So recently I picked up Telltale’s The Walking Dead, based on a friend’s recommendation. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything special. Considering games that get high marks for their narrative still tend to be trite and unremarkable, I was expecting The Walking Dead to be kind of like The Last of Us, a game with a well-presented, occasionally interesting narrative, but one that failed to really connect with me.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

To say that The Walking Dead is the best licensed video game, the best zombie game, or even the best video game narrative ever would be doing it a massive disservice. The Walking Dead is one of the most haunting and compelling pieces of fiction I’ve ever seen. Upon completion of a twelve hour marathon session I lay awake in my bed ruminating over the choices I had made, trying to figure out what those choices said about me as a person, and what my motives really were.

Rare is the game that keeps me up at night.

Since the first episode of Season 2 is right around the corner, I wanted to take a moment and write about the two moments I found to be the most striking in the first season. One is an example of how this game gets characterization right and the other is a more personal reflection on how my relationship with one particular character made me question my morality.

Both of these posts are going to be filled to the brim with spoilers. I implore you to not read them if you haven’t actually played the game yet, because it really is the sort of experience that deserves a completely fresh run, free of any preconceived notions. The choices you make have far more impact if you don’t see them coming and don’t know what the consequences will be. Since we’re only a few days out from Season 2 now, there really isn’t a better time to get up to speed.

But, for those of you who HAVE played the game…

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT!

Carley was my favorite character. Out of all the interesting personalities the game tasks you to look after and care for, I valued her well-being almost as much as darling little Clementine’s. I was always honest with her, when it was time for me to dole out the food, she was one of the four who ended up getting some, and when it came down to choice of saving her or Doug at the end of episode one, the decision was nearly instantaneous.

Apparently it wasn’t just me. Based on the metrics Telltale posted at the end of episode one, around 75 percent of players chose to save Carley over poor Doug.

Why is that?

Is it because gamers are primarily heterosexual males and therefore a pretty lady is always going to win over socially awkward tech guy?

Well, maybe. If I’m being completely honest with myself that probably had something to do with it. Gender roles die hard. But there’s more to it than that, I think. For me, the Carley and Doug decision came down to the fact that Carley felt a more textured and human character than Doug did.

And it was all because she didn’t know how to put batteries in a radio.

In case it’s been a while since you last played it, in episode one you have the opportunity to walk around the pharmacy where you and the other survivors are holding out. You can get to know these people a little better by talking to them and completing a few side objectives. If you take the time to talk to Carley, you’ll see her fiddling with a radio that she simply can’t get to work. However, once you investigate it, you find the answer to her conundrum incredibly simple: the radio doesn’t have any batteries in it.

Worse yet, when you finally do get her the batteries she needs, she puts them in BACKWARDS. What a dumb broad, am I right? That’s Darwin award level thinking right there. It’s a good thing she was handy with a gun otherwise the correct choice would have been to let her get eaten and take the smart guy.

The backlash I’ve seen some fans have against the battery moment is really telling to me and goes with a hypothesis that I’ve had for a while now, namely that a lot of people don’t want their fictional characters to act like real people or have any imperfections.

It’s quite the hilarious little paradox really. We look at a character like Superman and sneer at him because he’s morally perfect and then we turn around and criticize characters who make dumb decisions, calling them unrealistic or bad writing.

On some level we know that a character without flaws is a boring character, but whenever a character does make a dumb decision we snort at it and call that character an unlikable idiot, especially in survival situations like The Walking Dead where we’re confident that we’d do everything perfectly and make all the right decisions.

I want to ask you a question. How many times have you failed a simple task or done something moronic? Have you ever started up a game console and simply could not get it to work? You restart the console, unplug it, check the HDMI port, and there still isn’t a picture. Then your friend walks over to the remote and switches the input channel, and viola, it works! That’s happened to you at least once, right? Or how about when you pour yourself a bowl of cereal and accidentally put the box in the fridge instead of the pantry? Or how about that one time you accidentally brought raw pork chops to school instead of your lunch because your dad put them both in blue grocery bags? I’ve done all these things, and I’m willing to bet you’ve done stupid things that, if you were being rational, could have easily been avoided.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what Carley does in Episode 1. Your first introduction to her is when she saves Kenny’s son from being eaten by a zombie in the street. Then she saves either you or Clementine from another zombie. she confronts you about your past, but says she’ll keep your secret because the sensible thing to do is avoid drama. After that you both go and do some badass stuff and rescue a girl by killing a shit load of zombies at a motel. She does everything competently and efficiently, she doesn’t make any lapses in moral judgment, (like when Kenny selfishly refuses to help Hershel’s son) act insensitive, (like when Glenn laments that the bitten lady at the Motor Inn has a boyfriend) or have any moments where she just plain looks like an asshole (like Lilly). She does pretty much everything right. Now, as we’ve established, a character without any sort of flaws is a boring character, especially in a drama. By having her fuck up radio, she gets a human flaw that, instead of making me laugh at what an idiot she is or roll my eyes at how she’s nothing more than a clichéd Action Girl, endears her to me and makes her feel more like a real person.

