those characters. But with our protagonists? It could change them.

Jane’s whole policy of “you can only survive alone” conflicts with Clementine’s “But it’s nice to have someone to watch your back” and Jane seemed to be able to appreciate that. Make that a point of tension between the two of them — that there’s this unspoken concern where Jane is afraid she’ll have to see Clem die, and Clem is afraid Jane will run off and leave her alone. Have them both struggle with each other and more importantly, with their own emotions.

Let players make choices for BOTH characters. If you only have two main characters, you could totally get by with that, the same way Last of Us did, and probably the same way the upcoming Borderlands game TellTale is making will do.

If the choices we make in TT games don’t impact the plot so much but rather how the characters react, imagine what you could do if the choices were being made between two different characters in relation to each other? That could really mix things up from the standard TT formula. You could create varied interactions between those two characters without needing to actually change the set pieces or even the main plot/flow of the story.

Making one decision with one character could alter the choices the other character makes in a later interaction. Wouldn’t have to change up what ultimately happens, even.

Example, Jane calling Clementine “Partner.” If you were controlling Jane, some of your dialogue choices would actually incorporate that, as in you could choose whether Jane calls her “Partner” or “Clementine.” If she DOES call Clementine “Partner,” then similar choices would show up when players are controlling Clem. And if you continue to choose to do that then it eventually becomes like the default way they refer to each other, so later on in some big climactic event, they use that word to call to each other or something — whereas they’d just use their names if players don’t choose to go that route.

This is a really simple, not-all-that-important example, but that’s what might make things work: we already KNOW our choices won’t impact the plot too much. So by giving us wiggle room on how the characters bond with each other, we can choose to tweak the relationship in a dual-sided way most games don’t allow. Especially when you take into account that these characters are, at this point, both morally ambiguous. It wouldn’t be choices that are black and white. To go back to my previous example, if players are controlling Clementine and call Jane “Partner” but Jane hasn’t initiated that, it might actually make Jane not happy, because if she’s not the one initiating that kind of title, it might make her feel scared that Clem is attaching to her too strongly, etc. It would be emotionally conflicting.

Let’s explore another example of how the main flow of the game’s story could work with this “two against the world” dynamic.

Example: Jane and Arvo. That was a situation that left Jane emotionally exhausted, regardless of what Clementine decides, because Jane reacts the same way.

But what if we actually had a choice, like, for real? What if we were playing as JANE, and Arvo wasn’t going to show up again? What if that was his one and only scene (not that we’d know this in that moment)? What if the girls were both sick, and that medicine could help them recover quicker?

So we have a choice.

Option 1: Take the medicine, let the kid go. The characters would then feel guilty about leaving him and his sister without medicine. But they’d recover from illness quicker, and then maybe be able to help someone in a later scene because they have the strength to do so — or maybe if they don’t take the medicine they’re weak and in a chase scene one of them gets a permanent injury like a chip off their ear or something (could even be Arvo’s group that attacks them as revenge/wanting the medicine back).

Option 2: Take the medicine, kill the kid. Maybe that creates a different kind of tension, opens up a conversation scene regarding why you chose to kill him, but maybe that scene is from the other character’s perspective, so it places the player in control of deciding how critical to be of their own decisions (instead of another character telling us how to feel, we’re left to think on our own, and what we decide impacts the character’s moods, which could influence a later scene)

Option 3: Let the kid keep the medicine, let him go. Some kind of physical, negative consequence happens as a result of not having the medicine, but the character’s moods aren’t damaged as much as they lived and let lived.

Also, Jane was the character in control in that scene with Arvo, I’m just using it as an example. You could do it just as easily where Jane is sick, too weak to attack, and Clem is the one with the gun making the actual call.

Depending on which option is picked, it could impact a later scene, where the opposing character makes a choice that is either mirroring or opposite of what was made. Ex. if you’re playing as Clem and you choose to shoot the kid, in a later scene, while still playing as Clem, Jane makes no hesitation to shoot someone else, having decided that she doesn’t need to be sensitive around Clem. Or if you choose to let the kid go, Jane decides she’s cool with trying to be less murderous because hey, she cares about Clem and maybe Clem’s right, we don’t HAVE to kill people. And if Jane kills this other person in this secondary scene, something bad happens, and if she doesn’t, then…that bad thing doesn’t happen (let’s face it, good things don’t happen in this world). OR it could even go the other way around, all depending on what purpose that episode is trying to make.

And what would be another intriguing twist that would cause excellent tension? What if Jane and Luke’s “rolling along like teenagers” ended up with Jane being pregnant later? What if that led to this whole tension where now Jane has to face up to her own cynicism? What if choosing to abort the baby was an option? Dark stuff, and with her apparent flings with guys, it also wouldn’t be a stretch, plot-wise, and would cause tension in the present while simultaneously building off of events that the two characters experienced together.

Anyway! As you can tell, I could ramble on about these ideas for some time. There’s so much potential, and while I’m enjoying Season 2, I really hope Season 3 has a change of pace and structure. I would love to see a story about a laser-focus on a select few characters (similar to Wolf Among Us being all about Bigby) rather than it being about constantly shifting drama with groups we’re thrust into. The reason the comic and especially the TV show are still alive and kicking is because they keep characters around long enough to develop them over time, have them saving each other in the emotional way, not just from zombies. The game could really use that and do new things the show or comic can’t due to player choice.

I have not been so inspired by a combination of characters in this world — and I mean this WORLD, the Walking Dead comic/game universe and really most of the TV show, too — as I have been as inspired and engaged by Clementine and Jane.

I also just really, really would like to see a post-apocalyptic journey with two women for a change.

And if any of this sounds interesting to you?

Do yourself a favor, and go watch the series Michiko & Hatchin. Just do it.