The Walking Dead: A Short Review

The Walking Dead video game episodes by Telltale games have come and gone. Those who got to experience them firsthand knew by the end of the first episode that they had stumbled upon a gem of this generation. Moments into the game you are presented with decisions – decisions that are reminded by the game itself will change the course of your game experience, and they hold true to their word. Only few other games have ever held a solid method of decision making that actually engrossed the player – Mass Effect anyone? I will not spoil the ending here, but I will say that in comparison to Mass Effect, The Walking Dead doesn’t fall far of expectations from previous similar titles.

The Walking Dead
Developer: Telltale Games
Platform: PC (reviewed)

So what have I alluded so far – that this game is good and it’s ending is comparable to Mass Effect? Well, no, or at least, I hope that’s not what you take from this. See, The Walking Dead actually does accomplish something unique that other titles only tipped on, and that is actually growing the characters around you to the actions that you take. Clementine is the perfect example of this growing character. As you play as Lee, the convicted felon who murdered the man who slept with his wife, you make some tough decisions and progress through various challenges, but you yourself do not evolve. It is the characters around you whom are affected by your actions that change – and Clementine, by the end, will learn how to defend herself from the likes of the walkers.

In most games you find an over-emphasis on the main protagonist. For example, both Mass Effect and Heavy Rain held heavy contentions on the character you were playing, to the point that, for the most part, the other characters around you didn’t matter as much as you getting what you wanted. The Walking Dead counters that by remembering which actions you took and replaying them back during key moments, similar to the scientific saying “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. Not quite to that extent, some actions are in entirely in your benefit. However, that lingering feeling during a moment of decision of “what would-a happened if I did X instead of Y?” hit really hard from the get-go and is enough to cause even the casual player to spend time looking up the results. The player usually sees that the course of the game would have changed from choosing that alternate decision.

That is not to say that some paths are worthless compared to others. No one knows for sure which path is the best as there seems to be no way to avoid the ending you receive – cough, kudos back to Mass Effect on this one. However, the moments leading up to the game will indeed test those decisions, your willingness to stick by them, and the effect they will have on Clementine, the character that has been growing up under your wing.

I have to say, in some ways I think this game is an anti-thesis to games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, which utterly focus on a mostly unchanging environment, and ability to ignore any in-game decisions. The Walking Dead reminds us that we deal with people in our lives, and these people are not handing us furniture, or showing us some love meter. These people remember us and they change how they act around you. Within The Walking Dead, they will come to respect you, hate you, and in some cases, love you. In a world where most games provide very linear characters who only serve minor purposes, and are mostly forgetful, The Walking Dead reminds us that video games are about interactivity, and some things we choose to do, are not forgetful.