The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is the third season of Telltale Games’ adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comic, and it brings two playable characters to a series that had only ever had one at a time. Clementine returns. So does the save file.
It is a good season. In this paper’s view, it is not a great one.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
Javier Garcia and Clementine Share the Controls
A New Frontier hands players two playable characters for the first time in the series. Clementine (voiced by Melissa Hutchison) returns from the first two seasons, where she was the player’s companion and then the protagonist. She shares top billing now with Javier “Javi” Garcia (voiced by Jeff Schine), a former professional baseball player living with his sister-in-law Kate (Shelley Shenoy), his nephew Gabe (Raymond Ochoa) and his niece Mariana (Vale de la Maza).
The setup is pure Telltale. Society has collapsed under the zombie apocalypse, and pockets of civilization have emerged from the chaos. Javi is trying to find the family taken from him. Clementine is a teenager surviving on her own while looking after Alvin Jr. Their fates bind together, and every choice the player makes is supposed to carry weight.
The Save File Carries Over
The most interesting mechanical fact about A New Frontier is not the second playable character. It is the save file. Choices recorded in the first two seasons and the additional episode “400 Days” carry over into this season. Players who switched platforms before A New Frontier are offered multiple options for bringing in previous saves.
That is an unusual amount of respect for continuity in a medium that usually throws it away. A character the player did not save in an earlier season will not appear in later scenes here. The game remembers, and it makes the remembering visible. Whether that remembering amounts to much is a fair question, and one the season does not fully answer.
The New Frontier and Its Council
The season’s antagonists are not monsters. They are administrators. The New Frontier is a larger group of survivors who have, in the game’s own framing, lost their way. It is led by Joan (Jayne Taini), head of diplomacy; Dr. Paul Lingard (Yuri Lowenthal), head of medicine; and Clinton “Clint” Barnes (Andrew Heyl), head of rations and food. David (Alex Hernandez), Javi’s older brother and Kate’s ex-husband, runs security for the group.
A council is harder to hate than a single villain, and harder to defeat. David’s presence in it makes the season’s family theme cut both ways. The New Frontier also includes David’s right-hand woman Ava (Ally Johnson). Javi’s group picks up Paul “Jesus” Monroe (Brandon Keener), the ambassador of the Hilltop community from Kirkman’s comic, plus survivors from the town of Prescott: leader Tripp (Troy Hall), doctor Eleanor (Kelly Crowder) and bartender Conrad (William Christopher Stephens).
Point-and-Click, Quick Time, Limited Time
The game plays like the previous seasons. It is a point-and-click adventure. Players examine scenery, collect and use objects, and start conversations through conversation trees. Replies offer multiple choices, including staying silent, with a limited amount of time to pick. Let the timer run out and the conversation continues as if the player said nothing.
Action scenes require quick time events to keep the player character or allies alive. Fail and the game restarts at the start of the scene. Some action scenes also demand a key decision inside a limited window — which of two characters to save from attacking walkers, for example. Those choices shape later episodes: a character the player does not save will not appear in later scenes.
The timer, in this paper’s reading, is the design in miniature. It turns indecision into a choice, which is honest about what these games are. It also means two playthroughs can differ on reflexes as much as on values.
Release Schedule and Platforms
| Episode | Release |
|---|---|
| Episodes 1 and 2 | December 2016 |
| Retail season pass disc edition | February 2017 |
| Episode 3 | March 2017 |
| Episode 4 | April 2017 |
| Episode 5 | May 2017 |
The season shipped across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch. It is single player and third person. Telltale developed it; Skybound Games published.
Key facts
– Score: 7.5/10
– Developer: Telltale Games
– Publisher: Skybound Games
– First two episodes: December 2016
– Final episode: May 2017
– Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch
– Playable characters: Javier Garcia, Clementine
– Modes: Single player
Two Protagonists, One of Them Better
Clementine is, to this paper, the series’ best character, and A New Frontier plays to that. Hutchison’s performance carries the season’s emotional continuity, and the character’s arc — a teenager raising a baby in a world that has already taken everything from her — is the strongest thread here.
Javi is thinner by comparison. He is a former baseball player with a family to rescue, and Schine plays him with a steady warmth, but the season gives him less to work with. The two-hander structure also divides the player’s attention, and the season ends up caring slightly less about both than it might have about one.
The setting does the season no favors either, in this reading. A New Frontier is set four years after the apocalypse began and roughly two years after Season Two, which catches the game’s timeline up to the comics. That synchronization is a neat trick, but it lands the game in territory the comic has already mapped.
What the Season Gets Right
The New Frontier as a faction is the season’s best idea, on this paper’s account. A group that has lost its way is a more interesting antagonist than a group that was never good, and the leadership structure spreads responsibility across diplomacy, medicine, rations and security. When the season asks whether the living can be trusted on this new frontier, it has built a structure that makes the question concrete.
Where it stumbles, in our view, is in the choices themselves. Telltale’s formula depends on the player believing a decision will matter, and A New Frontier is the season where that belief starts to feel like a habit. The save file carries over. The characters remember. But the branching is narrower than the interface suggests.
None of this makes A New Frontier a bad game. It is a confident, well-acted, competently built episodic adventure with a strong returning lead, a genuinely interesting faction and a continuity system that respects the player’s history. The problem is that it is the third time Telltale has told this story with these tools, and the seams are showing.
A New Frontier earns its place in the series. It just does not earn a place above it. The season is worth playing for Clementine, for the New Frontier’s council, and for the small, real pleasure of watching a save file from the first two seasons still shape what happens on screen. It is not worth playing if you are hoping Telltale will reinvent anything.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