We tend to think of character flaws in the context of big character arcs they have to overcome throughout the course of the story, like Walter White’s pride or Kenny’s selfishness, but a character flaw can be something small like this that doesn’t really affect the plot. A small moment of a character doing something stupid shows their vulnerability, and it makes them feel more like a real person and less like a stereotype.

But the batteries aren’t just a character flaw for its own sake, the writers didn’t shoehorn it in because they saw no other avenues to make her more interesting, the batteries actually back up what the game is telling us and characterizes her in a more subtle way. While in the pharmacy, you can compliment Carley on how well she’s handling herself and she’ll tell you that she feels like a disaster. “Show don’t tell” is a common aphorism in writing, and it means that characterization is a lot more resonant if you can actually show us how a character behaves rather than simply telling us. So do we ever get to see this?

Another question: How do you react to stress? We all do it a little differently, right? Some of us do our best to ignore it and try to put on our best face, others completely shut down. It’s another one of those little quirks that distinguishes us as individuals. Speaking only for myself, I can very much relate to what Carley is doing. When I get stressed out, I often struggle to solve simple problems presented to me because I’m not really focused on the task at hand. If I’m concerned about the safety of a loved one or have some large issue hanging over my head, then I become disoriented and it can become difficult to do tasks that are under normal circumstances muscle memory. Something as simple as basic addition can be a challenging task when my mind is somewhere else and I get the sense that the battery situation is supposed to show that she really doesn’t have it all together in this stressful situation. Would you act perfectly if everyone you cared about started dying left and right? This is the game’s way of showing that despite keeping a cool head, she’s starting to crack under the pressure.

Plus, there’s another layer to all of this. When you do finally get the radio working, Carley is treated to a broadcast a station is making, and catches it just in time to hear her old friends and coworkers under attack. Another possibility is that, on a subconscious level, maybe Carley doesn’t want to find out what’s happening on the outside.

Now, compare this method of characterization to what we see of Doug. The game tries to give each character their own opportunity to shine and endear themselves to you, but Doug doesn’t really get any actions that characterize him in a meaningful way. He stands watch, but only because Kenny tells him to. He doesn’t speak at all in the argument between Kenny and Larry when you first arrive at the pharmacy. While you can talk to him to find out more about what he was like before the zombie apocalypse started, he doesn’t really do anything that makes him stand out. You’re told that he’s a socially awkward nerd, but the only indication you get of this is that he knows how to program a universal remote, his character model is a bit chubby, and the characters constantly talk about what a nerd he is. Hell, Glenn had more characterization and he was basically a cameo. Out of all the survivors you’re grouped with, Doug is easily the least interesting, so when it came time to choose between the one note nerd character or the reasonably realistic one. Well, sorry Doug.

Finally, if you do choose to save her, then later on Lee and Carley will make jokes at her expense about the radio. These moments are funny not because we’re thinking “Hurr Carley is such a dummy” but because we see a little bit of ourselves in these interactions. They laugh and mock each other like actual friends do. How often have you done something stupid and your friends never let you hear the end of it? It not only makes the relationship between the characters feel more real, but the familiarity of the dialogue makes you as a player attached to her. So much so that when she’s swiftly and cruelly killed a few episodes later it really hits home. I don’t think the death of a fictional character has ever hit me so hard, and that process began by humanizing her with small details like not knowing how batteries work.

I’m not saying rescuing Carley was the correct choice. One of the recurring themes of the game is how, when it comes right down to it, there often isn’t a right choice. Carley’s character really resonated with me, but maybe that wasn’t the case for you. Maybe something about Doug really resonated with you in a personal way, and that’s totally awesome. Part of what makes The Walking Dead so wonderful is how personal the experience is. I just wanted to offer the idea that maybe the trait Carley is so often mocked for is what saved her life in many cases, whether players realized it or not. The lack of little flaws and details like the battery incident are often what make bad characters so bland, and I think people need to remember that you don’t have any drama unless your characters are fucking up.