Game of the Year Trinity: The Walking Dead
Why is The Walking Dead the best game of the year?
For a long time now, “people” have posited that making a game that “makes you cry” is one of those benchmarks that will signal a sea change for writing in video games. I’m not sure that it’s fair request (especially because I’m pretty sure that plenty of moments in gaming have made people cry.) but the sentiment makes sense. Writing in video games isn’t known for its ability to garner empathy or generate any emotional response besides nerd-rage. While I can’t guarantee that The Walking Dead will move you to tears, it will garner an emotional response. If it doesn’t, you’re probably too cynical for your own good.
For The Walking Dead, narrative is everything. Using player control more for dramatic effect or an mechanical palette cleanser, the game’s essential moments limit your control to force players to focus on the choices you make without worrying about how you make them. And it’s good that you don’t have to think about anything else, because some of things you have to do will require all of your concentration to make.
The Walking Dead excels at building you up so it has the chance to knock you down, even if it never feels that way. The “hopeful” moments are so minute — a hopeful smile, a loving glance, the moment where a hard stare softens — that it’s always a little surprising just how devastating it is when things go wrong.
Of course, that give and take between you and the game only happens when you’re invested in the story. The Walking Dead is able to make us feel the way it wants us to — terribly — because the game’s characters make us feel like they care too. What makes them special isn’t the depth or nuance of the individual personalities, but of their incredibly messing, rapidly fluctuating relationships.
Every character has an emotional burden to bear — Lee needs to take care of Clementine, Kenny needs to take care of his family, Lilly needs to take care of his father, and so on. Knowing a person and knowing everything about them are two very different things. The default omnipotence of storytelling in a videogame, which ultimately stems from the fact that most video game characters don’t have enough essential backstory for you to learn, falls out when the player’s control is completely limited to one character in a larger group.
In games where players follow a group of characters like, say, traditional RPGs, the dynamic of group gets some attention, but you generally get the sense that everyone in the group likes or is at least accepting of everyone else. In this story, the dissolution of that assumption is crux of the experience. Plenty of games of use betrayal as narrative tool, but it’s mostly meant to shock you. The Walking Dead shows the evolution of how you and your companion make illogical, unfair decisions in an attempt to hold onto their strongest bonds. The feel makes logical decisions harder to make because you understand where these irrational ideas are coming from — They aren’t just words on a page because you’ve felt them too.
The Walking Dead’s influence stems beyond it’s propensity for gnawing on our heartstrings: As the most successful game to date released as an episodic series, it may usher in a new sub-genre of interactive TV-style adventure games. Potential and innovation may not make a game more enjoyable, but it’s the difference between a good game and a great game, nonetheless.
Clearly it’s easy to get hyperbolic when talking about The Walking Dead, but those exaggerated declarations are a reflection of just how affecting the game really is. Regardless of whether it becomes a benchmark in the history of video games, the important thing is it’s ability to grab you so tight and make you feel something.
Why is XCOM: Enemy Unknown better?
A sense of agency, for one. While both The Walking Dead and XCOM are at their best when they force you to make difficult choices, making choices in XCOM boil down to the player doing one of two things. The Walking Dead feels more like you’re choosing what not to do — It’s about who you let die, not who you save. The result is the game’s strong feeling of guilt.
XCOM also makes the player think so much more. In The Walking Dead, all of your choices are emotional. In the end, the game moves on no matter what you do. XCOM’s choices are weighed in terms of success and failure. They don’t feel as urgent most of time, and are rarely presented as bluntly, but they are often more important to player, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
Why is Dishonored better?
Most of the time, Dishonored and The Walking Dead feel like polar opposites. One gives you the freedom to think outside the box, while the other demands that you play within a very tight framework. When you boil it down, the immense, heart-wrenching choices you’re forced to make in The Walking Dead mostly affect what the characters say, not what you do. Dishonored is incredibly empowering, making for a more “fun” experience, even if it is a less emotionally cathartic one.
