Interactive storytelling

I wish to talk about storytelling in games - a subject I started on last week - by using a specific case example, The Walking Dead. I'll try to avoid spoilers about the plot, but those who have not played The Walking Dead and wish to get the most of the most out of it (and haven't been spoiled by anyone else) might want to stop reading here. Done? Alright, let's get going.

According to Telltale Games, the company behind The Walking Dead, it's an "adventure horror game series". Telltale Games has made episodic license adventure games their thing, with Tales of the Monkey Island and the Sam and Max franchise being the biggest ones until TWD. Now, The Walking Dead is based on Robert Kirkman's original comic book story that really hit the charts with Frank Darabont's live action series. It's basically a story about a zombie apocalypse, but with a sort of a twist. It actually focuses on the stories of the people that have survived instead of the surviving itself (for these, check every other zombie game from Left 4 Dead to Resident Evil).

The Walking Dead is a blast from the past - an adventure game. Adventure games were really in in the 1990's and for a while afterwards, but they've all but died out in the last five to eight years. Telltale Games is all about reviving this (back in the day) loved genre, and they're doing a more or less good job. What The Walking Dead isn't is as huge and unforgiving as the old adventure games - it's more like an interactive story where your choices count - it actually all but says it itself. It also plays pretty much like this.

The Walking Dead isn't that player intensive to play: lot of the events that come and go in the game are timed, even discussions: you only have a limited time to pick a talk option, or to solve a situation. What it focuses on are the choices: they're not easy, not black and white and they really do matter. The other characters remember what you say, and it changes how they speak and react.

The Walking Dead has an interesting feature: at the end of each episode, it takes five moral choices from the chapter and tells you how everyone else chose. I find it curious, since it anchors the already moral options into a larger frame. What did others do?

To me, The Walking Dead doesn't seem so much like a game - it's more like an interactive story and a pshychological exercise than anything else. If you needed to choose between two bad situations, which would you pick? If you needed to save someone and didn't have time to save everyone, who would you save? Who would you side with in a fight? How will you justify your choices to yourself?

I really like The Walking Dead. It's not much as a game, but it's a really good way to have a look at your own morals. I suggest it to everybody: it's a game for that will make you cringe, laugh, be angry and cry. It's sad moments are actually sad, the good moments actually good. The characters are real: they feel human and you can understand their choices - the why and how of their doings. It's got Clementine, probably the only six-year-old that's felt like a person instead of a midget stick-on you'd want to kick back to the sea. Try it, you might like it.