After the shocking and sudden closure of the company in September, things were a little unclear as to what would happen to Telltale’s The Walking Dead finale season. The Skybound Games picked up the production by making use of the original Telltale team.
First Two Episodes among the best ones
The latest episode is among the best seasons of the series, however, there is something that doesn’t fit quite right. Since the series began back in 2012,
The Walking Dead: The Final Season’s first two episodes were among the best ones. In the episodes, Clementine is seen trying to protect AJ, the one whom she has been guarding since Season Two’s end.
Clem and AJ became a part of a war with the neighboring raiders when they stumbled upon a small community of children called the Ericson Academy for Troubled Youth. The series is full of budding romances, intimate character beats and revamped combat.
During the end of the last episode, several Ericson students were kidnapped by raiders who were led by survivor Lilly during a battle. The stakes go up in the third episode as they’ve ever felt in the series.
Broken Toys
In “Broken Toys”, the latest episode, there is a lot of ground to be covered, the issue is pacing and the result is inconsistent. Several character moments will be hit in this episode and the setting will also be questioned.
This will involve moving from one scene to another and not abruptly. Such scenes taken in isolation are great, but when they are connected together, there is a chance of stumbling.
The episode moves on to stealth mission planning from an interrogation sequence. It is followed by character beats and introspection at a pace giving almost no time to these moments to breathe.
With a sense of finality and a race towards the endgame, it’s not easy to say if that’s how it was supposed to be originally or it’s the result of the tumultuous development.
Pete Hawley, then CEO, has told the employees in September that they are planning to shut down the studio. Around two hundred employees lost jobs with only a few days of health benefits. A class-action lawsuit was also filed under the California labor laws. Skybound Games took the project under control and retained the Telltale veterans.
“Broken Toys” contains the most isolating and scariest set pieces of the series. Clementine will have to enter a barn full of zombies and don a mask of rotting flesh in order to befriend James.
On the other hand, James is making all efforts to make Clementine understand. James feels that the zombies still have a part of their former life hidden within them.
It’s meditative and frightening, questioning the nature of the dead in the franchise.
