Telltale Games recently wrapped up season two of its violent and emotional The Walking Dead. The season ended with a bang, incorporating multiple endings for the first time. Telltale president and co-founder Kevin Bruner opens up about putting Clementine in the leading role, bringing back old faces, and how fan feedback shaped Telltale’s direction.
Note: This is an extended version of an interview that originally appeared in issue #259, featuring answers that didn't make it into print. This article also contains spoilers for season two. You've been warned.
On Bringing Back Clementine...
When did Telltale start planning season two, and what were your initial ideas?
We started planning season two shortly after the finale of season one. First we kicked around ideas about what character would be playable for season two. We considered moving to a new group of survivors or revisiting the backstories of characters like Kenny. We were really gun shy about making Clementine playable. We were worried it would be strange to play her after the season one experience. We also certainly didn't want to leave her story untold, since that was what we felt was most interesting for the series. We even kicked around playing as a new "protector" of Clem, but that felt too much like replacing Lee.
Once we finally came to terms with making Clem the playable character we dove into the season two arc. It took a while to land where we did, but that's not unusual for us. One version of the story actually had an abandoned zoo and a tiger!
What did the team hope to accomplish with season two?
We felt like season one was about teaching Clementine how to survive in the apocalypse. But what Lee taught her was grounded in surviving the zombies. He taught her to fire a gun and keep her hair short. In season two, we wanted to explore how Clementine would deal with other survivors as she grew up. We thought we could let the player own this aspect of Clementine without tarnishing everything the player did as Lee.
Clementine encounters some demented stuff, like the sadistic Carver. Did you ever have any apprehensions due to her age?
We thought her age was an asset. An early concept for season two was "You're eleven years old and the world doesn't care." That's actually a notion of survival that was put forth by 'Chuck' who you met on the train back in season one. In fact, his words to Lee became part of the backbone of everything we worked towards this season when thinking about Clem, and how we should be treating her. To quote him directly, "I don't know much about you folks, but ya'll keep goin' like this and that girl ain't gon' make it. You gotta consider her a living person, that's it! You're either living or you're not. You ain't little, you ain't a girl, you ain't a boy, you ain't strong or smart, you're alive"
We wanted to put Clementine in real adult situations where she was forced to grow up faster than she normally would, yet, we still wanted to keep her a little girl. One of my favorite moments in the game is when the group is sitting at the power station talking about sex assuming that Clementine doesn't understand. The player can jump in and say "I know what you're talking about" which makes them ask, "Really?" The dialog choices are then firmly from an eleven year old's perspective ("kissing stuff" is my favorite). It was a fun way to remind the player Clementine is still a little girl in an adult world.
What were some of the challenges of using a young character like Clementine as the lead character?
One of the hardest challenges was ensuring that Clem was in situations where an eleven year old girl was the pivotal element to the story. It's not organic for a bunch of adults to defer to a kid for decisions and solutions, but having the adults solve all the problems isn't much fun to play. I think we crafted some pretty good solutions to this problem. As the story progresses, the group starts to consider Clementine more of an equal (an adult). We thought this dynamic was great for us since the player would want Clementine to grow up and take care of herself. But in the end she is still a little girl. The finale forced players to confront this reality when Clementine has to go to some extreme lengths to deal with the adults around her.
Up next: Discussing the cast and changes due to fan feedback...