Poll: Clementine vs Ellie
- Thread starter Sack of Cheese
- Start date
I'm going to cop a bit of flak for this but I found Ellie to be really annoying, she seems to be a cut and paste of Juno from the movie of the same title. Same appearance, Similar voice, Same attitude.
Its prob just me but I really hated that movie and the character and unfortunately Ellie seemed a bit too much like her.
Its prob just me but I really hated that movie and the character and unfortunately Ellie seemed a bit too much like her.
lol at the eyebrows and ellie's eyes in each one.Binnsyboy said:I've only been able to play the first episode of Walking Dead, and I don't have a PS3 and as such can't play Last of Us.
But I prefer Ellie purely because of this:
OT: ellie for sure, clem isn't a bad character, but never really cared about her, idk i just couldn't get into the game immersively like some people could.
Like Elizabeth from BI, Ellie and Clem are both relatively one note characters designed around a single prominent personality trait. Clem's wide eyed innocence, and Ellie's pugnacity (that naturally hides a heart of gold). Anyone expecting more from video game characters at this juncture in history needs to review their expectations. These guys barely get enough dialogue and genuine character development time to fill 2-3 episodes of a television show, let alone get measured by any "great character" standards. At best you're going to get relatively broad character archetypes. Walking Dead and TLOU would have to go on for 2-3 more full length games before a truly multi-faceted character could begin to emerge, complete with arc.
What they both are is charmingly written and well voice acted. And, as relatively static archetypes go, they at least avoid the "bland gaming prop" curse that haunts so many electronic protagonists and their supporting casts. Tomb Raider reboot I am looking in your direction.
I voted for Clementine, by the way.
What they both are is charmingly written and well voice acted. And, as relatively static archetypes go, they at least avoid the "bland gaming prop" curse that haunts so many electronic protagonists and their supporting casts. Tomb Raider reboot I am looking in your direction.
I voted for Clementine, by the way.
Ellie seems to be more genuine to me. Maybe because she's old enough to show terrible personality traits and bad habits.
If I remember correctly, The Last of Us has about 90 minutes worth of cutscenes. The Walking Dead isn't much shorter than some miniseries. Heh, Metroid: Other M wastes 2 hours of your life with motherhood symbolism, and that's a Nintendo game we're talking about.
Maybe I don't get what you're trying to say, but lack of time don't appear to be the problem.
But what about movies? I mean, you can have a great character with a compelling arc in 2 or 3 hours. These days, even the dumbest games come packed with excruciatingly long cutscenes.BloatedGuppy said:
If I remember correctly, The Last of Us has about 90 minutes worth of cutscenes. The Walking Dead isn't much shorter than some miniseries. Heh, Metroid: Other M wastes 2 hours of your life with motherhood symbolism, and that's a Nintendo game we're talking about.
Maybe I don't get what you're trying to say, but lack of time don't appear to be the problem.
Well...this is a character building scene in a movie...Nonomori said:
And this is a character building scene in a television show...
Can you show me anything remotely like this? Even in TLOU, or BI, or any of the games that have only VERY RECENTLY started to pay attention to character building even in the slightest? I've yet to see a game show us dialogue that exists for no other reason than to advance a character. It's almost always expository, or action packed, or intended as a bridge between two game play sequences. It's almost never just a single character talking and revealing elements of their character in the process.
Now, perhaps it's not particularly fair of me to post Daniel Day Lewis and James fucking Gandolfini as examples, but these are great characters. That's what I want to see games aspiring to before we start flinging laurels at them for their robust character building. Not so much "this one was cute" or "this one was feisty" or "this one has a basic internal dilemma". Certainly it's PROGRESS and I admire the games very much for trying, but they have a long way to go. And I find when people want to dismiss a character...like, say...Elizabeth...because they're annoyed at the game, they'll key in on the very evident fact that she's fundamentally one dimensional and only faintly sketched in. As though that weren't a quality she shared with more or less every single video game character in the history of the medium.
That's what I'm trying to say.
- Mar 31, 2010
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Got to go with Clem, she's a little cutie whereas Ellie... not so much. That and Clem is surprisingly useful to have around at times, maybe stretching reality a little with how untroublesome she is compared to your average real child but hey, it's not exactly the most unrealistic thing in a zombie game, that's all part of the fun.
