Jake from Telltale Games took over the PlayStation.Blog to bring gamers up to speed on the Walking Dead game that will be released soon. He stated that the next game they release could not be any darker; a five part episodic series based on the Eisner award-winning comic book series The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman.
The first episode, The Walking Dead, ‘A New Day’ will be released via PSN on Tuesday, April 24. Each episode will cost $4.99 via the PlayStation Store. The entire series is available for pre-purchase for $19.99, a savings of $4.99 and will come with an exclusive PlayStation 3 premium theme.
The Walking Dead is a much darker experience than anything the studio has worked on in the past. It also differs greatly in game play from the studio’s previous titles. The decisions players make, through action and dialog choices, will have huge repercussions on how gamers experience the story of the game.
Perhaps you’ve read The Walking Dead comic books or have seen the TV show. The story of the game comes strictly from the comic series. The game story is part of the official canon of the comic books. This means that players will find out more about characters and locations from the comic books and get a better understanding about their lives at the outset of the zombie apocalypse. If you are a fan of Glenn, you will get to know his back story before the trip to Atlanta
The game is not going to be a simple retelling of the story of Deput Sheriff Rick Grimes. A new character, Lee Everett, exists in roughly the same world and about the same location at Rick in the comic book timeline. Telltale and Robert Kirkman decided to tell the story of a new character. “We felt that re-telling Rick’s story didn’t make much sense because most people will know what would come next. Beyond that, it wouldn’t make sense to create a new story for Rick because we’d be off into new territory, making stuff up that really has nothing to do with The Walking Dead. A new story, with a new lead character, means that we’re free to create new and exciting scenarios and that we can add to the backstory of characters and locations seen in the comics.”
Fans of Telltale games know they are not known for open-world shooters. Robert Kirkman said he chose to go with Telltale because they are known for adventure games were storytelling and sympathetic characters, which are the most important thing to Telltale. “Robert (and Telltale) wanted to use the videogame medium to focus on the characters and the emotions of The Walking Dead universe, allowing players to experience the horror and tension of the walker-infested world. It’s a much more personal experience than many other zombie-based games have offered.” Telltale did not make the game about taking down gigantic zombie hordes with massive firepower. They want to show the true horror of killing a walker. “The zombies in our game are not just fleshy targets for your high-powered weapon, and you might be forced to finish someone who was a friend or a relative before they turned. On top of that, resources in our world are limited and noise attracts the wrong kind of attention, so you’ll have to get up close and use hand tools and weapons. We want people who think they’re desensitized to zombie violence to find that, in truth, they’re not.”
The Walking Dead tailors the story according to the decisions the players make. The decisions or actions might have an effect in the episode you are playing or the entire season. Perhaps a question was answered a certain way and now a character became suspicious of your motives. Perhaps the player is forced to choose who to save when two characters are in mortal danger and only one can be saved from the zombie horde. Those types of decisions will stay with the player for the rest of the series; this means that two players could experience the game in very different ways.
In addition to the impact of choices for a tailored experience, players will have full control of Lee and be allowed to explore the gaming environment and make decisions about action sequences and survival-oriented puzzle arcs. The puzzles will implement a serious concept that is logical and help figure out how to survive the apocalypse.
Since Telltale will be releasing the games episodically, gamers can expect a summer-long story with a new episode being released every month.
(Via The PlayStation Blog)