Telltale’s The Walking Dead

[Yakumo]

I only just found out that this game was released so I quickly hopped on to my UK Xbox account to download it for 3.99 (since it won't get a Japanese Xbox release) and while I was at it I bought the season pass.

So what's the game like? Well, you can import your save file from the first game so I'm not sure if that will affect how the game starts but just to be safe from spoilers I won't tell you. What I can say is that you now play as Clementine (as you'd expect) and instantly you start to feel for the girl. The voice acting, story and graphics are all just as solid as the original game. In fact you'll actually feel a little squeamish at one certain point. The gameplay is pretty much the same although there are a few new QTE style events in there which are actually pretty easy.

There's not much I can say without spoiling the game so let's just say, if you enjoyed the original then the magic is continued here.

[tokyochojin]

Thanks Yakumo, really wanting this. I played the first season on Vita but a vita release date is yet to be confirmed, will it change much by starting a new save and playing this on pc?

[Dogg Thang]

Can this be a general Walking Dead season 2 thread? Or given there isn't a huge amount of discussion, should we just have one combined Walking Dead game thread?

Anyway, played through ep1 of season 2 today. The look is a little different, more cel shaded this time and more comic booky as a result which is fine. Playing as Clementine is a little odd and I'm not certain yet it was the right choice but she has grown up a bit and it's great to see how the passage of time since season 1 has affected her.

Got to admit I was gutted that

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they pulled an Alien3 and killed Omid and Christa. I really liked those characters and either one could have been the main character of season 2.

But the real heart-wrenching part of ep1 was the

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dog bit.

That really got to me and, emotionally, I found it right up there with the best of season 1. It's bleaker and calmer and lonelier but I still thought this episode was really well done. Generally, I thought it was a really good follow up...

...until I hit the end of the episode and I was left going: what, is that it? It was a sudden and very unsatisfying end to the episode. The one thing season 1 got spot on was that each episode was like a self-contained chapter in itself, like a short story that was part of a bigger story. Each led to the next but had a satisfying conclusion in itself. The exception was probably ep4 but that was leading to the final part. The earlier chapters had great endings. This episode didn't have an end. It just stopped.

So I think that was a problem and I think it undid some good work in this episode. It would have especially done so for those getting the episodes at launch and having to wait for the next.

And yet I do think there was great stuff in this episode. A quieter, more miserable episode but still good. On to ep 2...

[PeteJ]

I'm amazed this thread didn't get more of a response, is there another thread we're missing? I only finished Season 2 the other day having waited for episode 5 to be released before starting.

It's a really tough one to discuss without giving anything away or even hints as to what may happen. I have issues with season two as I did season one, but I will say that if you enjoyed season one - as I did a lot - then season two is well worth it.

[Dogg Thang]

Glad I'm not completely alone in here!

I finished episode 2 and felt pretty much the same as the first one - some great stuff but it just ended. Rather than feeling like individual structured episodes, so far this feels like one big story broken randomly. I did love the bit in the

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ski lodge though because I knew pretty much instantly what had happened their missing guy and knew that it was all going to kick off. Tons of tension in that and yet surprises too because it didn't play out as I expected.

Will be playing more this evening. Still not sure yet that Clementine was the best choice for main character here. She spends a lot of time being told what to do which doesn't make me feel quite as involved in the main decisions.

[Dogg Thang]

Well episode 3 was stunning with a fantastic ending. Took a lot to get me on side with this episode actually because I felt like they were

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pulling a Governor story and really they were and the Walking Dead has always felt a little more childish with cartoon bad guys. The comic got away with it because they kept it pretty short even if devastating but I felt Negan got ridiculous and I left the comic behind at the end of the All Out War storyline. So this Carver story feels very similar and I have to admit I don't find that anywhere near as interesting as the clear cut survival journey like in season 1.

Nevertheless the Telltale strength of storytelling pulled me in and I was gripped by the end of the episode. What a climax.

And I found dealing with the Clementine I am now playing as very tough knowing where she started. For me, this is Carl from the comics done much better (must admit the TV show tainted my enjoyment of some of the comic threads because of its rubbishness). She is growing up and doing so in a very tough environment. They don't overplay it or make her out to be weird, it's just there. A harder edge. I miss little Clem but the progression is great.

So I loved ep3. But the start of ep4 committed a gaming crime in my opinion. Ep3 ended with

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the choice with Sarita and then the start of ep4 rendered that choice meaningless instantly. I wouldn't have minded that happening together and playing out like that but making it an ending to a chapter and then undoing it in the next is cheap, IMO.

Still, I'm really into this. I miss season 1 and this is very different. I do have issues with the episode breaks and there is a bleakness here that comes with later zombie stories after the world settles a bit which is, well, unsettling. But it's still all very strong and I do appreciate that it is not a rehash of season 1.

