I won’t lie, I cried a little to the end of the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead. It was a truly engaging plotline with interesting characters I actually cared about. That and I was a teenager at the time of its release, so the hormones running through my body might have contributed to the idea of a semi-maternal relationship being broken up hurting a little more. I don’t believe this is a major spoiler of the overall game because almost everyone has either played it or seen it. It was THE talking point of 2012.

2012, was a magical year of Dishonored being really good, Far Cry 3 being amazing, Mass Effect 3 being shot in the head, Max Payne 3 wanting to be shot in the head, and… not much else. I’m not willing to admit that’s the time the Hitman series died, the first time. Smaller indie titles such as Hotline Miami, FTL: Faster Than Light, and the oh so fantastic Spec Ops: The Line released. Though it was this strange “interactive story” about the horror of the people trying to eat you alive that stirred up emotions. It was like being on the internet making jokes.

However, this story was to continue the work Telltale had already done for several years prior: Adapt the work the original creator doesn’t care too much for anymore. By this point the intellectual properties they had adapted were small, things no one had ever heard of, things like CSI, Sam & Max, Wallace & Gromit, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and Law & Order; ya know, small things. Two years before the release of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, the TV adaptation released of Robert Kirkman’s comic books, and were greatly received as something fresh and interesting. Now we look at zombies the same way we look at bad-smelling meat.

However, since the fall of Telltale Games last year, halfway through the final season’s penultimate episodes, there was a chance we’d never get to this point. Skybound Entertainment, the publisher of Kirkman’s comics, stepped in as the publisher and later acquired Telltale’s portion of the rights. Hence why we’re here to review The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive series, a collection of all the Telltale and Skybound produced Walking Dead games. Now admittedly, I have played a little beyond the first season, though I never finished the latter half of season two. My guess is the lack of Lee and Clem’s relationship.

That’s truly the story that grasped many upon the release, the newly kindled relationship that formed between these two strangers. Then from season two onwards you are left with just Clem trying to find her way through the “walker” infested wasteland of the U.S. with very little on her side. These stories are always about the relationships of those that survived, hence why the show has lasted through ten years and troublesome storylines. Some stories survive through the seasons, and those are impactful, though none live up to the ones we have with Lee Everett.

Though this is the thing, the star of the series is Clem, a child growing into a mature young woman in a matter of minutes. Only growing with every passing moment of the series. As the developer’s commentary states, Clementine isn’t treated nor was she ever going to be “just another kid.” Much like Ellie in 2013’s The Last of Us, she needs protecting and teaching but knows more than anyone of us knew at that age. She’s a child with the mind of an adult in a world harsher than anyone could imagine, she’s powerful and different.

Given The Walking Dead is character-driven and you are only left with one major character and possibly a handful of supporting characters; (I’ll not spoil that,) it loses some of the touching narratives. In the first season, Lee is looking for redemption, Clem is looking for her parents, and they are both looking for salvation. They have goals and by the time season two comes around, there’s no goal left aside from survival. Suddenly what was about character had morphed into the massive blob of other zombie stories while retaining that focus on the character’s narrative.

That’s not to say the gameplay didn’t change through the seasons, that the narrative was lost, or anything that made The Walking Dead Interesting. What was lost was something to keep us in that world, returning month after month. It still had a spark, though it was a dying ember for a lot of people. We know how it would or should all end: 90 percent of the planet is brain dead or watching reality TV, then the apocalypse comes and they return to their brain dead state, thus the last 5 people have to repopulate the world before they die. A losing battle for sure, as you can’t go back to several billion people while everyone that’s left is at each other’s throat.

However, let’s move on to the gameplay, as it is a point-and-click adventure game with something normally associated with an action setting. Given we’re talking about the Xbox One edition there is no click, just a controller which is as fun as it sounds. You use the left stick to move, the right one to look around; A, B, X, and Y, to do specific actions, with more buttons added later on. Though assuming you have seen or played a Walking Dead game before, the quick time events are still here though I don’t have to destroy my Q key.

This is the major issue with gameplay and the controller, for a controller isn’t precise; quite the opposite. Often you’ll be asked to move the cursor from across the screen to a zombies face. With a mouse, this was simple and quick, with a controller it is like trying to remotely land a housefly on Buzz Aldrin’s zipper on his spacesuit while he’s on the moon. The problem with this is the lack of sensitivity options in-game, though I can alter this with the Xbox One’s Accessories app. Something I’m sure my fellow PS4 users can’t do.

Ok, so that sounds like a whole list of complaints, “Do you like anything?” For all that I am saying I think the first season is shining brilliance, it is something to see the end of Clem’s story. I do enjoy that, and I’m sure anyone who maybe played the first season, even breaching into the second, should pick up the “Definitive Edition.” Though it is less of a definitive improvement and more a complete edition. Gameplay and visuals seem to stay as they were in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 – 2017, and 2018 to 2019 when Skybound took over the final episodes of the series.

What you get instead of a complete overhaul of every aspect is all four seasons, the two DLC/spin-offs in; 400 Days and Michonne, and a menu of concept art, music, and developers commentary for select episodes. Again, I think I have to say The Telltale Definitive Series is more for established fans that dropped out ahead of the third and fourth season. It seems that if you have, as I did, dropped out but still want to play through the entire 50+ hours of gameplay, this is for you.

In conclusion, it is still that same brain dead Populus ingesting 24: The Energy Drink and watching people with fewer brain cells bicker over who had the tastiest neck. However, that’s all The Walking Dead needs to be, it is the mundane drama of people’s lives following a sudden change in our biology. With a lead I actively cherish, I can’t say the story is bad though it does peak in the first season only to semi-mirror itself later on. For all my gripes of the gameplay, I can’t complain too much though I could see why others would.

An Xbox One review copy of The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series was provided by Skybound Games for this review.

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The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series

$49.99 USD

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Same simple gameplay
• Still a grimy and beautiful art style
• Still a great dramatic story.

Cons

• Lack of controller sensitivity options.