The Walking Dead - Days Gone Bye

[Beastro]

I stopped watching the show after a season or two. I can enjoy the occasional zombie movie, and its well-suited for certain types of video games, but overall I'm just not a big fan of the genre. The implausibility of zombies themselves bother me more than the likelihood of every world government being unable to handle an outbreak, but neither is the biggest issue for me.

The big problem for me is the contrivance of the writing. Zombies by definition lack any kind of goals or motives, even insanity. Once you get the creepiness/horror/blood-and-guts factor, there's nothing else there. All conflict and drama will necessarily be driven by the survivors, and the zombies amount to little more than a tool to drive home whatever point the writers want to make about society, culture, or people in general.

My (faint) hope was that the show would actually go into what the world would be like after the apocalypse as zombies fade in number, but remain a hazard from those who die, with the main focus shifting from typical survival horror to exploring how things would develop afterwards.

Yes, that would inevitably be looked on as boring, and why they just keep giving you more of the same after all these years (and is why I dropped it early), but it gives a chance to explore something new and deeper that would add to zombie horror.

Land of Dead kinda went a step in the direction, but still couldn't abandon the hordes.

[TheStarWarsTrek]

I feel like the best post apocalypse stories explore the "rebuilding the new world on the ashes of the old" thing. There's lots of interesting directions you can go with it, while "survive" as the focus can get stale.

[FaxModem1]

I think the big issue is that after a few years, the show becomes about rival civilizations and facing off against warlords. The issue is making said warlords interesting.

Where is the line between a warlord villain character and a supervillain?

[CrypticMirror]

Where is the line between a warlord villain character and a supervillain?

In a word: Presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy2zB8bLSpk

[clearspira]

I think the big issue is that after a few years, the show becomes about rival civilizations and facing off against warlords. The issue is making said warlords interesting.

Where is the line between a warlord villain character and a supervillain?

Given how this is a comic book adaptation I would say there is nothing wrong with the odd supervillain, but to answer your question: execution.

Governor Round 1 (as opposed to Governor Round 2 with the eyepatch and in-name-only Governor Round 3 with the tank) was in my opinion a good villain because he came off as a man who (like many men) was getting along just fine until Rick's group decided to come along and fuck things up for him. Yeah, sure, he had a creepy fish tank of zombie heads and he liked to kill the odd soldier for their supplies (in a world where the authority figures we have seen tend to follow the Romero mould of incompetent and corrupt) but overall his people were happy, well-fed, they had the rule of law, and had a quality of life beyond many other settlements we have seen. Then Michonne had to come along and take out both his eye and his zombie daughter and...

Also, he killed Andrea, which was a real plus for the show.

In other words, the Governor initially came across as a man with motives and possessing a reason for his vendetta.

Compare that to Terminus where they eat people apparently for the lulz, the police faction that exists apparently solely to rape and enslave any one they come across, and Negan, who is pure comic book but in a negative way. He exists just to conquer and bash peoples' heads in with a bat. Although I will say that Negan had every right to go after Rick to begin with given how the latter had just gotten through with trying to murder a whole settlement by stabbing them in their sleep.

[clearspira]

I feel like the best post apocalypse stories explore the "rebuilding the new world on the ashes of the old" thing. There's lots of interesting directions you can go with it, while "survive" as the focus can get stale.

I think that's why the Fallout series has endured and one of the reasons why Fallout 76 with its empty world failed so spectacularly. People don't play this series just to walk around a nuclear wasteland shooting bugs, they do so because of the deep lore and interesting characters populating a land that is beginning to pick itself up again. The Walking Dead characters in contrast tend to be rather indistinguishable from one another - hell, I watched several seasons of this show and I probably could not put a name to most of them.

One of the many reasons why I started as a huge fan and ended up as someone who cannot stand to watch one more minute of it is that its lack of scope became so obvious over time.

[Beastro]

I think that's why the Fallout series has endured and one of the reasons why Fallout 76 with its empty world failed so spectacularly.

The problem is Fallout's been in the hands of the premiere makers of walking simulators for the past decade so they thought delivering even more of that gameplay was what people wanted from Fallout.

The way Bethesda has handle Fallout clearly shows they do not get the heart of what makes the setting work and just reduces everything to a cartoon.

[TheStarWarsTrek]

Uh, the Bethesda Fallout games are partially what I was thinking of when I said I liked post apocalypse stories where a new world is being built/made. (Although I haven't played Fallout 76). Sure they've got "just walking around a nuclear wasteland shooting bugs", but you've also got people making cities out of aircraft carriers or starting a cult worshipping an atom bomb or turning the Jefferson Memorial into a water purification center.