I finished the walking dead, it might’ve actually changed my life. (Semi long rant, got a little passionate for a second)

I played through every single season except for new frontier and finished the final season on December 28th 2024, it is January 4th, 2025 and it’s still on my mind.

Warning, this might get cringe but i’m being as sincere as possible.

Holy fuck, what a game series. I never thought a game would actually impact me to the point where i think about it every single day. Lee and Clementine are amazingly written and taken care of in terms of character development, traits and motivations pretty much throughout the entire series. Clem isn’t your typical cringe fictional character like a lot of child characters in media, she almost feels like a real kid. Not too smart but not too clueless and they balanced that aspect of her pretty well. Man the fact that we stumble across this lost and scared little girl as lee and don’t hesitate to take care of her really hit the soft spots in my soul as the oldest brother in my family and as a young father. Lees death hits you so damn hard and you actually start to miss him in the following games. Watching clem become a fearless young woman from a scared little girl is so inspiring. On top of surviving an apocalypse, now this 11 year old girl has to take care of a new born child AND SHE MANAGES TO DO IT?? There’s so many things that i resonated with beat for beat with this game. The games make you give a shit about your decisions and for the most part, they make you care about the side characters to the point of making sure things go as smoothly as possible so your friends can survive.

Part of me is still confused of why this game has become apart of me, but when clem got bit in the final season, my heart sank as if i was actually losing someone i loved. And as my/clems relationship with AJ grew, he was clearly capable for a 5/6 year old. (which i know is kinda goofy but i made sure to take the story at face value lol) As long as you made sure to turn AJ into a decent person, you get the option to trust his decisions for the rest of the falling action of the story. and it payed off.

The parallels of lee in the beginning and clem in the end were done so well. When clem said “i’m so sorry kiddo” just like lee did to her when he was bit, i was genuinely heartbroken. When clem begged AJ to kill her, i was irl sad as fuck tearing up and basically screaming in my head “there has to be another way, JUST CHOP HER FUCKING LEG OFF”. then, when it’s revealed that’s actually what Aj did BECAUSE YOU CHOSE TO TRUST HIM, i deadass bawled my eyes when it was revealed clem was alive. As much as this might seem like a parasocial relationship kind of thing, the game really is a roller coaster and getting super invested into it makes the experience so much better.

In conclusion, after playing these games a small void has grown in my heart trying to find another game series that’ll make me as emotionally invested like these games made me. Trust me, i’m fully aware of how stupid that sounds but if there’s anyone that can recommend a game that makes you feel the way these games made me feel, pls lemme know lol