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He only tries to take AJ if you encourage him to shoot Lilly (obviously he's dead otherwise, but his issue was clearly with that decision). You can talk him down and if you choose your words carefully he'll even stay behind to fight off the walkers while you escape. I'm not condoning him trying to take AJ, but at least he's reasonable enough that you can make him reconsider.
Yeah, I liked James a lot.
His ideas were really interesting and a real breath of fresh air for the series. Having someone who tries not to kill walkers, in a world where everyone else just kills walkers all the time and never seems to think twice about it or ever reflect on the nature of these new creatures... it adds a nice bit of variety, an extra richness to the world-building and some challenging philosophical questions about morality and the walkers' natures.
It's also really interesting to have a character who's clearly a skilled, hardened and resourceful survivor, but who also isn't all angry and vicious and grouchy all the time but instead tries to be gentle, compassionate and thoughtful - that makes a nice change, too.
One thing you have to remember about James - and something which makes him all the more intriguing as a character - is that he wasn't always like this. He used to be more like William Carver from Season 2. James was part of a creepy, vicious cult that saw strength and survival as the only thing that mattered, and saw things like compassion and basic decency as contemptible, something to be rejected. James believed in this so fanatically that he killed one of his own companions just because they expressed the smallest bit of empathy with their enemies.
I think that, when James saw the error of his ways and realised what a monster he'd become, he was so shocked, and so utterly disgusted with himself, that he decided to swear off violence altogether, even against walkers. He decided that indulging in any more violence might make him fall back into his old habits, so he adopted his stringent pacifist stance.
James seems like a guy with quite strong extremes of feeling. A bit of an 'all-or-nothing' kind of person.
He also reminds me of Lee Everett, a bit. The two of them are both people who've done bad things in the past, and are now trying to make up for it and redeem themselves.
But even leaving all that aside, James is absolutely right to think more deeply about the nature of walkers, and to try to be as compassionate and non-violent as possible. Even in a world as harsh and dangerous as the one in these games, you still have to hold onto your compassion and kindness. If you indulge in violence too much, if you get too used to violence, then eventually you'll start to like it, start to see it as okay, and not just necessary or a last resort - and then you've become a monster. Given his background, James, in particular, understands this.
Now, I don't see walkers as people, exactly. Obviously they're not people. They don't seem to be able to rationalise or plan or even think at all beyond reacting to immediate stimuli. But even so, they do seem to have some kinds of feelings.
They're not evil or malicious or anything like that - they don't deliberately try to cause terror and suffering, they just kill people and eat people because that's all they know how to do. They don't strike me as evil monsters or anything like that, they're more like wild animals - wild animals who just don't know any better.
Very ugly and terrifying wild animals, maybe, but still just wild animals.
And maybe they do have some kinds of feelings beyond just hunger and reacting to noises. When I walked into the barn wearing James' mask, and touched the wind-chime, maybe there was a little more to what the walkers were feeling than just 'Sound! Sound there! Go to sound!' Maybe the walkers liked the sound, too. Maybe they can still like and dislike certain things. I found that a very interesting and touching scene.
Obviously, the walkers are still very dangerous. But all this world-building makes them much, much more interesting than just mindless, scary monsters. Doing all this was a very good idea from the game-makers.
And I probably wouldn't have thought this hard about the walkers if James hadn't raised all these points and brought up all these questions. It all makes the game's world so much richer and more interesting.
A shark kills because of mistaken identity or starvation, a bear kills because it's protecting it's young, a walker kills simply because there was something there. Not out of survival, not out of fear, just an urge to tear the nearest living thing to shreds.
It's one thing to try and be non-violent whenever possible, and to avoid killing walkers if you can. But James' philosophy verges on valuing walker lives over human lives. He initially refuses to help save people from what is likely certain death (those that don't join Lilly will be killed) because walkers might die in the process.
Let me put it this way, if I have the option to kill a walker and safely get from point A to point B or to not kill a walker and put my entire groups lives at risk getting while getting from point A to point B then I'm invariably picking the first option. It's better to kill a mindless (or nearly mindless) walker than risk the life of a fully thinking and rational human. Neither is something to be enjoyed, but one is easily the lesser of two evils.
If I can avoid killing a walker without increasing the risk to any human lives then sure I'll pick that option, but 99% of the time in these games that's just not plausible, and even if it is that just means that walker will be around to butcher the next survivor who's minding their own business.
I agreed with James as far as taking any killing seriously, especially if it's a living human, but the fact of the matter is it's usually a case of kill or be killed, but at least if I kill the walker I can feel bad about it and try to make the world a better place, if the walker kills me it just tears me apart and moves on to the next person to kill.
