The Walking Dead (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Walking Dead, a 2012 episodic graphic adventure from Telltale Games, begins with a convicted criminal named Lee Everett in the back of a police car. On the first day of an outbreak, the car strikes a walker and crashes. Dave Fennoy voices Lee, who is about to become the guardian of a young girl named Clementine in Georgia.

  The game shares a universe with Robert Kirkman's comic book series of the same name. Yet it asks the player to talk, to choose and to endure rather than to fight.

  How does a game with so little action leave players shaken? What do its famous decisions actually change? And how did a studio known for episodic adventures based on established properties end up with a game that is now cited as one of the greatest ever made?

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• 2. Road To Savannah

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  Clementine first appears in a suburban home where Lee takes shelter, a girl whose parents had traveled to Savannah. Melissa Hutchison voices her. Shawn Greene rescues the pair and brings them to the farm of his father, Hershel. There they meet Kenny, his wife Katjaa and their son Duck. After walkers kill Shawn, Hershel forces the group to leave.

  Macon, Lee's hometown, is the next stop. A group led by Lilly has barricaded itself inside Lee's family pharmacy. Among its members is Glenn, who eventually leaves to look for friends in Atlanta.

  Three months later, the survivors are holed up in a motel and running low on supplies. They meet a group that includes Ben Paul, whose teacher dies and then rises as a walker without ever being bitten. The lesson is grim: everyone is already infected. The St. Johns, a family running a dairy farm, agree to trade food for gasoline. Then the group discovers that the family practices cannibalism. Two survivors die, including Lilly's father Larry, before the rest escape and leave the farm overrun.

  Bandits attack the motel and draw a horde of walkers, and Duck is bitten. Lilly, hostile after her father's death, murders a member of the group and leaves. The remaining survivors board a train for Savannah, hoping to find a boat that can carry them off the mainland. On the way, a homeless survivor named Chuck, voiced by Roger Jackson, tells Lee to teach Clementine to defend herself. Duck dies of his bite, and Katjaa takes her own life. Near Savannah, a couple named Omid and Christa join them. Then the walkie-talkie Clementine carries suddenly crackles, and a man claims to have her parents.

  In Savannah, the group shelters in an abandoned mansion and loses Chuck to walkers. Lee and Kenny learn that every boat nearby is gone or destroyed, and that the walled community of Crawford has scavenged most of the supplies. Vernon, who leads another group, helps Lee return to the mansion, where they find a motorboat in a shed. A raid on Crawford finds the community overrun by walkers, and the escape is costly. Vernon leaves, doubting that Lee can protect Clementine. Then Clementine goes missing, and in his rush to find her, Lee is bitten. Vernon's group has stolen the boat.

  Clementine reaches Lee by walkie-talkie from a downtown hotel, the same one where her parents had stayed. Lee's group crosses rooftops to avoid the streets. Kenny is seemingly lost after sacrificing himself to save another member. Lee reaches the hotel alone and confronts Clementine's captor, The Stranger, played by Anthony Lam, who owns the car the group ransacked earlier. After killing him, Lee and Clementine smear themselves with walker guts to move through the streets unnoticed.

  They come upon Clementine's zombified parents, and a weakening Lee helps her reach an abandoned store. There he urges her to escape the city and find Omid and Christa. He tells her to either shoot him or leave him to become a walker. In a post-credits scene, Clementine, having escaped, spots two figures in the distance, and they notice her too. Many details above shift depending on the player's decisions.

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• 3. How It Plays

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  An on-screen reticle is the player's main tool in The Walking Dead. It lets them examine characters and items, collect objects and use the environment to solve puzzles. The game is a point-and-click adventure seen from a third-person perspective, and talking to different characters is as much a way to progress as solving a puzzle. Kirkman said the game focuses on developing characters and story, with less of the action tropes found in zombie games such as Left 4 Dead.

  Timed conversation trees set the rhythm. In some of them, the player must pick a line within a limited time, or Lee stays quiet. That silence can change how other characters respond to him. Mass Effect and Fallout sort choices along a scale of good and evil. The choices here have ambiguous results, and they mainly shift how the non-player characters feel about Lee.

  A "Minimal" mode switches off the hints and the "choice notification" that signals changes in characters' attitudes toward Lee. Action sequences rely on quick time events, where on-screen prompts keep Lee or others alive. If the player dies, the game restarts from just before the sequence. Each episode contains several points where the player must pick between two options. Players can keep multiple saves and use a "rewind" feature to revisit earlier decisions and explore other outcomes.

  Each episode runs about two and a half hours, so these decisions come quickly.

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• 4. Choices That Barely Bend

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  Telltale was founded by former LucasArts employees, people who had worked on games where the player could not die. In The Walking Dead, the player can die if a decision is not made quickly enough. Choices can also cause the permanent deaths of non-player characters. The time pressure was meant to keep the pace up, and it led the studio to track player decisions globally. Telltale expanded its tracking tools to make that possible.

