This review contains spoilers
I put off replaying this game a lot longer than I did replaying the rest of the series because I knew I wasn't ready for this ride to end yet. Despite some of my problems with the middle seasons I do truly love this series, and I knew that this last season was gonna hurt just as much as it did the first time. Which surprise, it did. Honestly this season feels like a great send off to the series. I will be talking about spoilers here so be prepared for that.
The Final Season takes place about four years after the end of season three and once again follows Clementine, who has AJ with her again as the two of them try to find food and survive on their own in this post apocalyptic hellscape. After an accident they're saved by a group of kids from a nearby boarding school that got abandoned early into the end of the world. Clem and AJ befriend this group and then have to defend it from outside forces trying to kidnap the students to use them as soldiers in their war with another community. The story is all around really solid and has some incredible set piece moments and scenes, but personally I think where the game excels is in its characters.
This game had a pretty big cast of main characters, with there being effectively five of them (Clementine, AJ, Louis, Violet, and Tenn) who were present for most of the story. I think all of them are handled really well and are all great characters in their own right personally. Though of course the main focus is entirely on Clem and AJ. Seeing Clem and AJ at this stage of their lives is really interesting since the last time we saw either of them was four years ago when AJ was still effectively a toddler and Clem was just barely a teenager. A lot has changed between then and the beginning of this season, especially for Clem. She's been through a lot in the eight years since the outbreak started, and it seems like the time between season three and now have hit her even harder. Though despite this she's still the same Clem, hardened and more cynical but still a person just trying to make the best of the worst possible state of the world. This Clem really feels like the culmination of the Clem we saw in season one, it might be that the writing is generally tighter than season two's or way more focused on her than in season three but this is the Clem that feels the most like she was the same Clem that we helped teach back in the first season as Lee. It's really cool getting to see the end of this character's arc and everything that entails.
AJ meanwhile feels like the perfect encapsulation of the exact opposite of how Clem was back in season one. AJ has been taught all his life how to kill and fighter walkers in order to stay alive, but he has to learn the empathy and human elements of being alive that Clem already had down. It creates an interesting dynamic where you shape the kind of person AJ will become over the course of the game. It's a really interesting way of handling his character that I think plays to the way telltale handles choices, where instead of it effecting the end of a story it changes the journey. You can play this game twice and have a completely different AJ by the end depending on what choices you make throughout. You'll still end with the same ending for AJ as the story dictates, but who AJ will be and how these events changed him will be different and he'll have had different experiences and guidance from you that shapes how he is. I love how these telltale games handle this sort of thing and the fact that it was such a focal point of one of the two main lead characters of the season was incredibly cool to me.
As for the other three main characters, Louis, Violet, and Tenn, they are all newly introduced into these season and I personally enjoyed the dynamics they brought to the game a lot. They helped round out the group of people who were regularly at the forefront of situations and all of them were likeable in their own ways that I really enjoyed. My favorite was probably Louis though since I found him the most relatable. Their dynamics and actions in regards to Clem and AJ are also really interesting to me, where each of them have a completely different connection to the main two. Tenn being AJ's first real friend was a really sweet dynamic that was nice to watch play out despite how it ends, and I really enjoyed the moments those two got together. Inversely Louis and Violet acting as Clem's two most trusted friends at the school work really well in my opinion and both have strengths and weaknesses as characters that make them feel like believable people. A really strong secondary main cast was missing from season two and from half of season three so it was really refreshing in this season to have a really strongly written core group to have around across the entire story.
This season also had a pretty strong showing of villains I thought. The three main ones we see throughout the season are Lily, the woman from the first season that either stole your RV or that you left to die on the side of the road, Abel, Lily's right hand and a bit of a bastard, and Minnie, Tenn's sister who was kidnapped and initiated into Lily's group before this season starts. All three of them play different roles in how the story plays out and all of them have their own strengths as villains I felt. Abel worked effectively as an evil bastard who shows up and instantly starts causing problems, which in turn leads to Lily and Minnie being villains since Abel got everything started off on the wrong foot. Lily works great as a big bad of the season, pushing things that Abel started further and generally just being a much worse human being than she was when we left her back in season one. She's way past the point of being too far gone and is more or less just out for herself and herself alone, which is shown by her surviving in my ending and going out on her own and leaving all of her comrades behind. Minnie meanwhile is extremely tragic and is shown to basically have been completely corrupted by lily's group to the point where she has basically become a brutal killing machine who wants her and her brother to die just so they can be together again. All three of these characters have very different outlooks and ways of acting as antagonists, but in my opinion all of them work extremely well in this role.
