"The Walking Dead: A New Frontier" Review

It's no secret that Telltale's The Walking Dead was a masterpiece adored by nearly everyone who played it. It changed the very nature of adventure games and episodic games alike, and it launched Telltale games into an era of biting off more than it could chew in the vain hope of matching its success. Then along came The Walking Dead: Season 2. While it was universally disliked (at least when compared to the original), it helped fans answer the question they wanted to know: What happened to Clementine after Savannah? Now, we have The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. You may remember that I reviewed the first two episodes when they came out last year, but the scores I gave those episodes will not be taken into account here. Those reviews were strictly for the end of the year lists, and this review is of the season as a whole. So, does A New Frontier pick up Season 2's slack? Well...you see, that particular saying, "picking up the slack" refers to tightening rope, not literally picking something up. The reason I state this incredibly obvious fact is to put my answer to this question I just posed in context. The Walking Dead: A New Frontier does "pick up" Season 2's slack, but it doesn't tighten the rope...more like picks that rope up off the ground and uses it as a jumprope or something. Same amount of slack, different usage, capiche?....no?....Let's just delve in and I'll explain in greater detail.

In A New Frontier, you play as Javier, a man traveling across apocalyptic America with his brother's wife (I say brother's wife and not sister-in-law because...you'll see) Kate and his niece and nephew, Mariana and Gabriel. A gas run goes wrong one day, and Javier ends up running into recurring character and reason everybody plays these games, Clementine. Now a girl of around 13 or 14, Clementine has been living on her own, surviving the day-to-day. From there...it's a Walking Dead story, you know the drill. There are settlements, things are sketchy sometimes, people are the real monsters, etc. The actual plot here doesn't make any stunning innovations. Really, the best part of the story is the family drama. Every episode opens with a flashback to Javier's life with his family before the apocalypse, and these flashbacks alongside the moments of family storytelling in the plot are the best parts of the game. As is the case when I review Telltale games, I'm going to break this down by briefly talking about each episode.

Episodes 1 and 2: The Ties that Bind pts 1 & 2 start off the series with a bang, and they're easily the strongest episodes of the bunch. Both of these episodes bring levels of shock and anxiety nowhere to be found anywhere in A New Frontier, and this is due in part to their sense of variety. I'll get further into that later, but these first two episodes cover a number of areas, so the experience is fresh throughout. There's a sense of mobility to the story, like characters are actually going places, and that's the kind of mobility that a Walking Dead game needs. In addition, the action in these episodes is both more cinematic and more satisfying in terms of feedback than in past seasons. Episodes 1 and 2 establish a solid base, implying certain things here and there to be explored later on and crafting characters that I, at least, didn't want to die. It's pretty much all downhill from here though.

Episode 3: Above the Law is an unusual event for Telltale. Normally the third episode of a Telltale series is the best, but episode 3 of A New Frontier was, without a doubt, the worst in the series. It did nothing at all interesting with the plot twist at the end of episode 2, meandered about for half the episode, introduced some brand new, wholly weak characters that I never once cared about, and answered The Ties that Bind pts 1 & 2's bang opening with a whimper ending. This episode was also where the game's technical issues started to show, but I'll get more into that in the technical section.

Episode 4: Thicker than Water was a stronger episode than Above the Law by far, and it was the closest the series ever came to recreating the magic of the first two episodes, but thanks to some notable problems, it was still weak. The first of these problems is once again something I'll touch on in the technical section, but the second problem is a problem that seems to be becoming more and more apparent in Telltale games. I don't think anybody believes that your choices matter in Telltale games anymore, but lately it seems like Telltale's writers don't even care anymore. There are little inconsistencies in the writing throughout this series, but in episode 4 there is a blatant contradiction that simply cannot be overlooked. In episode 2 you make a decision whether or not to shoot another character when the rest of the group has gone further ahead, and if you choose to shoot this character, you have the choice to tell the group, and I'm pretty sure you end up giving them the picture no matter what. I, for one, definitely chose to tell the group. However, in episode 4, this fact is brought up again as if I were holding that information back, and suddenly all the characters who I'd told acted shocked and threatened to kill me! That's not ok, Telltale! If you want to make choices not matter, fine, but they have to be reflected somehow in the writing. Otherwise, there's literally no point to making choices. I can confirm that this wasn't a one-time bug either. My brother (who uses a different PS4 than me) encountered the same contradiction, and I'm pretty sure that if I asked around, I would get similar testimonies. Episode 4 hits better story points, but it's cancelled out by how obsolete it makes your choices from past episodes.

Episode 5: From the Gallows once again brought the quality down, but not quite as much as episode 3. Thankfully, this episode had a much better sense of mobility to it, and there were some legitimately touching, impactful moments...and also a death that was thrown in so quickly and with so little effort that I legitimately laughed out loud for a full minute when it happened. There was also a glitch where a dead character happened to walk across the screen like they hadn't died, leading me to believe that (and I know this will be shocking) Telltale didn't bug test very well. The climax of the episode is actually pretty good, and if you make the same choice I did, the penultimate scene might bring tears to your eyes. I actually found myself wiping away some stray tears at that point. Not a bad note to leave on, but unfortunately the ending is just the ending, and most of the episode is not as good as the end.

And so we come to the technical section. Good lord, how is it possible that Telltale games continue to worsen from a technical standpoint? When I bat-reviewed Batman: The Telltale Series, I mentioned that it was Telltale's weakest technical product, but compared to A New Frontier, Batman may as well have been made by Nintendo. The framerate was all over the place, character models glitched out, the whole nine yards. However, what truly pushes this game into an unforgivable level of technical sloppiness is the frequency of "super hard" crashes. I say super hard because I had to literally unplug my PS4 to escape the crash. These crashes that forced me to physically unplug my system happened five times. Once in episode 3, once in episode 4, and three times in episode 5. That's inexcusable, Telltale! As if the variety of bugs wasn't bad enough, there's also a lack of variety in locations. Episodes 3 and 4 and a lot of episode 5 take place in the same three buildings (they can claim it's different buildings all they want, but it's the exact same models), and these locations get re-used over and over and over again, and this is what I was talking about when I said that this game desperately needed more mobility in it. In episodes 1 and 2 (and some of 5), Javier and team are going from town to town, moving around, but for most of the game they're just walking to and from the same three places over and over again, and it makes the whole experience boring. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Telltale needs to get its act together. These technically sloppy products just aren't going to fly anymore.

At the end of the day, if you're a fan of Telltale's The Walking Dead, you'll find some value here. There are some legitimately good story moments, and the character development is definitely stronger than in Season 2. However, the game is far too marred by inexcusable technical shortcomings, thumb-twiddling subplots that take the entire season to develop, and an obvious lack of effort on Telltale's part to recommend it at full price. Wait for a sale, and then invest in it if you think you might get some value out of the positives. If you just have to know what happens to Clementine in this season, then by all means go out and buy. However, if you're new to the franchise or have lost your desire to follow this story, just go and play the original season. It isn't going anywhere, and it's not going to be beaten anytime soon.

Let us review:
Technical failures -1
Weak story -1
Contradictions in the writing -0.4
Recycled locations -0.3

So the final score for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is...

7.3/10 - Ok
Better luck next time, Telltale, better luck next time.