Summary
- Making tough decisions is essential for progressing in horror video games like Telltale's The Walking Dead, where player choice matters.
- Characters in the game face dark and challenging choices, such as deciding who to save or sacrifice, creating emotional and moral dilemmas for the player.
- The consequences of these decisions can have lasting impacts on the story and characters, adding depth and complexity to the gameplay experience.
Making decisions is a major part of a lot of video games these days, and horror games in particular seem to feature many tough decisions where player choice really matters. The player has to make these choices to progress the story. Telltale's The Walking Dead is known to feature the darkest and toughest decisions that rival the choices that characters have to make in the comic book series it's based on.
The events of The Walking Dead game take place soon after the zombie apocalypse starts in Georgia. The characters are primarily original ones created for the game, including Lee Everett, a criminal and university professor, and Clementine, a young girl in need of help finding her parents. There are occasional characters from the original comic book series who make in-game appearances.
10 Save Violet Or Louis
This one is a really difficult choice to make. It's the final season and the player must decide whether to save Violet or Louis. Both are potentially the best love stories in the game, but they both also get into some serious issues later on in the game.
The one that doesn't get rescued faces some serious problems later in the story. The decision could be based on which one the player wants to have a romantic interaction with but, both are likable characters, so it's not an easy choice to make.
9 Shoot Kenny Or Let Jane Die
Season two is full of big choices, and one of the biggest is when a fight breaks out between Kenny and Jane when she returns without the baby, AJ. Kenny is stronger and gets the better of her, and the choice is to either shoot him or let him murder Jane.
It sounds like an easy choice, but there are a lot of different things to consider before deciding on Jane and Kenny's fate. Whether the player wants to maintain the father relationship with Lee's former bromance or kill him off for good, is up to them. There's always a consequence and someone else's story involved.
8 Food Rations
Food and supplies can run pretty low in The Walking Dead games and can be as much of a risk to health as the evil walkers and morally dubious human beings who would kill at the drop of a hat.
A dark decision the player must make is choosing who eats and who potentially starves. Ten allies need feeding and there are only four items of food. It depends on which characters the player likes more than others, or which ones will be the most useful moving forward. It's a lose-lose situation that leads to a bad ending for certain characters.
7 Get AJ To Shoot Lilly Or Save Her
The choices in the final season can lead to a sad ending, so the decisions the player makes are more vital with the end in sight. Clementine now has a child to protect, and AJ has seen nothing other than the apocalypse, and the choices the player makes for him are vital.
The big decision is whether the player kills Lilly or listens to James and teaches mercy to AJ. If mercy is indeed taught, Lilly ends up killing James, begging the question if one life was worth another.
6 Kill Clementine?
What an impossible choice to make. Clementine is one of the most loved characters in the game and killing her or leaving her is one of the darkest decisions in the game. Clementine has literally grown up in this apocalypse, with fans rooting for her and guiding her since Telltale's T he Walking Dead Season 1.
Clementine is dying, and many fans found this very difficult to accept. Later on in the game, it is revealed that it doesn't matter which option they chose as AJ will cut her leg off to save her life from the infection that could turn her into a monster.
5 Which Prisoner's Foot To Shoot Off
The 400 Days DLC gives fans a very dark decision to make. Whose foot does the player shoot off? Vincent is trapped on a prison bus when the zombie apocalypse takes control, and there isn't much time to think about a decision.
All the prisoners have their feet shackled to the floor and the choice the player must make is which prisoner's foot to shoot off, to hatch an escape plan. One of them is a confessed criminal, and the other is accused of sexual assault but maintains his innocence. Only the player can make this darkest of choices to progress the story.
4 Kill Larry Or Save His Life
Larry was a colorful character in the first season of The Walking Dead, and in episode two, he suffers a heart attack and the player can choose to kill him or resuscitate him. Larry is always an angry man, who is often butting heads with the other survivors, especially Lee.
The choice stems from the decision to side with Lilly or Kenny. Lee gets along with Kenny but the urge to save the relationship with Lilly might be a deciding factor. Whatever the player chooses, Kenny ends up killing Larry anyway.
3 Show Or Hide Lee's Bite
The fourth episode of season one of The Walking Dead game sees the player having to make another big decision that could have dark consequences, and time is of the essence in a world where trust is such a fickle thing.
Clementine goes missing, and the player needs the help of friends to find her. It all sounds fine on the surface, but the dilemma is that Lee has been bitten by a walker. The player must decide whether to show or hide Lee's bite. The group is fast approaching, and the decision must be made whether to tell the friends about the bite.
2 Steal From The Abandoned Car Or Not
A car is open and full of supplies of food and medicine, and the player must choose whether to steal from it. Regardless of which choice they make, the group will steal from the car. The decision the player makes is whether they take part in the theft or not.
Stealing from the car ends up being the worst of bad ideas, and the player will pay for it. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and the decision has to be made to move on and progress through the intense story ahead.
1 Kill Or Leave Lee Everett
The toughest decision in the whole emotional storyline of the games is choosing whether to kill Lee Everett or leave him be, in episode 5. The finale of Telltale's first season of The Walking Dead is one that broke many fans emotionally.
Lee was a hero that the fans grew very fond of so when it comes to choosing whether to kill him or leave him alone, it's a dark decision to make. The crux of the issue stems from the fact that the gamer is getting a child to make this big decision, more so than the choice of whether to kill Lee or not.