Living To Tell The Tale of The Dead – Throwback Thursday: Telltale’s The Walking Dead
After three full seasons and a spinoff featuring Michonne, I’m here to take you back to how Telltale’s The Walking Dead all started. Telltale wasn’t a newbie to the game industry but it took quite a while for them to get in the spotlight. Some gamers may remember their more successful games like the Sam & Max series or Back to the Future: The Game. Others won’t even know that they developed the CSI video game series. It wasn’t until 2012, when they released the game that would take them to the skies.
For those unfamiliar, Telltale are sort of a pioneer when it comes to “making choices that matter” in game. The most unique aspect comes in the play style of their games. You get a third-person perspective and gameplay revolves around dialog, point & clicks, and quick time events. Their games have been described as a “graphic adventure” because it’s not all about the game play but about the story that unfolds as you follow along. This is also where your choices come into play. Certain events may or may not happen depending on your decisions throughout the game, making playthroughs unique to every player.
The Walking Dead has you play as Lee Everett, a man on his way to prison in Atlanta, Georgia. When something in the road causes the officer to panic into a crash and Lee awakes afterwards with a chance to escape. Except, the officer that was transporting him, turns into a zombie and tries to bite him to death. As Lee makes his way back to civilization to find out what has happened, he encounters a young girl named Clementine. She’s in need of help from her zombie babysitter and Lee just happened to come save the day.
As the story continues, you’ll meet many more characters and end up in all sorts of dire situations. I failed to mention that this game was released in 5 episodes in the span of about 6 months. So you basically had to wait a long time before completing the game. In my experience, I took about 12 hours of game time to complete the entire season but it’s probably less than that if you’re not too adventurous. Nowadays, there’s people who wait until the entire season is out instead of playing as the episodes become available. Seeing as the gameplay changes from the choices you make, what if you forgot what kind of choices you made in the previous episode? Well, you do get a mini recap of what happened at the beginning of each episode that helps a lot. One of my favorite things to see is that, there are many crucial decisions that sway one way or the other. Upon completing the episode, the game shows your decisions compared to everyone else’s choices. So you get to see if you were in the majority or if you made a differing choice.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead does a great job at accenting the most important decisions when it comes to survival and choosing what’s best for you or the group. It keeps you invested in Lee and makes you feel the importance of everything. I mentioned that this game was the beginning of greatness for Telltale. They have made many other series that have gained just as much acclaim in different universes such as The Wolf Among Us, Tales from The Borderlands, Game of Thrones, Minecraft, Batman, and Guardians of The Galaxy. If you haven’t gotten the chance to revel in these amazing stories, I recommend you start with The Walking Dead or The Wold Among Us. These games have hardly been anything but great and it’s wonderful to see them expand across so many universes. They’re currently in the works for a final season of The Walking Dead as well as a second season for The Wolf Among Us and Game of Thrones.