You're making no sense. You're telling me a character SHOULD act when this is a game about characters who happen to have flaws.
The game acknowledges her dumb decision. Nora later tells Abby to tell Mel to settle down. It's evident that Mel knew it was a dumb decision while she was getting stitches in the infirmary.
Bad writing would have characters ignore the fact that she's pregnant going into a battlefield.
I don't really agree with this.
I don't think that just because they acknowledge later that it's stupid it somehow makes it okay.
The fact that it even happened to begin with is really unbelievable and stupid and I think that it does make it bad writing because it was just a way to shove her into the plot.
Making your character do a really stupid and unbelievable thing doesn't change what it was just because characters later go '' oh that was stupid wasn't it? Silly me, oops. ''.
I am not saying that characters can't make mistakes, but the mistakes at least have to make some semblance of sense and be believeable.
Mel being pregnant in the field makes even less sense when you consider the setting too, It'd even be more believable irl and that just wouldn't happen either.
Even tho they're a pretty large group they're still small all things considered, people didn't send women into battle historically because sending women into war would've been a great way to get your whole people killed collectively. Women just aren't replaceable while men are, one woman can only have so many children while a man can reproduce and infinite of times.
That kinda begs the question as to why have women in the field altogther but I can at least accept that because it's a video game. But when you make her pregnant too you just make it so much dumber and draw so much attention to it that it t akes me out of it completely.
I also think that it's kinda dumb and tropey when everyone is pregnant, like if you have to rely on something like that I just think that it speaks for a lack of confidence in your writing and characters. But that's another thing.
It's kinda like how they constantly throw kids into movies just to make the main character '' relatable '' because oh don't you see he's a '' family man '' and he loves his family soooooo much just like you love yours. It's just so cliché and dumb and I find it annoying.
These characters,like Ellie, will almost all have been born since the outbreak. This is all they know, its their normal.
Its not like they can take a weekend off and go and binge on Netflix LOL. What's Mel supposed to do? Sit around by herself in her bunk while her friends (and baby daddy) are off on patrol?
Think about what your arguing. Man, I swear the more discussion I've read about the game the more credit I give the writing and the more I lean towards the overall game direction being at fault.
War and living in constant fear of being attacked and killed has been normal throughout most of human history.
If you want to use that logic then women shouldn't be in the field altogether, sending women out in the field would be disastrous to your population and group survival.
I am not saying that this should've been the case in the game.
But when you make a woman pregnant you're drawing so much more attention to this which makes it so absurd.
The only reason why this would ever work is if pregnant women had plot armor irl.
Gameplay is one thing, but lore wise are these people really supposed to be rambo and take on five thousand people on their own?
Everyone else also grew up or have at least adapted to that world.
They're also killers and aren't pregnant.
This is just another stupid trope in survival shows too, like how in Walking Dead the heroes are these rambo badasses who kill these faceless npcs en masse. It kinda makes it feel a bit stupid when you really think about it. Especially when non main characters or new characters are completely incompetent and yet have managed to survive somehow. It's like the main characters are these Jesus figures or something. Or when a hero picks up a sword with no training and kills hordes of trained elite soldiers.
Again tho, making your character pregnant on top of being a woman ( in this setting ) just draws A LOOOOOOOOT more attention to this and makes it dumber.