Review for The Walking Dead: The Final Season. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 14/08/2018
From the opening minutes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season, the feeling that pops into the player's mind is that Telltale Games has understood and made amends for the mistakes made in the making of A New Frontier and has aimed at a sober, albeit decisive, change of course.
The third videogame season dedicated to Clementine and the much-loved Walkers ended in a way far from insufficient, but some narrative choices limited those episodes to little more than a parenthesis, necessary to show the passage of time and the growth of the protagonist, but still lacking in content and determining characters as happened with Lee in the first season and Kenny in the second.
To reinforce the presentiment is the almost total absence of events related to A New Frontier within the Story Builder created by Telltale; The Walking Dead: The Final Season still has all the time necessary to do justice to the characters of the third season, although it is undeniable that, being precisely the final arc of the story (at least, the one linked to the events of Clementine), we must hope that the script points to new elements and figures to be developed, without remaining anchored to the more or less happy choices of the past.
The first episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season shows a less harsh protagonist than in the past, probably due to the reunion with little Alvin Jr., which brought humanity back to the surface; AJ is perhaps too mature and lucid for his age, but at least he manages to untie from the classic, abused screenplay trope of the defenseless and endangered child around which every single problem of the protagonists revolves.
After a brief summary of the story so far and a prologue in which the game controls are explained, Clementine and AJ meet a new group of supporting characters, very young boys and girls who grew up in an institution for problem children and remained there, hidden and isolated. from the rest of the world since the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, abandoned by adult teachers and tutors: it is an interesting vision in Walkers of Neverland, a small paradise, a bubble of freedom surrounded by hell and death, within whose solid walls Clementine breathes a sigh of relief and AJ can for the first time behave like the child he is.
However, the Bible teaches that there is no peace for the wicked and The Walking Dead: The Final Season does not seem to want to deny the narrative traditions of the Telltale series: both the school building and its inhabitants hide terrible secrets, which will come to the surface in the final stages of the pilot episode, in a crescendo of danger and tension abruptly suspended by a cliffhanger.
On PC, The Walking Dead: The Final Season offers a smooth experience and a remarkable glance, worthy swan song of the Telltale Tool graphics engine: both the models of the characters and the settings are extremely accurate and well animated, with minimal stutter during hidden uploads between scenes, which, however, does not affect the gaming experience as a whole.
Questionable, at least within this first episode, the choice of create real fights with zombies, therefore not linked to interactive videos by means of QTE, but to a basic combat system that offers the possibility to attack enemies, stun them or interact with the environment (if possible) to activate environmental traps. The idea of making the clashes more dynamic is certainly interesting and the short shooting sessions of the past seasons have (almost) always been welcome, but in the case of The Walking Dead: The Final Season the freedom that follows is only apparent.
Being a graphic adventure, the controls do not offer the right reactivity in the movement system, the camera is too close to guarantee an overview of the environment and a single player error leads the young Clementine to end up surrounded by two or more undead and inevitably killed, with no chance to defend herself. To this it should be added that, since it is not a cutscene with scripted events, a directing of shots is completely missing and the generous half of Walkers eliminations in this episode is reduced to an audio-video loop of the animation in which the protagonist stabs the creatures at the head, in an unwanted mention of the God of War R3 key kills, but without an ounce of the same epicness.
It cannot be ruled out that the cumbersome repetition of the battles of Episode 1 will not be present in the following ones, but it cannot be denied that chaining two or three consecutive Game Over just because it is not understood which zombie to attack before the others can be frustrating and breaking. the atmosphere.
Thankfully, the focal point of Telltale games is certainly not the gameplay and The Walking Dead: The Final Season gives a great initial impact, with graphics that are now iconic for the series, a soundtrack that always fits perfectly and characters written in a convincing and excellent way. dubbed: honorable mention to Ray Chase, known in recent times for his performance with Noctis Lucis Caelum from Final Fantasy XV and here grappling with Marlon, leader of this season's new “lost children”. The road is still long, but after a decidedly subdued third season, the end of Clementine and AJ's journey began in the best way.
► The Walking Dead: The Final Season is an Adventure-Point & Click game developed and published by Telltale Games for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 14/08/2018
