Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Holy Shit, The Walking Dead Episode 2 Came Out!

The Walking Dead Episode 2 came out last Friday at around noon. I started playing it after I finished up the last of my weekly business, at around four or five. I finished at about two in the morning, heart pounding, mouth dry, a little drunk but mostly stone cold sober for the story it told.

For the uninitiated, The Walking Dead is a comic book started in 2003 by Robert Kirkman, previously known for his work on Battle Pope. It’s quite good, far better than it has any business being, honestly, mostly because of its unflinching portrayal of humanity and a bleak willingness to kill off characters regardless of how important they are to the story itself. That is to say, it tells a story about humanity looking at its own end and does so fearlessly, rarely turning away from the horrors that populate our world, horrors that enter our own sheltered lives when circumstances become particularly dire. It tells a story where shit happens, and we just have to keep going because if we stop, if we shut down, we die.

The Walking Dead has also been adapted as a TV show that had no fucking clue that the comic book was about any sort of universal humanity and instead thought it was about action setpieces that involved people in heavy make-up and a bunch of guns.

It has also been adapted as a video game, which gets exactly what makes the comics great: sometimes shit happens and you just have to deal with the consequences. You make decisions about who lives and dies in haste and that is really the crux of the challenge: the immutable permanence of the choices you make, not the challenge of overcoming a given hurdle, forms the body contiguous of the game. The first episode of the game guided you through a budding zombocalypse, forcing you to do unpleasant things to survive, occasionally asking you to make really tough choices, neither of which were wholly right or wrong. In the end you were in a sort of perilous safety, and a “on the next installment of” video promised that this safety would not last and that the central issues of The Walking Dead (specifically a lack of food) would rear their head in the next episode.

The first episode was the most Walking Dead thing I’d seen outside of the comics, and it had some truly awesome moments in it that made it tense and nerve wracking, despite a lack of fail states and puzzles that were less like puzzles and more like “click the right icon” bouts.

The second episode completely outstripped the first.

It’s fair to say that gameplay is sort of anemic in episode 2. There aren’t a lot of areas to explore, nor are there a lot of the urgent, challenging puzzles that usually populate adventure games. Instead there are plodding moments of uncertainty, where you’re forced to do really unpleasant things. The opening scene is basically a barrage of difficult choices which culminate in a brief action sequence, and even after going through the opening once I’m not sure there are any “right” choices to be made. I leave it feeling frustrated and a little bit hopeless, which seems to be exactly what Telltale is going for in this chapter. Because as you continue to play you’re going to be asked time and time again to do horrible shit. You’ll have to choose which wrong choice to make in front of the people you’re continuing to live with and then you’ll have to deal with the consequences.

The first episode centered around a parking lot puzzle which had players sort out just how to clear a motel complex of the undead. This was the overall tenor of the first game: carve out a safe haven and choose the allies you want with you in said safe haven. The second episode accounts for the strains that went into forging and defining those alliances and then forces those alliances into circumstances of humanity at its worst. It’s tough to discuss the episode as a whole without spoiling it (though I’m willing to bet most players will figure out the twist relatively quickly – I saw it coming the moment I set foot on the farm) but it’s important to note just how distinct the episode is from the first one. Episode 2 opens with you sinking your axe into a zombie’s head. Killing the undead is something you’re good at now. You’re practiced at using your axe and you have two functional legs. You’re not struggling to overcome babysitters anymore. But keeping your starving cadre of allies together? That’s another story. And the learning curve is steep, the conditions punishing.

By the end of the episode I wasn’t struck with a profound sense of awe for how the game rendered this environment and put me in the shoes of this character. I was horrified and revolted by the things I’d seen and done, and concerned for how these characters, who I was becoming attached to at breakneck speed, were going to fare in episode 3. The trailer for episode 3 had a considerably more upbeat air to it, but it didn’t really do much to alleviate the tension of the finale. Telltale’s embracing of the stakes of The Walking Dead’s world has made me deeply concerned for these new characters inhabiting it at every turn. I’ve gone from confidently believing that nothing will harm any of the vulnerable characters in the first episode to wondering who’s going to die next, and how the other characters are going to respond. Aside from Lee and Clementine, I’m not sure anyone’s really safe. And even there…

I found myself doing something while playing episode 2, something that never would’ve occurred to me during episode 1. I rewound my progress in the chapters occasionally to recast some of my decisions which, in retrospect, weren’t really in line with whom I wanted Lee to be. Sometimes it was to engage with content I’d missed which, in retrospect, became very apparent, sure. But more often it was in response to how a character acted following my actions. Clementine, specifically. I’m not sure that Telltale will let anything happen to her in the main story at this point – the parallel between Rick and Carl from the comics and Lee and Clementine in the game is quite strong. But I’m thinking more and more after this episode about how my actions actually impact Clem, and how regardless of the circumstances I’m teaching this young woman how to survive in this horrible new world. I’m feeling responsible for a virtual pre-teen girl. I’m seeing my actions through her eyes, not from my jaded twenty-something perspective, but from the perspective of a little girl who is totally reliant on me for her safety and well being. That’s really changing the way I see my actions in the game. Hell, it’s even changing the way I see myself as a gamer.

If you’re holding off on getting The Walking Dead games until the episodes are all laid out, I’d advise against it. Buzz generates fast for games like these, and spoilers will circulate and likely find their way into your eyes if you frequent the sites that report gaming news. And there’s something delicious in the tension of waiting for the next episode, that delightful, nervous waiting period that cereals evoke that makes playing each fresh episode as it emerges that much sweeter. It’s something any comic book nerd knows and loves, and it’s another element of the comics that The Walking Dead game manages wonderfully. If you love The Walking Dead, even if you don’t necessarily like adventure games, grab The Walking Dead game. It’s getting Walking Deadier in each iteration, and I mean that in the best possible way.