[ Review ] The Walking Dead: A New Frontier

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Game Informations : 

Developer: Telltale Games

Publishers: Telltale Games, Skybound Games, Howyaknow. LLC, WB Interactive Entertainment

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Andriod, IOS, MAC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360

Initial release date: December 20, 2016

 

 

 

For two seasons of Telltale Games' venture into the apocalyptic wastelands of The Walking Dead, we have experienced the life of survivor Clementine as she has dealt with unimaginable loss and strife in a world overrun by walkers. Whether together with others or alone on the road, Clem (and, in turn, us as players) have kept alive through sharp intellect, honed instincts, and wise tutelage. But for Season 3 of The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series, everything is changing. Here, you find a new family of survivors, and a new playable protagonist named Javier. Here, you will be tested to make choices that will affect not just people you know and trust, but those bonded by blood. Here, you will discover A New Frontier. And here, no one can be sure to get through what awaits and come out alive...

 

 

 

Both a continuation of the last two seasons and, as its name suggests, a fresh chapter in Telltale’s ongoing saga, The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier kicks off with a tightly paced, engaging premiere episode that has me excited for what lies ahead this season. “Ties That Bind Part I” is not a complete departure from what made previous seasons work, but it does feel like an attempt to correct some of the series’ wrongs; and so far, it’s succeeding.

 

Episode 1 starts off with on just the right note by introducing a new playable protagonist, Javi, in one of the series’ best-directed sequences. Set during the initial zombie outbreak, the opening sequence plays out like a tense, well-shot indie horror film, with stylish editing and directing that delivers substance (in the form of Javi’s family) to match.

 

A New Frontier doesn’t want to do away with what a longtime player like myself loved from the last two seasons — namely, Clementine’s continued character development — but the premiere smartly establishes Javi’s band of survivors before returning to the familiar baseball hat-wearing protagonist.

Skipping years ahead, Javi is working to keep the remnants of his family together, alongside his brother’s ex-wife Kate and two kids. The idea of family as one born out of circumstance has certainly been part of Telltale’s corner of The Walking Dead universe since its inception, but Javi’s situation differs greatly from that of Lee and Clem’s in season 1 and then Clementine’s options in season 2. I found myself invested in building out Javi and Kate’s relationship, even knowing the troubled past it likely comes saddled with, while also molding Javi into a source of light in this dark world, and this episode allowed me to shape him that way.

 

 

He is unfortunately saddled with a clichéd whiny teenager, but for the most part my desire to make Javi a beacon of hope, particularly when it came to his interactions with Kate and Mariana, the daughter of Javi’s brother, had me being just as thoughtful about my dialogue choices as I ever have been in a Telltale game.

Naturally, trouble finds Javi and his family very quickly, and Clementine’s unexpected and amusing introduction not only offers some semblance of comfort after the family’s search for supplies falls apart but also further opens up this new pocket of the walker-infested world.

As Clementine introduces Javi to a new group of survivors in a safe haven, I appreciated seeing the choices I made in Clem’s earlier years defining the woman she’s growing into now. Telltale has implemented a system to allow you to import saves from previous seasons, recreate choices, or start as if you don’t have a clue who Clementine is when launching A New Frontier. Aside from the appreciated ease of the recreation system — a short questionnaire about key moments from seasons 1 and 2 — it’s gratifying to see a matured version of the Clementine I helped establish in one playthrough while noticing the slight changes to her interactions in another.

 

“Ties That Bind - Part I” doesn’t handle her backstory as deftly as Javi’s, however, with a flashback scene that feels unnecessary other than as a symbol of more Clementine revelations to come in further flashbacks. But Clementine’s return, as well as the way she brings Javi into a wider world of survivors, is very much a welcome one.

And as its title suggests, the season premiere is very much the first half of a whole, leaving things on a powerfully affecting cliffhanger that actually left me shouting out a cry of “No!” as it concluded. Episodes land on shocking twists all the time, yes, but the premiere is very much about shaping Javi from the man we first meet to the fearless leader, compassionate family man, bitter survivor, or whoever each of us chooses to make him (within Telltale’s bounds). Without spoiling a thing, Part II forces Javi to reckon with the premiere’s events and us as the player to decide what matters to our take on Javi.

