Must russians ALWAYS be bad?

[[RUS]ferzz]

First, to make things clear:
1. I like the game really. This particular and most of Telltale series.
2. I'm not offended, just curious.
3. I don't play balalaika, nor have a pet bear.
With that said.

I know i might be speaking to emptyness. But tell me, is there some secret plot making guide? I don't know, for game developers, movie script writers... With a guideline "How to show russians in games and movies". And it goes like that:
1. Russians are bad. ALWAYS. (Really, there were a lot of different characters in Walking Dead, seasons 1 and 2 different races, nationalities... But russians MUST be bad!)
2. Don't you EVER consult someone who speaks russian. Use Google Translator instead. (They DID manage to find russian speaking guy for Arvo. Couldn't they ask him to check the lines of other characters? Nikakova orugiya for "No weapons"?! Really?! Who says either of it?! And a bandit russian speaking with clear american accent?)
3. Russians ALWAYS must look like orcs. At least one of them! (Seriously, that russian bandit covered in tatoos... How many people look like that?)
4. Don't tell their stories! They're just bad orcs! (There's this guy, Arvo. Who is he? What's the matter with his leg? Why has he been hiding meds there? judjing by how far that Arvo escorted Kenny and the group to the russian bandits lair - that's quite a distanse between them and the Civil War museum. And that Arvo went there with his leg? Why? Why so far from base? Are these bandits all his relatives? They told a story of Carver and his group. He is a bandit too, but has a story, motives, developement... But no, Arvo doesn't deserve a story.

And I see this in a whole lot of games! I am surprised, that russian bandits didn't come riding bears, wearing valenki and ushankas, playing balalaikas and drinking vodka, while crying "Hail Stalin"!

[blaier]

mad?

[Comrade Tiedanski 五月天]

I mean it would be interesting to have a twd character who is a soviet afghan war vet in great depression that came to the states after the collapse of the USSR and for decades just laying low and being a typical russian alcoholic but then ended up defending an orphanage that is filled with kids who can't even barely hold a gun and the guy is constantly having PTSD over a afghani village raid that had gone wrong where both his comrades and innocent civilians died in this massacre. It will be fun given that in the twd universe, communism is actually a thing and who else would suit this role than an ex-soviet soldier and citizen of the USSR.

[NastyCats]

All I can tell is in GTAO I avoid all Russian players cuz they are too bloody. And I grief every single Chinese player cuz they are too naughty.

[Sigh Man Vanz]

Part of the reason may be that the developers wanted to have Arvo's family speak a language that none of the main characters would understand, thus making the Mexican standoff nearly impossible to resolve with dialogue. This may not have worked as well if the other family spoke, say, Spanish (even monolingual Americans can sometimes stumble their way through a simple conversation with a Spanish-speaker, using their memory of high-school Spanish and the fact that certain words sound the same in both languages).

But yeah, Americans tend to have a very cartoonishly villainous stereotype of Russians, probably as a relic of the Cold War. Russians are pretty much the only non-Americans that it's still considered "safe" to portray as inscrutable bad guys, without running the risk of being accused of racism. (The stereotype nowadays isn't that they're shifty communists, but rather that they're all connected to organized crime and/or just generally untrustworthy and emotionally cold).

I actually found it intriguing that we knew almost nothing about Arvo or his family, and I personally found Arvo to be a largely sympathetic character (right up until he shot an 11-year-old, that is). But I agree that the developers may have been relying on Americans' stereotype of Russians in order to lend more "menace" to the encounter with Arvo's family.

[NecroMaster]

The Russians were originally intended to speak English they have scrapped English voice lines.

And most of these voice lines in episode 4 are the group telling Buricko to stop while Buricko continues to yell obscenities and screwed up threats.

They really goofed on the transition into episode 5 they screwed up so many things.

[dave.]

I think the US never recovered from the Red Scare and the entire Cold War mentality manufactured by propaganda. Heck, it got only worse in the last 4 years with the country being incapable of self criticism, instead looking for scapegoats for its own failures.
To be honest, I'm pretty sick of this tired trope as well and I wish writers knew better, had enough knowledge, intelligence and sensibility to create characters that aren't just copy-pasted cookie cutter cliches. Especially in a game that's character driven and always tries to show there's hardly completely, objectively good and bad choices, thus you'd expect some nuance, not just from the main cast, but secondary one as well. Certainly not merely one dimensional racist stereotypes.
Discrimination and prejudice may have been great subjects for a post-apo game to comment on, show how different "camps" don't trust each other and how the "us and them" mentality must be ditched to trash if people want to stay alive.

Then again, I felt like Season 2 generally was a bit lackluster when it came to writing, compared to the first one. Every determinable character fate seemed so... stiff writing-wise, they lacked the impact, drama and shock I remember from Season 1. Not even starting with everyone's convoluted motivations in Episode 5, which really makes you ask who came up with all of this nonsense? There's so many ways the same plot lines could have been executed more elegantly and natural, but I guess that's another whole conversation waiting to be unraveled here (and I can bet has had dozens of times already). What I'm trying to say, considering how underwhelming main plot writing feels in this Season at times, especially near its end, I'm not that surprised to see some irrelevant side characters were so badly designed and written. I wish they weren't, I'm truly sick of all the stereotypes haunting modern popculture.

