The Walking Dead (2012)

There is nary, in the history of the medium, a watershed more underanticipated than a 2012 Telltale releasing The Walking Dead. After years of making unserious, if spirited licensed adventure games, introducing such pure, unfiltered pathos into their tried-and-true ethos feels... like a gamble. Today, though, we know how the bet turned out. The Walking Dead put a game studio and both its unsung and fresh innovations on the map, in tandem, entwined in pedigree, whose albatross would eventually spell the gallows for aforementioned game studio. It sweeped multiple gaming award shows when most were still in a state of infancy with its conspicuous novelty, it broke from convention and became the new primordial blueprint to follow, lest risk extinction.

It's also a great game. Thunderously resonant. A masterpiece, however diluted that term may be. Never has freedom of choice been explored with such care or poise than in The Walking Dead, and it seems the secret, if only in its totality, will be taken to its grave... we can only count down the days to its graceful rise anew in our beloved medium, shocking and perturbing us, driving its claws deep into our hearts, and finally - finding us living once more. Savor every moment with this game as the survivors savor every day, fort, and supply - it could always be your last.

The graphics have definitely aged even by Telltale standards, but they're absolutely not what's important here. I'd also say they're not bad by any means.

The characters are the best part of the experience. You will, most likely, grow emotionally connected to these people in a way you may not expect. Lee is iconic as a protagonist and one of the most beloved leading men in gaming for a reason, Clementine is adorable and from what I can tell a good emotional anchor for most players, Kenny is lauded by gamers (even if I find him overrated myself), and the various side and minor characters are well-written and serve a purpose. I could write you an embarrassingly long essay in defense of Ben even years after I last played.

Gameplay is the typical Telltale fare - QTE sequences, timed dialogue choices, moral decisions, walking around, some scattered environmental puzzles. If you don't like Telltale's usual style of gameplay, it does nothing different here, but I do, so I enjoyed it.

It's really, really hard to express how much this game means to me. Not only my first Telltale game (to this day one of my favourite studios), when it released in 2012 this was my first choice-based/interactive fiction type game ever, and it catapulted me headfirst into possibly my absolute most-played genre ever. There is a reason people still talk about this game and its characters over a decade later, there is a reason people uploaded videos of themselves sobbing at the ending, there is a reason this won so many GOTY awards. If you're going to play one Telltale game, make it this one. Even if you don't like gameplay-light experiences like this, try it. I don't think there's a single person I wouldn't recommend this to with my entire soul. I've lost count of the number of times I've played this - on Xbox 360, on Xbox One, on PS4, on computer - but it's absolutely in the double digits.

As an aside, the horror of Episode 2 impacted me so deeply as a child that aspects of it formed and affected my fears to this day. "See where he is now" is a phrase that haunts my damn mind. If you know, you know.

(Sidenote I include with all Telltale reviews: Telltale's games often get a bad rap for having your choices not influence the story, but to me this misses the point of what they do. Variant endings are a nice bonus in games, and I enjoy them when they do pop up in Telltale's stories, but for the most part your choices aren't here to change where you go. They're there to change how you get there, who you are when you get there, and often who you get there with. They influence and change your relationships with the characters around you. The joy of replaying these games is to experience the different dialogue, the different reactions to you, the different routes you can take on the way, the different bonds you can evolve with people - not to have a wildly different ending. I think this aspect is overhated and sadly misunderstood by a lot of players, so if huge, game-changing differences are what you're looking for, I'd temper your expectations.)

INTERACTIVE DRAMA - Lee Everett must protect a young girl named Clementine while navigating moral dilemmas and dangerous threats in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies.

PROS:

++ Emotional and gripping storytelling. From beginning to end, this game just never feels dull to me. Even though I've played and replayed this many times, I still am enthralled each and every single time. Every single episode is exciting and had a fresh scenario. There were lots of emotional and unforgettable moments. (Duck and Katjaa's death, Ben's death, Mark getting cannibalized, Carly's death, Lee's amputation, confrontation with Clem's kidnapper, etc. The list goes on and on.) And the ending is still one of my favorite endings in gaming. Even after completing it yesterday, I felt the urge to replay it again immediately. Very few games have that effect on me. I just feel glued to the screen when I'm playing this.

