Telltale’s The Walking Dead games adapt the comic books, but there one very important difference between the comic books and the game: The comics star Rick Grimes. Rick is a good man who finds himself leading a band of survivors, and he does the best he can to be a wise leader, a cautious defender, and a moral compass for his young son. The game stars a new character name Lee, but the real star of this story is the Player. The characters in the comic books have Rick to guide them. The characters in the game… well, they have me.
I’m a fair and just leader. I forgive people who do harm, if they had good intentions. Yet I punish without mercy those who do evil deliberately. I’m a diplomat who keeps the team together, sometimes angering friends, and often tolerating people I don’t really like. I’m honest, even when the truth is better left unsaid. Above all, I strive to be a role model for Clementine, the fictional little girl from this game.
At the end of each installment, the game displays a chart showing how other gamers responded to the choices over the course of the episode. I’m proud of my decisions and it seems that, despite my many mistakes, I’ve managed to keep more of my friends alive than most other players.
These other players have, no doubt, experienced different stories with Lee and Clementine. Their Lee could be cruel. Deceitful. Prone to freezing up in tight spots. The Walking Dead will be a different tale for each player.
But no matter what players do in the dozen hours of the first four episodes of it, they still can’t change the fact that Lee and the other sorry bastards trapped inside this game are stuck in a grim world where terrible things happen to people who don’t deserve it.
As the story draws to a close with Episode 4, Telltale is making it clear that episode 5 isn’t going to end with puppy dogs and ice cream for everyone. No, this episode shows players yet another bad side of humanity, as Lee has to deal with a community of survivalists who’ve barricaded themselves in a neighborhood of Atlanta. Things go from bad to worse, to The Absolute Wort Thing Possible over the course of episode, and it ends with one hell of a cliff-hanger.
The action is upped once again, with Lee performing some nine millimeter brain surgery on packs of undead in a couple of scenes. There are also some clever plot twists, and a mystery or two for players who want to hunt down all of the clues.
Lee and whatever companions he has left also encounter some new faces – most of them being disposable zombie fodder. This is arguably a problem with the story. Sure, in a zombie holocaust people should die, but there’s such a high attrition rate to the cast that players might wonder what point there is in getting to know the supporting cast.
Of course, this sense of hopelessness is probably what the developers intend to instill in their players. Will Lee view every new face as just another single-serving zombie snack? Or will he and the players who control him see every human life as precious?
With Halloween just around the corner, players will be looking for games that offer scares and gore. There’s nothing wrong with zombie dogs poppin’ out ya, but The Walking Dead offers a deeper experience. Players who still haven’t tried it, are once again encouraged to jump on board and play through the four currently-available episodes before the conclusion arrives in November.
It is out for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 with a mobile version for iOS on the way.
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