The Walking Dead (Xbox 360, 2012)

I started reading the Walking Dead comic when I was in college, and the series was about 25 issues in.  I was immediately drawn by the creator's focus on what would happen to ordinary people, forced to spend every ounce of their energy on day-to-day survival.  The zombies almost seem like an afterthought at times - it becomes pretty clear early on that people have to worry far more about each other than about the undead.  Six or seven years later, I'm now 107 issues in, and though the characters are much stronger, and their situation is somewhat more stable, things are still pretty much as grim as ever.  Life goes on - there is no light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm just as hooked as ever.

As a fan of the series, and of adventure games, you can guess that I was pretty excited about the adventure game, developed by Telltale, one of my favorite studios.  And it's fair to say that the game surpassed all expectations, earning game of the year accolades from across the industry press.  It certainly deserves all of its praise.  So with that in mind, let's talk about how this game could have been even better.

But first, some words about what Telltale was trying to do.  Many critics have expressed their surprise at the resurgence of the "classic" point-and-click* adventure game, with games like The Walking Dead.  The definition of the adventure game has always been more about what isn't there and than what is, so I don't have a problem with applying the label in this case.  But The Walking Dead is actually part of a very new trend, arguably starting with Quantic Dream's games, especially Heavy Rain.

I understand that Heavy Rain is not to many gamers' tastes.  Like Indigo Prophecy, it's a weird mix of psychological thriller and science fiction, with many plot elements that I would not tolerate in other media.  It also tries hard to maintain an intense mood all the time, and doesn't always succeed, usually because the mechanics are, well, ridiculous.  But when Clare and I played it, none of that mattered.  The game just worked for us, mostly because by some combination of design and chance I was never forced to restart a checkpoint, always getting through every situation on the skin of my teeth, my heart racing like crazy.

The real strength of this new type of adventure game, if we want to call it that, is pacing.  Every potentially sticky part of the genre, from puzzles to exploration, is streamlined to keep the sense of momentum, in the service of maximum suspense.  And I think it's the success of this approach that is going to radically change the genre, and possibly the whole games industry with it.  Both of these games were suspenseful as hell.

The tremendous pacing in The Walking Dead is under-emphasized.  The back-of-the-box selling point of The Walking Dead, and a focal point of many of the reviews I've read about, is choice.  As I've written before, choice is overrated.

What is crucial to all games of this type, in my opinion, is the illusion of choice.  This is actually what makes Heavy Rain a significant improvement over Indigo Prophecy.  The earlier game, with its many Simon Says segments, feels like playing a minigame in order to continue watching a movie.  In Heavy Rain, many of the mechanics are practically as silly, but the crucial difference is that the game encourages intent.  You always know exactly what your character is trying to do, and in fact you've instigated this action (even if it may be the only option available), and dammit you're going to twirl your analog stick like a fool until you get him or her to do it.  The Walking Dead also has similar moments of genius, where in a flash of insight (inherited from the adventure game model) you quickly find a solution to your problem, and you do what you can to carry it out.  Most importantly, you don't stand around like a fool, wondering if you missed out on any content.

There are many instances of both games where I'm not sure if there were alternative approaches to my immediate problems.  I'd like to think that there were, and the game is one big, open sandbox where I'm allowed to do anything I want, but I'm never going to test that hypothesis.  For me, those situations are in the past, and these are not the kind of games where I enjoy testing the limits.

Where The Walking Dead runs into issues, despite its greatness, are in the capital-C "Choices" that are featured so heavily.  Occasionally, the game asks you to make an important decision.  A few of these are interesting thought experiments - do you try to have morals in a world where survival is paramount?  (The unexpected results of one of these choices leads to one of the more far-fetched plot elements, but that's another issue entirely.)  Most of these choices are somewhat obvious, at least for the type of character that I feel the game is trying to promote.  And some of these are stupidly arbitrary - do I let person A or person B die?  Well, obviously I would try to save them both, but the game doesn't seem to accept that option.

Even if all of these choices were interesting, we are left with the same problem that has plagued choice-based games since Knights of the Old Republic.  Without really giving anything away, I'll say that there are two major paths for your character in The Walking Dead - be the guy who tries to save everyone at the expense of the whole group, or be willing to sacrifice everything to protect the one thing you care about.  Whether you choose one or the other is probably a matter of personality more than anything else.  However, when you allow either one, you prevent your writers and your voice actor (who's quite good, by the way) from strongly expressing the character's personality, and in the end, he's forced to become somewhat of a cipher.

Telltale tries to compensate for this by giving the main character a reason to hide his past.  In the end, I didn't really connect with Lee, because I could never quite figure out how I should be playing him.  (The main NPC, Clementine, is much better defined, and it's not hard to understand why she's so beloved by fans of the game.)  The fundamental problem is that personalities are complex things, and I have yet to play a game that allows anything other than the most basic dichotomy.  At least in this case the dichotomy is slightly more interesting than good versus evil.

That said, the game is amazing, and I'm not trying to keep you from playing it.  Extremely excited about Season 2!

*The phrase 'point-and-click' at one time distinguished mouse-driven adventure games from those with a text parser.  Now it appears to denote the whole genre itself, separating it from action-adventure games.  This despite the fact that many adventure games are not played with a mouse, or even a cursor.  How strange!