  The studio wanted choices that never ended the game, so that players would be less tempted to use the rewind feature. The choices were designed to feel significant, but they often had little effect on the larger story. Writer Gary Whitta said every choice was meant to be equally difficult. The writers kept the dialogue neutral to produce an even split among players.

  The early episodes showed how hard that was. In Episode 1, most players saved Carley rather than Doug when walkers attacked them both. In Episode 2, most opted to cut off the teacher's leg rather than leave him to the walkers. Telltale responded by adjusting dialogue in later episodes to remove any sense of a "right" choice.

  The comic series set limits as well. Shawn Greene is a walker in the comics, so the game ensures he is always bitten, even when players try to save him. The attempt does not change his fate. It does change how Kenny sees Lee.

  Telltale also designed around player bias. Larry, a harsh character introduced early, was expected to be disliked by most players. So the second episode includes a scene where his daughter Lilly tries to redeem him in the player's eyes. It worked, and 75% of players chose to try to save Larry when he suffers a heart attack.

  Earlier choices also echo forward. In Episode 4, Whitta drew on decisions about who killed Duck in Episode 3. He built a similar dilemma in which Kenny confronts the death of another boy. Players decide whether Lee or Kenny should kill him, or whether they should walk away, which hurts other characters' view of Lee. The first act of Episode 5 alone contained 32 possible variations based on past decisions.

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• 5. From Comic To Game

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  Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island were the episodic adventures that gave Telltale its early success. Sean Vanaman recalled that Carl Muckenhoupt, a Telltale developer, was building a text-based prototype with an "active world," where objects and characters acted independently of the player. Telltale considered using the idea for a Left 4 Dead spinoff, but talks with Valve never materialized. In February 2011, Telltale announced deals with Robert Kirkman and Warner Bros. for episodic series based on The Walking Dead and Fables. The Walking Dead series was set to start in the fourth quarter of 2011.

  Kirkman and his comic publisher, Skybound Entertainment, worked with the studio. Kirkman had enjoyed Telltale's Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People and liked its focus on storytelling and player engagement. The studio's proposal centered on decision-making and survival rather than action, which appealed to him. He oversaw story elements of the universe but stayed hands-off. Telltale's CEO, Dan Connors, said Kirkman's involvement helped shape the story and bring in new characters alongside established ones from the comics. Kirkman asked that Rick Grimes not appear, because of his long-term plans for the character. He was initially unimpressed by an early build. After seeing a near-final version, he said, "Holy shit guys, you did it".

  Telltale looked to other media for models. For in-game cinematics, the team referenced Heavy Rain and the Uncharted series, while the Mass Effect series shaped the choice mechanic. Game of Thrones and Mad Men guided the effort to build well-rounded characters in a short time. Connors believed traditional conversation systems lacked a "believable rhythm," which led to the timed input system.

  The team designed the story around its destination. The closing farewell between Lee and Clementine in the fifth episode was set as the ending the whole game would build toward. Clementine was considered critical to the writing. The team wanted her to be a "moral compass" without coming across as whiny or annoying for a child character. Lee, the game's Black protagonist, was designed so that his race shaped how society reacted to him without dictating the narrative. The Stranger scene in the hotel was planned early, to test the player's moral choices. Vanaman said each episode paired a writer with a game designer to keep plot and gameplay cohesive.

  Some ideas were cut. A scene in which the survivor group fires at zombies was dropped because it did not fit the sense of panic the team wanted.

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• 6. Glitches And Release

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  The Walking Dead's engine was optimized for PCs, consoles and mobile devices, to simplify porting. Even so, the team tailored the control scheme for each platform. It drew on its experience with the Back to the Future game to refine touchscreen controls.

  The save game format proved the biggest headache across all five episodes. It needed frequent updates and fixes, which sometimes invalidated existing saves. A fix on one platform would often resurface as a problem on another. Connors said the studio would handle save games more carefully in future series.

  Xbox Live Arcade on the Xbox 360 had long frustrated Telltale's release plans. As a small publisher, it had to work with larger publishers to book release slots months ahead. After the success of Back to the Future: The Game and Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale gained publisher status on Xbox Live. It also designed episodes 2-5 of The Walking Dead as downloadable episodes, which bypassed slot scheduling and allowed same-day release on PCs and consoles.

  The game was announced as a five-episode series with roughly monthly releases on Windows, OS X, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was originally slated for late 2011. Telltale delayed it to April 2012, timed to coincide with the end of the second season of The Walking Dead television show, so it could ride the show's growing popularity.

  On the 11th of December 2012, Telltale announced a physical disc release of the complete series for the same platforms. A Collector's Edition sold exclusively at GameStop in North America featured artwork by Charlie Adlard and The Walking Dead: Compendium One, which collected the first 48 issues of Kirkman's comic. After the retail release, some Xbox 360 users reported performance problems caused by storage limits. Telltale offered free digital download codes as compensation.

  An iOS version arrived in August 2012, and a PlayStation Vita port followed in March 2013. Telltale made the first episode free on the App Store, as it had done before. Connors explained that doing so "opens the funnel and gets it out to more people who can then convert into the full game".

