Telltale's The Walking Dead series has stood as a shining example of how player choice can affect storytelling in a game. Faced with four options of dialogue as a time bar slowly shrinks, players experienced the panic of trying to say the right thing at the right moment to achieve a better outcome for their character, be it Lee, Clementine, or, more recently, Javier. In an even more harrowing situation, you are faced with two actions to choose from and each action can lead to a person's death.
But do your choices ultimately matter? Is player agency an illusion that these games trick you into believing? In each episode, we're reminded that this game is about player choice and that our choices will have consequences. But have you ever looked back on your playthroughs (or actually played the game again) and realized that making a different choice led to the same conclusion? We now have three completed seasons of The Walking Dead to play through, but the formula has roughly stayed the same: make choices, see the consequences, realize that your choices were meaningless and destiny plays a larger part in these games than we would like to admit.
We're going to examine several choices that players are confronted with in the course of all three seasons. Each of these choices might have filled you with dismay at the thought that your actions would negatively impact the game's outcome. Never fear. Each of these choices, in the end, did not affect your story, whatever you chose.
20 Which One Should You Save?
One of the first choices we're faced with in Season 1, Episode 1, is deciding whether to save Shawn, son of Hershel, or Duck, son of Kenny. Walkers have attacked the two, one grabbing Shawn as he is pinned underneath a tractor and another clutching Duck's shirt as he is perched on top of the tractor.
Lee met Shawn as he was escaping Clementine's house. Shawn good-naturedly offered you a ride to his father's farm, saving you and Clementine. He was a good man who showed no hesitation in helping a fellow human being. Duck was... well, Duck was Duck. If you need more of an explanation on Duck's character check out this list. He was the young son of the family you just met at Hershel's farm, exuberant and playful as all young children should be.
No matter who you decide to help, Shawn will die. If you go to help Duck, Kenny will rush forward to assist you, leaving Shawn to struggle alone. If you help Shawn by trying to move the tractor, a walker still manages to munch on his neck.
19 Leaving Sarah Behind
Clementine makes a "friend" in Season 2, and boy, does this friendship require a lot of work that ends up being pointless. We meet Sarah as Clementine is sneaking inside Luke and company's house, searching for basic medical supplies to treat her dog bite. Sarah immediately comes across as immature for her age, especially given Clementine's maturity level. And when she asks Clementine to be her friend, the wince if you accepted was practically universal.
Sarah ends up in a downward spiral after the death of her father, refusing to carry on without massive amounts of encouragement. It all comes to a head when Clementine, Luke, and Jane are escaping from a walker-surrounded mobile home, and Sarah refuses to stand up and leave with them. You, as Clementine, are faced with the choice of convincing her to join you or abandoning her in the soon-to-be infested mobile home.
However, if you do make the choice to save her, you find out you were merely prolonging her death. Sarah falls from the observation deck of a Civil War site the group was taking shelter in. She's surrounded by walkers, and gets eaten no matter what steps you take to try and save her.
18 Choose Wisely...
The meaninglessness of this particular choice is blatantly obvious. In Season 3, Javier is forced to choose who should live between Ava and Tripp. Big man Tripp has been plucking your heartstrings with his talk of love for Eleanor, and Ava has been showing time and again that she is one hardcore bada*s. So when Joan, the evil leader behind the New Frontier presents this choice to Javier, you feel that the repercussions of making it will haunt you for a long time.
However, the choice is ripped from your hands, as Joan shoots whoever it is that you chose to spare, all to teach Javier the lesson of "betrayal." We can only watch in horror as our chosen character receives a bullet to the head. This leaves us with a very unhappy survivor.
17 Poor Puppy
This heartrending choice (especially for dog lovers) in Season 2 has no consequence to it besides hurting sensitive players. Separated from her companion Christa, Clementine has to fend for herself alone in the wild. She comes across an abandoned campsite with a disheveled but friendly dog lingering nearby. It's name tag reads "Sam," and it reminds us of a time when pooches and kiddos were not left alone to fend for themselves. As she searches the camp for food, Clementine comments to the dog on their situation and can play a small game of fetch with it as well.
