Played on PS4

I think it’s important to briefly talk about the events that occurred surrounding this game, because it made the whole experience a little bittersweet. Plus, for some, it may affect whether or not you want to play the game, so I think it’s important to bring up. Just like previous Telltale games, The Walking Dead: The Final Season is an episodic game, with this particular game having four episodes total. This was an exciting prospect, because this was planned to be the final Walking Dead game for Telltale, wrapping up Clementine’s story. Many fans like myself were really excited for this. However, something winded up happening along the way. The week before the second episode was released, it was announced that Telltale was shutting down, and that all of its employees would be out of a job. This seemed to come out of nowhere, and it was a really unexpected and terrible thing to happen. My thoughts on the studio’s closure itself aren’t really relevant here, but I just want to bring it up because of what it meant for this game. With episodes 3 and 4 having not been finished, it was uncertain whether or not we’d ever see the end to Clementine’s story. Some of us weren’t even sure if it was worth having it finished, since we knew that the original people working on the game weren’t going to be the ones to do it. However, for better or worse, what ended up happening is that Robert Kirkman (the creator of The Walking Dead franchise) had his studio Skybound take over and finish the game so that fans could get the ending they were looking forward to. While I am very sad that the people that originally worked on the game found themselves out of a job halfway through, I am also happy to have the game finished in the end. I bring this up because some people might oppose the game on this principle alone, and so I want to let you make that judgment call for yourself. I wanted to address that, but from here on I’m just going to talk about the game itself.

As I’ve stated, this game is meant to wrap up Clementine’s story. After having Clementine play more of a side character in the third game of the series (A New Frontier), this game brings Clementine back to being our playable character, and so we get to see where her journey takes her next. In this season, we get to watch as she tries to take care of AJ, who you may remember as Christa’s baby from the first season. AJ is now a few years old, and so Clementine is at the point in her relationship with him where her focus is now on bringing him up right in the world that they’re living in. In a world where killing is necessary to survive, she tries to teach him the right morals and boundaries for knowing when to do this.

It’s a really touching story, and the real beauty of all of this is that we’ve now come full circle. In the first game, Lee was taking care of Clementine, and now Clementine has found herself in that parenting role for AJ. There are a lot of parallel here with the first game, and I think it was the right choice for the direction of this season. I don’t want to spoil the details of all of this for people that want to play the game, but I just want to say that I think that the game ends Clementine’s story in a really great and meaningful way. Like many others, I fell in love with Clementine back when the first game was released in 2012, and I’ve stayed invested in her story ever since. It was easy for many of us to look at Clementine as if she were our daughter, and so it made me so proud to see how far she’s come since the first game. I think that this series has seen some diminishing returns since the first game, as I haven’t heard nearly as many people talk about it since the first game, but for those of us that have stayed invested in the series, I think that The Final Season is really worth seeing through to the end. It was never going to be easy saying goodbye to Clementine, but it’s handled the best I could have hoped for. There are still some high and low points in the story to be sure, so I don’t want to act like it’s a complete masterpiece, but I’m definitely satisfied with what we got.

I’m not really going to explain the gameplay of The Walking Dead: The Final season though. Part of this is because I’m tired of explaining the “Telltale formula” in reviews, sure, but mostly it’s because it’s unnecessary. If you’ve played the previous Walking Dead games, then you know how this game plays, so I don’t need to explain it to you. If you haven’t played the previous games, then to be completely honest I don’t recommend this game for you anyway. I don’t think that you’ll get the most you can out of this game without the context of the previous games, so if you’re interested in this, then I 100% suggest going and playing the first game. For everyone else, this is your standard Telltale game. It has three types of gameplay: dialogue choices, quick-time events, and point-and-click exploration. The only really big noticeable change to me was that the camera is now over-the-shoulder and that the game will give you an objective during the exploration bits (although it’s not like this changes the gameplay), so while nothing has really changed it does feel more like a modern third-person adventure game.

I definitely think that The Walking Dead: The Final Season is the best that the series has ever looked. While I felt like A New Frontier had the most improvement in its art style, it’s still more refined here, so I think the graphics have some real beauty to them here. The music isn’t completely memorable, but it suits the game well, and at the very least the credits theme of “Waiting Around to Die” is a song I immediately fell in love with and listen to all the time.

By far, the biggest improvement The Walking Dead: The Final Season makes is its performance, though. I have always repeatedly criticized Telltale’s games for how they run, because there would always be some sort of freezing or lagging during their games. The picture would stop while the voices would keep going, and this was always a huge detriment to the experiences of their games. In fact, I very specifically remember the lag issue being the one thing that kept me from giving the first Walking Dead game a perfect score, and that broke my heart because of how much I loved that story. However, I’m happy to say that in The Walking Dead: The Final Season, I can’t recall one single instance where the game froze or lagged on me, and so I have to compliment the game for finally giving me a smooth experience.

This is definitely the shortest of the four Walking Dead games, so take that how you will. While the episodes are longer again (all of them pretty much clocking in at about 2-2.5 hours), there are only four episodes this time instead of the usual five, so in the end you’re looking at an experience that’s somewhere between 8-10 hours. However, unlike the previous games, there is incentive to play it further outside of just making different choices, so if you’re interested in that, it’s here. There are some collectibles here, and it’s also impossible to get all of the trophies in one playthrough, so if you’re a huge completionist then this will definitely extend your play time. Personally, I’ve never been too concerned about short lengths, and I just like to judge a game more on the quality of my time spent with it. For the story that The Final Season is telling, I feel like its length was perfect.

It was always going to be bittersweet reviewing this game since it was going to be Telltale’s final Walking Dead game, but now it’s even more bittersweet since it’s Telltale’s final game, period. I understand if some might be opposed to playing it because of the studio’s closure, but for me seeing it through was more of a celebration of the company’s work. I’ll miss their games, but I’m glad that I got to play as many of them as I did. The Walking Dead has been their best franchise for a while, and so I’m happy to see that it got the ending that it deserved, even if the company behind it didn’t. Outside of its extenuating circumstances, this game is an easy sell for me. Like I said, if you haven’t played any of the other games then I highly recommend playing the first game before this, at the very least. But if you’re like me and have been invested in Clementine’s story for the past seven years, then this is a great ending to her story. Definitely check it out if you’re interested in seeing it through.

4.5/5