I will say that compared to other seasons this one really felt like you didn't get enough time with a number of the introduced characters, namely a fourth of the kids at the boarding school. Granted half of them were gone for pretty much the entirety of episodes three and four thanks to them getting kidnapped and then Clem, AJ, and Tenn getting separated from everyone else, but it still felt weird how we got through most of the series without ever really getting much to Omar, Aasim, or Willy. We get a few interesting things here and there but they felt weirdly underutilized compared to other side characters from the school such as Ruby or James, who were pretty involved in the plot without directly being a main character. With a cast of this size its inevitable that not everyone is going to have their moments, but it feels off to me that these three were effectively sidelined for most of the story despite how much everyone else in the boarding school group got to do. Part of me thinks this is due to there not being five episodes in this run like there normally are in The Walking Dead seasons, so they had less time to let everyone have their moments, but there is no way of knowing for sure how accurate that is. One aspect that didn't suffer though was the gameplay sections that happen between most story sections.
This season of The Walking Dead Game makes a huge leap forward in terms of how it handles gameplay this time around, which has never exactly been what Telltale is known for. It's mostly just glorified quick time events like in past games but the sections they have built in order to give a sense of combat and fighting off hordes of walkers are well done with making you think about your positioning and using your ability to knock over the zombified people which is pretty fun and feels like an interesting way to attempt a mini horde mode every so often in a game without extensive combat mechanics. These sections would most likely get tiresome if given enough time but thankfully the game seems to use these sections just sparsely enough to feel like a nice break from the normal movie style story that the episodes tend to be otherwise. There's also other sections that are essentially just emulating older rail shooters like the other games in this franchise. These sections felt remotely unchanged from the older games in that you basically just focus your crosshairs on the big "shoot here" prompt and then shoot. It works fine as just the filler action gameplay between bursts of story that most of these games function on, but that's really all there is to it.
One thing that really stuck out to me about this season was how throughout the season the creative team really dipped into more subtle aspects of horror with the Zombie apocalypse in a way that the series hasn't since season one. Season three had one moment of this at the very beginning but outside of that the series was much more focused on the drama and tension between people in seasons two and three that I hadn't even noticed until I played through all of season four. Scenes like Clem's nightmares, getting pulled back into the darkness by Zombie Brody in episode one, the person pleading for death as his body is melted from the burning metal he was stuck under, all a lot more subtle and kind of horrifying in ways that feel extremely reminiscent of season one's approach to trying to have more horror beyond the walking dead that surrounds them. It's hard for me to ignore this now that I've made this connection, but I honestly do prefer this style of approach especially this late into the series's life. It's hard to get any fear out of the zombies this late into the series; the fear and horror these things once instilled throughout the first season more or less disappeared by the time seasons two and three rolled around, not to mention that they took a major backseat to the human drama aspects of the series. This isn't necessarily bad but I feel like more of a blend like what seasons one and four have works better for me overall.
So I wanted to dedicate a section of this specifically to the ending of the final episode, since I felt it was probably the strongest part of the whole season. In Trying to escape a horde with AJ Clem has been bitten on the leg, leaving her and AJ to seek shelter in an old barn they found earlier in the story when with James. AJ desperately tries to block off the barn as Clem provides cover fire with a pistol until the two of them have a moment where the walkers can't get in. After a tearful goodbye and pleading with AJ to either kill your or leave you depending on your choice, AJ agrees to do as you say at first, until he turns around and supposedly hits you with an axe. The whole scene is incredibly emotional and really feels like a send off to a character we've watched grow over several seasons.
The issue though, is that anyone who has spent even a small amount of time with The Walking Dead will most likely be questioning why they don't just cut off her leg since the bite just happened a few minutes ago. Thankfully this quick cut works as a great misdirection, since that's what AJ did. In the after credits/real ending of the story you play as AJ and come back home to the boarding school to see Clem on crutches with everyone else as everyone who survived the events of the game are there, happy and safe. Seeing AJ go from this baby who we could barely keep alive in season 2 to someone resourceful and smart enough to save his family on his own is really cool to see and effectively ties together what this season is ultimately about, that being ending the cycle of loss that has been perpetrated since the start of the outbreak. AJ doesn't let Clem die like Clem had to let Lee die, he makes sure she survives and everyone who survives gets to end up happy and safe for the first time in a long, long time. All things must die has effectively been the mantra of the series since season one, but the final season effectively adds an asterisk to that. Saying that while all things will go eventually, we can still fight to make sure that that time is as far off as possible. It's a nice, resounding message of hope in a series that has always leaned far more onto the bleak side.
And with that, Telltale's The Walking Dead is over. It was truly an unforgettable ride and I'm glad I got to experience Clementine's story. Her having a happy ending after everything that she has been through is well deserved in my opinion, and fits really well narratively and tonally in a way I wasn't expecting since the series doesn't always have the most tonally consistent or well thought out endings (looking at you season two) and considering all the development issues this season went through due to Telltale shutting down I wasn't expecting to be as satisfied with the ending as I was; but I'm more than happy to report that they stuck the landing. Definitely recommend this season if you enjoyed season one or any of the others, it feels like the perfect place to end Clementine's story.