  In November 2013, Telltale announced a Game of the Year Edition for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It bundled the five episodes, the 400 Days episode, the original score and a behind-the-scenes feature. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions followed in October 2014. A Nintendo Switch version arrived in August 2018, again including 400 Days. On the 27th of August 2014, a virtual pinball table made with Zen Studios appeared for Zen Pinball 2 and Pinball FX 2. It featured set pieces from all five episodes and animated models of Lee and Clementine.

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• 7. Praise And Numbers

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  A Metacritic score of 89/100, based on 14 critic reviews, marks the critical reception of The Walking Dead as "generally favorable." Reviewers praised the harsh emotional tone, the characters, the bond between Lee and Clementine, the story and the resemblance to the comic. Some criticized technical glitches. Oli Welsh of Eurogamer called it "a serious, solid, but clay-footed work." Greg Miller of IGN called it "something special" and described its story as "a tale no one should miss."

  The episodes were each well received. Episode 1, "A New Day," scored 84/100 on Metacritic for PlayStation 3, 79/100 for Xbox 360 and 82/100 for PC. Episode 2, "Starved for Help," won the GameSpy E3 2012 award for "Best Adventure Game." Miller gave Episode 3, "Long Road Ahead," a 9 out of 10. He called it "a disturbing, depressing and entertaining entry in a journey that's been nothing short of excellent so far." GameSpot gave it an 8.5. MTV praised its "wrenching, emotional decisions" set among "not-too-hard puzzles."

  Episode 4, "Around Every Corner," scored between 80 and 82 on Metacritic across the three platforms. Episode 5, "No Time Left," received critical acclaim, with Metacritic scores of 89 for PC, 89 for Xbox 360 and 88 for PlayStation 3.

  The Walking Dead was named Game of the Year by USA Today, Wired, GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, Destructoid, Digital Trends and Yahoo! Games. It appeared across many ceremonies, from the Spike Video Game Awards on the 7th of December 2012 to the Game Developers Choice Awards on the 27th of March 2013. Categories there included best narrative, best downloadable game and performances by Melissa Hutchison as Clementine and Dave Fennoy as Lee.

  Sales matched the reviews. The first episode topped the Xbox Live Arcade charts for two weeks starting on the 30th of April, and led PlayStation Network and Steam for a week. Within 20 days it sold one million copies, excluding iOS, making it Telltale's fastest-selling title. By the third episode, 3.8 million episodes had been sold to 1.2 million players.

  By January 2013, sales exceeded 8.5 million episodes and generated about $40 million in revenue. Connors said iOS accounted for 25% of sales, with strong growth in late 2012 driven by App Store discounts. By the release of 400 Days, over 17 million episodes had sold worldwide. The total reached 21 million by October 2013 and 28 million by July 2014.

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• 8. 400 Days And Beyond

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  Day 400 of the outbreak gives the downloadable episode 400 Days its name. It was revealed at the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo and released in July 2013. It introduced five new characters and carried decisions from the first season into Season Two. Players can approach its five stories in any order.

  Vince, a convicted murderer imprisoned for killing a man to protect his brother, is on a prison transport bus on Day 2. A violent standoff leaves the bus overrun, and he must free one prisoner and leave another to die. On Day 41, Wyatt and his friend Eddie are on the run after accidentally killing a friend of Nate. In heavy fog they hit one of the bus's prison guards, and Nate attacks.

  On Day 184, Russell, a teenager walking to find his grandmother, hitches a ride with Nate to a gas station and truck stop. An elderly man named Walt fires on them, and Nate sees a chance to rob Walt and his wife, Jean. Russell must decide whether to go along. On Day 220, Bonnie, a recovering drug addict, travels with Leland and his wife Dee, who suspects Bonnie of having Leland's affection. After Dee steals supplies, Bonnie accidentally kills her with a rebar in a cornfield. She must then choose between the truth and a lie.

  Shel and her younger sister Becca live at the same truck stop under a leader named Roman, who enforces strict control. Some members were once with Vernon, whom Lee met in Savannah. On Day 236, Shel casts the deciding vote on the fate of a captured scavenger named Roberto. On Day 259, Roman demands she execute Stephanie, a member caught stealing, and Shel must choose between complying and escaping with Becca.

  On Day 400, Tavia finds a billboard near the overrun truck stop. It shows photos of the survivors and a map to a supposed safe haven. She tracks them down and offers sanctuary. Bonnie accepts, while the others' answers depend on their past choices and on whether Tavia can convince them.

  Telltale's Season Two began in late 2013. Connors said the studio wanted to build on players' favorite elements while considering ties to the television show. A three-episode mini-series, The Walking Dead: Michonne, followed in 2016. The first episode of Season Three, A New Frontier, launched in December 2016, and The Final Season concluded in 2019.

  The game's lasting mark is on its genre. It has been credited with reviving the adventure game, which had declined in popularity since the 1990s. Its focus on narrative and choice is regarded as having "paved the way" for later titles such as Life Is Strange and The Quarry, both of which center on player choices and their effect on the story.

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