This Week In Retro: The Walking Dead (2012) (Patreon)

April 24, 2012: "A New Day" dawns for adventure games

by Diamond Feit

There are two contradictory points of view regarding human beings: Those who believe we have free will and make our own decisions, and those who believe our entire lives play out according to a predetermined pattern. Whether that second group thinks the "pattern" comes from our own biochemistry, the Lord, or extraterrestrials is immaterial. What matters is both groups cannot be right; either our choices matter, or they do not.

For video game fans, choice is paramount. "Linear'' has become a dirty word in the field of interactive entertainment, because everyone wants to take charge and immerse themselves in a virtual scenario after a long day of enduring real life. First-person shooters, third-person action games, RPGs, even battle royale contests emphasize the size and scope of their make-believe worlds. It's another reason why "roguelikes" are so in-fashion now, for if a video game never plays the same way twice, it is a de facto infinite space that can be explored forever. What is Minecraft other than a survival fantasy where the player overcomes the wilds of nature to rebuild the entire world as they see fit?

Sadly, in the world of computers, infinity does not exist and nothing is truly "random." Video games are programs and programs always have limitations. You may think the long block in Tetris or the elusive Metal Slime in Dragon Quest only appear according to the whims of fate, but in fact from the moment the player turns on the power, the game functions according to a specific set of rules. Deep in its code, the software knows exactly when and where every enemy, item, and secret will be placed. It's why I love watching tool-assisted speedruns of JRPGs: When carefully manipulating the game on a frame-by-frame basis, it becomes possible to walk through every dungeon and skip all chance encounters.

Hence the great video game paradox, a medium unique for its interactive nature but one that remains rigidly confined by arbitrary limitations. Link is free to explore Hyrule to his heart’s content in the original Legend of Zelda but cannot collect more than 255 rupees due to memory constraints. Doomguy can run rings around the forces of Hell at inhuman speeds, but cannot scale a waist-high wall. Jill Valentine can obliterate zombies with a rocket launcher in Resident Evil, but nothing in her arsenal can crack open a wooden door.

Video games may never be capable of fully satisfying players' every whim and fancy, but that hasn’t stopped developers and publishers from promising us that in their latest creation, our “choices matter.” Even though every game ever made has revolved around making decisions (right or left? jump or duck? Xbox or PlayStation?), we are forever told that this time, the narrative will be entirely player-driven.

Ten years ago this week, Telltale Games used just such a hook to revamp the point-and-click adventure and create the most talked about game of 2012: The Walking Dead.

In Telltale's The Walking Dead, players control a man named Lee who begins the game in the back of a police car in handcuffs. There is no text crawl explaining Lee's backstory or crime, no internal monologue conveying his thoughts, and no cutscene showing his trial or sentence. Instead, the officer behind the wheel tries to talk to Lee and the player must decide how to respond (if at all). Their conversation, be it one-sided, terse, or friendly, informs the officer as well as the player about who Lee is and why he's going to prison.

Unlike other adventure games, The Walking Dead does not freeze time waiting for players to pick their talking points from a list of canned phrases. When another character speaks to Lee, players get two or three possible replies to pick from, plus an ellipsis should they wish to remain silent. An on-screen timer also appears; should the player make no choice before it expires, Lee says nothing. The Walking Dead advises players that "silence is a valid response" and in most situations, it is, though not answering certain questions will likely irritate the other party.

This casual interrogation sequence doubles as a tutorial for the game's control scheme, with the right analog stick (or mouse on PC) guiding Lee's point of view, allowing him to move the camera and focus on objects or people in his sight. Pressing a highlighted button prompts him to "look" at said target, talk to it, interact with it, or possibly use an item. In this case, with his hands in chains and nothing in his pockets, Lee can only look at the policeman via the rear-view mirror, glance at the radio as it reports growing disorder in Atlanta, or stare out the window at a number of cop cars and choppers hurrying towards the city.

Video games have often struggled with compelling conversations; it's far simpler to engage a player with action than it is two people sitting and chatting. The Walking Dead maintains tension throughout its dialogue scenes by including on-screen alerts regarding the player's decisions. Try to change the subject instead of answering a difficult question, and the game will report "He noticed that." Admit to an embarrassing (or incriminating) transgression, and the game will say "She will remember that." Side with or against someone in an argument, and the game will advise you that your choice impacted your relationship with them.

This system feeds directly into the aforementioned promise that in The Walking Dead, "choices matter." Depending on players' decisions, entire scenes may play out differently. Potential friends may become less cordial if Lee isn't honest. Lee may never meet certain characters, or a survivor might turn into a victim. The climax of the first episode has Lee and company escaping from a zombie encroachment, forcing players to choose between two people in peril. Whomever Lee aids, lives; the other one is devoured by the undead. The loss will weigh on Lee's conscience, and likely the player's as well, as the performances and writing give everyone in The Walking Dead a tremendous amount of personality. The folks Lee meets aren't tiny pixel portraits with flapping mouths, they're presented as real people (or at least as real as Lee).

