San Rafael, California developer Telltale Games has announced plans to release the next entry in their episodic series of games based on Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic books. Telltale’s Walking Dead game series currently consists of one season of five episodes, each of which is a separate and distinct game that continues on the storyline of the prior game, and the current, second season which currently consists of three episodes with the upcoming release being the fourth in the season.
The Walking Dead series of games follows Lee Everett, a former university professor turned convict, and a young girl named Clementine who he meets in the zombie-infested town of Macon, Georgia after the zombies have overwhelmed and destroyed most of organized society. While set in the same universe as the comic, the game series shares only minor story tie-ins with the comics and the television series based on them. Telltale’s primary development focus with The Walking Dead centers around story and character development, putting the typical tropes of the zombie genre such as wading through shambling hordes with assault rifles on the back burner. While the games do feature combat and survival elements, their signature feature is a plethora of branching story options, some of which create lasting impacts on the world such as choosing which of two characters lives that carry over between episodes.
The upcoming episode, known as Amid the Ruins, follows Clementine and her companions as they take refuge at a Civil War museum following the events of the prior episode in which the protagonists were taken hostage by Carver, the radical, militant leader of another group of zombie outbreak survivors. What direction the story will go from there is yet to be seen, although presumably it will focus on transitioning the plot from the end of the Carver story arc towards the fifth episode and season finale, No Going Back, which will be released later in 2014.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead series has earned a great deal of critical acclaim for its writing and television-esque episodic plot development. While no further episodes beyond No Going Back are known to be in development, Telltale’s rights to The Walking Dead property are a “multi-year, multi-platform, multi-title” license, leaving open the possibility of future seasons if the series continues to be successful.
The Walking Dead: Amid the Ruins is scheduled to release later in July 2014.