Things go downhill when Clementine finds a can of beans. We can decide to feed the dog or leave it to stare at Clementine as she eats, but either way, hunger prevails and the dog attacks Clementine, desperate for food. Clementine manages to push the dog off of her, but it lands on spare tent poles, impaling it on impact. We are then forced to choose to put it out of its misery or to leave it to die as it is. This choice does nothing for the plot. Its sole purpose seems to be to make us feel bad for either killing it or leaving it to suffer.
16 Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
This is one of your first big choices in Episode 1 of Season 3. Javier and his family come across a seemingly abandoned trailer stocked with--of all things--pudding. It seems like a dream come true for young Gabe and Mariana. Kate, forced into the evil stepmom role once again, insists that it isn't safe to stay and that they should all get back in the van and vamoose. Gabe demands that they stay and enjoy a single night away from the apparently dreaded van. We are faced with the choice of siding with Kate or siding with the kids.
You either make Gabe happy or you make Kate happy. Momentarily. The consequences don't extend beyond that. While Javier finishes siphoning some gas from a car (regardless if you decide to stay the night, he still siphons the gas), he's caught in the act by the New Frontier, who claim that he's stealing their gas. The encounter ends with Javier getting clocked out and separated from his family.
15 Sheltering Clementine (Or Not)
In Season 2, the moment for escaping Carver's domineering community arrives, and you think you will be able to sneak away from the hardware-store-turned-camp without getting caught. Unfortunately, Carver catches your group on their way out. Due to some quick thinking on Clementine's part, Carver is disarmed, and your group has to think on what his fate will be.
Kenny takes matters into his own hands when he shoots Carver in the legs, and when he picks up a crowbar, we all know what he plans to do. Sarita, Kenny's girlfriend, urges Clementine to leave the building so she doesn't have to watch. We get to choose what to do at this moment, and beyond a few comments other characters make to Clementine, there are no repercussions for watching Kenny pound a crowbar into Carver's face.
14 But Who Should You Help?
In an eventually hilarious look at our own values, Season 1 presents us with the choice of helping Omid or Christa onto a moving train. A herd of walkers shambled toward members of the group already on the train, so Lee and Omid, having removed an obstacle from an overpass to clear the way, have to leap onto a moving train. Lee makes it without injury, but Omid lands on the roof of the train at a bad angle and then flops down to the ground. Seeing this, Christa jumps off of the train to help her boyfriend.
Lee then has to choose who to help back onto the train first. No matter who you pull up, the other manages to climb up without you, and whoever you assisted berates you for not helping the other first. It ends up being a choice without consequence. Who needed your help more: the injured man or the woman?
13 Join Me For Dinner
When Clementine and her new group meet up with old friend Kenny, it is a very touching reunion. Players had thought Kenny dead in Season 1, and to see him alive was an unforgettable moment of Season 2. However, the meeting of two sets of people, especially in the environment of The Walking Dead, is always fraught with tension. Kenny and his group don't know if they can trust Luke and his group and vice versa. With assurances from Clementine, we see the two groups sitting down to dinner together.
Almost as if Clementine is in a clique-filled high school cafeteria, she has to choose who she sits next to for the meal, Kenny or Luke. The decision, while made awkward by the hurt looks the grown adults inexplicably throw at Clementine if she does not sit with them, does not affect the plot in any way.
12 To Keep The Arm, Or Not Keep The Arm
Some will argue that the decision to chop off Lee's arm after getting bitten by a walker in Season 1 does indeed affect the outcome of the story. Depending largely on who Lee is able to convince to come along with him to rescue Clementine at the end of Episode 4, the act of cutting Lee's arm off can fall to several persons. If Lee is by himself, he will have the opportunity to cut his limb off all on his lonesome.
If you chop it off, Lee is less likely to have those fainting spells that he suffers from if you leave it attached to your body. However, the hope that Lee will not turn into a walker if you chop it off is a false hope. No matter what you do with that appendage, Lee is set to die by the end of the game.
