The Walking Dead Game: 10 Horrific Things The Developers Made Us Do (So Far)

8. Duck's Fate

For us, episode three of Season One is potentially the bleakest most depressing two hours of gaming ever made. Lee and the gang have just lost their home at the motel along with several friends and Telltale even cruelly gave Lee a dream sequence in which Clementine apparently turns into a walker. At this point most players have been left emotionally wrecked. Yet despite this they weren't yet done with making the group suffer, as it is revealed that Kenny€™s son Duck has been bitten. As his condition worsens mother Katjaa can no longer take the pressure and commits suicide. Now it is left to the player and the grieving Kenny to decide what to do with the child. Now like Larry it€™s fair to say that Duck was never the most popular member of the group, however Telltale deliberately and cruelly made us warm to him at the beginning of episode three when Duck suggests to Lee, €œYou€™re the greatest detective and I can be Dick Grayson, your ward€. We should have known better that this whole bonding section was a clear indication that Telltale were trying to make us develop affection to Duck€™s character just half an hour before they planned to kill him. In episode four, Kenny and Lee encounter a child who has turned into a walker through starvation and the similarities between this moment and putting Duck out of his misery are immediately apparent. If these moments teach the player anything it€™s that in this universe no-one is safe, not even children, making both Lee and the player all the more desperate to protect Clementine from such a fate.