It's been almost exactly 3 years since the first episode of The Walking Dead: Season 2, and ever since, fans have wanted more. So Telltale Games answered that call with The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. Introducing new characters and bringing back old ones, A New Frontier serves more as an expanded narrative rather than a direct continuation of season 2. So is the first episode of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier any indication that this season has been well worth the wait?

Ties That Bind - Part 1 (episode one) begins with a surprisingly well executed prologue that introduces new characters just as the zombie outbreak has started. Shortly after, we jump forward several years after the initial outbreak with our new group. A simple task goes horribly wrong and the adventure begins. If you've played the previous seasons, there's nothing wildly different here. Since this is only the first episode, I'm not sure how much I can say before it becomes a spoiler so I'll leave it at, "It's your standard Walking Dead story."

There's been a shift in focus on this new season of The Walking Dead. We no longer get to play as Clementine. In fact, she's actually become a secondary character. This may be a disappointment or a breath of fresh air depending on how you look at it. I'd be indifferent on the matter if the new characters were even half as likable as the cast from the first two seasons. Sadly, this isn't the case.

After the aforementioned introduction, our new group is revealed: Javier, Kate, Gabe, Mariana, and eventually Clementine. Javier is so bland that it almost hurts, Kate only cares about herself. Gabe is a drama queen, and Mariana is the new innocent little girl we're supposed to care about. Clementine, on the other hand, is still a joy to be around. The natural progression of Clementine over the course of these three seasons felt natural and it's nice to see her finally adapt and accept the world she's forced to be in. While we do actually get to play as Clementine in very brief flashbacks, Javier is our new main playable character, and I can already tell that making it through each episode is going to be an absolute chore. It's common practice to have the playable character void of all personality so that the player can imprint themselves onto them, but considering Javier has a vivid backstory that the player experiences, he really should have had his own personality.

The natural response to those criticisms would be, "Well it's only the first episode. These characters might grow on you and become likable as we approach the end of the season." While that is true, it still hurts the overall narrative. In the first two seasons, the player knew who was likable and who wasn't in the very first episode. Those characters still would grow and become more or less likable as time went on. The problem with starting everybody off as unlikable just makes the player not care about anyone and have no desire to push on to the end, and that's where Clementine comes in. Perhaps it's just me, or maybe Telltale intended it this way, but Clementine is the only real reason I want to finish this season. She's just as, if not more, likable as she was in seasons one and two.

Seeing as how this is a modern point and click adventure, gameplay is the standard point and click fare. You walk around, hover your mouse cursor over an item or person, and click to interact. Quicktime events also make a return, but are a bit more in depth than they were in season 2. Although it still comes down to a variation of WASD and Q or E. If you are familiar with the combat in Telltale's Batman series, you'll see the similarities immediately.

Here's where the boring characters affect gameplay. Just like before, there are times where the action stops and you can walk around and talk to various characters that are in the area. The problem? Since the characters are so bland and uninspired, why would you want to talk to them? Giving them the time of day won't change your opinion about them. It just seems that the love and effort that went into the characters of the previous seasons is lost here. Now it seems like Telltale have adopted The Walking Dead show's formula of "little to nothing happening for the entire show then drop a crazy twist/cliffhanger at the very end so you'll have to tune into the next episode."

I know it may sound like I'm being overly harsh on The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, but overall, I actually did enjoy the first episode and look forward to the rest of the season. Perhaps the overly critical nature of this review is due to my love for The Walking Dead series, and Telltale games in general and how I don't want to see the series fizzle into mediocrity. Despite it all, I do recommend episode one of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier.

With Prescott overrun, the group, now consisting of Javi, Clementine, Eleanor, Kate, Conrad, and Gabe, have to travel to another settlement in hopes of finding a doctor for a wounded member. It's hard to explain, but this episode felt more like the previous seasons than the first episode did. Some characters do a complete 180 in personality to become likable, and others just keep getting worse. We also get the introduction of quite possibly the coolest character in the series since Kenny, Jesus (or Paul Monroe if you don't want to call him that).

There are strange changes that come out of nowhere. For instance, after an altercation that ends in murder, the character Tripp tells Javi and Clem to leave his town and never come back. Tripp is clearly angry and serious, but Javi and Clem do eventually come back and Tripp welcomes them with open arms. He even offers Javi an invitation to stay. From then on, Tripp becomes a good guy and reliable ally. Then his town gets overrun by the New Frontier. What is left of the group survive and escape. So clearly Tripp, the obviously capable leader, becomes the leader of the group, right? Wrong. He hands all reins of leadership onto Javi, a man he did not trust and possibly hated a couple of hours ago. While it is nice to see Tripp as a friend, this change did not make sense.

Some characters are growing, but not always in the right ways. Javi, for example, is becoming more likable, but only because you are tailoring him to your personality rather than him having his own. Lee and Clementine in seasons one and two had their own personalities, but exhibited some of your own through the choices you made. Javi, on the other hand, is essentially a blank slate to draw yourself onto. I have no doubts that he will be 100% likable at the end of the season, but only because he's 100% me. The opposite is happening for problem child Gabe. He's still whiny and complains about everything, but now he has a gun. It also seems that Gabe is going to be a potential love interest for Clementine. Clem clearly doesn't want to get attached to anyone, but do any of us? Honestly Clem, you can do much better.

Ties That Bind Part 2 also solidifies the problem with simplified dialogue choices. If you remember the "Glass Him" option in The Wolf Among Us, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The dialogue choice in the picture provided forced me to restart the episode twice because you don't know what each choice is going to make Javi say. "Tell him off" should be renamed "Destroy his entire marriage and family" and "Break down" should be changed to "Defend Kate and yourself, but in an incredibly insecure way." Thankfully this happened at the start of the episode so I only lost about 10 minutes of playtime having to restart. There have already been other players complaining about this one choice in particular, so hopefully we won't run into something similar again.

