The border of horror

From Game of Thrones to Minecraft, passing through Borderlands and Batman. All heavy licenses that show how much software house that for many is synonymous with graphic adventures in episodes where there is little to squeeze the meninges but much to witness in terms of narrative, has grown in recent years.

 

And  new frontier represented the turning point for a company that before working on the Robert Kirkman brand had cut out a microscopic market space working on some spin-off of Sam & Max and The Secret of Monkey Island and on all a series of other little adventures based on the CSI brand.

The frontier of horror

Now, obviously, the times are ripe again to return for the third consecutive time on the franchise that has made them known to the general public with the awareness of not being able to play the mere task but having to, at all costs, return to amaze old and new fans, proposing something in step with the times and, above all, able to excite the players again.

 

A New Frontier is the subtitle of the new season of  the walking dead game, which loses any numerical reference but is again divided into five episodes

 

.It is not clear if they will follow a rigidly monthly publication as happened at the recent Batman: The Telltale Series or if the cadence will be more rarefied but, what the audience immediately noticed is that, for the first time, the debut is marked by the contemporary distribution of the first two chapters.

 

A choice that appeared to the writer rather cunning not being justified by some kind of gameplay or particular narrative choice but probably the developer needs to bring back to the scene with force this historic franchise and to immediately make the whole package an economic value rather Interesting.

 

Exactly as it was already with Batman, it is no longer possible to buy individual episodes or maybe download a trial version of the first chapter, at least on PC, but you must necessarily buy the entire season pass to enjoy even the first bars Adventure. And it is obvious that if you immediately enter into two of the five parts of which the game is composed, those who must proceed with the purchase feel more rewarded for their investment

 

In addition, the walking dead new frontier is Telltale’s first work that does not arrive on the old generation of consoles, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, despite the distribution is maintained even on iOS and Android.

A New Frontier is a great starting point for the new season of The Walking Dead

TELLTALE STYLE, ALWAYS THAT

Turning to the actual gameplay, even with this  the walking dead season game the guys from Telltale wanted to immediately put things straight: the style of their gameplay is always, only that. It is clear that the software house has no intention to try other roads or try the difficult path of innovation and, despite many players were looking at this third season as a turning point in the company’s production, it takes just the first few minutes of play for realize that there is really nothing new on the horizon.

For most of the time we will see long and intense dialogues, essential to present the new characters and to adequately explain the evolution of the situation.

 

Sometimes we will have to activate ourselves to choose one of the four possible answers to give during the exchanges. We will have little time available and, very often, our choices will have consequences on what the other supporting actors think of us, sometimes even with important implications that can determine the disappearance or removal of an individual, perhaps in a tragic way, or even a real change of scenery.

 

Exactly like it happened in Batman: The Telltale Series, there will be a couple of crucial moments in the advancement of the two episodes that will force us to make drastic choices and this will involve a change of course regarding the scenes that we will face with our protagonist and the characters closest to him. 

 

For the rest of the game time instead we will have to perform short and sporadic quick time event where we will just press the right button when we are shown, sometimes pushing the same button repeatedly and quickly, other times maintaining the pressure or possibly performing in some bolder combination.

 

There are a couple of situations for each of the two episodes in which we can wander freely with our avatar within well-confined scenarios.

 

In these situations we will have the freedom to dialogue with the characters present, explore the environment and also collect some objects that will be placed in our inventory and will be used automatically in some sequences, sometimes opening the way to small optional scenes.

 

For all the rest we are faced with all the typical elements of Telltale productions: these first two episodes of  walking dead game are quite linear in their evolution and offer a narrative arc that has involved us despite the topic and the setting are now too familiar . In terms of longevity we attest to the hour and a half for each of the two parts that make up this Ties That Bind.