The ending of The Walking Dead was an ending that made me feel as if the precautions that I took with my decisions throughout the game were a complete waste. With “The Walking Dead Season One” being the first telltale game that I have played and not watched, I had this false belief that I had such significant control over the ending of the game. As far as my decisions throughout the game, my main goal was to have an ending that got fewer people killed or the main characters signing off with a happy ending. With that type of outlook, I often valued survival and loyalty. Whenever I was faced with a difficult decision, I always considered whether the person at hand was loyal to me throughout the game or valuable to me later on down the road. Early on, I didn’t pick sides all too much as I did my best to prevent conflict as much as I could. Eventually, I learned that rarely helped me at all. Eventually, I caught myself siding with Kenny more after meeting Larry at the pharmacy. However, once we reached the events at the Motor Inn, both Lilly and Larry’s well-being were irrelevant to my decision-making. After Lilly’s father, Larry, intentionally tried to get me killed by the walkers at the pharmacy, Kenny was the one to save me in a bleak situation. From there on, I promised to side with Kenny whenever I could. With that being said, I bought into the pipe dream that Kenny was selling to the entire group and take the RV to the ocean shore to find a boat.

If I were to play through the first season again, I would only change one thing, and that one thing would be that I would save Duck instead of Shawn because looking back at it, that is the only reason Kenny did not help save Clementine. When I think about it, I must have chosen the better survival option choosing the more battle-ready character. Solidifying that decision, I assumed that choosing Shawn over Duck would be universally understood by the other characters. To add on, the main protagonist (Lee) is closest to Shawn during the walker invasion. To make matters worse, I assumed that Duck would be smart enough to get off the tractor at the sight of danger.

Based on my first play-through, I concluded that there were three major events where you, as the main character, had to pull through for Kenny and have his back in his eyes, with saving Duck being one of them. I only came through for him only on one of the events. As for the second event, when Kenny and Larry are arguing, I attempted to defuse the situation instead of siding 100% with Kenny.

In Kathrine Isbister’s chapter, the term “Astute Avatar” is mentioned. To simply put it, an astute character is a character that has complete consciousness with both the events in the game and the actions of the player. One can assume that the characters in The Walking Dead were all “Astute avatars/characters,” Thus making no one decision easy, fulfilling the main objective of all creators of telltale titles.