Hi, friends! These past few weeks, I’ve been replaying Bend Studio’s Days Gone, a zombie apocalypse game in which the protagonist Deacon St. John tries to grieve the death of his wife and uncover the secrets of the National Emergency Relief Organization (NERO). I played it some years ago, but stopped about 75% into the game. While playing it the first time, I was fascinated with the characters. I loved how Boozer fidgeted with his shotgun, and I loved listening to Copeland’s “Radio Free Oregon” (and Deacon’s rants after having listened to them). My favorite character, the one who I am always excited to bike across the map to visit, is Ada Tucker, leader of the Hot Springs Encampment. Today, I’d like to dissect what it is I like about Tucker’s character.
This post will contain spoilers about two storylines: the entire Chasing Leon storyline and the You’re Safe Now storyline’s first two quests (“It’s Not Safe Here” and “They Won’t Let Me Leave”).
Let’s start with the player’s first encounter with Tucker. We first meet her when turning in a quest– killing a man named Leon who stole drugs from Tucker’s camp, Hot Springs. Deacon stumbles into an ongoing conversation between Tucker and her right-hand-man Alkai. We learn that Tucker has taken on some sort of dig job when Alkai, sharing his frustrations, says, “I’m telling you, everywhere you look, it’s all one giant lava field. Twenty-five feet solid rock. It’ll take jackhammers…” Tucker is unwilling to compromise; her first words of the game are harsh when she cuts Alkai off with, “I don’t need a lecture, goddammit.” Alkai presses on, telling her how hungry her settlers– referred to as “campers” in the game– are. Tucker pushes back, saying, “I don’t give a shit. We’re all hungry, Al. But this jobs gotta get done whether it takes all goddamn year.”
When Deacon finally enters their argument, there is tension between him and Alkai. They bicker until Tucker pulls Alkai away. As the scene reaches its conclusion, Alkali confronts Deacon once more, saying, “What are you looking at?” Deacon responds, “Oh, I don’t know. Just waiting for you to smarten the fuck up.” The two approach each other, seemingly about to move beyond words, but Tucker quickly shuts it down with one word– and aggressive “don’t.” Being at least a foot shorter than the two men, her authority is impressive. Deacon and Alkai don’t need to obey her, but they do anyway.
This short back-and-forth shows the player a driven and even merciless woman. Her people, the campers who joined her settlement for food and protection, are starving and weak; yet Tucker forces them to work through their exhaustion. In fact, if the player walks around the camp, they will see guards armed with rifles beating campers if they are resting. Her people listen to her when she gives a command, and when they don’t listen, she gives them no other choice. She is a force to be reckoned with.
Seeing Tucker as an powerful and even menacing woman brings up questions about her past; who was she before the apocalypse? Was she a strict parent? Did she have kids or grandkids at all? She shares with Deacon that she was “matron of the women’s [prison] ward,” and this suggests that the woman we see presently is similar to the women she was before the apocalypse. Fortunately for the player, the game reveals through the environment who Tucker was before.
In the town of Marion Forks some miles northeast of Hot Springs, a house sits at the edge on the outskirts. Inside the house, a note can be found on the kitchen counter. It is addressed to Tucker. This house is hers. Upon reading the note, we learn that it is a suicide note from Tucker’s husband. While there is a lot to analyze in this letter in regards to Tucker’s husband, Henry, we will focus on what this letter teaches us about Tucker. The fill note can be read in the below picture, or you can visit https://bit.ly/4dO7Khn for a transcript.
The suicide note reveals three things about Tucker: she retired from her job, she was married for forty years, and she used to go by Ada (or, at least, her husband called her Ada). These details help shape Ada Tucker into more than the workcamp leader she is; she was a wife who loved someone, and she liked camping.
When we leave the note and turn to the house itself, specifically, the backyard, we can learn even more about Tucker. Her backyard is a garden; there are rows of garlic, corn, and other crops. In the corner of the yard is a greenhouse filled with herbs. Tucker, or maybe her husband, loved to garden. One of them cared for and cultivated plants.
