I only watched the first 20 minutes by Let's Play, as I don't really like Telltale or zombies or low-interactive "games" much. Annoying details put me off watching any more after the protagonist and the little girl arrived on the farm, so I'm glad I didn't bother with it personally. That it's winning "Best Game of the Year" awards is kind of laughable given the reviews I've read on it talking about the lack of gameplay, but that's par for the course nowadays.
Having said that:
Also, I think the game pushed the political correctness angle too far. I'm certainly not against games featuring minorities, and all the characters were very well represented, but they pushed it too much and it was unnatural. In the beginning they go out of their way to show that the little girl is a black latino, there are a lot of minorities, and the game also goes out of his way to tell that the black hero is an English professor, although that element is never used in the plot. One of the other characters in the game is also told to keep his prejudices to himself. Nothing inherently wrong all in all but it felt really forced.
The main character is also the worst by far. He was not credible as a murderer and acted like a care bear.
George Bush HHR doesn't care about
gay people wheat people black people.
Okay, let's be fair to HHR (despite the fact he's often not) and give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's capable of thinking beyond people as a caricature (given his opinions on gay people, this is giving him a LOT of benefit in this regards, but whatever).
Maybe it's just bad writing?
Let's face it: writing for computer games, even story-heavy ones, is mediocre at best in the vast majority of cases. And, hell, even it's popularity doesn't discount this possibiity: Twilight and Mass Effect pretty much tell us to expect terrible writing from popularly-liked stories. Given this game was released by the same company that thought the Soda Poppers were great characters to reuse certainly keeps clumsy writing in the realm of possibility. I can't talk about these things because I only saw twenty or so minutes of it and it was already bugging me to put me off the writing. But I get pedantic about these things far more than is probably reasonable, so to be fair let's give Telltale some leeway as well.
So, either you're right and it's post-aPoC gone mad; or you're just a bigoted idiot; or Telltale can't tell a tale; or maybe it's something else.
Let's just take the basic premise: a post-apocalyptic (specifically, zombie) fiction. These always bring up the somewhat randomness over who survives and who doesn't to show the frailty of humanity as a species, and to help get across the isolation and general feeling of loss, and to explain why people act in some of the dumb, suicidal ways they do at points. Even medium-sized cities (especially those in America) quite often have a bigger racial/cultural mix than smaller, rural areas: people (especially the poor) go there for jobs, businessmen visit there for business purposes, more doctors getting better pay than in their home countries, colleges and universities with international students, etc. And zombie stories usually require people to flee from the safety of their homes and communities, and to band together with other survivors to continue to survive. And if things are as severe as they are, trying to keep good relations with the people in your party is pretty important, because losing people (either through dying, zombification, or splitting of a party) just leads to weakness. Now, most people will gravitate towards people who are most "like" them, but that's not always an option.
What you've claimed as "PC rubbish" just seems to me to be the natural consequence of the type of story it is, and that it
is a story (more importantly, an "interactive" one) and so the protagonist has to be relatable (otherwise, like a lot of modern horror movies, you just don't care if the people survive through the ordeal).
- Take the demographics of an area, roll a d100 and chances are high you'll get a mix of races, genders, whatevers from who survives (unless, say, a particular race is more/less susceptible to it, but as far as I know this isn't the case in this story). And since this type of game generally has a wider audience than a lot of other games, the devs probably wanted to give more people someone to identify with: it might be the same for the TV show/comic book, but I don't know anything about them either.
- Telltale chooses to have a black protagonist, which apparently is not a problem for you, so we'll skip over that under the benefit of the doubt clause.
- However, he's an English professor or something, which apparently is a problem. Not sure why you'd care about this never occurring in a story where literary analysis, the pursuit of tenure, attending conferences, giving lectures, etc., have pretty much zero impact on the "new world". Most professions don't. Maybe the writers just decided to put in a more familiar profession to something they've done/know about? Maybe they needed a profession that wouldn't have much experience with violence so the player's control failures would still fit in the world better than if he'd been a cop or athlete or whatever profession you think he *should* have had. As the player's avatar, it make sense that he goes along with what other people suggest rather than having his own resources.