I also just found the idea of living with walkers, of not trying to fight against them or destroy them but instead trying to adapt to them, really fascinating.
If it wasn't for their evil viciousness and their disgusting, degenerate, social darwinist, 'might is right' outlook, the Whisperers would be really, really cool, I think! People who can walk among these dangerous zombies and not get hurt! People who can control them like livestock! People who can use a herd of walkers as weapons, or diversions, or a place to hide, and so forth! Don't you think that's just awesome? I mean, these are people who've really used their ingenuity! These are people who've looked at all these horrifying walking corpses, and instead of going 'Oh no! This is terrible! Run and hide! Kill any walker who comes close! It's the end of the world! Live in fear!', like everyone else, the Whisperers have gone 'Hold on. Wait a moment. We can work with this. With a bit of thought and a bit of effort, we can take these walkers and actually turn them to our advantage!'
i just think that's really cool, and a very interesting new idea for a work of zombie fiction.
And it does show quite a bit of forward thinking. I mean, think about it. No-one knows how long these walkers are going to be around, or if they're ever going to go away. Maybe humanity is stuck with them now. In that sort of situation, probably the best thing to do isn't to futilely try to destroy, or keep at bay, all these creatures who probably vastly outnumber the human race by now. Maybe the best thing to do is adapt to them. Find a way to live with them. Human beings are very good at adapting. It could be done.
We've known from season 1 that covering yourself in walker guts makes you a lot safer around them. Maybe people could make that a common practice, maybe people could try out the whisperer practices of wearing walker skin and maybe, slowly but surely, people could find a way to regulate walker herds, find a way to control them and keep them away from human settlements, maybe box them into containment areas, that sort of thing. And then maybe people wouldn't be so scared of walkers anymore, once they'd found a way to adapt to them and control them.
Like Lee said, we're smart, they're not! Maybe by trying to adapt to this new reality, humanity could find a way to overcome it and build a better, safer world!
Some more interesting thoughts that James inspired in me.
So, all in all, I really liked James. In fact, I think he's now one of my favourite characters in this series.
I love how compassionate and kind-hearted he is, he's a powerful and helpful ally, his character and backstory are intriguing, and his worldview is fascinating and inspires all kinds of thoughts and questions that really help make the game's world richer and more interesting.
Plus, I love that he brought even more LGBT representation into the game! That's always welcome.
Very good points!
So, I disagree with you, but I feel you make some very good points. Chief among them, the one I quotes above. Like James or not, and I don’t, without him, we wouldn’t be having an interesting discussion. His ideas are radical, and they prompt us to reexamine our beliefs on walkers. I for one think the dude is nuts, his philosophy is crazy and dangerous, and his way of thinking could get real people killed in order to protect zombies. However, I acknowledge that others, like you, have differing points of view on the subject.
I don’t find walkers enchanting, I don’t think they have feelings, I don’t think there is anything left of the people they used to be. I don’t believe they deserve compassion, and in a world this violent, I don’t think they should be spared. Every one you kill is one less chance for a living person to be killed.
As for adapting to them and moving among them, the only reason to do so is so they will not kill you, not to be one of them or to try and understand them better. But, as I said, I can’t stand the guy and what he represents, because I think he’s going to get people killed in the name of trying to save the walkers, and people are the most important thing left in the world.
This I agree with, at least to some extent. Using the walkers to your advantage is smart, as long as people don't value them over human lives I have no objections at all to adapting to them. But the moment a walker becomes a risk to human life I wouldn't hesitate to neutralize the threat.
Mind you that doesn't necessarily mean killing them (although in the heat of a difficult moment that might be the safest solution). Removing their teeth with a knife like Jane does in Season 2 at one point to prevent them from biting removes a big part of their threat for instance.
So yeah, if it can be done safely there's nothing wrong with using ingenuity to get past a walker rather than brute force. I think James had some good ideas here and there, but he went to an extreme with them and seemed willing to risk human lives to keep walkers from being killed, which is what I disagree with.
Overall I think he's an okay character, not my absolute favorite but certainly not my least favorite either.
And I definitely agree with him about preventing AJ from taking human lives at such an early age (whenever possible at least). IMO he needs to be old enough to rationally figure out the difference between what he wants to do and what needs to be done before he can make those sorts of decisions, he seemed to be killing out of anger rather than necessity. He's only 5 years old, that's a lot for a kid that age to be dealing with.
That's right.
James had seen firsthand what rampant violence and killing can do to people, he knew what he was talking about.