izigame.me

A New Frontier isn't necessarily a bad game. Much like its title, it tried to be a wave of new change, dealing with new themes through a different protagonist. It just didn't. The New Frontier fell, and the change never came. So, the rot and decay swallowed the company eventually. Well, at least that's the poetic dramatic retelling of it. Both the game and the company.
Like most Telltale games, it starts strong with the first episode. The themes of second chance, found family and such were apparent from the very start. With David's propensity for violence and Tripp's initial appearance, I had thought it would be moral tale on the toxicity of traditional masculinity. Not that a story about that couldn't be good, it's just that far too many people mistake good themes for good plot. I was pleasantly surprised to find a more nuanced take on it where the front of masculinity had been more of a commentary on the refusal to change. David was a soldier, and it was an identity that he could never truly get away from. Much like he constantly chastises Javi to change and be there for the family, that had been another manifestation of his own self-aware failure to change, choosing instead to project onto his brother his own failures.
Now that what's good had been said. Here's what isn't: not much else could be commented on for the game from me. Themes were dropped. The exploration of the necessity of order and community was dropped when the antagonist is a strawman argument in the form a crazed dictator who did it just cause. Even if difficulties were hinted through the various backdrops of past crisis, the game still fails to directly show any substantial motive for Joan to act the way she did. And then you have the cast who never grows on you as much as it did the previous games. You spend far too little time in Prescott before it all happens. As Javi may say, they're just strangers who just met, leaving the events to feel a lot more weightless in comparison.
Then you have the awkward pacing of the game. For a lot of telltale games, the QTE and middle mini-game sections feel like a hassle to make sure you're still paying attention. In the first walking dead game, the games were a great way to allow for a meditative breathing room in between the tense scenes and action sequences. Here, it's here because.... There's also Clementine's flashbacks which seriously interrupt the story momentum. For one moment, you're in a tense scene in fear of the enemy spotting you. Then Clementine goes something like "Oh, I don't trust people. I know that all too well." The story cuts to a flashback. I love Clem, and I know people do too. I am positive that had the game been positioned to have a deuteragonist, the plot composition of the game would have been a lot better. As of now, it feels like Clem is being dragged in to avoid people from going "but where's clem" at the detriment of Javi's story.
Then you also have the large cast where most of whom feel undeveloped. Tripp (who is still a pretty cool guy mind you), Eleanor, Ava, Lindgard, Clint, Joan. All of them feel as though they had great narrative potential that really went nowhere. Character stances feel like they flip flop depending on what needs to be echoed to Javi for there to be a supposed dilemma when you have to make the binary choice.
It's not bad, but it's not good either. Play the first walking dead, Wolf among us, tales from borderland instead. And if not, we live in an age where we've moved beyond playable movie with QTEs in terms of interactive story telling. Spend the money on a better game with better story and gameplay.