It’s been a long road for The Walking Dead’s Clementine, who’s arguably gone through just as much as her TV counterparts. She’s lost almost everyone close to her over three seasons of heartbreak and haircuts. Now, with The Walking Dead: The Final Season looking to wrap things up for her and the series as a whole, things are looking hopeful in more ways than one.
Telltale recently released a demo of the first fifteen minutes of the first episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season for PS4 and Xbox One. If you’ve watched the gameplay trailer, it’s effectively the same thing: Clem and AJ are hunting for food when they come across an abandoned enclave.
The improvements are apparent almost immediately from the second Clem talks to AJ in the backseat of the car. The animation has been taken up a notch for the final hurrah for not only Telltale’s flagship, but also for the Telltale Tool: what the studio has been using for years and years to develop games. The engine has been the showing signs of age for quite some time now, and with Telltale transferring future projects over to Unity, it’s clear that they’re squeezing every drop of potential out of the old girl.
Everything is smooth, including the framerate, which is never a given with Telltale’s output. Although I played The Final Season in the bubble of a squeaky clean demo, I have faith that they will be able to deliver a consistent experience throughout. Coming from someone who’s currently playing through The Walking Dead Collection and encountering bug after bug, that might sound naive, but with a lot riding on The Final Season — to satisfy fans and to also get themselves out of a sticky patch as a business — I expect Telltale to deliver.
From playing through the earlier seasons to trying out the demo, the step up is pretty clear. The Telltale fundamentals are, of course, present (dialogue options, constant guilt trips), though everything points towards the shift in game design that the studio has previously alluded to. For all of their charm, Telltale’s licensed games over the past half-decade have played it somewhat safe with incremental changes. It’s a formula that’s worked wonders for them and spawned many imitators, but it also seemed to foster complacency.
The industry is always shifting: tastes change, conventions change. Much in the same way that survival games and military shooters have had their day, the demand for choice-driven, narrative-driven games has been wilting. The best studios adapt to the curve, which Telltale certainly seem to have done with The Final Season.
There’s a greater emphasis on freedom of movement than before with the player able to control Clementine from an over-the-shoulder perspective. This creates more “intimate” encounters, especially when coming up against walkers. QTEs are still present, but Clem can now stun zombies before dispatching and approach combat more tactically than simply hovering a cursor over a zombie’s head and pressing R2.
The Final Season also feels more fluid in how its sequences pan out. In the gameplay trailer, Clementine rings a bell and attracts walkers. In the demo, I left the bell and just walked in instead, only finding a single walker for my troubles. At another point, I could either leave an undead couple and ask AJ to crawl through an opening to find food or I could just kill the couple and take their keys to gain access.
Fifteen minutes of gameplay wasn’t enough for me — I wanted more. The demo hints at more mechanics that will become more important as the season progresses, such as your decisions and attitude shaping what kind of person AJ turns out to be. There are also consequences for even the most seemingly superfluous of actions, meaning that The Final Season will constantly be making you question yourself.
Much like living in the zombie apocalypse, you have to make tough decisions if you want to survive in the gaming industry. By keeping what makes them so beloved intact while also embracing a more expansive and immediate approach to gameplay, Telltale’s future hasn’t looked this bright in years.
The Walking Dead: The Final Season’s first episode lands on August 14th for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
