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Telltale’s The Walking Dead

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    #16
    Welcome back to my lonely Walking Dead replay. Technically I think the Michonne miniseries is next but I’m sticking with the Clementine journey for now so I’ll continue with:

    The Walking Dead: The New Frontier

    Which, as it happens, isn’t really Clementine’s journey even though she is in it. New Frontier brings us a new main character: ex-baseball player, Javier Garcia, and for the most part it’s a story about his family. It starts all the way back at the start of the outbreak, establishes how he ended up with the people he did and then cuts to many years later where we pick up the journey as they scavenge for supplies. And of course this many years into the apocalypse, the chances of any supplies not being claimed by someone are really slim so things go wrong from here. One big difference in this story, and part of the reason for starting at the beginning of the outbreak, is that many of the core characters are people Javier knows well. It’s a whole different dynamic to the meeting strangers thing of other seasons. And there is another big change too, that really comes from the comics.

    If you’ve read the comics, you’ll remember that the entire nature of the stories changed forever in one issue. Once a story of survival, out in the wild looking for a home, the group encountered a couple of small communities and tried to start their own but it never worked and off they’d go again. Until in one issue, they found not only a big working community but learned that there were many, many others all communicating and trading with each other. It changed the stories completely. The dead really dropped off in terms of real threat other than being used as a weapon and it became more inter-town fights and politics. New Frontier reflects this change. We quickly end up in one Fallout-like town and learn of others. The result is that, like the comics after that point, the story loses that survival struggle aspect and becomes about getting along with your neighbours. Personally, that’s far less interesting to me because it requires acts of great stupidity to ruin a pretty stable situation.

    Another difference is that the season is far less mean-spirited. Sometimes to a fault. There is one character in particular (Tripp) who is baffling. Your presence causes him to lose just about everything he has and you make it worse and worse for him and he’s all smiles and “I’ve got your back, Javi”. Really? Why, Tripp? Even the adversaries are painted as more relatable people. That’s great in one sense - it acknowledges and embraces the grey areas but it does suck some of the drama from the season.

    And then there is Clementine. She comes into it in the first episode and helps out Javier and, from there, she dips in and out like she is player 2 in a Lego game. But it’s 100% Javier’s story and, at times, it feels weird that she is there at all. In the final episode, she is present for most of it and yet is silent for large chunks like she’s just an extra. I feel like she either should have been tied more to the story or removed from it more but she exists in a weird mid point where she is just there for this other story at times.

    The story does play out in an interesting way and, again, I like that this season does something different. It aims to tell a completely different type of story and doesn’t cover ground we’ve been through in the first two seasons. It feels more like a TV show episode somehow and I’m not completely sure why. A good episode but one I wasn’t completely invested in. Not sure I really connected with Javier or his group. His partner Kate is someone I think we were supposed to like but I just didn’t. So the season doesn’t really have any of the impact the others do for me. I feel some of this might just come from that big change to the world of the Walking Dead because my attachment to the comics dropped off considerably when it got into communities fighting rather than stories of survival. So yeah, I didn’t quite connect with this one. By the end, I was satisfied with the ending but wanted to follow Clementine on her next journey.

    And yet it’s still entertaining and an interesting addition to the series as a whole with some strong moments.

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      #17
      And back to...

      The Walking Dead The Final Season

      I have covered this only a few posts above but, in the context of my replay, I’ll sum up some impressions here. On replay, I really love this season. It’s smaller, more personal and, in many ways, it’s warmer. I connect with the characters far more than any characters in A New Frontier and I would say actually that they are the strongest group of characters since the original while being more realistic, not just in looks but in personalities too.

      The situation they are in also fits the personalities on display. One oddity in A New Frontier is that the characters have been on the road for years and must have seen some hideous things and yet don’t seem to be remotely affected by it. The characters in The Final Season have been more shielded and any innocence makes sense and yet what they have been through is always acknowledged. They’re good characters.

      The jump in engine and mechanics is huge. A shame it came so late but this game feels so much better than all the other seasons. And it looks superb. No jankiness here at all and a gorgeous visual style.

