Review — The Walking Dead: A New Frontier — Ties That Bind Part II

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier

We sit down and review The Walking Dead: A New Frontier — Ties That Bind Part II. This is the second episode of Telltale’s continuation on their version of The Walking Dead. Here’s our review on how they did

Thankfully there was no real down time between the first episode of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and the second. That is outside of the time required to download the content as Telltale Games did give us some back to back work here. Hopefully it is a taste of things to come with all of their IPs but for now we are here to focus on The Walking Dead. Part two of the starting story is here and we also took it for a whirl to keep the fun going and see if the overall season is still going to go strong or fall victim to some of the faults we found before. Here’s our review of the second episode of this new season.

Story

Fresh of the tragic ending of the first season, we find our Javi and Clem regrouping with the community and dealing with the aftermath of all of that. Even more shit happens and the crew need to set out to find a new home and some help to save some of the injured members in the party. Sadly, this means splitting the party at some point and also coming across another fan favorite from the comics and the TV show. All to see if they can get the help needed to save just one member of the team and possibly losing more than they started with.

Hated

This has to be a new one for any and all of the Telltale titles out there but this episode seemed to have some very disconnected dialog options to what was actually said by the characters. By that I mean the option that you see to choose from makes it seem like the character is going to say one thing but then goes down a completely different path. The first instance that comes to mind here is when Javi is given the option to defend Kate or stay out of an argument. I believe the option here is “Tell him off” but what actually plays out is Javi betraying Kate’s trust and causing more issues than just “Telling Someone Off.” I think this was the only time I ever had to reset an episode of The Walking Dead as that was not my intended goal. This wasn’t the only instance of it here either as this episode was plagued with these misconceptions from choices to what actually plays out.

My other major issue I had with this episode is more or less a double edge here as it was also something I enjoyed. That was the inclusion of another well-known character from The Walking Dead in way of Jesus. The issue I had with it, and you can also see this in the stats, as that a lot of the choices with him were all about trusting him. Fans of any of the other version of the franchise know he is a trustworthy character and 96% of people when I played opted to trust him in general. It seems like a weird thing to try and force a bit where we are not supposed to trust the character when he is already proven himself in the universe and we already know Telltale Games isn’t deviating from it. It just felt like padded gameplay to make us think we shouldn’t trust this character in my book.

Loved

Building right off of the Jesus issue from above, I do think that Telltale nailed the character extremely well in both dialog and actions here. Something that was hard to be impressed upon early in the comics with just the still frames and internal voice I gave the character. I think they did such a great job that it kind of built up the above issue I had as they truly brought the comic counterpart to life and even made him seem like and even cooler character after using a few tactics that I don’t remember seeing him use elsewhere but would totally be his style. Just further proof that they know what they are doing here and will be carrying the franchise on extremely well while other titles and attempts just fall flat.

Another great thing mixed in that has seemed to be missing in a lot of the past titles they’ve put out is some of the very subtle misdirection woven into the intro story here in The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. I’m not going to spoil it but the way that they have been telling the story and using the dialog so far totally builds for one of the shocking moments in the story here. It is even one of those things that seems so obvious after the reveal but given some great wording and events that take place Telltale really hits it home in a way that I’ve always loved about their titles. We are off to an amazing place and I hope this momentum keeps going and the same tactics or better ones are constantly employed. Then it will totally make up for not have Clem be at the head of this season of The Walking Dead. At least for me.

Overall

As it comes to the story here, which is what The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is really focusing on, it feels like it continues perfectly well and shows that the team has some great things planned and in store for us down the road. At least if they keep up with the same methods and tactics to tell the story. They do need to work on some of the wording for dialog options as I am sure that many will be reloading sections based on not getting the desired outcome but other than that it was a blast to play through and I can’t wait for the next episode to hit. I just hope it isn’t a long wait as the momentum of it all could get lost with a long break. None the less, you should totally be playing this season of The Walking Dead even though it isn’t all out just yet.

I give The Walking Dead: A New Frontier — Ties That Bind Part II 2 Missing Fingers on the Missing Finger scale.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier — Ties That Bind Part II was developed by Telltale Games. The Walking Dead: A New Frontier — Ties That Bind Part II was published by Telltale Games for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on December 20^th 2016. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.