Tag: Rick Grimes

One Aspect of ‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ Bring a Comic Storyline to Life

Rick Grimes may be one of the most iconic comic book characters who isn’t a superhero but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have changes to his “lore.” One of the biggest changes came when the Governor (David Morrissey) didn’t take Rick’s right hand on The Walking Dead.

In the comics, Rick loses his right hand when the Governor demands information of Rick that he is unwilling to give. If that had happened in the original run of the show, it would pose a longstanding issue in filming with Andrew Lincoln and the money it would take to CGI it. Instead, Robert Kirkman and company decided against the move to save money and ultimately just didn’t feel strongly enough about it overall.

It left fans wondering if Rick Grimes was going to come out of the apocalypse with both of his hands or not. So when The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live geared up, so did the theories that Grimes would lose his hand this time around. And they were right, sort of.

Spoilers ahead for the first episode of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

In the first episode of the series, titled “Years,” we watch as Rick loses his left hand. Which is decidedly not his right hand. Not only that, but the reasoning behind it is significantly different than the comic storyline. This time around, Rick is with the Civic Republic Military (the CRM) and they have him handcuffed. In that moment, Rick sees his only chance at escaping them to get back home to Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Judith (Cailey Fleming) since he doesn’t yet know about RJ (Antony Azor).

Sawing off his own left hand (the one handcuffed), Rick does it and tries to flee the CRM to get back home to Alexandria. He’s unsuccessful but the loss of Rick’s hand gave fans that arc they wanted.

A comic storyline brought to life

(Gene Page/AMC)

What makes Rick cutting his own hand off even more tragic than the Governor taking it from him is that it was, in that moment, all in vain. Rick was fighting to get back home but he was still with the CRM. So him cutting off his hand was for what? To just have to learn how to fight one-handed in the apocalypse?

That moment shows that there was going to be nothing that stopped him from getting back to his family, even if it meant losing his own hand. And that’s why it is heartbreaking that he doesn’t succeed. For all his attempts, Rick Grimes was still stuck and imprisoned with people who “saved him” on the bridge. They didn’t let him blow up but they were keeping him away from the ones he loved.

So Rick losing his hand in The Ones Who Live holds much more weight than it frankly would have during his time with the Governor. Because watching this man who desperately wanted to get home fail? That’s a version of Rick Grimes I am fascinated to be on this journey with.

(featured image: Gene Page/AMC)

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Rachel Leishman

Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She’s been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff’s biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she’s your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh.

Rachel Leishman

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March 4, 2024
New Walking Dead Game Looks Uh… Not Great!

A new video game based on the popular TV show The Walking Dead is out now on consoles and fans who have jumped in to check it out are reporting another clunky, broken, and ugly Game Mill-published mess, just like that awful King Kong game from earlier this year.

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My job is to write about video games and to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the industry. So I was pretty surprised to see a new Walking Dead game—that I had no idea existed—land on consoles today with little fanfare. I don’t doubt there were marketing materials and even ads for The Walking Dead: Destinies before it launched, but somehow I completely missed all of that and only discovered the game existed about an hour before writing this paragraph. And let me tell you, it’s been a nice Friday afternoon treat.

Let’s just cut right to the first thing I saw of this game: A boss fight between Rick and Shane over who should lead the group. The big draw of this game is that players can change the events of the show, which is cool in concept! I like that idea. Sadly, the shootout between the ex-friends and former cops is one of the worst and silliest boss fights I’ve seen in 2023.

MKIceAndFire /Game Mill

I think Rick takes about 20 or so point-blank shotgun blasts to the face before getting knocked down. Then the fight transitions to a second stage and at this point, the audio starts to cut out and character voiceovers play on top of each other as Shane smacks Rick repeatedly with a crowbar. Eventually, after all this silliness, Rick dies and Shane walks away the victor, changing the events of the show. But at what cost?

Game Mill strikes again, unfortunately

The rest of The Walking Dead: Destinies doesn’t look much better. Cutscenes aren’t animated, character models look ripped out of a PlayStation 3 game, and gameplay seems to boil down to “Run up to zombie, kick or punch zombie, and press the stab button.” Then just do that a few hundred times or so.

