5) The Walking Dead: Season One
“There’s only one thing you can do. You know that.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
Telltale’s The Walking Dead is a series where players are forced to get used to constant tragedy, so it’s fitting that the most heartbreaking moment is saved for the first season’s conclusion. As Lee Everett, players do their best both to keep a struggling group of survivors in a post-zombie apocalypse world alive, while also protecting and helping to raise the recently orphaned Clementine.
Clementine is ultimately kidnapped by an unstable stranger with a grudge against Lee’s group for taking his supplies at one point, and to make matters worse, while looking for her, a rogue zombie gets the drop on Lee and bites him, leading to his slow infection over the final episode. By the final scene, Lee has saved Clem, but one look at his pallid skin tone and constant fainting shows that he doesn’t have much time left.
Clem is able to drag Lee into a nearby store, but not before getting visual confirmation that her parents, who she’s spent the entire series hoping to see again, are no longer among the living. With Lee being all she has left, she begs for him not to turn, but it’s obvious at this point that there’s no going back, which leads to the final decision of a game well-known for its moral choices: Have Clementine shoot Lee, or leave him to die.
Much like many of the choices that have come to define this iteration of The Walking Dead, the way the final scene plays out varies depending on what you choose. The game even throws in a nice callback to past decisions, with Lee possibly mentioning how difficult it was for him to shoot other characters depending on how you played. You also get to choose what Lee’s final statements to Clem are, closing with the possibility to pick three simple but effective statements: “Don’t be afraid,” “You’ll be okay,” or “I’ll miss you”.
Since initially beating the game, I’ve rewatched both versions of the last scene, and while they definitely both pack an emotional gut punch, I’d argue that the one I ended up choosing, which was having Clem shoot Lee, has more of an impact in how it’s presented. Clementine lifts her pistol, Lee gives her one more reassuring smile, and after much hesitation and preparation, we focus on her firing the shot, leading to an immediate cut to black, the sound of Lee drawing a final breath, and a cut to the credits.
Given the somber nature of The Walking Dead, it was hardly a shock that things didn’t turn out well for Lee in the end, especially given that the fourth episode concludes with him initially being bitten and realizing he’s running out of time. And yet, so many things about the way the finale is delivered, be it the emotional performances delivered by Lee and Clementine’s voice actors, the memories of the more tender and lighthearted moments they spent together amidst all the bloodshed, or the fittingly melancholy folk tune sung by Alela Diane over the credits, all combine to deliver one of the most impactful moments in a series already full of them.
With the final episode of the follow-up season, which chronicles Clementine’s struggles a year later, not far off, it will be interesting to see if Telltale can match the initial season’s now-iconic conclusion.
– John Fleury