 

An immediate follow-up to episode 1, The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier Episode 2: "Ties That Bind Part II” takes Part I’s solid start and runs with it much faster than a walker ever could. The episode feels more tied to both the familiar trappings of Walking Dead and Telltale Games' plot structures. Yet by building on the foundation of the last episode and the two seasons before it, the conclusion of this two-part opener sets up an intriguing rest of the season — one that makes me feel like my choices actually matter (even if that’s likely an illusion).

Picking up from Part I’s dramatic final moments, “Ties That Bind’s” second half forces Javi to learn the true cost of surviving in this world for the first time since his introductory flashback in the season premiere. It’s easy to see how many dialogue choices and actions only matter in the moment, but I continued to care deeply about how Javi reacted to every blow to his family and his world. I fought to keep Javi’s hope and determination alive, even as the world around him actively worked to shake him of that resilience. And some of those choices paid off within the episode itself as it deepened our understanding of Javi’s relationships. Picking up an item in the environment leads to a kind gesture later in the episode, and the long-term work Javi puts in with Kate and the kids over these two episodes feels important, even if it isn’t drastically altering the plot just yet. Without spoiling anything, however, I was excited to begin to notice how choices I made during Javi’s flashbacks are helping to define relationships in the present

 

 

The same can be said of Clementine, whose flashback in Part II feels much more important than in the premiere. The episode thankfully gives us some more details about the title of the season’s meaning (other than its obvious metaphorical idea), and the New Frontier’s role in things is surprisingly malleable. They have an impact on Clementine’s backstory, but it seems that we have some welcome input on that very impact, which imbues some of the moments in the present-day story with some nice additional emotional heft.

And reaching even further back into Clementine’s history, choices made with her and even Lee in previous seasons will shift the tone of some side interactions with her. How they will continue to impact the season remains to be seen — I’m not prepared to say just how much the overarching story will actually change this season because of those choices, because based on Telltale’s history it’s unlikely that a season’s plot would branch in a significant way this early on — but this far into the series it's reassuring to see my influence actually carrying some narrative weight.

Outside of those choices, however, Part II offers some sadly familiar events. After a tense standoff early in the episode, the remaining survivors head off to a supposed safe haven for medical attention, only to predictably find trouble along the way. Any Walking Dead fan will certainly find something repetitive in that idea, and the fun appearance of a familiar franchise character didn’t make the overused plot ideas any less disappointing. But I was kept engaged by the continued strong character work, even if Part II lacks some of the cinematic flourishes that felt so special in Part I. And even when the episode's scenes fell into recognizable territory, the quicktime event action scenes were often executed with tense, well-paced scenarios.

 

 

Telltale Games’ third season of The Walking Dead continues the trend of the two-part season premiere, exploring its themes of family through the strong lens of its new protagonist, Javi. And though A New Frontier continues to do right by its lead, the narrative problems of the two-part premiere persist in this good but not quite great mid-season episode.

After making such a sympathetic protagonist in Clementine for two seasons, A New Frontier continues to find unique ways of making Javi equally likeable. “Above the Law” kicks off with yet another look at Javi’s life in the early days of the outbreak. Watching Javi take charge of his brother David’s family feels as vital to his story as anything in the present-day storyline. These flashbacks are some of the series’ quieter moments, sure, but they can offer greater impact than any of the franchise’s most bombastic scenes. The full picture Telltale continues to paint of Javi throughout the season is A New Frontier’s greatest triumph. His plight remains one I’ve genuinely cared about since the season began, never once making me doubt Telltale’s decision to switch protagonists for this entry. “Above the Law’s” flashback in particular, while not quite as cinematic as those in the two-part premiere, serve as a strong launching pad for the Javi I am creating through my dialogue and action choices.

 

 

Though Telltale finds intriguing ways to flesh out Javi’s story, the flashbacks for Clementine’s story often fail. Melissa Hutchinson’s performance continues to sell the hard road she’s traveled, but I find Clementine’s actions and conversations in the present to be much more engrossing than in her flashbacks. “Above the Law’s” flashback was the most engaging of the three. I’m all for showing over telling, but the way Telltale shows Clementine’s past isn’t interesting enough yet to merit actually playing through it.

