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- Telltale Games
- Telltale Games
- Telltale Games
- Telltale Games
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier Episode 1: Ties That Bind Part One
Released On: Dec 20, 2016
81
7.0
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 38 Critic Reviews
81
79% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
13% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 38 Critic Reviews
81
79% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
13% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
These two episodes start off strong, the new cast additions seem solid, and I'm excited to see where this entry takes Clementine.
Telltale has crafted another entertaining chapter in the always-growing Walking Dead story. The Ties That Bind Part I takes the series in a welcome new direction with the Garcia family while still staying true to the moral dilemmas and zombie-chomping action that made the first two seasons so compelling. The New Frontier is off to a great start, and its troubled cast's harrowing journey is just getting started.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 267 User Ratings
7.0
57% Positive
151 Ratings
151 Ratings
28% Mixed
76 Ratings
76 Ratings
15% Negative
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 267 User Ratings
7.0
57% Positive
151 Ratings
151 Ratings
28% Mixed
76 Ratings
76 Ratings
15% Negative
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
the best episode in the whole season it introduces us to new interesting charachters and clementine when she grew up
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PC
I don’t have a clear sense of where the season as a whole aims to go just yet, but “Ties That Bind Part I” is one of Telltale’s strongest openers in recent memory. Scenes feel carefully constructed in their camera direction and editing, and Telltale avoids the pitfalls of its most egregious past issues — only one environmental exploration sequence temporarily slows things down — but for the most part the episode moves along at an exceptional clip. But that’s not just thanks to Part I’s style. Smart characterization and writing for Javi and his family, plus the return of Clementine, add weight to a largely unfamiliar but already engaging new frontier that I can’t wait to continue to explore.
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PC
Quotation forthcoming.
A New Frontier is a good start for the new season of The Walking Dead: its plot is compelling and fascinating but the gameplay it's still the same of the Telltale's adventures.
The Walking Dead Season 3 makes two very strong starts. Splitting the first episode into a two-parter means fans are treated to a double-whammy of excellent storytelling and get to spend more time with these immediately engaging and relatable characters.
In short:
+Revamped graphics & animations
+Cool soundtrack as usual
+Finally choices have *some* actual consequences. Even ones from previous season.
+Clementine is a grown up badass
+/- Clementine is mostly not playable
+/- New characters, not as strong as the ones we knew
+/- Overall story is hit and miss
+/- Story involves a lot of flashbacks, which is a new method for the series. It has its ups and downs.
+/- Too much interactive movie, too little game
- Writing can be rather weak and inconsistent
- Underwhelming ending
So if I could I would give this game around 6.5, but went for 7. I have personally enjoyed it for the most part, even though there were many mediocre parts. I've tried to keep in mind that it's fairly hard to compete with Season 1, and indeed this one doesn't reach the same heights.
Luckily, although I've ran a lot into the opinion that this is the worst game of the series, I personally felt that this was a major improvement over Season 2.
For The New Frontier, seemed to me like they've tried to get back to basics, in a way, to the formula of season 1: Clementine is no longer a controllable character (although she's probably the most interesting one), and we've got a lot of 'family' stuff going on. Without spoiling too much, I could say that a lot of this story revolves around family and taking care of each other in a zombie-apocalypse era, and Clementine gets to some extent a new "Father figure", although now she's more of a teenage girl..
Anyway, this works OK for the most part, but the new characters can really be unlikable or uninteresting at times, although they all had their moments and I've ended up caring about them after all, in a way.
Whether they've tried to be more like season 1 or not, this game is definitely not perfect - but I'll actually go first over what I think this game did well and way better than season 2:
Graphics & animations had been revamped and I personally liked it. It all felt a bit more like a movie.
Soundtrack is good as ever.
Clementine is as cool as ever, and all grown up.
After season 2 had a rather meaningless choices & consequences, season 3 did some better job at giving us a feeling our choices actually control something.
No, it's not anything revolutionary, BUT things actually can go somewhat differently depending on your choices, and I think it's even worth more than one playthrough. The choices you made on Season 2 are mostly carried over by a series of flashbacks, which I guess was an easy way to not over-complicate stuff, but it was mostly ok and rather satisfying to watch things unfold. They do feel like they get in the way of the story at some points, though.
What went wrong, still?
As I've already hinted, the characters and writings aren't as strong as we were used to by TellTale standards.
The attempt to make a somewhat convulted scenes according to our choices sometimes turned out in an inconsistent writing, and characters could say things which are ridiculous and really out of context or simply wouldn't be said by a human being in such situation.
Additionally, The New Frontier took one step further into making this series purely an interactive movie and nothing else. I've personally liked to have SOME gameplay elements to still feel this is actually a game, but here I felt rather passive most of the time.
Last but not least, while the story had some strong moments here and there, unfortunately they didn't save it for the end. The last episode was mostly underwhelming, what was possibly the best thing about it was that there were actually plenty of possible scenarios according to your past choices. Also it was nice having a hopeful ending for a change, and not as dark as in previous two seasons. But besides that, it felt very meeh, mostly a big zombie fight with way too many qtes.
Still much better than season 2, though. But this had potential to be something more.
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PC
Season 1 and 2 were awesome, but this season 3 is not. Previously the story was focused on clem, now there is a second character you play as well, flashbacks to the past, the action sequences are extremely easy, choices seem irrelevant, and the game, for me, hardly triggers emotions. Time to move on.
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PC
TL;DR - Offensive to S1 and S2 players.
Rest in bloody peace: a series which once used to be great.
Short 60 minute episodes (and the awful story makes it even worse), Clementine is playable for 5 minutes per ep, false advertisting pre-release, this is Javier's story for whatever **** reason even though we never asked for this and just wanted a GOOD continuation of Clementine's story (but this is an ABYSMAL continuation - this shouldn't even be called S3), The story is awful, and Clem is just a side character shoe-horned in when she was pretty much the main character for the previous two seasons. This isn't Clem's story, this is Javier's story - so this shouldn't even have Clem in it if Telltale wants to tell Javier's story so badly because she's just shoe-horned in and a side character. All the false advertising pre-release doesn't help either. Her being in every bloody advertisement also doesn't help. We played as Clementine in Season 2 and shaped our Clementine, and now Clementine is a supporting character again plus her personality doesn't change at all depending on your choices last season. Easy choices and deaths don't affect you because there is not enough character development and the game just pushes you forwards without any chance to talk to characters like in Season 1 (and even S2). This review would be too long if I talked about every issue, but SOME of the main issues are up there. SOME of the main issues. S2 choices don't **** matter for ****
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PC
Summary When family is all you have left…how far will you go to protect it? After society was ripped apart by undead hands, pockets of civilization emerge from the chaos. But at what cost? Can the living be trusted on this new frontier? As Javier, a young man determined to find the family taken from him, you meet a young girl who has experienced...
Platforms:
- Xbox One
- PC
- PlayStation 4
Initial Release Date: Dec 20, 2016
Developer:
- Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Genres:
