Sunday, August 31, 2014

The Walking Dead 2 Episode 5 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-walking-dead-2-episode-5-review-ef48ad594581#.xe8fv1izi

I was hoping that I would be able to make it through a season finale of The Walking Dead without making any decisions I immediately regretted or crying. I failed. It was a fool's hope anyway.

Much like the finale of season one, there were very few times where they give the player the opportunity to take a break and look around. It was mostly a constant push towards the end of the episode. They did give the characters a break at one point, which also let me become more attached to them. This was no doubt part of their grand plan to break my heart, but those are not things that you realize while playing.
There was one situation that I saw coming from a mile away because the writers focused on it so much for the last couple of episodes. On the other hand there was another closely related situation that I did not see coming at all.
As a whole I enjoyed the second season of Telltale's The Walking Dead, though not as much as the first season. I would say that the main factor was the faster turnover of characters. I did not get enough time to get attached to most of the characters before they died or were otherwise removed from the group. I cannot remember many of their names, or how they died. In contrast I remember almost all of the characters from season one.
Telltale knows how to frame a shot.
I am not sure if Telltale will make a third season, and frankly I am not sure how wise it would be for them to try. It is easy for the player to become jaded to the loss they are constantly subjected to in this series. The second season also had much less of a cultural impact; out of my Steam friends, the number of people who have played the second season is less than half that of the first. I would certainly play a third if they made it though.

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