A videogame can't be emotionally-draining. This thing here is emotionally-draining. The Walking Dead isn't a videogame.
The Walking Dead game, made by Telltale Games, based on the comics of the same name, is a disturbing plunge into interactive storytelling and it rips up definitions. It will make you feel terrible. It will make you feel terrible things.
This is a videogame tagged under the draconian "adventure" genre, Telltale's signature, meaning you've probably got supplies to collect, venues to comb through, and a story to progress through, eschewing action in favor of situational puzzles. Let's just get this out of the way. This isn't a videogame. And it's not an adventure.
This is a computer-generated interactive drama. You're given a modicum of control only so you can feel crippled when that control is wrested from you in a moment you need it the most. In years past, a videogame requires a certain level of control be offered to the person. Control is given to bypass barriers, usually by avoiding or preventing death, and to spur continuation into content, be it in Tetris, Super Mario Bros., TNNS, or The Last Story. This is no game. With The Walking Dead, we finally have another argument to not call them videogames anymore.
There will be times in The Walking Dead where you're given control. You might be asked (without warning) to whack a zombie. You can give food to a little girl. You can choose to save Girl A or Guy B. But always, your avatar, Lee, soldiers on, guilt, and reminders of his decisions and dishonesties cluttering your mental inventory. Videogames are sometimes crafted with trickiness so your progress is delayed by challenges, and The Walking Dead has almost none of that.
It instead asks you, personally, can you continue on, knowing your decision or indecision got some other person (character) killed? Oftentimes, undeservedly so?
When and how you can control your avatar is almost the full extent of gameplay. At the same time, having no control is also gameplay. Being forced to do nothing, usually the opposite of what you want to do in a videogame, are the game's most effective moments. That's a new brand of helplessness.
It can drag you down into the pain of a 20 minute death-soliloquy. In fact, it can make you say that soliloquy to a character, or say nothing at all, if you don't have the guts. It can lull you into a false sense of security, making you feel like you're playing a videogame, something usually empowering, and then pull the rug out from under you, taking your friends, your most valued commodity, and forcing you to continue on without them. It can let you take control, and hurt you even more because there's only one way it can end, that much is clear.
It's not a game anymore. I was wondering how this production could be improved as I watched the closing credits. It was hard to critique it the way you normally would. More interesting action scenarios? Maybe bigger branching paths in the story? That's about all. Additional exploration would kill the pacing, as was the case a few times in episode 2.
Nevertheless, this is entertainment that smashes the videogame medium. As somebdoy that has been here since the beginning, it's particularly effecting because it disarms you in an environment where you traditionally go in with weapons-hot. Go, play it (it's on the iPad), and fear what happens next.
Did anybody else have a similar dread in their stomach "playing" this one?
-- Alex Crumb (originally published 1/30/13)
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