So here we are at long last with the last of Telltale's offerings. One appropriately titled The Walking Dead: The Final Season and promising to deliver on the story of Clementine, whom we have followed since the days she was a little girl under Lee's tutelage and now come into her own as young adult. Is this newfangled offering worth it, though?

It has been a few years since A New Frontier and our girl has diligently taken care of her little goofball AJ. Being a kid of five-six years means he is also a more fully realized character as opposed to a cutesy prop he used to be... although, that might be its own problem as I'll go into later on. Story catches up with Clementine and AJ as they stop their cool wheels to inspect a derelict train station house in hope for some supplies. This being The Walking Dead franchise things don't exactly pan out as intended leaving them displaced until they're seemingly rescued by kids from Ericson's Boarding School for Troubled Youth who have managed to stay hidden since the zombie outbreak began. Realizing this just might be her opportunity to a stable home for AJ, and owing a debt to students for saving them, Clementine decides they just might stay and contribute.

I'll refrain from divulging specific story beats, but seeing as this IS a Telltale zombie game you already know what tools it has to work with. One sidetrack I did like is how passage of time is acknowledged in more than just our two protagonists aging. It has been seven years since the first game, after all. While zombies are still a major problem in the world it's not like everyone stood by idly. For example, problems and conflicts are even more human-focused than they've been so far as we hear about survival groups engaging in all out war with both sides being spoken of as despicable in their methods. There are even weirder groups like the Whisperers who have their own ideas about the walkers and humanity's place in this new world. Titular walking dead are treated more like instant instant danger and drama rather than focal point of this particular story.

So we come to characters themselves and this [supposedly] being the very last game you all know why you're here.

The Final Season definitely aims to emulate the original game with its setup aka having this older, more experienced character step into a mentor role for a young newcomer. For the most part it works. For Clementine, at least. I was much less sold on AJ which could be due to how the game handles him. You could say it's somewhat believable because Clem herself knows being a kid doesn't mean you're helpless, and in fact leaning more to brutal pragmatic side just might be the desirable mindset in this new dead world, but AJ is simply too reasonable and entrusted with too much for a five or six year old. I had difficulty buying into it and characters questioning why he was given a loaded gun honestly made me wonder the same thing. Reason, of course, is Telltale never really said goodbye to your choices just being flavor because story is pretty set and game decides to pull a fast one on you at the very end. Had it not been a happy outcome I would probably be ranting about it because they piss all over your final decision totally invalidating it in the process. This ties into the whole raising AJ goal that persists throughout the game. Developers are rarely comfortable just letting the goofball act based on his learned lessons and Clem aka player still tells him what to do. In rare instances you don't character operates based on his own leaps of logic that never left me satisfied with the outcomes. For god's sake, Episode 1 ends in a disaster because there is no way to teach AJ the “correct” lesson and there's a fixed outcome that has to happen. Bringing a character I had a hard time remembering as the main antagonist felt like a C-list pull game could've done without.

Ironically enough I think this may be the first Telltale game where technical changes are notable in more than just skin deep appearance. Visuals have definitely come leaps and bounds from the first game, and built upon the last one's foundations, but I think a single major change may have kickstarted attention to detail work – The Walking Dead embraced over-the-shoulder camera perspective. Because nothing good lasts forever real issue now is how samey the game looks. West Virginia as portrayed here looks very brown and dull green, with swamps and rundown buildings all blending together. Odd textures here and there notwithstanding I find this to largely be an issue with the art direction.

While we're on the subject I'd also like to point out The Final Season also plays somewhat more loosely. Gone are the days when every single interaction was presented as elaborate QTE sequence. Oh, those are still around aplenty, but there are more sections where Clementine can actually move around “combat zones” and engage enemies on her own with simple one-two attack or take aim for ranged attacks when scenarios call for it. It's actually integrated into gameplay proper now, albeit in very rudimentary fashion with hotspot prompts. This sadly came at the expense of nonexistent puzzles as game will not only automatically use whatever you need to, but will also turn the camera to WHERE it is if you don't have it. Idea of character inventory is just window dressing here and collectibles you can adorn your room with are more tangible as far as importance goes. Which reminds me – this is the first game in which Telltale implemented achievements for more than playing through the normally. How much this matters to you will vary based on how (in)tolerable you find unskippable cutscenes for repeat plays.

Final Thoughts and Rating?

Seeing that belated conclusion to something you like can be a coin toss, but The Walking Dead: The Final Season landed with decent scores if you ask me. There are hints of resurrected Telltale finally making technical advances some have clamored for a long time now yet familiar characters reaching their deserved endings is the main draw here. If you've played their games so far and enjoyed them this isn't really a difficult sell. At times incongruous logic and inability to translate layered morality into more than binary outcomes have always been Telltale's Achilles' heel. Both are present and accounted for. Overtly echoing the very first game, with addition of a weak antagonist, has also resulted in somewhat forgettable overall story. Very much like other offerings this final outcome is also fixed.