The Walking Dead: The Game

I honestly think this season is an improvement over season two. Still not as good as season one though.

I think Joan and co. will be defeated this episode, with David being the antagonist for episode 5. Everyone says David is an asshole, and they not backing down on Javi and Kate's relationship.

edited 20th Apr '17 1:43:56 PM by SilentColossus

@InkDagger: It started out fairly well. Javi and his family are interesting characters. The main plot started as a typical "evil settlement" story, but things get more complicated when it turns out that the evil settlement's leader is Javi's brother David, whom he got separated from at the start of the outbreak. Making things even more complicated is that Javi and David's wife Kate are very clearly in love with another. I was hoping that Telltale would use the whole Cain and Abel thing to make the evil settlement plot more interesting. Instead, it turns out that David is just one of the leaders of the evil settlement and is outraged when he learns of the raids. The leader behind the raids is a run-of-the-mill Well-Intentioned Extremist doing the hard things necessary to survive.

Oh, and Clem's basically the Supporting Protagonist and is only playable in flashbacks.

Episode 3 turned a generic story that had potential into something very bland.

edited 20th Apr '17 1:58:19 PM by lrrose

I think it's better than season 2, in that no one's a huge unlikeable douchebag besides the ones that are meant to be unlikeable douchebags.

It's possible Kate survived the crash. Maybe. If she was dead they would show the body, right?

They''d better not kill Kate.

The final episode has arrived.

Man Clementine, why couldn't your first romance have been with someone who wasn't shit? I was happy when David and Gabe fucked off, but was disappointed when Clem went after them, and really disappointed when Clem brought Gabe back.

That ended better than I expected. I played Episodes 4 and 5 in one go.

Episode 4:

• I refused to kill Lingard.
• I had Javi return Kate's feelings. I could have sworn that they were already an item at the start of the season, but whatever.
• Goddammit Gabe.
• Goddammit Eleanor
• I tried to save Tripp, but Joan killed him instead. This was a poorly designed choice, since both Tripp and Ava have the personality of cardboard.
• Speaking of which, Joan is a terrible villain who just does evil things because evil. The Walking Dead sells itself as a gritty franchise, but villains like Joan are just plain ridiculous and unrealistic.
• I shot Joan because that deal was clearly going to end badly. Youtube tells me that David fucks things up even if you take the deal.
• Overall, better than Episode 3, but still kind of a disappointment.

Episode 5:

• I refused to forgive Eleanor. Did the game seriously expect me to find her betrayal reasonable just because her ex-boyfriend died for reasons totally out of Javi's control?
• I cut off that New Frontier guy's arm. He died anyway, though given that it was clear that his condition was hopeless, I'm not holding it against the game.
• OMFG Ava's death was incredible! A walker from nowhere pushes her to her death, David does the Big "NO!" and she's never mentioned again. Youtube tells me that Tripp doesn't die the same death, but he still does wind up dying anticlimactically.
• Ummm, so after Gabe spends the past two episodes realizing that he idolizes Javi and that David is a shitty dad, he still chooses David? Pubery isn't an excuse for a character's blatantly inconsistent writing.
• I chose to fight David because the whole game was building up to it. The fight was sadly anticlimactic though.
• I chose to save Gabe and David. I didn't try to get David to come back (I'm guessing that he wouldn't have listened anyway). Kate got fridged as a result and I had Javi put her out of her misery.
• From what I understand, getting the Golden Ending of having both Kate and Gabe lives requries being a dick to Clementine so she decides to do the opposite of what Javi does. Quite counterintuitive.
• If we can't play as Clem again, can we spend the next game as Sir Jesus of Vakarian?
• I liked that we got a happy-ish ending for once. It was nice that Lingard doesn't die anyway and that (while this didn't happen in my playthrough), it's possible to have Conrad survive the whole game.

Overall thoughts:

A New Frontier is okay. It's more solidly written than Season 2, but its best written parts aren't as good as the best written parts of Season 1. Neither holds a candle to Season 2 of course.

The flashbacks were the strongest part of the game. David was a decent character that they didn't really do enough with. Kate doesn't really get much personality beyond being Javi's love interest until Episode 5, where it's far too late for me to start to care about her. Gabe is just plain terribly written. Tripp and Eleanor were so bland I tended to forget that they existed when they weren't on screen though I was pleasantly surprised that Eleanor survives no matter what. And the New Frontier members sans David are just kinda there.

When the inevitable Season 4 comes out, I'll just wait until all the episodes are out and there's a sale. I'm too invested in Clementine as a character to abandon the series (and the Michonne game was actually pretty good), but Telltale's writing for this series is too inconsistent to make future seasons a day one purchase.

edited 30th May '17 3:18:03 PM by lrrose

After seeing Jesus and his posse killing Walkers, I wouldn't mind there being an open-world action game where you play as Jesus riding a horse and helping people.

Also, I really hope that Javi and his family aren't dead when Clem and AJ return.

I'm just happy Kate survived. That preview pic tricked me.

