The Walking Dead Universe is ramping back up so it's time for my opinions on one of the world's most polarizing entities. I noticed the final season The Telltale series was on Game Pass, which I didn't know at the time, and was pretty fired up. I had played all of the previous episodes but across different platforms. I had to that point been disappointed with the lack of weight the decisions throughout these games carry, but I was expecting at least a tight well crafted experience like the first three seasons. Instead of jumping right in I went back and played through every season again, and let me tell you, this game kinda sucks and is the opposite of "tight and well-crafted" for nearly its entire run.
When I played through the games again, the whole thing just comes across as a mess. This even goes for the first one, when Telltale had an actual studio that hadn't fudged everything up yet. Each episode is full of an infinite number of egregious plot holes, weapons and items disappear and re-appear along with environment setups changing back and forth for convenience, NPC's truly only exist to pigeon-hole the main characters into feeling guilty about decisions that never matter while also changing their attitude and behavior from one scene to the next to fit progression and make you question your choices no matter what you do, continuity errors of every imaginable kind, being forced into adult decisions by adults despite only being a kid (Clem's story)...it just rarely makes sense and doesn't even try to. The absolute best example is Rebecca. You can steal the meds from Arvo, you can do everything in your power to keep her alive, and it won't matter. She is going to die no matter what you do, Arvo will attack you either way, and the story progresses along an identical path regardless, a prevalent recurring theme in this story. And then......raising a god-damn baby in the wild during a zombie apocalypse? Lucky for them he never cries, right...at least the show made the same dumb choice, I guess. No matter how you progress your story with Kate in episode 3 David turns on you. LAZY. It would take me a year to detail each individual instance that ruins the immersion, believability, and suspense of this story. The list would go on forever.
No game in history has nailed the 'choice concept' in video games, and I can't say I've ever really enjoyed a single one. The Witcher 3 did their absolute best with this, and mostly pulled it in my playthrough. This series is easily among the worst on a second playthrough - there is not a single decision that matters outside of throwaway comments and meaningless two-second conversations, even most of the character development stuff turns itself on and off to fit the story and the circumstance. Sided with a character through two episode only to have that character turn on you when the proverbial gun is pointed at them is a common, wildly stupid occurrence. Even if you just stay silent and let the arguments and conversations play out, the writing is lazy through the entire thing and often times you will be forced to make a decision anyway (again very stupid especially when adults are putting literal children in that position). Their lack of attention to detail gets worse and worse as it progresses and that's really disappointing. Because I have to say it, the ending to episode 4 is just awful and the absolute worst. I can forgive the lazy writing that allows a group of kids, most of whom are sheltered and inept to this point in the apocalypse, taking over what is essentially a military ship full of heavily armed grown-ass adults with the most half-baked plan of all time if I have to. I will do that. Clementine surviving a zombie bite, to an already exposed wound, many many minutes after infection IN A F****** BARN SURROUNDED BY A SMALL HERD OF ZOMBOS WITH NOBODY BUT PINT-SIZED AJ TO CUT OFF HER LEG WITH A 6 LB. AXE, CAUTERIZING HER WOUND AFTER PINTS OF BLOOD LOSS AND DRAGGING HER HEAVY PROBABLY UNCONCIOUS ASS BACK TO THE SCHOOL IS MADDENING. The degree to which Telltale chickened out on this ending is nothing but trash fanfare, something that ruined the overall universe to begin with and equally does so here. Just horrible. Maybe not quite as bad as crossing a frozen river in a basic single file line. Whatever, the writing sucks in this series it rarely makes sense.
"This game series adapts to the choices you make. The story is tailored by how you play." It isn't, though. They are the most illusory of choices, the equivalent of a timeline with a single branch. The story itself never changes, no matter your decisions the same characters die and survive based on a predetermined timeline. There are some minor differences in characters that survive the end of some episodes but it never amounts to anything. The outcome will always be the exact same for your character outside of a few dialogues that feel hollow. Most of the time there won't be choices that completely fit the situation anyway, you'll be forced to make a narrow choice based on what should be a wealth of information that builds up over time. It doesn't work that way. At the very least just play through it once and try not to pay attention to the details, it's an average experience that way, probably.
I used to love the Walking Dead universe, until every company who got their hands on it summarily ruined it completely over time. Telltale is no different. What started out as a mostly-solid idea in episode 1 failed to ever grow and quickly devolved into a hurricane of crapola that had no idea what it wanted to be. I don't wanna hear "studio trouble" either, they did that to themselves just like they did with these games. But hey, at least Fables, Batman, Game of Thrones, and Guardians of the freaking Galaxy got the same lazy games out of it. When you are building a mountain of poor ideas it is best to just keep adding to it I always say - the Capcom/Konami model at its finest. At least we will always have Sam & Max, Wallace & Grommit, and Homestar Runner. Those can't be taken away from us. Rant over.
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