As always happens with the episodic titles of Telltale, the chapter opens with a quick summary of what happened in the past and starts exactly where it left off. Javier and Kate are on their knees before the entrance to the fortress of the mysterious and ruthless New Frontier group and their eyes are wide open for an old acquaintance that is revealed in front of their faces once the large metal gate has been opened.
From here starts a slow, sometimes even cumbersome episode that, unfortunately, is busy for most of its time by dialogues.Let it be clear that it is always interesting talks and discussions that do everything to involve the player and oblige him to respond sometimes with phrases that are not elegant, disturbing and sometimes too caustic,
but it is still a question of choosing between the four game offers us, evaluating the one that seems more appropriate and better suited to the attitude we want to carry forward. More than ever in this chapter, the consequences of having a very sharp language seemed to us very evident and often the results of the conversations seemed obvious, sometimes even telephoned.
And it’s a shame considering that we will take at least two thirds of the whole episode to respond to the conversations set up by old acquaintances and a couple of new meetings around which much of the plot of Above the Law will occur.
The most animated gameplay, the one in which the pad is used not only to choose the preferred answer, is also present in this episode but in really too limited form to be noteworthy.And so next to the usual and inevitable quick time event, we will find ourselves wandering freely with the character on the screen in a single piece of gameplay
. Really too little for a title that, at least on paper, should carry forward the concept of graphic adventure and, in particular with The Walking Dead, should aim to overcome what was built in the past and maybe even innovate considering how long the revival of the genre is anchored to a style of play that is starting to stink of old.
Tend to be the only, big problem of this third episode is all here: for more than half of its duration we will be entangled in dialogues that, although interesting and rather tantalizing implications in view of the continuation of the series, are still very simple dialogues.All in just 80 minutes of gameplay.
It is true that in this third season Telltale is trying to do a little more on the replayable side introducing, since the recent Batman-based series, some alternative scenes that can only be dealt with by making certain choices obliging the player to retrace his steps to try other options in case you want to see all that a chapter can offer, but now we are reaching the paradox of a title that touches the boundary of the interactive film, lasting even less than a feature film.
Nothing negative to say on the acting front, thanks also to the renewed graphic engine that continues to give that extra boost to a project otherwise very in line with the developer’s archetypes.Excellent dubbing and more in general all the audio effects. By the way, even this episode seemed to us really very well optimized and completely free of bugs or other issues.