      And it all leads to a really good ending. One that feels earned after this journey with Clementine. It’s strong. A shame what happened to Telltale but I’m so glad that Skybound stepped in and finished this.

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        #18
        Being very careful what I read and don't read in this thread as I'm playing the series for the first time. I finished Season 1 last night which packed a huge emotional punch. Wow. Though I was surprised that a decision I made was only shared by 5% of other players

        I asked Clementine to leave me, remember me alive, and not to have to carry the trauma of killing me. I was shackled anyway, so no danger to her

        .

        From the get-go I've enjoyed every minute of the season. It's always engaging. Will be playing 400 Days next.

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          #19
          I'm only going to summarise here as to be honest I don't have much more to add to what DT has written in the posts above but given I've just finished the Final Season having largely, pretty closely, worked through the series it's fresh in my mind after so many years of setting it aside. The only release I've yet to play is Michonne which I'm not sure is even part of the canon of the rest of Telltale's games but I'll get to that one at some point.

          The Walking Dead: Season One
          This was the second time I've played through the first season and I felt the need for the refresh but worried it would lose its impact knowing the beats. Interestingly, I found myself often making the same decisions I did the first time as I think once you're into the narrative and the distinct characters you find yourself guiding your decisions instinctively based on those relationships. Despite the familiarity and the years it hasn't lost its power or impact.

          The Walking Dead: 400 Days

          It's still an interesting snapshot into Telltale's version of this world, almost interesting that they never followed this up with another similar release, but looking back it's impact is very close to nil so fine to play but the least essential part of the canon.

          The Walking Dead: Season Two
          The opening of the game was frustrating, the rapid decline of the situation for Clem felt forced and as is the case with each season opener it feels like it makes a mockery of the make your own decisions system that the slate gets wiped clean to such an extent. Somehow I was braced for Kenny in this run, it felt like it needed something to anchor Clem despite the unlikeliness of their meeting but I was still glad of it as until that point there wasn't much to grab on to. I was glad the season didn't drag any of its scenarios out and it was nice that it was able to make Jane so well defined that by the end the decisions you make are harder than they could have been.

          The Walking Dead: Season 3 - The New Frontier
          Probably the season that best displays the storytelling strengths of the series as it's the one most removed from the main canon plot where it not for Clem's appearances. It's still the weakest of the three main seasons but I think this is less on Javier and the other characters and more that it's the most community at war driven season and in any form TWD has always been obsessed with the concept regardless of how ceaselessly dull it is.

          The Walking Dead: Season 04 - The Final Season

          The opening kind of wound me up, it's insane the vast majority of the season goes by before you learn why the scenario is happening rather than Clem fall back to S3's set up but in the end I feel like pretty much every point was addressed. I worried about the school setting as well but it paid off, the kids are way more changeable in terms of views and forgiveness than the adults which is true to form and I was happy with how they handled Clems blast from the past as well, it could have easily been too heavy handed but it felt like a very natural development of the character. Probably the weakest aspect is the ending, whilst I was happy enough with the outcome it suffered a little bit from LOTR syndrome so I second guessed the events well before things unfolded on screen.

          In the end it's quite a statement about the overall quality of this series as well as of its live action counterpart that narratively this absolutely destroys the show on every level. Despite the obvious budgetary limitations across all the seasons including the shutdown of Telltale it consistently has a distinct air of being carefully crafted, that despite what we've heard about life at Telltale in those later days the team working on this still cared about the series and for Clementine and tried their best to deliver content worthy of it. They succeeded too, it's a long old journey to go through all twenty episodes but one well worth doing.

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            #20
            The Walking Dead: Michonne
            I'm now finally going through this final installment, getting around it as part of wiping this off the backlog and nabbing a daily achievement for Rewards. It definitely feels unrelated from the main games and even for the character there's no real context as to whether it's supposed to fit into the series, comics, games or what not. Michonne is on a boat with a couple of guys and they need a part so head to a ferry for it and things go south. I'm done with Chapter 1 of 3 and so far it's literally TWD by the numbers, all 'the human camp is the real threat' cliche for the millionth time. It's remarkably short too, Chapters are broken down into 6 sections that take a very short time to do, more like short scenes. This one will all rest on where the story goes, if anywhere unique.

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