9/10
The Final Season takes place about four years after the end of season three and once again follows Clementine, who has AJ with her again as the two of them try to find food and survive on their own in this post apocalyptic hellscape. After an accident they're saved by a group of kids from a nearby boarding school that got abandoned early into the end of the world. Clem and AJ befriend this group and then have to defend it from outside forces trying to kidnap the students to use them as soldiers in their war with another community. The story is all around really solid and has some incredible set piece moments and scenes, but personally I think where the game excels is in its characters.
This game had a pretty big cast of main characters, with there being effectively five of them (Clementine, AJ, Louis, Violet, and Tenn) who were present for most of the story. I think all of them are handled really well and are all great characters in their own right personally. Though of course the main focus is entirely on Clem and AJ. Seeing Clem and AJ at this stage of their lives is really interesting since the last time we saw either of them was four years ago when AJ was still effectively a toddler and Clem was just barely a teenager. A lot has changed between then and the beginning of this season, especially for Clem. She's been through a lot in the eight years since the outbreak started, and it seems like the time between season three and now have hit her even harder. Though despite this she's still the same Clem, hardened and more cynical but still a person just trying to make the best of the worst possible state of the world. This Clem really feels like the culmination of the Clem we saw in season one, it might be that the writing is generally tighter than season two's or way more focused on her than in season three but this is the Clem that feels the most like she was the same Clem that we helped teach back in the first season as Lee. It's really cool getting to see the end of this character's arc and everything that entails.
AJ meanwhile feels like the perfect encapsulation of the exact opposite of how Clem was back in season one. AJ has been taught all his life how to kill and fighter walkers in order to stay alive, but he has to learn the empathy and human elements of being alive that Clem already had down. It creates an interesting dynamic where you shape the kind of person AJ will become over the course of the game. It's a really interesting way of handling his character that I think plays to the way telltale handles choices, where instead of it effecting the end of a story it changes the journey. You can play this game twice and have a completely different AJ by the end depending on what choices you make throughout. You'll still end with the same ending for AJ as the story dictates, but who AJ will be and how these events changed him will be different and he'll have had different experiences and guidance from you that shapes how he is. I love how these telltale games handle this sort of thing and the fact that it was such a focal point of one of the two main lead characters of the season was incredibly cool to me.
As for the other three main characters, Louis, Violet, and Tenn, they are all newly introduced into these season and I personally enjoyed the dynamics they brought to the game a lot. They helped round out the group of people who were regularly at the forefront of situations and all of them were likeable in their own ways that I really enjoyed. My favorite was probably Louis though since I found him the most relatable. Their dynamics and actions in regards to Clem and AJ are also really interesting to me, where each of them have a completely different connection to the main two. Tenn being AJ's first real friend was a really sweet dynamic that was nice to watch play out despite how it ends, and I really enjoyed the moments those two got together. Inversely Louis and Violet acting as Clem's two most trusted friends at the school work really well in my opinion and both have strengths and weaknesses as characters that make them feel like believable people. A really strong secondary main cast was missing from season two and from half of season three so it was really refreshing in this season to have a really strongly written core group to have around across the entire story.
This season also had a pretty strong showing of villains I thought. The three main ones we see throughout the season are Lily, the woman from the first season that either stole your RV or that you left to die on the side of the road, Abel, Lily's right hand and a bit of a bastard, and Minnie, Tenn's sister who was kidnapped and initiated into Lily's group before this season starts. All three of them play different roles in how the story plays out and all of them have their own strengths as villains I felt. Abel worked effectively as an evil bastard who shows up and instantly starts causing problems, which in turn leads to Lily and Minnie being villains since Abel got everything started off on the wrong foot. Lily works great as a big bad of the season, pushing things that Abel started further and generally just being a much worse human being than she was when we left her back in season one. She's way past the point of being too far gone and is more or less just out for herself and herself alone, which is shown by her surviving in my ending and going out on her own and leaving all of her comrades behind. Minnie meanwhile is extremely tragic and is shown to basically have been completely corrupted by lily's group to the point where she has basically become a brutal killing machine who wants her and her brother to die just so they can be together again. All three of these characters have very different outlooks and ways of acting as antagonists, but in my opinion all of them work extremely well in this role.