Without playing it I can’t say if it’s actually worse than Skull Island: Rise of Kong, another game published by low-budget publisher Game Mill. But even if The Walking Dead: Destinies is better, that’s a low bar to clear.

I don’t blame the developers behind this game for it being such a mess. As previously reported about Kong, Game Mill seems to provide little support and few resources to the studios working on its games.

So it’s entirely possible (and likely) that talented and passionate developers crunched hard on Destinies in a short amount of time to get something out, and this is what we got. And while that sucks and might be another sign of how the game industry treats its workers like garbage, it doesn’t change the fact that you probably shouldn’t buy this new Walking Dead game. But enjoy the videos of its wonky boss fights all you want.

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Zack Zwiezen

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November 17, 2023
The Story Behind Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Infamous Fan-Favorite Boss

Rick the Door Technician might not be the most powerful or dangerous enemy in Respawn’s fantastic sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. But he is a fan favorite who, in a game filled with great boss fights, provided one of the game’s most memorable and shortest.

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Fairly late into Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s main campaign, while exploring a large Imperial base, your protagonist, Jedi warrior Cal Kestis, runs into a single stormtrooper. Right before this, Kestis had to fight off a large garrison of Imperial baddies in one of the game’s biggest, toughest fights. After surviving all that, and likely injured with no checkpoint, you encounter a new boss: Rick the Door Technician. While another boss encounter seems like an unfair challenge after such a big fight, this lone trooper is really just a joke character who Kestis can defeat with one hit. So why is he here? Well, according to Respawn, he was created to make you laugh and feel better after a tough fight. Isn’t that nice of Rick?

In an interview with IGN, Jonathan Wright, the lead encounter designer at Respawn, explained the origin behind this odd “boss fight.” After that very large fight, players were stressed out, as Respawn purposely designed that section to be even tenser by not including a checkpoint. This makes players nervous about what’s coming next, as they desperately search for a checkpoint. While this all worked to create a tense moment, Repsawn wanted to eventually provide something that would “be a release of all that built-up tension.” Its solution: making players laugh.

Fuzzy Bearbarian / Respawn

“Players have just come from an extremely hard fight. Players are more than likely very low on health at this point, and are probably very stressed with finding the next meditation point so they can rest,” said Wright. “The moment with Rick allowed us to build up another moment of tension as players think they are in for another hard fight, but then release all that built-up stress when they fully realize the moment with Rick. It’s a good emotional reset to prepare players for what is to come.”

This is all part of Respawn’s effort to balance the mostly serious narrative and events in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor with moments of humor. According to Wright, this balance is what makes the jokes “land.”

“The seriousness of the rest of the game is what makes the more humorous moments land,” said Wright. “The contrast between funny and serious elevates both kinds of moments. We knew that the moment with Rick was important because of this.”

Respawn didn’t expect people to fall in love with Rick

However, nobody at Respawn could have predicted how fans would react to Rick, quickly embracing the character and creating fan art, mods, and other content based on the lonely stormtrooper who tried to stop Cal Kestis. The character has become one of the most talked about moments in the game, and has players asking for more of Rick the Door Technician. (It would probably have to be in a prequel, considering what happens to him…)

Wright told IGN that seeing all the fan love and community support for Rick has been “indescribable” and that he “never imagined [Rick] would explode in popularity to this extent.”

“To me, there is no greater achievement than something you had a hand in creating [then inspiring] other people to be creative,” said Wright. “All the comments on videos from people describing their experience with Rick’s heroic last stand, all the jokes and the memes, the videos and stories, it’s all a spark of creativity that started with Rick and I think that is amazing.”

As for if Rick will return, as so many Star Wars Jedi: Survivor fans have asked about, Wright told IGN that it isn’t his call, but he added that he doesn’t think more Rick content is “needed.”

“Rick’s story already has a valiant ending,” said Wright. “The explosion in popularity and fan creativity shows that we already did a good enough job with Rick. Let players have fun with it and let people be creative with Rick’s backstory in their own minds.”

Zack Zwiezen

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July 3, 2023