++ Wonderful characters. The main reason why this game has been immortalized for many. Lee and Clementine are phenomenal. Lee is a flawed character, as evidenced by his past life, but his relationship with Clementine and his desire to step up and protect her no matter what, results in one of my favorite dynamics. And Clementine herself is such a precious girl, and you naturally want to do anything for her. But the other characters in the cast are equally memorable and realistic. Kenny, Molly, Ben, Lilly, and Carley were all solid characters who received a healthy amount of development over the course of the game. There were other characters that didn't receive as much development, but were still very likeable (Christa, Omid, Chuck, Mark).

++ Tough choices. Another important factor that determines whether a choose-your-own-adventure game succeeds is how good the choices are. And this game is chock-full of hard decisions to make. Within each episode, there are a handful of choices that can really impact the whole story and how other characters perceive you. And although you can't save every character even if you try your hardest, and how certain events will still transpire regardless of your choices, I still found that the choices that can be made were difficult and hard to make. Many times I had to cheat and pause the game to really think about what option to choose. To this day, I believe this is the pinnacle example of what interactive games should be.

++ Solid vocal performances. Although some lines were delivered flat, I still believe that the overall performance of the cast was stellar. Kenny and Lee especially!

CONS:

-- Technical issues. Just some graphical glitches here and there. And for a game that doesn't seem to be too demanding, there was still a noticeable amount of glitches (in the original and "remastered" version).

-- Walking speed. Not a big deal but I really don't like how slow Lee walks. I just wished there was an option to speed-walk or something.

I loved this entire series from Telltale, each season had the usual emotional wrenching and plot twists that you would expect and I liked that there was links back to each Season as you progressed through and could save and import the choices you had made.

Clem is awesome, I was sad to leave her when I finished the series! I think I learned that I am still not always great at QTEs, but that caused some amusement throughout especially as I was streaming these.

When Telltale's The Walking Dead first came out, I was already all over Robert Kirkman's zombie epic. The TV series was at its high point, and I was eating up the comic books like a brain-hungry walker. Zombies are VERY overdone today in 2023, but at its heyday, I thought that The Walking Dead presented a unique spin on the theme.

Prior to The Walking Dead, I relegated zombies to being pure camp in the realm of classic films such as Dawn of the Dead or even Capcom's Resident Evil series. But Robert Kirkman's comics presented something more dark and dramatic. It makes you share in the horror and grief of the heroes as beloved characters are often unceremoniously and brutally killed. Then before you know it, you're cheering on these "heroes" as they do increasingly morally dubious things in the name of survival.

Telltale was already known for creating choice-based adventure games at that time, and pairing the gut-wrenching choices of this universe with their interactive form of storytelling felt like an incredibly natural fit. The first season of their take on The Walking Dead was lightning in a bottle. They created a new story set in the universe with characters that, in retrospect, feel even more compelling than those of the source material.

You play as Lee Everett, whose status as a convicted killer prior to the apocalypse gives him a perspective that is totally different from the main series' goody-two-shoes cop Rick Grimes. As the apocalypse begins, Lee becomes responsible for Clementine, a young defenseless child who is a sort of counterbalance to Lee. With each episode, you are put into an ever escalating series of messed up situations that culminate in an ending that still turns me into an emotional wreck... It's powerful, dark, tragic... Can't think of enough adjectives to describe it.

Unlike the main series, which details the protagonists' descent into (And subsequent struggle to return back from) the inhumanity necessitated by this apocalypse, Lee's story is one of personal redemption. He is a man who has lost his purpose in life, only to find it once more as the protector of his found family. Lee's story arc is a fantastic one that details how our connections with other people can bring out the best in us... Or the worst, depending on how you play. If you like gripping stories with fantastic characters, and you haven't played this game... Seriously, what are you waiting for?

