7. Lee Everett doesn’t count as a good character because he was a criminal.
There are many tropes and stereotypes that black characters are often subjected to across all types of media. One of the most common is perhaps the trope of the criminal black man, where the character might be prone to consistently stealing or raping or whatever it is that criminals do these days. Lee Everett from Telltale’s The Walking Dead has emerged as one of the first truly great black protagonists in a game, but many people are quick to point out that he’s just a criminal, immediately falling to this trope. Um… not so much. Though he enters the game from a criminal background, that origin does very little to define who his character is, especially from a three-dimensional standpoint. If anything, it helps to make his tale of redemption even stronger. After all, there is such a device as using good writing to subvert stereotypes to make a point. And if Lee subscribes to any stereotype, it doesn’t make him a bad character.
