With the sudden closure of Telltale Games this past September, there were many doubts about the conclusion of the Final Season of the developer’s seminal adventure game series The Walking Dead. During the Kinda Funny Games Showcase, however, it was revealed that next episode of The Final Season will arrive on January 15, 2019, with many of the core developers returning to finish out the conclusion to Telltale Games’ seminal adventure game series.
In the trailer for Episode 3: Broken Toys, we saw Clementine looking after another survivor during the zombie apocalypse, with a voiceover from the first season’s protagonist Lee reflecting on her growth. Over the course of the four seasons, Clementine has grown from a vulnerable character that needed guidance, to one of the series’ most hardened survivors. The trailer closed out with the twitter hashtag, #StillNotBitten, referencing a line said by Clementine during trailer.
In the weeks after the closure of Telltale Games last September, Robert Kirkman–the creator of The Walking Dead– and his studio Skybound Entertainment announced at New York Comic Con 2018 that they were able to work out a deal to ensure that former developers could return to the same office to continue work on the closing season.
“We’ve successfully negotiated with Telltale Games for our company Skybound to come in and see Season 4 of the Telltale game to completion,” said Kirkman during NYCC 2018. “We can’t lose Andrew Lincoln and Clementine in the same year.”
Skybound Entertainment has brought on 40 of the original developers to ensure that the same creatives are involved in the finish of the season, which had already been written prior to the closure. In our review of Episode 2: Suffer the Children, Justin Clark gave the game an 8/10, praising the game’s story and events, while also lamenting on the game’s cliffhanger–which came close to never being resolved.
“We leave The Walking Dead on a Telltale firmly willing to make mechanical and tonal risks, nearly all of which pay off well in this episode, hinting towards a bright future we may never get to see. If this is the last time we see her, the fact that she, and this series, have become what they’ve become is maybe the closest thing to a Happily Ever After as can be expected from The Walking Dead.”
