Do you like games that tell stories that turn you into a crying wreck? Then boy howdy do I have good news for you. The entirety of Telltale’s The Walking Dead series of episodic games filled with heavy, often heartbreaking choices —including all four seasons, the 400 Days DLC, and even the Michonne spin-off—is available for a grand total of fifteen bucks on Steam from right now until September 17. Now you can experience one of modern gaming’s most emotional narratives for a bargain.
The Walking Dead franchise started in 2003 as a comic series created by Robert Kirkman( who is also the mind behind the amazing Invincible superhero comic). The series follows a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic America that’s been taken over by zombies. The comic quickly gained popularity thanks to its fascinating characters and portrayal of humanity searching to survive and claw back some semblance of normalcy at the end of the world, so much so that The Walking Dead found its way into other mediums. Most people are probably aware of the AMC television series, but Telltale’s game adaptation of Kirkman’s world is particularly spectacular in how it translates the central themes of the series into an original, playable story.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead began in 2012 with “A New Day”, the first of five episodes in what would end up being the series’ first season . As opposed to the comic, which begins in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, the game kicks off on the very first day of the infection spreading. You take control of Lee, a man convicted of murder who is on his way to prison when suddenly the cop car he’s in crashes into a zombie. That crash sends Lee’s car into a tree after which he needs to fight off zombies as he works his way through the suburbs as the world quickly turns to shit. Early on, Lee meets a young girl named Clementine, who was separated from her parents during the first day of the zombie apocalypse. Lee and Clementine form a father-daughter relationship that is the emotional heart of the entire series.
This being a story about survival in a zombie apocalypse, things aren’t always going to go to plan. The Walking Dead guides you through a series of events and asks you to make important choices and dialogue decisions at key points, each of which will change the details of the story, like who lives or dies or how willing to support Lee other characters are likely to be. What Telltale’s The Walking Dead does so well is make you feel responsible for Clementine’s well-being above all else, which makes every decision that much more complicated, as you weigh the consequences of your actions in hopes of making a better life for Clementine. Of course this also means anything that happens to threaten the relationship between Lee and Clementine feels all the more awful to you. For many players, Clementine is one of the first video game characters they truly cared for on a deep level.
Without going into spoilers, that connection Telltale fosters between the player and Clementine is used expertly to inflict maximum emotional damage onto the player in The Walking Dead’s most memorable moments. That tension between choices and consequences expertly shown from the series’ first episode continues through its four seasons until players are met with a satisfying conclusion to a story that still holds up as one of the most impactful in gaming. If you have never experienced it for yourself, Steam’s current deal is the perfect reason to remedy that.
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