The other day, the winners of the 2016 Steam Awards were announced and despite being the oldest game in its category, Telltale’s The Walking Dead won one of them. The game won the “I’m Not Crying, There’s Something In My Eye” Award, beating out other worthy contenders such as Undertale and Life Is Strange.
For those unfamiliar with the game, it takes place in the world of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic series, but focuses on original characters created for the game. The player takes control of Lee Everett, a convicted murderer who was on his way to prison when the zombie apocalypse struck. Amidst the events of the game, Lee is given a chance at redemption when he is suddenly given responsibility of a young girl named Clementine. Every choice the player makes determines how other characters will treat Lee and, oftentimes, who gets to live and who has to die. As it takes place in the realm of The Walking Dead, I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that tragedy ensues and, for many players, tears were shed. The game went on to win the most Game of the Year awards in 2012.
Currently, the third season of the game, entitled The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, is underway, with the first two episodes available and three more on the way. This installment saw Telltale moving away from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, making it only available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, mobile devices and tablets. Though this means the game is playable on many more platforms than most games, many players who have their save files from the first two seasons of the game on their PlayStation 3s or Xbox 360s are upset that they won’t be able to continue on the same console. Telltale has tried to rectify this by creating their own Cloud, which would enable players to load save files from one console onto another. While this is a good idea anyway, it didn’t seem to help the matter all that much. For one thing, there are plenty of gamers, or just casual players, who only have one console, so the ability to switch between consoles probably isn’t that great for them. Also, there seem to have been issues with the Telltale Cloud. Many players claim they have been unable to load their save file onto another console, even after following Telltale’s instructions on how to do so.
The first two episodes of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier have been received generally positively regardless of any problems with the Cloud.