All of these details, both from the letter and the garden in the backyard, show us that Tucker was likely not always as cruel and cold as she is now. What stands out most to me is her husband addressing her by Ada. In the apocalypse, everyone refers to her by her last name Tucker (or sometimes Tuck). This says two possible things to me. The first is that, since Tucker has a much harsher sound than Ada, she goes by her last name to represent strength or even lose the femininity of Ada. The second is that, if she took her husband’s last name when they married, being called Tucker is a way of holding on to a piece of him. It’s a way to carry a bit of love through the apocalypse. We see a bit of this love manifest in another quest.
After Deacon turns on Leon’s bounty, Tucker shares that a young girl was spotted in Marion Forks. She requests that Deacon “head over there and find her before the Freaks [zombies] do.” When Deacon travels to Marion Forks, he finds the woman– who turns out to be a teenage girl named Lisa– boarded up in her home. Her face is dirty and bruised, and she sits on the floor of her bedroom, rocking while holding a bunny stuffed animal. She says nothing until Deacon reaches for a trophy off a dresser; Lisa grabs the trophy and tells Deacon the story about it: “This one’s for gymnastics. I should have won first place but Missy King, she cheated.” She then describes the day the apocalypse started. “[My parents] would be here waiting for me [at home] and we would leave together and I got here and there was a note that said they left with some men and I didn’t know what to do so… so I hid and I…” Two years later, Lisa is still alone and hiding. She cries and falls into Deacon who awkwardly attempts to comfort her.
Lisa is a young girl completely unaware of the extent of the apocalypse. She calls the Freaks, or zombies, dead people, and she fully expects her parents to return home. She represents the innocence of people before the apocalypse, and driving her to Hot Springs is torturous. We know Tucker as cold; fortunately, she is not the same woman that we met earlier. She and Lisa were neighbors, and they embrace upon meeting once again, Tucker telling her, “It’s okay. You’re safe now… Let’s go in. Get you cleaned up. Something to eat, and then I’ll find a place for you to sleep.” Lisa then goes inside with another camper. The moment is very emotional, and we see a warmth in Tucker we hadn’t seen before. We get a glimpse of who she was before the apocalypse: someone who loved people.
After Lisa is taken inside, Tucker remains to speak with Deacon. Deacon, sympathizing with Lisa, tells Tucker to go easy on the girl. Tucker loses her warmth, snapping at Deacon when she says, “Don’t tell me how to run my camp… Don’t get soft on me, Deek.” As Lisa’s story progresses, she is worked just as hard as everyone else, but I won’t say any more about her so as to avoid spoilers. As for Tucker, I don’t think she was putting on an act when hugging Lisa. Upon seeing Lisa, she is taken by surprise. She clearly loves the girl, but she forces her to work anyway. Her past self slips behind her hardness. Tucker returns to the woman we first met.
Though I can’t say I love Tucker, I can say that I love her character. She is multi-faceted; she loves and cares for people, but she forces them to work for her at her camp. She is, to me, the embodiment of the apocalypse: love calloused by fear and turned into cruelty. We see her love when she hugs Lisa, but fear takes over when she forces Lisa to work. Like most characters in apocalypse scenarios, Tucker was once a caring woman, but living in a cruel world forced her to become a cruel person to survive.
hope you enjoyed reading! I haven’t finished the game or covered all there is to cover about Tucker (to avoid spoilers), but I hope this mini-character profile was engaging. I enjoyed writing this and may profile another character from Days Gone next time (Copeland is certainly interesting). Or maybe we’ll look at a completely new game!
What makes writing this particularly interesting for me is that I am playing Days Gone partly for research. For my capstone project, I am writing the characters and narrative to a zombie apocalypse video game, and analyzing Tucker in this way helps me see what makes an engaging character in this genre. I hope to take inspiration from Tucker and make characters that are as complex and alive as her. I may even write a blog post about my experience creating a video game. We’ll see!
I hope you enjoy a zombie-free day!
Lauren Raimbault – Social Media Editor, Prose Editor & Blogger: Lauren is a Lewis University Senior studying English with a concentration in General Writing. She also mentors her peers at the university’s Writing Center. In addition to her academic pursuits, Lauren has played the violin since 2011 and currently serves as Concertmaster for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra. She also recently began learning bass guitar and plays in her university’s jazz band. When not writing or practicing, she enjoys reading thrillers and fantasy novels, crocheting, and playing video games.