11 Who Needs The Medicine More?
When Clementine and Jane scope out the observation deck at the Civil War site known as Parker's Run, a young man carrying a bag of medical supplies limps towards them. This is Arvo. Jane and Clementine surprise him and are able to take a look into his bag. With a very pregnant Rebecca desperately needing medicine, when we are given the choice to steal the supplies from Arvo, it is sorely tempting.
Some of us may have taken the high road and allowed him to leave without lifting the medicine from him. At the end of the episode, we find that our magnanimity didn't matter in the slightest. After leaving Parker's Run, Clementine and her group run into Arvo and his. A stand-off takes place, guns pointed at everyone. Whether you stole from him or not, Arvo does not attempt to stop the fighting. Nope. He seems to have forgotten that you let him take his medicine and doesn't do squat to help you when the shooting starts.
10 A Junkyard Buddy
When Clementine takes Javier to the small town of Prescott in Season 3, there is nothing that Javier wants more than to return to the junkyard and find his family. Once there though, whether you got thrown in jail with Clementine or not, Javier is faced with the choice of checking out the junkyard in the morning with Tripp or sneaking out at night with Eleanor to get there more quickly.
The only consequence of this choice is who gets to go with you. The same events occur no matter who you choose to go with or when you choose to go. Mariana still dies, Kate still gets shot, and whoever you chose to leave at Prescott (Tripp or Eleanor) does not hold you leaving without them against you.
9 But First, Let Me Take A Selfie
Oh, Sarah. When Clementine is left alone at the house with Sarah in Episode 2 of Season 2, we have the opportunity to discover that selfies did in fact survive the zombie apocalypse. While "having fun" with Sarah, she shows you an instant camera and asks if you want to take a picture of her. You can oblige her or you can watch as she takes a gratuitous selfie. Either way, the picture is taken, which means trouble later on, when Carver enters the house looking for his lost group. He finds the picture and can easily deduce that the group has been in the house at some point.
Later on, when the adults return, Sarah admits that Carver saw the picture of her. Clementine can take the blame for it, blame Sarah, blame her dad, or remain silent. This changes nothing. The group panics and decides to bolt either way.
8 Quenching His Thirst
Towards the end of the first episode of Season 2, Clementine finds one of the injured bandits who attacked her and Christa earlier. Desperate for information on her missing friend, Clementine asks the man what happened to Christa. The man mumbles for water, and we have the choice to deny him water or to share with him from Clementine's own bottle.
Infuriatingly, if you decide to give him water, he gulps it down gratefully enough, but dies anyways before he can tell you anything about Christa or what happened to her. If you withhold the water, he squirms in pain before passing on as well.
7 Leaving Lilly Behind
Lilly is a wonderful example of how nuanced a character can be in a Telltale series. She is smart, driven, and responsible. In Season 1, she is one of the people struggling to take leadership in the fractured group. She becomes aware that there is a spy within the group that has been dealing with the bandits that have been plaguing them. She is relentless in her pursuit of whoever that spy is, even enlisting Lee to help her solve this mystery.
The bandits attack the group before they can figure out who the insider is. After the group escapes in the RV, Lilly confronts scaredy-cat Ben about being the mole. He stutters and denies it. Depending on who you saved at the pharmacy in Episode 1, either Carley or Doug will step up to defend Ben. For their trouble, they will end up with a bullet to the brain, courtesy of Lilly.
Lee disarms Lilly in one rapid motion, and then we have to decide whether we take her with us as a sort of prisoner or we leave her at the side of the road. The choice is irrelevant because she leaves your group either way. If you take her with you, she steals off with the RV the first chance she gets. If you abandon her on the side of the road, the last you see is her small figure standing alone in the fading light, a walker ambling closer to her.