[GOLDENEYEGOD]

Yeah, your profile picture is so welcoming and friendly! Really helping out your case!

[[RUS]ferzz]

Dave, exactly my point.

[[RUS]ferzz]

Nemesis, yeah,great point. Not. I mean, it's not like every one else has a unicorn or a flower in their profile picture, but me, right? And my profile pic comes from time,when Shogun:total war was my favorite game. What does that have to do with my piont?

[Crowley42]

Yeah, the game was made by amerimutts and they are still mad at the reds. The scene with the russians is particularly awful because it was supposed to take place with the 400 days characters and though we don't know what exactly went down at Telltale it is safe to say the executives ♥♥♥♥ the bed and didn't like the script so they made this "Russian" thing to fill in the blank spot.

Nothing makes sense here, Arvo is mad even if you didn't steal from him, the russian guys are nobodies who get shot 3 seconds after they appear, there is a big gunfight where not a single person on your team dies. Also, where do these people even get machineguns from? Also, how do these russians survive in the US after the apocalypse without being able to speak the damn language? The whole sequence is a royal ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and, sadly the poor russians aren't portrayed very charitably.

[Sigh Man Vanz]

Do you know which 400 days characters they were supposed to be?

[Crowley42]

Publicado originalmente por Sigh Man Vanz:

Do you know which 400 days characters they were supposed to be?

I'd imagine it would have depended on who you managed to convince to come to Howe's in your own savefile. We know that Tavia was supposed to fall off the roof and die in the scene where the gang leaves Carver's place, so not her for sure. We also know that Arvo was originally supposed to be Eddie and that he would have stayed with your group unlike Arvo in the final cut of the game, you can even see Eddie in the Episode Select screen of the current version of the game, which is pretty weird. I'd imagine you would have gotten ambushed by a group of different size depending on how many people you've gotten to join and then there would have been different ways for the scene to play out depending on that, I'm thinking they cut it out because it would've been too much work to make all the alternate scenarios. Also, there could've been some cool interaction if Wyatt is with the group since he knows Eddie.

Whatever the original idea was it would've been a thousand times better since you would actually care about the 400 days characters a bit, meanwhile nobody gives a ♥♥♥♥ about the cannonfodder russians.

It's also weird how a couple things just don't make sense in the current game, like how Arvo is hiding the drugs in some random dumpster? Why is he doing that, is he hiding it from the other russians? Is he trying to save it for her sister? They're in the middle of nowhere and Arvo's got a limp and the nearest city is on the other side of the river, so how far away exactly were the russians from Arvo here? Nothing about the russians makes sense, clearly they were just trying to fill in some blank because they didn't have time to execute the original idea. Eddie hiding the meds would've made far more sense since we know that he is a junkie. And the guys at Howe's coming after the group for unleashing the zombies upon the place would've also made a lot more sense than the russians who attack for literally no reason.

[NecroMaster]

Publicado originalmente por Crowley42:

Publicado originalmente por Sigh Man Vanz:

Do you know which 400 days characters they were supposed to be?

I'd imagine it would have depended on who you managed to convince to come to Howe's in your own savefile. We know that Tavia was supposed to fall off the roof and die in the scene where the gang leaves Carver's place, so not her for sure. We also know that Arvo was originally supposed to be Eddie and that he would have stayed with your group unlike Arvo in the final cut of the game, you can even see Eddie in the Episode Select screen of the current version of the game, which is pretty weird. I'd imagine you would have gotten ambushed by a group of different size depending on how many people you've gotten to join and then there would have been different ways for the scene to play out depending on that, I'm thinking they cut it out because it would've been too much work to make all the alternate scenarios. Also, there could've been some cool interaction if Wyatt is with the group since he knows Eddie.

Whatever the original idea was it would've been a thousand times better since you would actually care about the 400 days characters a bit, meanwhile nobody gives a ♥♥♥♥ about the cannonfodder russians.

It's also weird how a couple things just don't make sense in the current game, like how Arvo is hiding the drugs in some random dumpster? Why is he doing that, is he hiding it from the other russians? Is he trying to save it for her sister? They're in the middle of nowhere and Arvo's got a limp and the nearest city is on the other side of the river, so how far away exactly were the russians from Arvo here? Nothing about the russians makes sense, clearly they were just trying to fill in some blank because they didn't have time to execute the original idea. Eddie hiding the meds would've made far more sense since we know that he is a junkie. And the guys at Howe's coming after the group for unleashing the zombies upon the place would've also made a lot more sense than the russians who attack for literally no reason.

That would explain why 400 days was so irrelevant.

[Zeuuuuussssssssssss]

Yeah, russia is a sh1th0l3

[Crowley42]

Publicado originalmente por Royal Armenian:

Murikans are just deadass terrified of Russian power, hence the same song and dance. You can tell if a country or people is good and prosperous by whether amerimutts try hard to convince the world to hate them or not. The only reason why Russians and the Chinese are bashed by muricans is because they're literally scared of them. So america has to make up delusional horror stories about russia and china being extremely evil and bad to turn the world against them and simultaneously stop everyone from realizing that muricans are very much the only bad guys lol

>amerimutts
>implying