Both the past in present, episode 3 finally offers a deeper look at the titular New Frontier. It’s relatively par for the course when it comes to The Walking Dead civilizations structurally — fortified buildings co-opted to be whatever this community needs. What’s meant to set this Richmond hideout apart is the batch of new characters “Above the Law” introduces. Most of them, unfortunately, come across more as caricatures than as fully drawn personalities.

That would be fine if the series decides to spend more time with them in the future, but the lack of any real connection to them makes the episode-ending plot points far less impactful. I found myself still caring about Javi and the people he holds dear in the episode’s final moments, but the twists and turns they find themselves in aren’t all that shocking.

 

 

 As its name suggests, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier’s fourth episode, “Thicker Than Water,” confronts Javi with the ideas of whether the bonds of blood or friendship are more important to him. Unfortunately, the path getting to those decisions before the strong ending is far less enjoyable than much of this season has been so far.

“Thicker Than Water” hurtles forward with the mistaken idea that Joan, the villain introduced in episode 3, is a force to be reckoned with. She remains so undeveloped that her big moments at the start and end of the episode paint her as little more than the standard Walking Dead caricature of a villain. She essentially exists as a plot device to reflect some of Javi’s choices in the last few episodes. Considering the back and forth of Javi’s antagonistic relationship with his brother David, Joan’s instant rise to prominence in the plot feels much less natural in its incorporation.

 

Another area in which this episode fell short of my expectations was in how we’re allowed to shape and develop Javi’s close relationships. A New Frontier has been successful with its depiction until now, especially with David. But the bonds that have mattered most to me, both of blood and of water, are the least emphasized in episode 4. Javi and Kate get great moments together, building off of three episodes of romantic buildup between the two, but she’s practically nonexistent for two-thirds of “Thicker Than Water.” At one point a character has to go to another room to call her in, and I almost laughed at the realization that she’d been absent for such a mundane stretch.

The same goes for Javi and Clementine’s bond. The two share comparably so little screentime in the episode, with Clem’s flashback once again being one of the most superfluous moments of any given episode. I love their dynamic, but with an episode light on tense sequences, their main interaction in “Thicker Than Water” doesn’t quite live up to the bond that’s been built in the last three episodes.

 

Some of that disappointment stems from the episode’s poor pacing. “Thicker Than Water” starts on another strong Javi flashback, this one giving some dimension to his and his brother David’s combative relationship before the walker apocalypse set in. I now understand their tempers, and though I wish the present-day story offered more interaction between the two beyond an early scene, I’m glad to finally have a deeper knowledge of such a key piece of Javi’s life.

The episode largely dips from there, though, kicking off with a boring environmental puzzle and only briefly touching upon the more interesting characters in Javi’s life, like Kate and Clem. Instead, “Thicker Than Water” spends much more time than necessary on the continually unlikeable Gabe. While I’ve cared about Javi in his role as surrogate parent, I’ve consistently found Gabe to fit snugly in the annoying teen stereotype found on nearly every TV drama. Unfortunately, an extended period with him and Javi only exacerbates the problem of his presence. The episode also gives time over to Ava, Tripp, and Eleanor, who, while fine secondary characters in their own right, feel more like diversions from what’s really working this season rather than complementary aspects. Every time I was in a scene with them I wished it could have been used to better explore Javi and Clem’s partnership, or Javi and Kate’s roles as parents.

Luckily, the episode’s bombastic last third brings everything to a head, ramping up the tension and stress that much of the episode preceding it lacks. Richmond descends into chaos not because of walkers, but because of the people there. (Though a walker horde suddenly appearing outside the city’s walls is another element to the episode shoved in to make the plot move along properly.) That chaos is thrilling to navigate as destruction rains down upon Richmond and Javi’s life.

 

 

 

A good season finale needs to satisfy everything the season preceding it has set up while laying groundwork of its own for the road ahead. “From the Gallows,” the fifth episode in The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series — A New Frontier, succeeds in doing both, keeping the spotlight on Javi, Clementine, and the characters around them that matter for the vast majority of an emotionally resonant, stirring ending. A New Frontier’s strengths lie in how it approaches the idea of family through the dual lenses of Javi and Clem. Ultimately, the choices I make as Javi, and to a lesser extent as Clem, have defined not just the family I’ve assembled by episode 5, but ultimately how much I have grown to care about them. A New Frontier impressed me in the premiere episode by introducing Javi and making him empathetic to the point that I deeply cared about the choices I made as him to protect Kate, Gabe, and the others I met along the way. Sure, I’m coloring within the lines of Telltale’s story, but “From the Gallows” does an excellent job of capitalizing on the choices made all season long, even as episodes 3 and 4 strayed from that stellar start.

