Character models are handled as usual, save for the updated lighting system introduced in The Walking Dead Collection. The art style and the graphics have seen a similar once-over, stepping ever-so-slightly away from trying to be a 1:1 translation of the original Walking Dead comics. Still, the complaints about Telltale's games being little more than Dragon's Lair with branching dialogue have been somewhat muted. While not a problem on PC, there is a little bit of confusion when going from the third-person camera to having to use the classic cursor for certain segments on consoles, and not being able to separately adjust how the camera and cursor control is a missed opportunity.
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Later in the episode, environmental traps can be triggered, which help give Clementine a little more breathing room. Walkers that get too close still need to be fought off by spamming an action button, but extra care has to be taken now-if more than one walker catches Clem off guard, it's game over.
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QTEs are still a core element of gameplay, but you can now face walkers more proactively, walking up and choosing whether to go for a stab to the head directly or target its kneecaps before destroying the head. The camera is now fully controllable in action sequences, over Clementine's shoulder. The same can be said of Telltale itself, which has also evolved the long-stagnant gameplay of the series. have grown into people who have adjusted accordingly. Life among the walkers is now a simple truth, and both Clem and A.J. laugh in the face of his hunger, and the trials of figuring out the next move or where the next meal is coming are treated as facts of life rather than crushing burden. There are smiles, Clementine jokes around with toys to make A.J. If we didn't know that walkers could be literally anywhere, it could just be a young mother and their son on a road trip to see family. The episode starts with Clementine behind the wheel of a muscle car, racing through the backroads with A.J. While we never see the how of it all, when Done Running begins it is at least six or seven years after the events of A New Frontier and Clementine has found A.J., the ersatz adopted son who was taken away by her authoritarian caretakers in Richmond, Virginia. Without a doubt, much of that likely comes down to necessity. Having known so little else of the world before, Clementine having pushed past her broken, bloody adolescence into early adulthood with her sanity intact may be the greatest blessing Telltale could've possibly given her character. It's worth mentioning that sad, storied history to understand just how strangely heartening it is that The Walking Dead's final season kicks off on a note of… well, hope is a strong word. She carried the tragedies she has endured like a ball and chain wrapped around her neck. We've seen, in New Frontier, what this world does to her. She was one of the depressingly few children left, now forced to grow up in a hostile world of zombies, desperate survivors, treacherous backcountry, deathtrap cities, and, above all, rampant, indiscriminate, ignoble death.
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The one perpetual ray of hope was in Clementine, the little girl whose soul you've been trying to protect since the first hour of the first season, and the character you control in Telltale's latest chapter. Throughout Telltale's The Walking Dead, we have seen what living in a zombified hellscape can do to people. Editor's note: The review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier.