The Walking Dead: Season Two
The Walking Dead: Season Two is a 2013 episodic graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games based on the comic book series of the same name. It is the sequel to The Walking Dead, with the episodes released between December 2013 and August 2014. A retail collector's disc edition was released after the conclusion of the season. The game employs the same narrative structure as the first season, where player choice in one episode will have a permanent impact on future story elements. The player choices recorded in save files from the first season and the additional episode 400 Days carry over into the second season. Clementine, who was the player's main companion during the first season, returns as the main protagonist of Season Two.
The Walking Dead: Season Two overall received generally positive reviews from critics; with particular praise going to the atmosphere, protagonist, and its sense of tension; however, its lack of hub areas, lack of impactful choices, and certain aspects of its storytelling received a mixed response. Many felt it was inferior to its predecessor. A third season, titled The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, was episodically released from December 2016 to May 2017.
Gameplay
Similar to the previous season, The Walking Dead: Season Two is a point-and-click adventure game. The player, in control of Clementine, can direct the character around the environment, examine and interact with various scenery elements and collect and use objects to advance the story. The player can also initiate conversations with non-player characters via conversation trees. Certain replies from other characters may offer the player multiple choices to select from, including the option to stay silent, with a limited amount of time to make the selection; if the player does not select an option, the conversation will continue as if they had stayed quiet. Such choices can affect how the other characters will later react to Clementine, which can influence later events in the story. Other scenes are more action-oriented, requiring the player to complete quick time events to prevent Clementine or her allies from getting killed. If the player fails at these events, the game will restart at the start of the scene. Such action scenes may also require the player to make a key decision within a limited time frame, such as which of two characters to save from attacking walkers.The player's choices and actions will impact story elements in later episodes; for example, a character that the player does not choose to save will not appear in later scenes. Season Two also incorporates the player's choices from the first season and the DLC 400 Days, via the saved game file from these games, to influence the story and events in these episodes.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
The Walking Dead: Season Two follows on the first game, and coincides with events of the comic, in which a zombie apocalypse has occurred, turning humans that are bitten or die into zombies, or "walkers"; the only way to stop this conversion is to damage the brain. The game is mostly set more than a year following its predecessor. While the game starts in Georgia, the setting moves to more northern locales as the survivors head towards Michigan, believing there is a large survivor camp there.The second season follows Clementine, a young girl who has been able to survive the walkers thanks to the help of Lee Everett. At the start of the apocalypse, Lee helps to protect Clementine and offers to help her find her parents who had gone to Savannah; they join several survivors in their journey. When Clementine is captured, a bitten Lee rescues her, but both realize her parents have become walkers. She is forced to choose between shooting him or leaving him to reanimate, before venturing off on her own.
The second season features several new characters, as well as others returning from the first season. Clementine initially accompanies Omid and Christa, a couple who are the last known survivors of Clementine's previous group. She then encounters a cabin that shelters several survivors: Luke, a survivalist who quickly befriends Clementine; Luke's friend Nick, and his uncle Pete, a hunter; doctor Carlos, who is protective over his teenage daughter Sarah ; and Alvin and his wife Rebecca, who are expecting a child. The cabin group has fled from William Carver, a charismatic yet dangerous dictator who rules a large survivor group in Howe's Hardware. They later encounter another group of survivors, consisting of Kenny, Clementine's friend who was believed to be killed by walkers; Sarita, Kenny's new girlfriend; and Kenny's friend, Walter and, Matthew. Both factions encounter Carver and his men, whose community includes Bonnie and other survivors that were previously introduced in the 400 Days add-on content from the first season; Jane, a lone wolf who had lost her sister to walkers; and Mike, a cranky yet humorous survivor. The latter part of the season introduces Arvo, a Russian teenager with a leg brace who speaks in broken English, later shown to be part of a larger group of other Russian survivors.
Plot
This is only a broad overview of the plot, and may differ based on the choices made during both this game and the preceding season and its add-on, 400 Days.After the events of the first game, Clementine regroups with Omid and Christa, but Omid is killed at a rest stop. Sixteen months later, Christa and 11-year-old Clementine are planning to travel to Wellington, Ohio but are separated when scavengers attack. After being saved from walkers, Clementine joins a new group consisting of Luke, Pete, his nephew Nick, Alvin, his pregnant wife Rebecca, Carlos, and his daughter Sarah.
After Pete is killed by walkers, Clementine encounters a man named William Carver, the possible father of Rebecca's child, who is hunting down the group. Forced to abandon their cabin, the survivors find a ski lodge occupied by Clementine's old acquaintance Kenny, his girlfriend Sarita, and their friend Walter. Walkers attack the lodge, during which Nick is potentially killed. They are saved by the arrival of an armed group commanded by Carver. Carver executes Walter and possibly Alvin too, depending on Clementine's actions. Regardless, Carver's group captures everyone except Luke.
Carver takes them to Howe's Hardware, a fortified mall that he tyrannically runs. Luke sneaks in Howe's and warns the others of an oncoming walker horde. The group, joined by two other survivors, Jane and Mike, and one of Carver's minions, Bonnie, devise a plan to escape by drawing the horde to the mall. During the chaos, Alvin is killed by one of Carver's men, while Kenny kneecaps and brutally kills Carver in revenge for an earlier injury that had cost Kenny his left eye. The group makes their way through the walker horde by covering themselves in walker guts, but Carlos and Sarita are killed.
Everyone gathers at the nearby ruins of a museum. Clementine and Jane set out to find Sarah, Luke, and Nick, who were separated amidst the horde. Clementine and Jane's search leads to a trailer park where Nick has reanimated and Luke and Sarah are trapped by walkers. With Sarah catatonic due to her father's death, Clementine can either coerce her to leave with them or abandon her to be devoured. As Rebecca goes into labor, the survivors retreat to the museum's observation deck, which collapses and causes Sarah to fall and get killed. Rebecca gives birth to a boy whom Kenny names Alvin Jr., "AJ". Jane leaves the group out of fear of getting attached to Clementine. As the group heads north, they are ambushed by Russian survivors. When Rebecca dies of exhaustion and blood loss and turns, either Clementine or Kenny kills her to protect AJ, which starts a gunfight.
Amidst the gunfight, Jane returns to save the others. Arvo, the sole Russian survivor, is left alive on the promise of supplies. He directs the group to a home across a frozen lake, but the ice breaks and Luke and potentially Bonnie fall through and drown. Kenny brutalizes Arvo, blaming him for Luke's death, which horrifies the others. They find a truck, planning to use it to leave the next morning. However, Clementine catches Arvo, Bonnie, and Mike attempting to escape from Kenny with the supplies, afraid of his increasing rage. Clementine is shot by Arvo and passes out. She awakens in the truck with Jane, Kenny, and AJ as they are heading north, the others having run off. The road is blocked amid a blinding blizzard and Kenny leaves to look for gas to siphon. Fed up with Kenny, Jane tries to convince Clementine to abandon him with her, but the two are separated by walkers. Clementine regroups with Kenny, but Jane then arrives without AJ, and it is implied she had to leave him behind. As an enraged Kenny fights and overpowers Jane, Clementine must decide whether to shoot Kenny to save Jane or allow Kenny to kill her.
If Clementine kills Kenny, she then learns that Jane hid AJ and faked his death to manipulate Clementine into believing Kenny was unstable. Thereafter, Clementine can either forgive Jane and return to Howe's with her or refuse and set off alone with AJ. If Clementine instead allows Kenny to kill Jane, she then has the option of either killing or abandoning Kenny and leaving with AJ or forgiving Kenny and staying with him. If they stay together, the two eventually find Wellington, but the community's overpopulation forces Clementine to decide whether to enter with AJ and leave Kenny or stay with him.
Episodes
The game is separated into five episodes, like the first season.Development
When Telltale Games acquired the right to make video games based on The Walking Dead comics, they signed a contract for a "multi-year, multi-platform, multi-title" license. This license went into effect after the success of the first season of The Walking Dead, when Telltale commissioned a second series of games based on the franchise. The first season was considered highly successful, helping to revitalize the adventure game genre, which had been in decline since the mid-1990s, with Telltale being recognized as one of the top development studios in 2012.During an interview on IGNs Up at Noon, writer Gary Whitta teased that more The Walking Dead from Telltale was coming sooner than later. Whitta continued to hint that something was in the works that would make the wait for Season Two "slightly less agonizing". This was revealed at E3 2013 to be an additional episode titled The Walking Dead: 400 Days, which would be released as downloadable content for the first season. It introduced five new characters, and decisions made in 400 Days would carry into Season Two.