In my backlog, there are the games that I bought because I’m loyal to a franchise, there are the games that I bought because of the hype, and there are the games that I’m so sure I’ll enjoy, I don’t dare to play. I keep them for a fabled perfect moment which, of course, never comes, so they stay in my backlog for years… Until the day I finally decide that it’s been long enough and I finally play them.

That day has come for the final season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

I love episodic adventure games, I love Telltale games and I love The Walking Dead, what could go wrong, right?! Well, beside Telltale shutting down right in the middle of the final season, absolutely nothing… The game is awesome, as good, if not even better than the other seasons.

Clementine is still amazing, a total badass, but it’s especially A.J. that surprised me. I get easily annoyed by kids, usually in movies, especially in games. It’s so rare that a kid as main protagonist doesn’t get so bratty that you want to yell at him (Gus in Sweet Tooth – the TV show, Daniel in Life is Strange 2,…), but A.J. isn’t like that. Beside a few moral conflicts, he doesn’t easily whine. In fact, he becomes the perfect side-kick and you’re the one who becomes dependent on him, not the other way around.

The game in itself is fantastic, it doesn’t overwhelm you neither with waves of monsters nor too long drama scenes. There are a few twists, sometimes sad, sometimes happy and sometimes OMFG! In short, the usual recipe for a perfect Telltale moment.

What I feared the most finally happened, I’ve finally reached the end of the adventure. Keeping it in my backlog was my way to keep it going on. Now that I’ve played it, even if I’m happy that it received the end that it deserved, I’m sad that I won’t get to live new adventures with Clem and A.J.. Until, of course, the new Telltale studios, announces a new season or, eventually, the day I’ll miss it so much that I’ll do a replay of the entire series.

When Soforah first read Telltale’s statement on Twitter, we couldn’t believe it. It was nearly bed time and we almost couldn’t sleep as we were baffled by this tragic news.

We’ve been playing Telltale games since the release of the first season of The Walking Dead and we were absolute fans of the style they had developed. We’ll always be grateful to Telltale for blowing back life into the adventure games genre.

Many of our holidays at home have been filled with their stories. We remember the laughs in Tales of the Borderlands and the Sundays with Game of Thrones, but it’s with The Walking Dead that we have the fondest memories. We’ve seen Clementine grow and become the badass she was in the last seasons and it greatly saddens us to think that we won’t get to see the end of her adventure. I highly recommend reading this Tweet from Melissa Hutchinson.

While we’re grateful to Telltale Games for all the fun they brought to us, we’re also really angry that their management took so many wrong decisions during the last years. All was fine when they had 3 or 4 franchises, and everything went to hell when they decided to spread their ressources between too many titles.

But what’s done is done. We just can’t believe that they didn’t know sooner that they were about to close the doors. The Walking Dead was the franchise that made them what they became and leaving the fans in the full middle of a season seems highly unethical to us.

So it’s with mixed feelings that we see Telltale go. Clem will always be hanging on our office wall, but it’s with sadness and bitterness that we’ll be looking at her…

Clementine is an amazing character and it was a great pleasure to spend a week-end in her company. I really have the feeling to have seen her grow, from the little girl hiding in her house to the total badass she became.

Javier Garcia was also a great protagonist. I’m convinced that he’s the reason why I’ve prefered this season over the previous one.

Even if Soforah’s end is a bit different from mine (more than usual in a Telltale game), I wish that my choices would matter more. Too often, whatever you decide, the story remains the same. I know that they can’t let it go too far, otherwise we would fork too far from the original story, but a bit more freedom would be welcome.

The eternal Telltale recipe has to change! I don’t wanna spend several episodes being bullied by a jerk (Kenny, David,…), just to see him become a human in the last 10 minutes.

A few screenshots I took during my last play through:

I’ve been very entertained with A New Frontier. As usual, Telltale delivers a game of quality. The voice acting, for example, is one of the best in the video game industry.

Being a fan of the franchise, I consider the Telltale serie better than the TV shows (at least better than the main show, which became total garbage).

I’ve just learned that the next season will be the final one… It makes me sad.