Going to have to go with Ellie here I cant say I particularly cared much about either of them in game but I thought Ellie was much better written, voice acted and animated plus she wasnt as annoying as Clem. I actually became more engaged in Ellie and Joel the more the story developed whereas after episode 2 I became less engaged with Lee and Clem until by the end of act 3 I didnt care what happened to either of them.
Every time I caught a glimpse of my roommate playing that game, Ellie always seemed to be swearing and cursing her head off. It really seemed forced and kind of ruined her whole appeal for me.
Clementine however, I found to be almost entirely innocent, and I wanted to do everything to keep her safe within the confines of the story.
Clementine however, I found to be almost entirely innocent, and I wanted to do everything to keep her safe within the confines of the story.
I don't know, to me The Last of Us had a good bunch of little dialoge moments that revealed character. And not simply by outright saying it.BloatedGuppy said:
There's the optional conversation at the movie poster where Ellie asks Joel who dragged him to see a dumb teen movie. To which Joel immediately cuts off the conversation by claiming he doesn't know, when he obviously does.
And then there's the end...
...where Joel says 'No matter what, you need to keep finding something to fight for.' Now in any other story this would be your usual 'keep your chin up' speech, but in TLoU it's used to reveal just how delusional Joel has become.
Same with Bill and his lone wolf rhetoric. He boasts about how he cut his ties so he could survive, but in the end you find out he's alone because he himself was abandoned by the one he cared about. He gets introduced as this badass, slightly crazy hermit, but ultimately gets revealed for the sad, lonely old man that he is.
Same with Bill and his lone wolf rhetoric. He boasts about how he cut his ties so he could survive, but in the end you find out he's alone because he himself was abandoned by the one he cared about. He gets introduced as this badass, slightly crazy hermit, but ultimately gets revealed for the sad, lonely old man that he is.
There's also plenty of gameplay moments that help establish the characters...
Like the moment just before the giraffes, when Joel goes to give Ellie a leg up (which at that point you've done dozens of times), but she's not there. Suddenly the monotony of this action gets interrupted for this nice little character moment.
Or when you play as Ellie in the Winter chapter. Ofcourse you get the same recurring gameplay, as that is the nature of action games, but it makes total sense for Ellie to control roughly the same, since she's been observing Joel's actions this whole time.
And at the end when again you control Ellie as you walk towards Tommy's compound, there's a real character shift between her and Joel. With him hurrying ahead, being very enthusiastic, and not shutting up. And her having a slow default walking speed and being very close-mouthed.
Or when you play as Ellie in the Winter chapter. Ofcourse you get the same recurring gameplay, as that is the nature of action games, but it makes total sense for Ellie to control roughly the same, since she's been observing Joel's actions this whole time.
And at the end when again you control Ellie as you walk towards Tommy's compound, there's a real character shift between her and Joel. With him hurrying ahead, being very enthusiastic, and not shutting up. And her having a slow default walking speed and being very close-mouthed.
It's probably one of the most perfect arcs I've seen in any game.
What it does, it does pretty well. I'm not trying to hammer on these games specifically and say they have bad characters. I'm saying that by any real literary or cinematic standard they are very sparsely realized. And people will often cherry pick their faults when they want to suggest they weren't very good...there's a few people in this thread doing exactly that. When their faults...the fact they're kind of hastily sketched and not particularly robust...are universal to the medium right now.Casual Shinji said:
I think that's kind of unavoidable in this medium though, unless you're going to drown the audience in text and dialoge.BloatedGuppy said:
Acting and dialoge in games will always buckle under the scrutiny of litrature or cinema, but in the same way so would the medium of animation. I mean, there's never been an animated character nominated for best actor. And that's because it can never hope to match that particular level of quality due to the nature of what it is. But then animation has a other qualities to it that live-action can never hope to match.
And so too it is with games. The interactivity and the ability to pace the experience to suit your needs grants it a quality that literature and cinema won't ever achieve.
Thanks for taking your time with the answer. But I have to say, of course it's unfair. Your examples are: a) the best Paul Thomas Anderson movie, truly a masterpiece if I ever saw one; b) one of the most important TV series ever made, period.BloatedGuppy said:
I would say that Ellie and Clem are great characters and well beyond one-note (especially Ellie), but I'm not exactly expecting Kieslowski's level of writing from a video game. Funny thing, while not agreeing with the severity of the words you chose, my opinion about narrative in the medium is basically the same.
In an unrelated note, rewatching that Sopranos scene made me realize for the first time what we've lost.