The Walking Dead: Season Two

Game Info

Similar to the previous season, The Walking Dead: Season Two is a point-and-click adventure game. The player, in control of Clementine, can direct the character around the environment, examine and interact with various scenery elements and collect and use objects to advance the story. The player can also initiate conversations with non-player characters via conversation trees. Certain replies from other characters may offer the player multiple choices to select from, including the option to stay silent, with a limited amount of time to make the selection; if the player does not select an option, the conversation will continue as if they had stayed quiet. Such choices can affect how the other characters will later react to Clementine which can influence later events in the story. Other scenes are more action-oriented, requiring the player to complete quick time events to avoid Clementine or her allies from getting killed. If the player fails these events, the game will restart at the start of such scenes. Such action scenes may also require the player to make a key decision within a limited time frame, such as which of two characters to save from attacking walkers.

Name

Companies

Telltale Games

Released

12/17/2013

Platforms

Android, Mac, Nintendo Switch, Ouya, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, iOS

Engines

Telltale Tool

Type

Point-and-click, Puzzle, Adventure

Social Networks

0

izigame

members favorited

Reviews

Monday, February 12, 2024 7:34:54 PM

9 Steam users votes up

Kumail

Steam user

the gap lee everett left in our hearts can’t ever be left fulfilled. however, following the story of clementine served as a great sequel for the original walking dead. the development of clementine from a eight year old scared girl to her adaptability towards the cruel world as a 11 year old while adopting lee’s teaching was quite a fascinating tapestry to unfold. 2013 and moving onwards is where telltale started leaning more towards quick time events and season two is a testament towards it. similarly to the wolf among us and batman’s telltale series, walking dead season two wasn’t short of quick time events to orchestrate action oriented sequences.
additionally, season two’s an all around shorter game with shorter episodes. the difference between the original and season two isn’t that of day and night however the difference is evident. a shorter game, shorter episodes by no means decrease the quality of the game as long as it’s executed correctly. season two by all means delivers on that aspect. episodes of season two take a different direction, they feel more binge worthy left with cliffhangers rather than the semi-solidified episodic endings of the first game. while both styles are great, this binge worthy episodic formula felt fresh for a change.
what made the original phenomenal was the characters that shaped the story, the exclusion of lee everett hits hard. while clementine’s a great character, newer characters were introduced which took a while to get attached to. along with clementine, kenny’s a key element in the tailoring of the game, the return of kenny felt great. kenny’s character development throughout the course of the adventure is also masterfully done.
a nitpick I personally carry for the game is the impact of the choices made throughout the story. when one of the highlights of the game is meant to be how the game’s tailored by how you play, my expectations are held high. in season two, the effectiveness and impact of my choices on the story felt less significant. I do agree that not all choices can be fuelled for an eventual outcome, I’ve had this nitpick for a lot of other telltale games but the issue felt most at concern here. here’s an example; during episode two, you get the choice of teaching sarah the usage of firearms or refuse teaching. sarah, a character around clementine’s age. neither option felt impactful at all. if you do end up teaching her, the game takes note of the fact that you taught sarah how to defend herself and leaves it at that. sarah never ends up using firearms to defend herself or provide herself useful in any situation. I personally saw this as an opportunity to explore a different outcomes in shootouts. there was definitely room here to explore. this doesn’t end at sarah, there were several other alleged tough choices which never ended up impacting the story where there was clearly a lot of potential to explore different possibilities. the only thing stopping me from mentioning these examples is avoiding spoilers.
in each episode, telltale has around 4-6 choices labelled as tough choices. circumstances where you’re only given 2 choices on a matter. the statistics of what player chose are then shown at the end of episodes. there’s a clear intention to sell this aspect of the game and yet there were several tough choices in this game where the choices had little to no impact on the story whatsoever. on certain occasions, the choices not impacting the story made sense to some extent to portray the cruelty of the harsh world of the walking dead. whether you choose to be nice towards someone or cruel towards someone and they end up stabbing you in the back regardless of either choice, this right here made sense to some extent as some people can’t afford to not be cruel in the cruel world of walking dead. while an impact-less choice made sense for one of the situations in season two, there were a lot of tough choices where not making them impactful felt lazy and areas of missed potential.
all in all, I strongly recommend the walking dead season two to players of the original and new players alike as it is very accessible world to immerse yourself into. it doesn’t surpass the original however it has the pedestal of a phenomenal sequel.