REVIEW – It’s time to check out Telltale’s latest game, which starts to wrap up their The Walking Dead series, and instead of the usual five, the team will only do four episodes this time around. There are noticeable changes, and the tension, which will grow as the season progresses, can already be cut by a knife…

At the beginning of the game – if you don’t import your save – you will have a few choices to shape somewhat the relationship between the adult Clementine and AJ, who while still is a kid, he can already pack a punch with a gun. If you’re done with them, the game can properly start.

Comic

What I really liked in Done Running is the way how Telltale depicted the characters in a comic book style in the episode’s credits lists. It’s a brilliant idea in my opinion! However, I shouldn’t run ahead of myself by this much, so let’s get into the story: Clem and AJ, both being hungry, start the season in a car. They decide to stop at a train station, where they end up finding a ton of food. However, the stash was rigged, and an explosion alerts a lot of walkers. They barely escape, crash, cut to the next location. Clem wakes up in a school, which doesn’t have any education – instead, it is ruled by a group of kids. The place doesn’t look that dangerous in the beginning, but towards the end, you will learn that it has its problems. Clem eventually finds AJ (who is being entertained by a musician who tends to feel quite the carpe diem guy) in one piece.

We try to get accepted by the team by protecting the school, and even though you succeed, and AJ gets accepted as well, the silent night gets interrupted by screaming that you end up hearing via the pipes. You head to the basement and see a confrontation between the school leader and his sidekick (as we met an unknown man during the second trip to the train station). The latter character gets shoved so hard that she ends up fighting us. After getting out of the basement, another confrontation happens that everyone ends up attending. The leader gets killed by a person who I shall not name, and that’d be the recap as the episode suddenly finishes after that unexpected death. I know, it is shorter than usual (but at least it doesn’t end up doing significant spoilers), but I have to talk about the improvements, and why should I waste my time with extra characters? So let’s move on…

Improvement

The graphics have improved. The visuals are still far from being outstanding; they start to be decent – I think I see an improvement especially in the backgrounds. The graphics have always been the weak point for Telltale‘s games, but the new engine might be fixing this problem. The audio is the usual quality, so I’m skipping this aspect. The gameplay will have some events/actions that will have outcomes (for example, drinking water from the trash). The dialogue system seems to be the same, but with what we say and do with AJ around will form his character. If we let the guy casually walk away with a bag of food at the train station (the name doesn’t matter YET), then AJ will relentlessly bring it up at the end of the day. There’s the character relation system as well, and now, you can also find hidden items scattered around to decorate your room. I managed to find four out of six of them. (And the game will also write in a red rectangle on what to do at the start of scenes.)

Is every beginning tough?

What I didn’t like is how after interactions, you have to wait a few seconds each time to regain control of Clementine. If there are multiple zombies, you’ll always see the others casually wait for you to finish the first one. With the subtitles, one time I saw four dots instead of three, and I think that is all I can bring up as negatives, nothing else comes to my mind.

The Walking Dead: The Final Season starts out with an 8.5 out of 10 due to the improvements. Although technically, Telltale did improve, the gameplay is still resembling the previous seasons. Big Bad Wolf’s The Council still occupies the throne of the episodic games, and in the autumn, Dontnod’s Life is Strange 2 is also coming – I think these three games will swap the throne between them for a while. The Walking Dead: usual ambience and style, The Council: a serious improvement in the dialogue and progression system, Life is Strange 2: likely the ambience will be the critical point here – we’ll see in September…

So, the beginning is good, Telltale improved, but it might not be enough to be the winner.

-V-

Developer: Telltale

Publisher: Telltale

Release date: August 14, 2018

Genre: episodic, adventure