I will say that compared to other seasons this one really felt like you didn't get enough time with a number of the introduced characters, namely a fourth of the kids at the boarding school. Granted half of them were gone for pretty much the entirety of episodes three and four thanks to them getting kidnapped and then Clem, AJ, and Tenn getting separated from everyone else, but it still felt weird how we got through most of the series without ever really getting much to Omar, Aasim, or Willy. We get a few interesting things here and there but they felt weirdly underutilized compared to other side characters from the school such as Ruby or James, who were pretty involved in the plot without directly being a main character. With a cast of this size its inevitable that not everyone is going to have their moments, but it feels off to me that these three were effectively sidelined for most of the story despite how much everyone else in the boarding school group got to do. Part of me thinks this is due to there not being five episodes in this run like there normally are in The Walking Dead seasons, so they had less time to let everyone have their moments, but there is no way of knowing for sure how accurate that is. One aspect that didn't suffer though was the gameplay sections that happen between most story sections.
This season of The Walking Dead Game makes a huge leap forward in terms of how it handles gameplay this time around, which has never exactly been what Telltale is known for. It's mostly just glorified quick time events like in past games but the sections they have built in order to give a sense of combat and fighting off hordes of walkers are well done with making you think about your positioning and using your ability to knock over the zombified people which is pretty fun and feels like an interesting way to attempt a mini horde mode every so often in a game without extensive combat mechanics. These sections would most likely get tiresome if given enough time but thankfully the game seems to use these sections just sparsely enough to feel like a nice break from the normal movie style story that the episodes tend to be otherwise. There's also other sections that are essentially just emulating older rail shooters like the other games in this franchise. These sections felt remotely unchanged from the older games in that you basically just focus your crosshairs on the big "shoot here" prompt and then shoot. It works fine as just the filler action gameplay between bursts of story that most of these games function on, but that's really all there is to it.
One thing that really stuck out to me about this season was how throughout the season the creative team really dipped into more subtle aspects of horror with the Zombie apocalypse in a way that the series hasn't since season one. Season three had one moment of this at the very beginning but outside of that the series was much more focused on the drama and tension between people in seasons two and three that I hadn't even noticed until I played through all of season four. Scenes like Clem's nightmares, getting pulled back into the darkness by Zombie Brody in episode one, the person pleading for death as his body is melted from the burning metal he was stuck under, all a lot more subtle and kind of horrifying in ways that feel extremely reminiscent of season one's approach to trying to have more horror beyond the walking dead that surrounds them. It's hard for me to ignore this now that I've made this connection, but I honestly do prefer this style of approach especially this late into the series's life. It's hard to get any fear out of the zombies this late into the series; the fear and horror these things once instilled throughout the first season more or less disappeared by the time seasons two and three rolled around, not to mention that they took a major backseat to the human drama aspects of the series. This isn't necessarily bad but I feel like more of a blend like what seasons one and four have works better for me overall.
So I wanted to dedicate a section of this specifically to the ending of the final episode, since I felt it was probably the strongest part of the whole season. In Trying to escape a horde with AJ Clem has been bitten on the leg, leaving her and AJ to seek shelter in an old barn they found earlier in the story when with James. AJ desperately tries to block off the barn as Clem provides cover fire with a pistol until the two of them have a moment where the walkers can't get in. After a tearful goodbye and pleading with AJ to either kill your or leave you depending on your choice, AJ agrees to do as you say at first, until he turns around and supposedly hits you with an axe. The whole scene is incredibly emotional and really feels like a send off to a character we've watched grow over several seasons.
The issue though, is that anyone who has spent even a small amount of time with The Walking Dead will most likely be questioning why they don't just cut off her leg since the bite just happened a few minutes ago. Thankfully this quick cut works as a great misdirection, since that's what AJ did. In the after credits/real ending of the story you play as AJ and come back home to the boarding school to see Clem on crutches with everyone else as everyone who survived the events of the game are there, happy and safe. Seeing AJ go from this baby who we could barely keep alive in season 2 to someone resourceful and smart enough to save his family on his own is really cool to see and effectively ties together what this season is ultimately about, that being ending the cycle of loss that has been perpetrated since the start of the outbreak. AJ doesn't let Clem die like Clem had to let Lee die, he makes sure she survives and everyone who survives gets to end up happy and safe for the first time in a long, long time. All things must die has effectively been the mantra of the series since season one, but the final season effectively adds an asterisk to that. Saying that while all things will go eventually, we can still fight to make sure that that time is as far off as possible. It's a nice, resounding message of hope in a series that has always leaned far more onto the bleak side.
And with that, Telltale's The Walking Dead is over. It was truly an unforgettable ride and I'm glad I got to experience Clementine's story. Her having a happy ending after everything that she has been through is well deserved in my opinion, and fits really well narratively and tonally in a way I wasn't expecting since the series doesn't always have the most tonally consistent or well thought out endings (looking at you season two) and considering all the development issues this season went through due to Telltale shutting down I wasn't expecting to be as satisfied with the ending as I was; but I'm more than happy to report that they stuck the landing. Definitely recommend this season if you enjoyed season one or any of the others, it feels like the perfect place to end Clementine's story.
9/10
DazzlingDynamic
1 year ago