6 Helping Sarah Out
Sarah has popped up on this list a grand total of three times. This is no coincidence. As one of The Walking Dead's most helpless characters, Clementine must often make decisions for Sarah's welfare if we want to see Sarah get as far as she can in the game. During their stay at the hardware store, under Carver's strict community rules and Reggie's friendly supervision, Clementine and Sarah are assigned the task of clipping leaves from potted plants. It seems simple enough, but after receiving a slap from her father (under duress from Carver), Sarah appears unable to do her own work.
If you help her, your work will remain unfinished. If you do nothing, Sarah's work will be shoddily done. Either way, Carver is still unhappy when he comes in to check how things are coming along. And he is still going to blame poor Reggie for the screw-up. And he is still going to toss poor Reggie from the rooftop.
5 Give Up The Gun
Remember that woman at the motor inn that you meet in Episode 1 of Season 1? That was probably the first time you realized your choices don't have as much weight as you might have thought originally. Lee, Glenn, and Carley encounter Irene after she's barricaded herself in a motel room, hiding from the walkers lurking outside. Once Lee dispatches these walkers, she emerges, only to reveal that she has already been bitten.
She asks if she can borrow Carley's gun so that she can do away with herself. It does not matter if you refuse her. She forcibly takes the gun from Carley if you say no, and shoots herself anyways. If you give it to her, Lee stays with her so that at the very least she's not alone when she does the deed.
4 Surrendering To The New Frontier
The New Frontier finds its way to Prescott in Episode 2 of Season 3. Using Francine, a likable, tough woman Javier met when he first came to Prescott, as a hostage, the New Frontier try to force Javier to leave the safety of Prescott's gates and come down to join them.
If you choose to fight, you fire on them from above, and Francine will get shot trying to run back into Prescott. If you surrender, Javier finds that the New Frontier wants him dead, so Clementine fires first before you're executed. Francine is shot in the back in the ensuing scuffle. If you try to negotiate, Francine will be shot in the head. Surrendering or fighting, Francine gets killed either way and Prescott gets destroyed either way. Sometimes jerks want to be jerks no matter what.
3 How Do You Solve A Problem Like AJ?
When the shoot out between Clementine's and Arvo's groups begins in the last episode of Season 2, Clementine is given the chance to rescue Rebecca's baby as she makes a dash for cover. If you don't make the choice to save the baby, Luke will notice it on the ground himself, rush to pick him up, and then get shot in the leg.
Before you feel bad about that choice, here's what happens if you do rescue the baby. You'll take him into cover with you, and Luke will comment that he hadn't noticed the baby there. He'll then ask you to cover him as he tries to shoot one of Arvo's group. You can cover him as well as the game will allow you, and Luke will still end up getting shot in the leg. Luke was clearly destined to get shot in the leg.
2 Dealing With Rebecca
During the last seconds of Episode 4 of Season 2, only Clementine has noticed that Rebecca has died sitting in the snow cradling her baby. Everyone else is pointing their guns at the threat that is Arvo's group. The situation goes from bad to worse when Rebecca starts to stir, her eyes open, and we all see the milky gray of a walker's eyes.
Clementine then has to choose between shooting Rebecca herself (and maybe causing an all-out shoot-out to commence), doing nothing (which endangers the helpless infant in Rebecca's arms), or calling out for someone to help her. All of these options mean absolutely zip because the same thing happens for each: Rebecca gets shot. You can call for Kenny, and he can assess the situation and shoot Rebecca himself. You can do nothing; Kenny still sees what's going on and shoots Rebecca. Or you can have Clementine shoot Rebecca.
And the shoot-out begins regardless.
1 Ending It For Lee, Maybe
This is the most harrowing of all the meaningless choices you will make in this game, even out of all the seasons. Lee has been bitten and has reached his body's limit. He now has to choose whether to have Clementine shoot him to prevent him from turning or to have her leave him to turn alone.
This choice is inconsequential to the plot because, no matter what, the man we knew as Lee will be gone. The meaning that Telltale imbues this choice with is found solely within the player as they contemplate how they want Lee to part with Clementine. Do you want him to have sheltered her to the very end? Or do you want him to prepare her for the harsh realities she will have to face in a world without him?
The choice is ours, and, either way, it hurts.