worth noting that I'm replaying this for the first time in, like, 6 years and experiencing this as the definitive series version on steam deck, so any thoughts relating to experiencing the game beyond story and writing will be saved for that one big log. also gonna be spoiling!!

but man, despite remembering every single beat of this I'm kinda taken aback by how good it holds up. characterisation is insanely good; Lee, Larry, Carley, Kenny, Lily, all feel like such strong, deep characters already -- all performed incredibly well and carry a lot of weight. I like just about everybody anyways, but there's some genuinely impressive stuff between these guys.
the decision to deal with a suicidal woman does feel like it has a real emotional impact to it -- one of the dialogue options being "God bless you"? it's just sad. really easy to empathise with Lee and his family situation too, I dunno, that kinda thing just has gravity now that I'm not a dumb teenager.

it's still a little labourious, I do dislike how anti-streamlined this is to get through for someone replaying it, with the pre-pharmacy stuff really feeling like an introductory running on a tad too long, but it's definitely worth it overall. excited to see how I find the rest of season one now.

The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day is the perfect Telltale Games episode. The story here is great, characters and voice acting is excellent, gameplay is fun and there are some creative sequences and the choices are brutal. The technical side holds it from being a masterpiece as it has more than a few problems especially in animations but it's still an incredible experience no matter what. One of the strongest starts to an episodic game, ever.

The Full Review(No Spoilers):

Every End Is A Beginning
I am a huge Telltale fan, let's start with that so you know where I approach this game from. And I of course played The Walking Dead, multiple times. However, it has been a good while since I last played it. At least 5 years, maybe more. So I wanted to replay it and review all the episodes. Let's start with the first one today.

The Walking Dead's story starts with a man in a police car. Lee Everett. Why is he on the police car? What did he do? Who is he? Those are questions I will leave you to figure out in game. But as you can imagine, things quickly gets wrong as the zombies starts to become a global threat and our man Lee meets with a young girl with no sight of her parents.

Throughout it's 2 hour long time, The Walking Dead Episode 1's story will make you feel a long list of different emotions. Writer Sean Vanaman did a great job managing to pace everything in this episode accordingly. It never gets boring, never stops inventing.

Another big factor in that equation is obviously the characters and the performances. Dave Fennoy voices our main character Lee and he is just incredible. As this is a choice based game, he had to go through a lot of different Lee iterations clearly and his performance was consistently great in all the lines of him that I heard.

Melissa Hutchison's Clementine is also a delight. Having young girls as sidekicks are kind of popular in all entertainment sectors right now but Clementine manages to differentiate herself thanks to her not being a "damsel in distress". She is also not a cry baby or opposes everything your main character does. She is a kid so she doesn't understand everything that goes around her.

But if you tell her the truth and let her see things from your perspective, she will have your back in her own childish way as well. Now, let's talk about the gameplay a little bit.

If you don't know, Telltale's games are actually more like interactive movies. In the game, you will mostly talk to people and make dialogue choices. Explore areas and sometimes solve puzzles. Finally, you will do QTE sequences.

Even in this first episode, some of the choices are incredibly hard. And they actually change somethings. There are choices where you will determine who lives and who dies. Some of them are obviously on the smaller scale. But still impacts your relationship with other characters. They change dialogues and some interactions. You can't alter the entire course of the story but through some smaller and a few big choices, you make the story your own.

There are also a couple of exploration moments. Especially in the second half of the episode, you are given the freedom to explore a drug store and it's basically a mini Resident Evil mansion. You will have to find items to solve some of the problems and those will give you other items to solve other problems, eventually leading you to the end of that sequence.

But there is not only the main path. There are a few side tasks as well that let's you learn more about the side characters and do some more tough choices. It also leads to the best sequence of the entire episode. I don't want to spoil anything so I will just say that it's a puzzle sequence that feels like an action sequence. Involving a motel, someone in need and a few zombies.

Finally, the QTE's. They are QTE's and as someone who likes them, I liked these as well. They aren't used too too often as the game is more interested in dialogue sequences compared to action sequences. So even if you hate them, I think you will be ok with them here.

The biggest issue of the game is in the technical side. While the graphics still looks good, the engine is old. It was old back then as well, it's older now. Animation quality is cheap, your main character stutters sometimes when the camera doesn't track him well enough. Camera cuts also stutters. It doesn't destroy the good of this episode but it certainly deals a huge blow.

The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day is the perfect Telltale Games episode. The story here is great, characters and voice acting is excellent, gameplay is fun and there are some creative sequences and the choices are brutal. The technical side holds it from being a masterpiece as it has more than a few problems especially in animations but it's still an incredible experience no matter what. One of the strongest starts to an episodic game, ever.

Since I’m playing thru this game for the 3rd time this year (this time on PS3) I thought hey why not review each episode one by one. Pretty good idea eh. So this episode is interesting 2 me because, like a lot of first episodes or seasons in tv it’s got a lot of stuff that doesn’t reappear, because its trying to figure out its footing. This episode is walking dead in its fullest point and clickiness. A majority of this episode takes place in a pharmacy where you have one goal and there’s an unorthodox way of getting to it involving a tv remote, a fire axe, a banana peel, monkey skeleton, and 15 gigatons of dynamite. This puzzle is so long that they give you a break halfway through so you can go somewhere else and do a faster and more actiony puzzle. These types of sections are basically nowhere to be seen in forthcoming and upcoming and incoming telltales and while I understand why, (noob zoomer gamers af L go play god of bore you noob let the intellectual Redditeurs like me solve the puzzle) I feel like stuff like this really helps the pacing and let’s you get to know the characters better. Because remember what happened before the pharmacy.. boom car crash boom escape boom farm attack boom now you’re here. Pretty stressful series of events eh. Almost feels like a zombie apocalypse out here. How about we chill out a bit so I can give Clem a granola bar. Now I’m stuck in a room with these new people might as well get to know them. Oh shit since the writing is so good I now care about these characters that I didn’t care about 10 minutes ago. See????? Was that so hard. I love you season 2 but maybe you should put a pharmacy in the Home Depot that would’ve been great. Anyways this is elkmane the king of gaming the king of backloggd saying good morning and have a fun day of badass