My partner and I checked out the version on The Definitive Series bundle, and they did a great job remastering the lovely comic book-inspired visual style. The game has still aged rather poorly in some respects--the dated animations slightly messed with my immersion in the story, and the game can still feel pretty bad when it branches away from its strengths in dialogue and point-and-click adventure into janky shooting and action segments. The soundtrack is something I had forgotten was incredibly good, and this theme is still living rent-free in my head. It might be one of my favorite pieces of video game music of all time, perfectly encapsulating the mood of this story.

More than 10 years after this game's release, The Walking Dead has a bit of a mixed legacy today. The comics meandered for a bit too long, and didn't have as strong of a finish as I hoped. The TV show became a totally unwatchable mess in its latter seasons. Telltale's subsequent Walking Dead seasons, while still enjoyable, didn't quite recapture the high of this first season, which I still consider to be the best single thing to come out of this entire franchise.

I've been replaying the first season recently & ended up playing the last episode while on an airplane - this was a huge mistake - people observing me with genuine concern while I was sobbing uncontrollably is something I don't think I want to repeat. A lovely elderly lady even tried to console me - to which I said: "it's okay, I'm fine - it's just a video game".

But it's so much more than that...

It's Telltale Games' peak of form, unmatched to this day in my opinion. Tales of Borderlands (the first one) came really, really close & The Wolf Among Us was almost equally as good but their first season of TWD is still unmatched in narrative point 'n click & QTE hybrid territory.

Back then I could relate to Lee & Clem's relationship very easily, because of having a younger sister at Clem's age. Being a young dad it feels like the game delivered a much stronger punch this time around - I kept thinking: "god, what if it was my daughter". I felt even stronger need to protect this little girl. The need to show her the ropes of surviving in this nightmare. The need to pass on the most important knowledge, before my unavoidable demise.

Everything - from small details in Clementine's design, facial expressions & on-screen behaviour to Lee being a convicted murderer and how he tries to keep his legal history quiet which proves a hard secret to keep - is perfect. The way the story plays out, hard choices that Telltale's title wants you to make (very rarely good or bad, rather bad or worse), compelling characters that you meet throughout the season and surprising situations and confrontations were definitely worth another playthrough.

Today in 2023 this formula may feel a bit stale. We've had so many games that tried to replicate and capitalise on the success of this title (some managed to do so and are quite good in their own terms), but back in 2012 this almost felt like a breath of fresh air, you know? It felt like you were playing a perfect hybrid of different gameplay mechanics. One of the most important games of '10-'20 decade? I certainly think so.

I got some enjoyment out of all the seasons, but I'll only be talking about S1 here

As everyone knows, the game is based on the TV show, which is based on the comic book

Unlike most adventure games there really is no puzzle solving. The game attempts to concentrate on character development and more often than not, does a pretty good job

Lee Everett is one of the great video game protagonists and Clementine is not just there to be cute in S1. She proves herself quite useful, brave and intelligent. You can already see the future bad ass that she will become

The game was basically marketed as a "your choices matter" type of game. I've seen some people say that the reality is that your choices don't really matter, but I find that to be a bit harsh

You can play "God" and make decisions that will affect whether a character lives or dies and your choices can affect how you go about completing certain tasks and how other characters will react to you, but it is true that the game pushes you in the direction it wants. I'd say the game does a great job of creating the illusion that your choices matter more than they actually do, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they don't matter at all

Some of the things that the game forces the player to do are a bit ludicrous and some of the choices of responses during dialogue parts can be inane. However, in general, the writing is strong with both tense and humorous moments

Besides Lee and Clementine you'll meet some interesting characters on your journey, but they all (one in particular) seem to be a bit bi-polar. Agree with them on something and they will act like you're their friend for life. Disagree with them on something a few minutes later and they will jump all over your ass. However, in many cases, the game does a remarkable job of developing characters that feel real in a very short amount of time

