Don’t worry, this is not an “impressions” piece or a review. There will be no spoilers. I just wanted to remark upon something I found odd to start with but accepted upon deeper thought.

As you probably know, the game has Tell Tale-style decisions that supposedly affect what you experience further in the game (although as several have argued, the decisions don’t really matter all that much). Now, in such decision-based games I tend to be the good guy and try to help everyone, no matter the cost to my character. What I found strange is that after making every such self-sacrificing decision, Max (the player character) would remark something to the effect of

Man, this could turn out really bad for me, maybe I should have done the other thing instead!

My reaction while playing the game was along the lines of “Wow, this chick is really selfish. She’d rather this really bad thing happen to this other person than this relatively minor bad thing happen to herself?”. But when I thought about it, I remembered that she is rather young. I mean, she’s eighteen, and I recollect rather well how selfish I used to be when I was a kid. I let others take the blame for my mistakes, I bullied other kids (in primary school, but still!) and was a general pain-in-the-ass to be around. So it’s not all that unusual after all for Max to not want to stick her neck out to help others.