Developed by Telltale Games
Published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Released for Xbox One (5/30/2017)
Also on Android/iOS/PC/PS4/Switch
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier (jeez what a long title!) is Telltale's follow-up to their successful Walking Dead games. It had been awhile since Telltale returned to the main storyline, as the previous release the Walking Dead: Michonne was an off-shoot and completely unrelated to the characters from the first 2 seasons. At the time of the game's release in February 2017, it had been 4 years since we followed the adventures of Clementine. Let's take a look at A New Frontier and see how it fares...
Like the previous two installments in the series, A New Frontier is composed of 5 episodes released individually. The first 2 episodes dropped on December 20, 2016. While it was uncommon for Telltale to release 2 episodes simultaneously, we'd have to wait all the way up until March 28, 2017 before the episode 3 would see a release. This was due to Telltale staff taking a holiday break and likely also because of work overload due to other projects being worked on simultaneously. Telltale was able to get things back on track and would release the following two episodes in a more timely manner. Episode 4 dropped on April 25, 2017 and the final episode on May 30, 2017.
It should go without saying that there will be some spoilers in the remainder of this review, but I'll do my best not to ruin everything if you decide to try it out for yourself. If you're coming into A New Frontier blind, be prepared for a bit of immediate disappointment as you discover that Clementine is not one of the central characters in the story. This time around we follow a young man named Javier (Javi for short), who is travelling with his brother and family. David (Javi's brother) is accompanied by his wife, Kate, and their two children Gabe and Mariana. This is the main crew and of course shortly into the story you'll encounter Clementine, who is out there surviving on her own. These are the characters you'll see the most throughout the game, but there is also a group of survivors that call themselves the New Frontier that play quite a role in the story (obviously since the game is named after them!).
Every so often, the story will fill in some of the gaps between this game and the previous two with flashbacks. There's stuff between Javier and his family while some of them try to explain how and where Clementine's been all this time. While I personally didn't care much for Javier (we'll get into that shortly), the Clementine bits were some of the more memorable and among the best in the game. Unfortunately, Clementine's appearances are occasional and I always found it a bit disappointing how many times she'd disappear from the group. The overall story is about what you'd expect from a Walking Dead title at this point, which mostly involves a crazy bunch of survivors trying to take out the righteous group. It's not terrible, but it definitely has a "been-there, done-that" type of feeling to it. It's also considerably shorter than the previous two entries, which means it spends less time establishing the characters and getting you to really care about them.
While A New Frontier is a decent entry into the Walking Dead games, in the story department it lacks the punch of the first two titles (especially the first one). It's great to have Clementine back in the mix, but it sucks that she's not one of the main characters and on top of that the group we spend most of the game following really aren't all that likable. Our main protagonist, Javier, is trying to cheat with his brother's wife which makes him feel scummy and hard to really care for. Honestly, this episode would've been for the better if they would have kept Clementine as the main character. Perhaps Clementine and the story of her acceptance and ejection from the New Frontier group would have made for a more riveting story. It definitely would have given the story in this game some more weight if they at least had a chapter showing Clementine's past with the New Frontier, but instead we are just treated to a few brief flashbacks.
Presentation-wise, A New Frontier is about the same as previous Telltale entries. The graphics have been cleaned up a bit and the game does feel like it runs a bit smoother than previous entries. Similar to other Telltale releases at the time, the interactivity has taken a step down from the earlier games, which means there are fewer instances where you get to actually walk around and explore. There are occasional action sequences that play out as quick-time events, where failure will usually end in death and a restart from a nearby checkpoint. Upon completing an episode, there were percentages to show you how many people made each decision. When I played this in 2019, the servers had shut down and this feature was no longer working, which is a bummer as I always enjoyed seeing what the majority of people chose to do in these games.
As far as your old saves go, there's an option to import a previous save which, in theory, would allow you to pick up your game regardless of what device or console you played the previous games on. This requires you to sign in to the Telltale servers, which likely went down when the company closed their doors. Forgive me, but I didn't feel like going through the hassle of setting up an account and trying it for the sake of this review. My saves carried over problem-free, but this is no surprise since I played all of these on the Xbox One. Initially there was a "story builder" page on the Telltale website that would allow you to setup which choices were made in the previous games. Once you'd made all of your decisions on the website they'd be uploaded into a cloud server and could then be imported into the game. Unfortunately, this is another feature that seems to have died after the Telltale shutdown.
If you've already invested the time into the previous installments of Telltale's Walking Dead games, then I'd say A New Frontier is worth a go. Just beware of the aforementioned issues and try to grab the game on sale or even better, play it while it's available on Game Pass. It's not really the follow-up that most of us wanted, but given the state of Telltale Games office around the time of its release it's cool that we got anything at all. Thankfully they didn't mess up the well-liked Clementine character, but at the same time they really didn't do a whole lot with her either. Here's to hoping that the fourth entry into the series does her character a bit more justice.
A New Frontier was slated to also release on the previous generation consoles, both for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but was cancelled shortly before release. With the game being cancelled so close to the release date, it's easy to assume the game was more than likely in a finished state or close to it. Perhaps it suffered from the same unoptimization issues as Batman on the Xbox 360 or maybe Telltale just felt it was time to move away from the previous generations. The Xbox 360 marketplace was a ghost town when it came to new releases by February 2017, so this is likely part of the reason.
Final Verdict: A decent entry into the Walking Dead series, A New Frontier brings back the welcome sight of Clementine. Unfortunately, she's only a side character and the rest of the cast aren't near as interesting or memorable. Still worth a play but I'd advise you to wait for a sale.
Purchase Links:
Buy Walking Dead: A New Frontier - Microsoft Store
Buy Walking Dead: The Definitive Series - Microsoft Store
Search Walking Dead: A New Frontier (Disc) - eBay
Related Links:
Telltale Games - Xbox Overview
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier - GameFAQs
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier - Wikipedia
A New Frontier Cancelled for PS3 & Xbox 360 - Hardcore Gamer
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