I tried to fight it....
Fangirling and Spoilers for The Walking Dead Game - Episode 2
I'm not quite sure how this happened, but I think I may be a little bit in love with the St John brothers.
I actually sat down and played The Walking Dead Game back in December, and although I'd watched walkthroughs actually playing it myself was an entirely new experience. Especially episode two.
While watching the walkthroughs I found both Andy and Danny St John to be interesting characters, intriguing even, and when they turned out to be the bad guys I wasn't all that horrified.
However, when I picked up the controller myself and knew what as coming, I decided to do what I hadn't seen done in any of the walkthroughs - attempt to get to know the St John family.
Where most people rushed on with the plot of the game, I took my time and chatted to everyone, over and over.
I learnt so many little things that expanded the characters...
- Danny is a mommas boy, but wouldn't thank you for mentioning it.
- Their house was custom built by their (deceased) father, because he planned on having lots of children, although Brenda stopped after she had the two boys.
- Andy has a college degree up on the hallway wall.
- Danny has a baseball trophy.
- If you fix the swing rather than letting Andy do it, he'll talk to you about how he's fond of children, and how one of the things he misses most about the time before the zombies is that kids could just be kids.
- Danny's gun is named Charlotte, and he points out that she keeps him warmer at night than any woman ever has.
Just little bits of information that turned them from bad guys into a family unit; into people who grew up together, who had a normal life once and who did normal things.
There's a scene where your group has been taken hostage and you have to sneak up on Danny to take him by surprise.
In every walkthrough I've seen the player rushes up on him in about 20 seconds as he's sitting outside the barn talking to himself.
I sat and listened, and boy did I learn a lot about his character.
If you actually hear him out at that moment, his psychological issues start falling into place. Everyone who charged in never got the "creepiness" explained.
They never found out that he was the downtrodden sibling, that his brother was always favoured more, that he's bitter about always being second best in his mothers eyes because Andy went to college and he didn't (he points out angrily to himself that she needs to understand that that doesn't make his brother better or smarter than him). These players never saw that his years of built up insecurities actually lead to him lamenting about how his brother and mother were probably right now making all the important decisions without him because he doesn't think that they view his input as important.
Then Andy comes along and calls him a "damn weirdo" for sitting out in the rain (even though Andy and Brenda told him to) and my heart broke for him.
Danny's temperament throughout the game goes from fairly normal to slowly becoming more intense and a bit creepy as things are revealed, leaving most players to murder him outright when he's defenceless and they're given that option.
After learning all the little things about the family and after hearing him ranting to himself privately about how he's not appreciated, I just couldn't do it.
I spared both the St John brothers.
I don't think they were bad people, I think they were desperate and cunning with what they did and I'm not excusing it, but I honestly think it was a high pressure survival situation and they were doing what they felt they needed to to be able to get by.
It bugs me that so many people missed all of that.
Also, to end on a completely shallow note....
Look at Andy's gorgeous face <3