[Dogg Thang]

So I've finished season 2. Man, that was bleak. It was plain ugly. There was no niceness to it at all. Overall, I thought it was great. Felt very different to season 1 and managed to explore a whole bunch of different stuff. I didn't feel like it was structured as well as season 1 though and I think, while some of the last events were fantastic, the very ending was a problem.

The characters generally were great and I got really attached it a few of them. They really know how to work that.

Now the final episode (major spoilers obviously)...

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the last episode felt slow and bleak and, mostly, I loved it for that. They beat me over the head with a few character points I already knew which there was no need for but they did really build those tensions. We all knew where this would go from very early on and knowing that didn't take away its power in my opinion. When it al kicked off, I felt so uncomfortable. I was attached to Kenny mostly through history and also knowing how he got to where he was. I was hugely fond of Jane. I liked most of the group. So I desperately wanted to repair everything. But it wasn't to be.

The game forced me to choose sides and I found that incredibly hard to do.

So I was feeling sick to my stomach as it all played out, knowing it was never going to work. The writers really made that difficult in the best possible way. But then there was the very ending.

I feel that Telltale may have reacted to criticism by putting in a last minute decision that drastically affects the ending. I think that was a huge mistake.

It led to a fracture in the storytelling, with outcomes not quite feeling right. The ending I got was the only one that made sense to me in terms of the decisions. And yet I found it very unsatisfying. I went in and played the last bit again, making a choice that I never would have made at all and got to see a much better ending and yet one that I knew didn't really make sense to me. Obviously it didn't quite have power given that I just replayed that last bit to see it. I tried again another way and got another ending, again through a choice that to me made no sense given the context. Now maybe those choices make sense to others which probably leaves the other choices making no sense to them but I'm not convinced by how satisfying these endings are.

And so the result is at the very least three vastly different and completely incompatible endings. A strong story needs to build to a strong ending and if endings can't just go in any direction and be expected to be all that strong. I think this splintering at the very end took away some of the strength that could have come if it had all been going to a single carefully chosen place. The endings felt like generic game endings rather than the climax of the first season.

And the other big issue with that is that if there is a season 3, there will be no choice but to undo these endings very quickly into the first episode because they don't provide the same jump off. And pretty much every secondary character involved is now out of bounds for season 3 as a result.

I think the multiple endings was a bad idea. It was a final fumble in an otherwise excellent story.

So that was disappointing. But it wasn't enough to take away the good in this season. It was dark, harrowing and very uncomfortable. Generally some wonderful narrative. It's funny because there are no events in this season that sound darker than some of the twisted stuff in season 1 and yet it just all felt so much more hopeless and I think that atmosphere got under my skin. A sign of good writing.

I'll likely play this again at some point to see how else little events might play out. Shame 400 Days didn't have much of an impact here although I guess it was enjoyable on its own and that's what matters.

[PeteJ]

Couldn't agree more with your writeup there. I thought Season 2 was much darker than the first (which wasn't exactly a nice game to start with) but I did feel they tried too hard to shock, often at the cost of the story telling. As you've pointed out this is especially true of the ending and I did leave feeling underwhelmed, which is such a shame after the amazing end to season one. To be clear, the final gameplay moment is brilliant, but the conclusion is unsatisfying.

The party you belong to was pretty good, and the likes of Jane were interesting characters but some of the others...such as...erm...uh, can't remember, were just bland and forgettable. They also made it too obvious that a character was about to get killed, by suddenly doing character development when previously they were just in the background. The first season also suffered from this to some extent, but overall it had a much deeper and more interesting selection of characters. And going back to the first point about the game being much darker, because the characters weren't as strong, some of these shock moments didn't work as well as they perhaps should. The core characters did work off of each other well though, so although weaker than the first season it's still along way from being weak.

As a fan of season one I really enjoyed season 2 as it is a worthy followup. Sure, it's not quite as powerful and the story isn't as well focused, but it is still more gripping and horrifying than most games can achieve.

I hope they do a season three, but I think they need to start afresh. New characters, new setting.

[Dogg Thang]

I think they have already announced a season 3 but I think they've said it is a long way off. I only have one reason for wanting to see our surviving characters back again and that's to give them a better single ending to their story. I felt I didn't have closure with season 2 in the same way we got it for season 1. It didn't quite feel like the end of the story but I think that depends on the ending you get.

I'd like a better ending.

But that could be done within the framework of new characters and I have a suspicion that we'll see that. Due to the multiple endings, it will be difficult to carry on the story coherently. But have a new character and group and their own story and it could eventually meet up with characters from season 2 and give a "here's what happened" explanation. An easier way to reconcile the endings while also giving us a new start.

[k0pp0]

Started last night, still simmering through losing my previous saves but continued on anyway.

Oof.. had me seriously squirming in places, but just love it to pieces.

It'd be interesting to see if this game performs better on the next gen consoles, as I was getting all sorts of juddery nonsense..