Clementine, the little girl that Lee Everett has to raise during a zombie apocalypse, is the bulk of what makes The Walking Dead so excellent. Telltale managed to create a character that we cared about, so much so that many of us shed tears by the end of the first season of the franchise. And yet according to Eurogamer, Clementine was almost scrapped from the game.
During a talk at the Game Developers Conference last week, Telltale writers Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman described initially feeling insecure about how players would feel about Clementine. What if we didn't care?
"We tried to answer this one question: Why would you not leave this group of assholes?" said Rodkin. "If you don't care about that child then we're doubly screwed, because you'd be frustrated by this group and you'd be shackled to this little kid you don't care about. Was there talk about leaving Clementine out of the game a week before voice recording? Yes. Yes there was."
While I'm thankful they didn't get rid of Clementine, it feels absurd to try to think about the game without Clementine. It wouldn't be the same at all.
Telltale nearly scrapped The Walking Dead's Clementine a week before recording [Eurogamer]