- There's also the point of whom he murdered: it was someone important (don't remember the details, some politician I think), but given his wife was involved it's likely he'd probably have to be in a somewhat sedate, likely middle-class profession. This lets the wife a decent position to have the affair with the politician (can't be too wealthy/rich/important, or the affair is less likely to take place) while avoiding the situation where the politician has an affair with someone married to a man more likely to beat him up/kill him. Professor seems to fit in that list of professions. I don't know how much whom he killed affects the story, but if there's good reason for him to be a VIP then there's only so many people the protagonist-murderer can be without it entering too far into the unbelievability zones and turning people off the story.
- He's also arrested or convicted of murder, but is apparently a "care bear": if he'd been violent or more thuggish or however you expect murderers to act, then that'd make him unlikeable and he'd have a hard time - as a non-"care bear" black murderer - getting a little girl to stay with him, or being accepted in a group, or having the little girl stay with him when they encounter more humans. And as this is a game made for the mass market of non dudebros, it'd be hard for a lot of people who'd want to play this game to relate to him. I'm assuming the girl's important to the story they wanted to tell, so he had to be "care bear" or else she'd wind up dead or being looked after by someone else; either that or they met nobody else (which apparently is not what happens in the story) better equipped to look after her, or the writers have no idea about how people act believably. Additionally, if he'd been a more stereotyped murderer, the officer at the start wouldn't have had a dialogue with him, wouldn't have crashed the car and we'd have a completely different story.
- Since the protagonist is black, the little girl probably has to be as well. First, so that she trusts this random stranger - people respond better to people who look like them, after all - and, second, to help cement the father-daughter bond they apparently form during the game. If she'd been a different race, it wouldn't have worked as well as it did, especially if they'd encountered other people she'd have had more in common with.
- As for the problem of people telling others to "keep their prejudices in check"; well I'd say the same thing. Not based on whether I'm LIBBRUL or a member of the KKK or whatever, but because it's an apocalypse going on, and there are more important problems going on than not liking someone's skin color. With the "world ending" and not a lot of people around to rely on, getting angry and fighting with other people is a waste of energy. Yes, it's human, but that's why other people (who -shock and horror- may feel differently about things than you do) will say to cool off: it's counterproductive at best, at worst (at least as far as this world is concerned), you're risking your life by having less people to rely upon by driving them away, or accidentally killing them and getting another zombie to have to fight off. Besides, it adds to potential conflicts between parties, and as this game has apparently nothing much but the story going for it, adding in conflicts is important so the writers have more wriggle room to work with.
Did Telltale do this way? The hell if I know. But I came up with this stuff in a couple of hours with this in the back of my mind while I did other stuff; if I'd been writing it for my job, then I might be able to be a bit tighter with it. This won't persuade you to think otherwise - I have read a thread you've posted in, after all - but it's a fun exercise coming up with much more logical responses than "Political Correctness? In MY videogames?"
You're not the self-loathing alternate personality of John Walker, are you?
It has nothing to do whatsoever with the protagonist, he was decent, and his being black changed nothing to the game.
So then what's your problem? If it changed nothing to the game (much like your choices
), then how is he the "worst character by far" in this regard?
Also this sounds way too much like, "Some of my
best friends favorite protagonists are black."
It only has to do with awkward, forced PC themes BioWare style seemingly seeping into games.
Aside: "lol Bioware's style is alllll contard, baby"
What's being forced? More than one race surviving an apocalypse? Black people in the middle class whose jobs are useless in a zombie attack? Black kids feeling closer to black adults? People who prioritize working together to survive over bitching about other people's skin?
Also, don't you have a new baby that you should be spending time with so as to ensure they don't turn into a depressed homosexual, secretly bringing drugs, booze and bread home to binge on? I mean I seriously enjoy your hilariously awful arguments, but if you're going to
keep up your ruse of having a child raise a perfectly straight little Christian soldier who pops boners about waitresses like the old man, then shouldn't you be spamming the Codex less?
about that tramp Lilly sitting on the RV all day and telling people what to do. 
I really need to stop reading this thread
etc.