Take a step back, however, and the choices made in The Walking Dead don't quite matter as much as advertised. That opening scene in the police car always leads to disaster no matter what Lee does or does not say. He will always wander into the same vacant house and meet young Clementine, and the two of them will always hitch a ride to Hershel Greene's farm. When that visit ends in tragedy, Lee will always make it back to his hometown of Macon and face the reality that what happened in Atlanta most certainly did not stay in Atlanta. That choice Lee makes at episode's end is a difficult one, but regardless of who lives and who dies, the survivors will hole up at a motel in the hopes that the military will come to their aid.

Tell a video game fan that "choices matter" and they'll imagine an ever-widening triangle of decisions, one where each individual move leads to a variety of outcomes. In their mind, the flowchart of actions will look like the results screen in Out Run: The race may begin in one place, but it can end at one of many finish lines. Yet for all its twists, the path taken in The Walking Dead never turns, forming a double helix that ultimately always narrows to a single, definite ending. Indeed, the journey taken in The Walking Dead is a microcosm of our lives: Whatever choices we make, however hard we work, whether we move to the other side of the planet or never leave our hometown, we all reach the same conclusion eventually.

In 2012, zombie fiction was nearing oversaturation levels but The Walking Dead still felt fresh. It helped that the game focuses squarely on Lee and his relationship with Clementine and the people they meet while on the move. There’s precious little action in The Walking Dead and the experience is all the better for it; just like today, players ten years ago looking to dismember zombies had their pick of more violent games to choose from. Instead, talking to people is the focus here, with the threat of violence looming over every decision the player makes.

Another point in Telltale's favor was The Walking Dead's episodic structure. April 24, 2012 was the digital launch date of "A New Day," a two-or-three hour experience that opens the story and ends on an uncertain moment as the power in Macon goes out. It would be two months before episode two would arrive, with episode three coming another two months after that. These periodic piecemeal releases, which could easily be cleared in a single sitting, kept the public conversation surrounding The Walking Dead going for the rest of the year. Each new episode meant another round of chatter on social media, with each cliffhanger leaving players hungry for the next reveal. Once the complete game was available, Telltale even gave away the first episode for free on multiple platforms to entice new players to see what all the hype was about.

In case my perpetual fondness for Resident Evil wasn't a dead giveaway, I'm a fan of zombie fiction. I had picked up an omnibus of The Walking Dead comic in 2009 and tore through it, finding it equal parts compelling and devastating all the while. I didn't know Telltale Games from Tale of Tales in 2012, but with the allure of zombies, episodic releases, and that "choices matter" pledge, I was an easy mark for The Walking Dead and it did not disappoint.

Revisiting The Walking Dead in 2022, however, I found the game even more powerful today than I did before. A decade of separation from the hype cycle and being well aware of how Lee's journey ends did not diminish the story beats or painful decisions in the slightest. There's also the fact that being 27 months into a global pandemic makes The Walking Dead a lot more relatable; I'm not worried about being eaten alive by the coronavirus, but we've all seen firsthand that when people's routines are upended by disease and death, it affects us in ways we never expect.

Sure, the adventure game seams of The Walking Dead are all the more visible now, but like a good magic trick, it doesn't matter how the illusion works so long as you're willing to believe it does. I went through "A New Day" twice this week, once sincerely, and once while trying to make Lee the worst person possible. My choices didn't "matter" in the grand scheme of things, since Lee doesn't transform into a psychopath or anything, but the ability to shape the sequence of events as a player still feels satisfying.

I never finished The Walking Dead comic, and the show was sufficiently different from the source material that I lost interest well before the game arrived. I enjoyed Telltale's first two seasons of zombies, but I fell behind on season three and the company's abrupt bankruptcy soured me on buying and playing the final season. However, what Telltale accomplished a decade ago with The Walking Dead was, despite receiving several Game of the Year awards, underappreciated. Pairing a decaying game genre with an indie comic and the well-worn topic of zombies should never have worked, not even a little bit, yet Lee's plight became all we could think about for half a year.

Ten years later, adventure games and visual novels are flourishing, with horror remaining a popular topic. Zombies haven't gone anywhere, with each streaming service seemingly producing a new series or film about surviving an undead apocalypse every week. A version of Telltale Games even rose from the grave and has announced new story-driven games like the ones that made them famous, though at present, the jury's still out on that pledge.

Meanwhile, if the recent past has taught me anything, it's that our choices in life matter more than we could have imagined. It's not about trying to change the ending (because that's impossible), it's about pursuing twists and living each day on our own terms. There's little chance that I'll wake up tomorrow and be independently wealthy, a world-famous artist, or a flesh-eating zombie, but between then and now I get to make a million snap decisions that will ripple outwards beyond my sight. Some decisions are hard, some won't turn out the way I'd like, and some matters remain light-years beyond my reach, but that doesn't take away the power I do have to shape the sequence of my life right now.

You have that power too. I promise.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.