Wow. This season was very short episode length-wise, and rather boring to boot. I was completely disinterested in the conflicts and characters as Telltale didn't give the story or characters time to properly develop (Telltale says that they think it is best to beat an episode in a single sitting, which makes no sense IMO). It wasn't always as insensitive as S2 (like how EP 4 treated Sarah), but damn this season was boring.

I like Javier, but they seriously should have made Clem and Javi duel protagonists like they had for games like TFTBL and Game of Thrones (the latter of which was rather subpar, but the former was great). Tales proved it could work, but they decided to just throw out a perfectly good storytelling device.

David had the ability to be a great antagonist, but was never used as such. Instead, he is Kenny 2.0 but with the abusive attributes more obvious. So like, you can save him.

edited 6th Jun '17 8:20:48 PM by SilentColossus

I agree that David fell short. Joan felt by the book at this point, but put David in her role and you have a decent Cain and Abel plot.

edited 6th Jun '17 8:27:47 PM by VeryMelon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGl12Sv9SNs

So, I found this video and I think it really finally puts into words a lot of the issues I had with season 2.

Not all of them, admitedly, because I think that this narrative they had going, assuming the video is correct in their intention, was wonky and fucked in structure from the get go. But, it gets some major points across about Kenny as a character and the ending itself.

I wouldn't go so far as the call Kenny abusive to Clementine, but I do agree that Season 2 failed with both its minor and major choices in a way Season 1 succeeded in.

I hated Season 2 personally. I know Season 1 is a definite Tough Act to Follow but damn did Season 2 disappoint me in so many ways.

edited 15th Jul '17 6:47:57 PM by Wispy

When I replayed Season 2 in preparation for New Frontier, I found that while it was largely misery porn and tedium, there were plenty of really good moments, mostly involving Kenny and Jane. Still, the good parts don't stick out enough to justify me replaying Season 2 unless I want a new file for a new season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1UnOysihiI

The short of it is, among a new season of Batman and The Wolf Among Us, Walking Dead Season 4 is a thing.

Simply subtitled as 'The Final Season', it'll come out in 2018. We also do know that this IS the final season because the interviews in the video say it is.

Sounds like Clementine is the sole main character again.

Holy shit they actually decided to end the series on its own instead of stretching it out ad infinitum like AMC has planned with the TV show.

That being said, given the mixed quality of Season 2 and a New Frontier, I'll be waiting until the season is fully released before buying.

Accusing them of stretching out the TV series ad infinitum is rather unfair when there's still quite a lot of source material left (and it hasn't ended yet). Padding so that they don't catch up to the comics too quickly, sure. But cutting the show off before even catching up to where the comics currently are isn't "ending on their own terms," either, really.

IIRC, AMC has said that they intend to continue the Walking Dead indefinitely, which is where my concern comes from.

I think one of the major problems with Telltale's TWD is that there's no ending point. The logical ending of the series would be the zombie plague being cured or otherwise neutralized, but since this is supposed to be canon to the comics that won't happen. As such, the later seasons feel really unfocused since the characters don't have a long term goal beyond surviving. But it looks like Telltale has decided to make "Clementine finds AJ" the series end point, so hopefully this final season will have the focus Season 2 and New Frontier lacked.

edited 19th Jul '17 7:40:42 PM by lrrose

See, the comics (and now the show) typically do have stories beyond the characters trying to survive. It's now less about day to day survival, and more about trying to keep an alliance of four/five communities trading and allied. If anything, people were starting to complain that no one died until (comic spoilers)Andrea.

But Season One didn't really have a focus, either. Beyond Clementine. However, each episode had a clear plot, with a beginning, middle, and end. But ultimately, the scenes of Season One triumph. There is nothing like the meat locker scene, or Carley/Doug's murder, or even something like choosing who to feed or cutting Clementine's hair in the following seasons. Nothing like Kenny getting shit drunk, or refusing to accept Duck's fate. Or Lilly paranoid and hiding in her room. Season 2 has some nice moments, like talking with Jane when she isn't in survival of the fittest mode, or Luke trying to be supportive to Clem. Or hiding with Nick/Pete. It suffered from some (as mentioned) misery porn and callousness towards characters like Nick or Sarah (and perhaps some ableism because of it), but it still had nice moments. A New Frontier, meanwhile, is inoffensive but boring.

Additionally, Telltale seems to think that everyone has to die at the end of the season, with only ANF averting this. There was no reason to get rid of Christa, and while I think Kenny should have stayed dead, his second death fell flat for me.

And, like, they seem to think removing everything that is not absolutely essential for the plot itself to work must be removed. I agree everything needs a purpose, but minimal is not always better. More and more streamlined, but now with less and less heart.

edited 19th Jul '17 9:39:37 PM by SilentColossus

An editorial discussing the things troubling me about Telltale lately, the downward spiral of *those* games and hope for the future.

Guys, I wanna talk about Kenny. Specifically, how he compares to Brad.