REVIEW – Telltale made us wait until the end of 2016 to see the continuation of The Walking Dead’s plot. No, the Michonne mini-series hit the floor in almost every aspect, making it pretty much the weakest game that Telltale has recently released. The third season threw a lot of twists in our faces immediately… just as how it should suppose to happen.

In case you start the third season without having the save file from the second season (good job, me!), with the possibility of Recreate, you can get through the events quickly, although it seemed to me that the first season was largely ignored despite the fact that a lot of players have considered the first season of The Walking Dead as the best. Currently, The New Frontier has the chance to be up there – if not higher.

Javier

The game has a new lead character for us; he’s called Javier. So far, it seems that each episode starts with a flashback to the past – with the first Ties That Bind episode, it felt like an in medias res decision altogether, but the second half (because yes, I’m reviewing both episodes without spoiling anything if possible…) had way more sense with this layout.

Well, during both episodes, the three survivors related to him will have some adventures – they are mostly related to his brother. Now that I brought up Javi’s brother, he will offer the second big twist in the plot so far.

Clementine

Clem’s back, baby, and she had a lot of suffering in the past years. We get to see some of her memories here and there, but I don’t think Telltale made the right choice with these scenes: the only time you get to somewhat influence or control Clementine is via these scenes. Why not allow the players to switch up the game a bit and let them control Clem in one scene, then follow up with Javi in the other? It’s a large missed opportunity.

During the writing of the plot, she got an essential role, though. We will encounter some of the darkest events with her, making Clementine herself the first major twist in the story so far. This is how Telltale is supposed to function. Between Clem and Javier, I expect more conflicts (not to mention between Javi and David).

Bug?

During Ties That Bind, I experienced one major bug. There’s a dialogue between Javier and Clem in a tunnel (one of the key scenes in the episode), and after they are done, they just stood there like two idiots for multiple seconds with the lighting flipping around between them. What the hell was that?

At least the frame rate isn’t as chaotic as seen in the Batman game, which didn’t even look that stonking, not to mention that it had bars on the top and the bottom of the screen. The New Frontier isn’t visually great, but it’s a perfect evolution from the first two seasons – mind you, it’s not available on PS3 and X360 (which was announced just a few days before the game launched).

Audio

The music isn’t as present as say, in Tales from the Borderlands. In fact, some musical pieces sounded jarring, like one composition in the second episode. At least the voice acting is still the same quality as heard in other Telltale games – the developers know very well that they have to lift their game in this aspect. The animations felt like they skipped a frame or two here and there, but it’s nothing major, I just felt like pointing it out.

Great start

I ran into trouble with this group called The New Frontier, but not with the game. While I did complete the two episodes in just two hours and fifteen minutes (are we getting shorter and shorter…?), they got an 8/10 in the end. There are a few twists in the events with a tonne of action scenes, not to mention the decisions you have to make – it’s going to be exciting to see the faith of the remaining survivors, as they drop dead like flies.

That’s where the magic of The Walking Dead is: it kicks in with power, while already having ties to the comic book series (Jesus is one of the characters from the comics) – Telltale will get back their throne if they keep this quality up. Javi and Clem are having one up on Life is Strange already…

-V-

Publisher: Telltale Games

Developer: Telltale Games

Genre: Episodic, adventure

Release date: December 20, 2016