The story is pretty damn dark. Rightfully, it's the relationship between Lee and Clementine that people talk about most, but there is some really dark stuff in this game, which in some cases goes beyond even what you see on the TV show

The story, voice acting (particularly Lee and Clementine) are top notch. The art really does a great job of reproducing what you see in the comic books

I can remember shortly after the final episode of S1 was released, getting into a argument with a friend about the final decision/choice you need to make in the game. It got rather heated. In retrospect, it seems kind of silly. However, any video game that could make the both of us so vehemently defend our decision must be doing a hell of a lot of things right

I was reading a bunch of old GOTY lists and realized I hadn't played this, so booted it up on Gamepass. I think I really missed something by not doing this episodically, but overall still thought the experience was impressive. The story and choices were well done and if you suspend disbelief about the "illusion of choice" you have much more fun.

The gameplay and puzzles couldn't be more boring - handheld item puzzles and quick time events abound. I felt like I was just doing this to get to the next story beat, but I wonder if the game would have felt empty without them.

I probably won't be diving into Season 2 right away, but now I know what Telltale games are like for next time I'm craving an interactive story

I avoided Telltale games for the longest time due to how janky they always looked to me and, frankly, how little interaction they seemed to have. But I was looking at potential Game Pass exits and decided to give The Walking Dead Season 1 a go since it received quite a bit of praise over the years. And I have to say my first experience with the genre was an awesome one. The interesting thing to me is that my concerns have actually proven to be valid: TWD feels very clunky, with stiff movement and quite a few visual glitches showing throughout the campaign (the 2nd season greatly improves on this), and yes, being a Telltale means there isn’t a great deal of active interaction. In a way, all of this was a bit off-putting. But its upsides are so strong and effective that they quickly got me to ignore all shortcomings. TWD took me on an emotional journey I really wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t familiar with the comic novels and wasn’t a fan of the show, so to me this came as a surprise. There’s a lot in there to chew on in terms of how the story develops and how you shape it, not to mention the plot twists that get sprinkled throughout. I can see how frustrating it must’ve been having to wait for new releases when it initially came out, but I feel this game really benefits from its episodic structure, giving you time to digest the events and consider the implications of your choices. There were moments where the options given felt a bit underwhelming, not encompassing enough or even illogical or poorly sequenced (like how you’d finish a particular dialogue with a particularly aggressive tone, only to come back to the character and find a completely different vibe). But this happened on occasion only, and never felt frustrating enough to make a significant dent in my overall level of enjoyment.

I truly loved how the game gives you the sense that your choices really do matter, as well as offering you an overview of the choices of the rest of the community at the end of each chapter. Not having done a 2nd playthrough, part of me wonders how much of this is real and how much is down to perception, because some pretty major moments seem set in stone. But I feel that it’s fair to say the game gives you at least enough agency to shape the story in a way that makes it feel personal and engaging. The voice acting is phenomenal and the characters are incredibly well written. Lee and his relationship with Clementine, in particular, really brings in a whole new level of emotional investment. It was also satisfying to see how your feelings regarding certain characters would evolve throughout the episodes depending on their actions/interactions. And speaking of episodes, while I really liked all of them, the Long Road Ahead was particularly brilliant, and my favourite in the entire season. Starved for Help was a close second.

Overall, I loved this game. It has its fair share of issues and I can’t even give it a perfect score in all of its strong aspects, but I’m a sucker for emotional journeys in gaming and The Walking Dead has that in heaps. So much so that I jumped immediately into the 2nd season. Highly recommended if you aren’t strongly averse to Telltale games. 8/10.

The Walking Dead - how great can the story be right? You'd be supremely surprised when you get just about 5 minutes into the game.

Telltale is no stranger to unique narratives but Walking Dead Season 1 takes the cake. Written by the same mind that wrote Firewatch, Season 1 tells a gripping story of a father-daughter relationship between estranged people. Almost reminiscent of The Last Of Us but somewhat different.

Make your choices - the game will make you feel like poop when you do regardless. A must play especially if it's your first ever Telltale game.