after two seasons of Telltale Games' brilliant interpretation of The Walking Dea

d, many players have figured out its real game: It's in guessing which choices r
eally do alter the story, and which ones are optional conversations or decisions
that still funnel into the narrative the game had in mind all along.
The first two episodes of The Walking Dead: Season Three
also known by the mouth
ful of a name The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier
hew to that
model. Players are given a new protagonist and can pour their rage into scenari
os where a measured response would still end badly. Clementine, the only permane
nce in The Walking Dead's fickle and constantly reversible world, returns and is
playable, but only in flashbacks. Most of the player's time will be spent with
Javier Garcia, a former professional baseball player accompanying his brother's
second wife and her distrustful stepchildren.
This review will follow the series as it develops, with updates as each chapter
arrives detailing the current state of the game.
CLEMENTINE'S RETROSPECTIVES ARE HARROWING
Walking Dead fans looking to jump back into Clementine's story with this new gam
e should temper their expectations. The player only takes control of her in flas
hback chapters that do not affect the overall arc of the story or any relationsh
ip with a character in it. Her retrospectives are nonetheless harrowing. A flash
back with Jane, the Season Two heroine who leads Clementine through a quavering
puberty into her steely young adulthood, was legitimately sorrowful, and emblema
tic of The Walking Dead's remorseless prosecution of its story, allowing only th
e perfunctory objection from the player.
In the present day, the story is told through Javier, alienated from his family
by his athletic celebrity and some vague, implied disgrace. The establishing seq
uence quickly connects Javier to the zombie apocalypse, and then puts him on the
run with Kate, his sister-in-law, and her two tweenage kids.
Although this covers a lot of ground expediently, it plops the user into a new s
tory without much context to shape Javier's character or help him respond to the
conflicts in the story. In Season One, the player was a convicted murderer; say
ing nothing or safeguarding his past was a legitimate role-playing option. Seaso
n Two involved Clementine and some understanding of her history from the first s
eason. Season Three strands us in the form of a new character with unknown relat
ionships, making the dialogue choices a seat-of-the-pants affair.
Ultimately, Javier and his cohort reach a station rich with resources, and of co
urse that is where the trouble begins. The first big choice presented to the use
r underlines Kate's status as the resented stepmother to her children. Inevitabl
y, the player crosses paths with Clementine, in a luminously acted reunion that
consolidates her as the central authority of this franchise, even if the player
doesn't control her.
The story proceeds rotely from there, through a shootout with other survivors an
d then a visit to another settlement and an encounter with the faction that figu
res to be Season Three's ultimate antagonist. There is an unavoidable complicati
on involving Clementine and a former associate of hers, which ends ... badly. Th
is story conflict introduces Eleanor, a camp doctor, to conspicuously move thing
s along. Both she and Tripp, the camp leader, are likable and honest enough, whi
ch makes the decision to side with either a question of which character appeals
more on a gut level.
Nonetheless, nothing ever lasts in The Walking Dead, and Javier and his friends
are soon on the move, separated from their loved ones. It's in this portion wher

e I realized that the most violent and emotional choice the game offers still de
livers the same story path as the most rational and measured decision. No matter
how I negotiated the conflict, a major death and a near-fatal wound pushed ever
yone toward Richmond, Virginia, and their arrival delivered a cliffhanger leadin
g into the third episode.
Two chapters in, Season Three of The Walking Dead feels almost like a reboot, ga
thering together all the concepts that gave the video game series its emotional
force in the first two years and slamming them into two episodes. There is spont
aneous violence and unexpected death, but no sense that the player truly could h
ave avoided either. There's an urgency to reach another place, and the false sen
se of stability it promises.
Since I switched platforms from the Xbox 360 for this new season, my playthrough
of the first two seasons was rebuilt with a kind of vague questionnaire of the
choices, such that I could remember the ones I made. This placed Clementine's st
ory into roughly the same form as it had existed for me previously.
Clementine, however, is not the main character. Not yet. This is Javier's show,
which is fine, but I found it impossible to connect with a woman who is not his
wife and children who are not his kids. It was hard to find any kind of emotiona
l navigation point for Javier as I role-played him. Then, as Clementine, it was
disappointing to know that any choice I made for her was little more than embroi
dery around her hard-edged backstory.
Don't get me wrong; it is wonderful to hear Clementine's voice and see the young
woman she has become. But at the end of Season Two there was someone with her w
ho is mentioned in these flashbacks but has yet to appear here. I very much fear
what happened to take him away. Without a doubt, it is what made Clementine gro
w up so quickly since we last saw her.