The Walking Dead: Season One Review

Telltale had been making point and click adventures for years and then worked out that the interesting thing was not the inventory, it was the clock. Conversations here run on timers, so you answer a frightened child or a hostile survivor with whatever you have in the moment rather than the optimal line you would have found with thirty seconds of thought, and that single constraint produces choices that feel like yours. Lee and Clementine carry the whole thing, and the relationship is written with a restraint the source material rarely manages.

Episode three's train and the final act are as good as interactive drama has got. The mechanics are thin by design and occasionally by neglect: puzzles are perfunctory, quick time events are a blunt substitute for tension, and the engine stutters at scene transitions on every platform. It also overstates the reach of your decisions, since the branches converge far more often than those constant notifications about who will remember what would have you believe. The emotional work is real regardless.