There will likely be spoilers for earlier seasons of The Walking Dead beneath, and a few plot particulars from the primary episode of the ultimate season will likely be mentioned, albeit with out main spoilers.
It’s been over six years because the debut of Telltale’s first season of The Walking Dead. It stays the studio’s finest and most necessary work, a sport that modified Telltale’s growth practices and popularised episodic journey gaming. It earned quite a few sport of the yr accolades and has stood up extraordinarily properly over time. When I replayed the season earlier this yr I nonetheless had the identical despair, the identical throat lumps, and the identical sturdy sense of obligation to the characters. It stays unmatched within the sub-genre it more-or-less spawned, with solely Life is Strange coming shut.
The Walking Dead: The Final Season represents a number of firsts and lasts for Telltale. It’s the primary time they’ve formally wrapped a multi-game storyline, making it the final sport of their Walking Dead saga. It’s the primary sport of theirs to function unscripted fight sequences that aren’t fast time occasions, and it’s the final sport they’ll develop with their inner Telltale Tool (future video games will swap to Unity). There’s a way of heightened significance right here: Telltale often has a number of sequence going without delay, however proper now The Walking Dead appears to be its sole focus, with future video games (like Stranger Things) introduced however not but proven off.
This is sensible. Telltale now struggles to generate the identical buzz it did again in 2012, and inner points throughout the firm have resulted in unhealthy press. Last November Telltale let go of 90 of its staff, lessening the studio’s workforce by a full quarter. Departing CEO Kevin Bruner filed a lawsuit in opposition to the corporate for monetary damages, and reviews from nameless insiders have acknowledged that there was much less alternative for innovation in design than they’d like, with The Walking Dead method proving so profitable that there’s no room for deviation from it no matter concepts staff members might need.
But there’s nonetheless a whole lot of good will amongst followers in the direction of the developer’s tackle Robert Kirkman’s zombie epic, and an incredible wrap-up season could possibly be simply the factor to get a restructured Telltale again on monitor. The first episode of this remaining season doesn’t current too vital a shake-up, but it surely’s additionally way more than a sequence of cutscenes punctuated by dialog decisions, which a few of Telltale’s weaker episodes have felt like previously. It’s a bit longer and meatier than a typical Telltale episode, with extra moments of direct management, however puzzles are nonetheless out. Whether that’s an excellent or unhealthy factor will rely in your desire – Telltale achieved loads by stripping the journey style proper down, but it surely may be good to see them add a few of the style’s typical options again in at this level (as Life is Strange 2 appears to be doing if Captain Spirit is any indication).
The first episode picks up properly after the tip of season 3. Clementine has not solely discovered and rescued AJ between seasons, however they’ve clearly been collectively for some time now, and reference occasions we by no means see on display screen. AJ appears a bit youthful than Clementine was again in season 1, however the clear implication is that Clementine – who we, as gamers, have primarily raised throughout the course of three video games – is now a parental determine, and AJ is her (and by extension our) surrogate child. To actually hammer this residence, we’re given one of the on-the-nose notifications a Telltale sport has ever served up: ‘your choices will determine what he becomes’.
This message is undermined considerably by the truth that Clementine, who we’ve been moulding for years, goes to be more-or-less the identical for each participant because the season opens. Not that I might dare say a nasty phrase in opposition to Clementine, one in all gaming’s actually nice characters – she is a detailed private good friend of mine, even when she isn’t technically actual. Clem sums up the place her head is at now, and the sport’s central attraction, in a gap little bit of voice-over narration: “I’ll protect him with my life, just like Lee did for me”. God, I miss Lee.
If you’ve gotten a coronary heart, you’re keen on Clementine and need issues to go properly for her. The first episode – which entails her and AJ stumbling throughout an deserted college run by a gaggle of teenagers – grants us some want success by giving Clem moments of close to normalcy, chatting amicably and safely with children her personal age. Voice actor Melissa Hutchison carries Clementine’s maturity and progress completely, and improved animation make her extra plausible than ever.
The remainder of the characters on this first episode are a combined bunch in each sense of the phrase. Some are totally fleshed out whereas others are barely given any traces, and so they’re appreciably various by way of gender, sexuality, and race. Most importantly, they’re not all instantly at one another’s throats, as has been the case in previous Walking Dead video games. Getting to know these children is a pleasure, and the sport managed to get me a bit choked up a number of occasions simply by letting me carry out easy acts of kindness with Clem and AJ. It’s good to have an episode the place, for probably the most half, the zombies truly are the most important risk. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case the entire means by – ‘uh actually HUMANS are the real monsters?’ is an more and more drained message, however The Walking Dead can’t assist itself, and has to remind us all too usually that somebody’s all the time going to develop into an arsehole or a coward.
The zombies are correctly scary right here, at the very least, and this time there are sequences the place you battle them straight… sort of. There are sections the place you management Clem as she takes out zombies; while you strategy one you possibly can both go for an instantaneous kill by stabbing them within the head (which is harmful if there are different zombies close by), or shortly stun them with a kick to the knee, letting you carry out crowd management. It’s not probably the most thrilling system, but it surely reveals a willingness to strive new issues on Telltale’s half, and it makes the zombies really feel like a reputable risk.
The artwork fashion has been overhauled too, and this season appears significantly better than its predecessors. The sport now appears extra like a comic book than the comedian itself does: whereas the comedian’s black-and-white panels are sometimes bland outdoors of fight scenes and splash pages, the sport’s gothic fashion implies that background surroundings now appears nearer to one thing out of The Wolf Among Us than earlier seasons. Lines are thicker, but faces are extra lifelike, and there’s an actual visible sense of fashion and dread. It’s the form of sport the place I discovered myself pounding the screenshot button usually.
The first episode of The Walking Dead’s remaining season is a wonderful begin, however that’s often the case. It’s all the time been the center episodes that Telltale’s weaker seasons have struggled with. Telltale has constructed its empire round the concept that actions and decisions ought to have penalties, and that recollections matter. Perhaps when Telltale focus examined the uninteresting bits of Guardians of the Galaxy, or these motion sequences in Batman that didn’t fairly work, or the meandering elements of the third season of The Walking Dead, a little bit notification popped up someplace for the staff: ‘your players will remember that’. But as they wrap-up their most necessary sequence, Telltale’s writers additionally know that many people bear in mind each choice we made within the first sport six years in the past and have carried the burden of them ever since (I can’t essentially say the identical for the second or third seasons). Hopefully I’ll get to make some new recollections throughout the remainder of The Final Season.
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