This is it everyone. The beginning of the end of our journey with Clementine. It all started years ago with us playing the role of Clementine’s protector Lee, and now it’s all come full circle, with us filling the role of protector.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead has been largely a success over the course of its three seasons, with each season being praised and enjoyed. No season has been as acclaimed as the very first one though. Everything from its story and characters, to the tough choices and powerful emotions that it got from players makes it a season that’s always been tough to follow. The verdict’s still out on whether or not this season will be able to surpass the first one, but it does start off on a good foot.
This season takes place a couple years after the end of A New Frontier, with an older Clementine and AJ, who’s close to the same age Clem was when we first met her. They come across a group of kids that have made their home in an abandoned school and work to make theirselves a part of this new group. The episode is largely a slow start to the season, but that’s not a bad thing. Instead of being action packed and tense from start to finish, it focuses on developing the characters and getting you to learn just who these people are, both old and new. The new cast of characters are largely interesting so far, although only a few of them are focused on in this first episode. Among them is the leader Marlon.
Marlon’s a kid who’s been forced into a position of leadership at a young age and is just trying to do what he can to keep his friends and family alive. It’s a position that no one wants to be in, and it’s clear that Marlon is doing the best he can, which made me sympathize with him. Another character that I liked was Violet. Although she comes off as someone who’s a jerk for no reason, there’s more to her than what first impressions would lead you to believe, saving her from being the stereotypical character that hates you for no reason.
Although the new characters get a lot of attention, that doesn’t detract from the development of Clementine and AJ. These are characters that we’ve known for a while now, so it’s great to see how they’ve changed and grown in the years since we last saw them, specifically AJ. We’ve never really gotten the chance to get to know him given the story of the past seasons, but in this one episode we receive plenty of information about the type of child he is. He stands in stark contrast to what Clementine was like in season one, as he’s more aggressive than she was.
There’s a situation you’re faced with near the start of the episode where you have to get inside a locked room in order to get supplies, and one of your options is to kill a pair of walkers that have the key. The problem is that they left a note behind before they turned saying to leave them as walkers because that’s what they wanted. AJ doesn’t care and wants to kill them right away, but Clementine is hesitant to because of the fact that they were people before. Moments like this reveal AJ’s views on things in this world, and make your decisions even more important because of the lessons that he’ll take away from them. This was one of season one’s strongest aspects, and it works just as well here.
From a gameplay perspective, things have changed in some major ways. Firstly, the camera is no longer a fixed one that changes angles based on where you are in an environment. It now rests right over Clem’s shoulder a la Resident Evil 4, and can be freely moved around in any direction. At first this was a jarring change, but I quickly adjusted to it and ended up liking it.
It allows you the freedom to look around environments however you want and see things you would only have been able to see in certain spots in past games. This fresh camera angle plays well into the new way to go about walker encounters. You’re now able to walk right past walkers and avoid fighting them entirely if you want. Sometimes you still have no choice but to fight, but the fact that you now have the ability to engage them at your own discretion is a welcome change.
One thing that I noticed was missing from last season was being able to explore environments and check in with other characters. A New Frontier focused more on the story and your engagements with the game were mostly limited to making dialogue choices that pushed the story forward. There wasn’t much freedom to actually take a second to look around the area you were in and note many of the little things about it or to have a conversation with someone that had many different choices for you to go through in a way that didn’t propel the story. I’m happy to see that emphasis on exploring return in this one, as it was something that I really liked about the first two seasons, and I hope it carries on throughout the rest of this season.
The game still runs on the same engine that A New Frontier was on, but it looks better than that season did. While some may not be fans of how the art style hasn’t changed much from its comic inspired look since season one, I’m actually a fan of it. It appears as if Telltale has gone even more into that comic look this season, as things that are at a distance from you have less color than closer objects and look like drawings from the pages of the book. It’s a touch that some may not like, but I’m pretty fond of it myself.
Overall, this is a pretty good start to the final season of Telltale’s flagship series. The episode may be a slow one, but it all culminates in a way that’s shocking and sure to have consequences that are long lasting. I’m excited to see just where things go from here for the rest of the season and exactly what difficult decisions lie ahead for us to make.
TheComfySpot 