n fact, “Gallows” in many ways exemplifies the shift in the great work in the season’s first half and the struggles in the second. That success comes in feeling some authorship over Javi’s journey. I set out to create a man who, in the face of the apocalypse, refused to give up on the good in the people around him. The series oftentimes gave me chances to let Javi succumb to his weakness, to play his role as a brother, father, and friend more selfishly. But I resisted those temptations and ultimately found he could continue being the guiding light who defended and supported those he cared for. “From the Gallows” allowed me to double down on that character building, leading to affecting moments with Kate, Clem, and even Gabe, who has, for much of the season felt like the annoying teenager trope pushed to its limits.

 

Javi’s struggle to remain strong in a world ravaged by the undead is far less engaging when the spotlight shifts away from his family and onto his relationships with the characters of Richmond. Episodes 3 and 4 never really found interesting ground there, and certainly when any of them are the focus of “Gallows,” the episode suffers for the same reasons. Citizens of this safe haven occasionally dip in and out of “Gallows” as little more than plot devices. 

And that plot — Richmond has succumb to a walker infestation, and Javi has to decide what role to play in saving both it and the people he cares for — feels secondary to the strong emotional resolutions with the supporting cast. The episode’s biggest, or best, moments have little to do with bringing the struggles of the last few episodes to a head, largely in part because the episode hasn’t found a cohesive story focus. I was actually surprised at how little action came into play throughout “Gallows.” But there are plenty of climatic personal moments with Javi’s family that bring the series’ most important ongoing threads to powerful conclusions that I’ve continued to think about in the days since playing.

"From the Gallows" has one of the most moving scenes in a Telltale series.“

Thankfully, the focus rarely shifts away from Javi’s core family. A confrontation between Javi and David, surrounded by a few other key characters, encapsulates what I’ve enjoyed most about this season’s exploration of family, both by blood and choice. Without spoiling how it plays out or what my choices were, the scene allowed me to ensure Javi stayed true to the caring personality I had established for him in the premiere. It’s one of the most moving scenes I’ve experienced in a Telltale series, and it carried such weight because, for the most part, A New Frontier has continually done right by honoring my character choices.

 

The episode’s plot also largely served the characters I care about most well — and finally, we are spared another pointless Clementine flashback. Instead, several great scenes showcase just how much she’s matured since season 1 as a fighter and person. A New Frontier has certainly been Javi’s story more so than Clem’s — evidenced by yet another strong opening flashback for Javi to kick off “Gallows.” But my decisions as Javi have affected her in ways that evoke the character I started caring for years ago, making me excited to continue watching both of their journeys progress. Much of that excitement comes from the quieter moments between Javi and the other members of my season finale group. Like the David scene mentioned before, Javi shares touching conversations with every main player that mattered to me.

 

 

Secondary characters cameo now and then, but just as the villains first introduced in episode 3 came off as caricatures, the citizens of Richmond who come into “Gallows” story feel thinly written. “Gallows” is consistently more engaging when the episode focuses on the interpersonal connections of Javi’s family and Clem, both in the more active and quieter moments. Richmond only remained of interest to me in how saving it or abandoning it could alter the relationships in Javi’s makeshift family. I never felt the need to reclaim the town for the sake of its nameless or named-but-forgettable faces, which makes much of the plot leading into this final episode relatively inessential to what has otherwise succeeded in A New Frontier.Luckily, Javi’s makeshift family, the family I’ve formed, and the way those bonds play out, offers a series of satisfying, affecting character notes that make the sporadic plot pacing of the last couple of episodes, and the brief examples of them in this episode, worth pushing through. 

 

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System Requirements

Minimum:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz

CPU SPEED: Info

OS: Windows 7 64Bit Service Pack 1

VIDEO CARD: Nvidia GTS 450+ with 1024MB+ VRAM (excluding GT) - LATEST DRIVERS REQUIRED

PIXEL SHADER: 5.0

VERTEX SHADER: 5.0

DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1024 MB

 

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Official Trailer