Telltale’s The Walking Dead has been going for 6 years now, you’d think that it’d been ported to every platform imaginable but there’s still at least one that hasn’t caught the undead plague – the Nintendo Switch. Potential survivors will be able to play Telltale’s inaugural season when the whole thing drops onto the E-Shop next Tueday – August 28th. Purchases of The Walking Dead: Season One on Switch will also include the previously DLC only add-on 400 days and upgraded visual performance.
Season One isn’t the only chapter in this long running series to get the Switch treatment. The Walking Dead: Season 2 and The Walking Dead: A New Frontier will both be ported to Switch by the end of 2018 with further details being released in the future. Earlier this month The Walking Dead: The Final Chapter episode 1 was released on all major consoles including the Switch!
Source: Telltale PR
Walking Dead: A New Frontier episode four opens with a family moment from before the Walkers became a problem. We join Javier and David hitting baseballs at the batting cages with the choice of either showing off and upsetting David or being humble. Either way, David proposes you look after his family when he joins the military. This moment highlights the major difference between New Frontier and past Walking Dead seasons. We are reminded that our protagonists are not a found family as in previous seasons, but a family that is already established and even has biological attachments. While we had characters in the past that were already a family (such as Kenny, Katjaa and Kenny Jr.) they were never focused on. Looking back on the past of this family in moments like this helps build a connection not just to the individual characters, but to the family as a whole. One may hate David, but there is a complexity to the story that makes you feel for the family and wants them to be rejoined regardless of past sins. That of course, does not change your ability to choose others over blood relations such as David. You get to truly decide if blood is “thicker than water” or not. Me personally, I got quite frustrated with David and often made choices that were not in his best interest regardless of how torn I felt doing it.
These conflicted, strong feelings are what Telltale thrives in, and you get quite a few of these moments in episode four, but unfortunately they happen mainly at the end of the episode. Most of the episode is escaping your current stuck situation and getting out of Richmond with ideally the whole family, both blood and found. You make various choices based on who you want to be loyal to and what you feel the best plan of escape is. Aside from actually implementing the plan and making your attempt, the episode doesn’t offer much until the end when some big plot points and choices happen and a beautifully bittersweet flashback involving Clem, that only further emphasized what a nurturing and caring girl she has grown to be. At times, I had a hard time staying invested in most of the episode because it just felt like a long series of steps to take to get to the real story and when the story finally picked up, it was the end.
We also get some insight into what has happened to Clementine and her time with The New Frontier. We see how she got her tattoo, how she became a loner again after finding some stability and what choices she had to make to save her only remaining ties to family. A major discovery happens concerning AJ and we see that Telltale has not given up on Clementine or her story regardless of the change of protagonists. Clem is still as interesting and even heartbreaking a story as ever. We learn more about the connection between Javier, Clem and the New Frontier and the title “Above the Law” becomes very clear as we go deeper into how The New Frontier works. As the trailer for the episode showed, David reunites with his family, creating some hard choices for the family. Do they accept David back? Do they side with the New Frontier now that they learn David is involved? You need to make your own decisions and judgments after some investigation and conversations. There are some interesting developments, but it soon becomes a bit convoluted and frustrating when dealing with some dubious characters. There were times I even went against how I normally would respond in order to take a more aggressive action as opposed to a diplomatic response because of my frustration. The plus side is that this lead to some interesting responses from those around me.
It is hard to judge the first two episodes individually, so I chose to view them as one long episode. This time we are not following Clementine as a main character, but instead are playing a new character named Javier “Javi” Garcia and following his life and story beginning from before the zombie apocalypse leaves the world in shambles and disorder. Javier is the prodigal son of the Garcia family. Resented by his older brother, David and beloved by the rest of his family, Javier has made some mistakes with his life, but wants to pull his life together after a family tragedy and begin to truly grow up. Once the “muertos” begin to take over, Javier puts those words and intentions into action and soon he is raising his niece and nephew with his sister-in-law on the road, trying to keep ahead of the hoards of dead and make sure they have what they need to survive day by day while keeping the children’s best interest at heart (and maybe sneaking some adult fun at times). Along the way there are choices to be made and people who you must decide to trust or maybe even hurt. Will you decide to open fire or negotiate? Will you murder or show mercy? Will you take a stranger’s word on faith and hope they won’t turn on you? Will you stay at what seems like a safe location or keep moving? Even more important, how will you interact and treat Clementine? Has growing up in such a chaotic world so quickly turned her into your enemy? Or will she become a strong ally and even friend of your family and still show her good heart? What has happened to Clementine between season 2 and 3? All are wonderfully emotional moments and make for a wonderful story.
Picking up where the last episode left off, Harvey is in the hospital, and his physical and mental state are taking a toll. Telltale addresses Harvey’s mental illness competently to explain his duality and compulsion to flip coins in search of a true fair result that is left up to fate. The game addresses how mental illness can affect friends and loved ones by seeing Bruce and Selina’s reactions to Harvey’s episodes, which include pleas for him to see his therapist and continue his medication. The game also allows you to chose how to interact with Harvey and help him cope with his illness. While the accuracy of his disorder may be questionable, the emotions captured by those involved were well done and add complexity to the story and make your choices harder to make, Should you take sympathy on your friend who is ill, but has hurt you? Do you chose love over friendship? These are all addressed in the game.
Anyone who is familiar with a Telltale series, such as: Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Wolf Among Us or even Minecraft: Story Mode, will find themselves at home with the gameplay and style of Realm of Shadows. The game doesn’t waste any time starting the game with a series of quick time events that put us as Batman stopping the snarky, quick witted Catwoman from committing larceny. Throughout the episode, the gameplay involves the player alternating between Bruce Wayne’s life as the playboy philanthropist and “The World’s Greatest Detective”. You need to interact with other characters in Bruce’s life and make decisions that determine how characters feel about you, how the media feels about you and who is your ally and involved in your life. You also interact with your environment and investigate crime scenes, make connections between pieces of evidence to determine what has happened and even get into a quick time fight or two while wearing the iconic suit all while your trusty friend and butler, Alfred, guides and chides you about finding balance in your life.