There was also a pretty serious issue with performance during one section of episode two. As you and your group escape from the now overrun Prescott, you come to a tunnel that has been blocked with cars. You have to get out and find a way to move the cars to press on. Sounds simple enough, but the area is a bit more open than usual. Stuttering is common in Telltale games, but this particular section was almost unplayable. Every 5 seconds or so, the game would stutter for a brief moment all the way to a complete stop and do this repeatedly until you finished moving the cars. A simple annoyance at first, but then walkers show up and you are forced to perform quick time events with the stuttering at full effect. I haven't ruled out that it may have just been my PC having issues with this part, but I've never had anything of this caliber occur with other Telltale games or even the first episode of the season.

All in all, Ties That Bind Part 2 was a much better return to form while also remaining fresh. For better or for worse, the cast of characters are becoming more human and more fleshed out. While I won't spoil this episode's crazy cliffhanger, it's definitely cheap, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me excited for episode three. After a bit of a rocky start, it seems A New Frontier is coming into its own and shaping into an enjoyable experience.

As I hope you can tell from that lengthy introduction, Life is Strange: Before the Storm centers around Chloe Price, as well as her unlikely friendship with Rachel Amber. All is not right in Chloe and Rachel's worlds, though. With Chloe still dealing with the death of her father and Rachel discovering a devastating secret about her family, the two must confide in each other and face their demons together. Immediately I found the premise to be much more enthralling than the original, but after completing Episode 1: Awake, I knew with absolute certainty that developer Deck Nine were the right choice to create this prequel.

Anyone that experienced the original is familiar with Chloe's rebellious personality, but Before the Storm allows the player to understand why Chloe has this attitude. This is mainly due to Chloe's friendship with Rachel. We see much more sensitive side of Chloe that is brought out by her feelings for Rachel. While the interactions between Chloe and Rachel feel genuine, the speed at which their friendship progresses seems unnaturally hasty. By the end of this episode, their friendship has only lasted for about a day, and they're already much closer with one another than I've ever been with my any of my friends. Surely Chloe and Rachel's friendship will have its ups and downs over the course of these next few episodes, but it would have been nice to see a more realistic path from strangers to best friends.

The scenic little town of Arcadia Bay returns in Before the Storm and is either paradise or perdition depending on whether or not you're a student at Blackwell Academy. The stylized graphics and modern point and click gameplay popularized by Telltale's The Walking Dead also make their return from the original Life is Strange. And while Before the Storm doesn't add anything new to this recent sub-genre of games, it never really had to. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Everything you've come to expect from this type of game is here: explore an environment, examine and interact with objects, then speak to a character or exit said environment to continue the story. It's understandable that some people have become fatigued by this style of gameplay, but they're missing out on an exceptional story with Before the Storm.

Player choice was a major narrative and gameplay mechanic in the original that makes a return in Before the Storm. Whether it's something seemingly minor or something blatantly obvious, the choices you make in Life is Strange: Before the Storm all have consequences. Of course, since this a prequel, Max Caulfield is not in the picture and there are no time altering powers for the player to utilize, but Chloe has a power of her own; her attitude. 'Backtalk' allows the player to turn Chloe into the rudest 16 year old imaginable to verbally force her way through specific encounters.

Backtalk is used as both a narrative and gameplay mechanic. In a narrative sense, Backtalk plays a large role in player choice and consequence. And in terms of gameplay, you can use Backtalk to easily bypass potentially longer sections of the episode. You may find that someone you were rude to in order to get through a section of the episode easier is someone you really shouldn't have been rude to later on. There's only a few moments in Episode 1 that allow you to use Backtalk, but it's clear that there will be repercussions in the following episodes for using it. The exclusion of time altering abilities elevates the feeling of needing to face reality and consequences to heights not seen in the original Life is Strange, and that's crucial for any "coming of age" story.

Perhaps it's just me, but I found a large amount of the dialogue in Before the Storm to be painfully cringeworthy. I like to think that I'm 'hip' and 'with it,' but I've never met another human being in my life that spoke even remotely similar to how characters in Before the Storm speak to one another, and I live in California; the birthplace of all popular slang words. To blame Deck Nine for this would be misguided. Lest we forget that the original Life is Strange developers, DONTNOD Entertainment, sewed these cringe seeds hella deep.

On top of well written characters, Deck Nine also did an incredible job with Before the Storm's soundtrack. Had they gone with only melancholic tunes to match the depressing tone of Chloe and Rachel's stories, it would completely negate their punk, rebellious personalities, and if they had gone completely with a punk rock soundtrack, it would take away from many of the somber moments found in just this one episode alone. Luckily Before the Storm has a perfect combination of chilling melodies and rocking tracks to properly convey the appropriate emotions for each scene.

Returning to Arcadia Bay with a 16 year old Chloe Price as our hero was a great idea, and if the quality of this first episode is any indication, Deck Nine were the perfect choice to take the reigns of the Life is Strange series. Working in tandem with a beautiful location and a properly utilized soundtrack, Life is Strange: Before the Storm is perfectly capable of eliciting the emotions applicable to any given situation. While the unnatural speed at which Chloe and Rachel's friendship progressed at was a tad bit off putting, I'm still very much excited to see how their relationship will play out, and how they both deal with the curveballs life threw at them. If you've played through the original Life is Strange, you know where both of these characters end up, but it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.