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Telltale Games has recently been hinting that "Around Every Corner", the fourth episode in the developer's critically beloved adaptation of Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead comic series, would be dropping "soon." Now we know when "soon" is, and yeah, it's real soon.

Like, tomorrow soon. PlayStation Network players will be able to download the latest episode--penned by Giant Bomb pal and confidant Gary Whitta--following tomorrow's PSN update. Xbox Live and PC players will get their hands on the episode Wednesday.

The only caveat to those dates involves European PlayStation 3 owners, who will not be getting the episode with tomorrow's update. According to Telltale, the episode is in submission with SCEE, and just awaiting a final go-ahead for release.

I realize there are several other key contenders I still need to play, but as of right now, the first season of The Walking Dead has been jockeying for position toward the top of my Game of the Year list. I'll have more to write on the season once it wraps up with episode five, but for those looking for more immediate dissection, be sure to check out Patrick's "Faces of Death" series with the minds behind the game, where they discuss the various choices the players find themselves wrestling with throughout the season. They're linked below for maximum convenience.

Faces of Death: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3

I’ll put most of this after the jump so that people who aren’t up to date don’t get spoilers in their afternoon tea. The Walking Dead: Episode Four sees the survivors entering “the worst kind” of place. Anyone following the series will know that all the places so far have been far from “the best kind” of places. The trailer below contains piles of zombies and malicious use of a walkie talkie.

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Congratulations. You’ve made it. You’ve survived. This far.

If you’re reading this blog, that means you’ve probably already played the first three installments of Telltale Games’ episodic video game adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s never-ending zombie epic The Walking Dead. And you’ve been put through an emotional meat grinder unparalleled in interactive storytelling. You’ve had to deal not just with the dead rising up, but with the living brought low as the scattered and desperate survivors of the zombie apocalypse have struggled to hold onto their humanity under impossible pressure. You’ve seen murder, cannibalism, fear, paranoia, insanity, betrayal, and even the tragic death of an innocent child. And all I can say to you after all that is, I’m sorry. Because it’s about to get worse. Much worse.

At the close of Episode 3, Lee Everett and his fellow survivors were just about to arrive by train in Savannah, where Kenny, distraught after the recent loss of his wife and son, has pinned all his hopes on finding a boat that can carry the group to safety. Clementine still holds out hope that she might find her parents there — driven in part by a sinister voice on her walkie-talkie who seems to be trying to lure her away from Lee. Meanwhile Ben is agonizing over the responsibility he feels for Duck and Katjaa’s deaths, and Lee is still figuring out what to make of the newest additions to the group – Christa, Omid, and the enigmatic boxcar hobo Chuck.

Episode 4 opens after the group arrives in Savannah – but this being The Walking Dead, Georgia’s First City might not be the salvation our survivors have been hoping for. In fact, it might just be the most horrifying place they’ve visited on their travels so far. For somewhere deep inside Savannah lurks a dark secret, the result of the unspeakable acts that some people have been willing to resort to in order to survive within a militarized enclave known as Crawford. But our group will have to confront the horror of that place up close if they are to have any hope of making it out of Savannah alive.

As the only writer outside of Telltale Games invited to contribute an episode to this incredible series, I’ve felt a great responsibility for this one to live up to the expectations of Walking Dead fans — particularly after the preceding three episodes have been so incredibly well received. But I think you’re going to like it. I was very fortunate that the overall narrative structure of this first season placed a lot of what I think are the most dramatically intense parts of the story in this chapter. It’s undoubtedly the biggest and most ambitious episode so far in terms of action, and the choices — well, if we’ve done our job right you’re going to hate us for some of the decisions this episode forces you to make. Episode 4 also introduces some brand new characters who should shake things up a bit, including one in particular that I’m very keen for you all to meet. Let’s just say that Lee’s group hasn’t encountered anyone quite like her before now.

While I think it’s a riveting chapter in its own right, Episode 4 is also designed to tee up the big season finale that follows. In that regard I think we’ve succeeded; the climactic events of Episode 4 should make the wait for Episode 5 even more agonizing. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer and screenshots which give a few other hints of what’s to come. Once you’ve had a chance to play the new episode, be sure to head to Telltale Games’ new The Walking Dead stats page on the official website to see how your choices stack up with everyone else’s. Then share your choices with friends and talk about it on the Telltale Games forums! And feel free to tweet me directly with your reactions to the episode – I’m @garywhitta, and I’ll be listening!

And remember. In the end, the dead always win.

Three episodes into its run and more than half way to the presumably bitter end, the first series of The Walking Dead from Telltale has touched a lot of people with its rotten old hands. Tears have been shed, shocks have been administered and the weighty grimness is becoming unbearably tragic. I’ve tried to be light on specific spoilers but I do talk about how ‘orrible it all is, and also why I have my doubts about the walk and the talk.

The Walking Dead is telling a story we’ve all heard a thousand times before: man meets girl, girl saves man’s life, man temporarily adopts girl, monsters eat people, people become monsters (in more ways than one), man protects girl, man fears for girl, man fears. Telltale’s particular telling of this story has met with approval from many and I am tentatively among them, although as is often the case when I find myself in a crowd, I can feel the spine-tingling rush of Devil’s Advocacy on the tip of my tongue.

What’s so great about all this death and despair?

One of the reasons the zombie apocalypse is such a useful backdrop, and not just here, is because it allows for great dollops of melodrama and scattershot commentary on the human condition, while the extreme nature of events makes an audience more likely to forgive the broad strokes in which encounters and characters are painted. Telltale mostly avoid this as far as characterisation goes, though they don’t avoid the extremity of circumstance, and I think it’s the characters that people have responded so positively to.

I found the Grand Guignol of episode two a distraction from the relationship between Lee and Clementine, the accidental adoptive father of a young girl who is learning to live in a broken world. Episode three brings the focus back on the warmth and friction between the survivors, with some subtlety punctuating the series of extremely unfortunate and horrific events that are the through line of the narrative.

There is believable misery and terror in this third installment, and the zombies are both catalyst and accelerant to the fall of civilised society and the consequences of that collapse. The three or four hours of playtime include some of the most harrowing events I’ve ever seen in a game, but rather than the grotesque almost-absurdities of episode two, the horrors here hit closer to home: the dreadful struggle of caring for a terminally ill loved one; the hollowed out feeling that there’s nothing left to live for. It’s so often the horror of hope’s absence.

The characters continue to be strongly realised on the whole, and the pacing, plotting and personalities could well be Telltale’s best work to date, but the further into the series we move, the more I feel they’ve made an excellent interactive comic, a cartoon with occasional inputs. It all comes back to the opening words of each episode: “The story is tailored by how you play.” I don’t believe that’s true.

The warning sign was there during the game’s first crisis moment, when a gut-wrenchingly awful choice is actually false, with only one outcome possible no matter how Lee responds. At the time, I was willing to concede that it was unlikely that a choice would lead to an entirely different route and, sure enough, there are no locations or characters unique to one path or another, although some characters may endure longer lives as a result of Lee’s actions.

What I did hope for was an adjustment within the group, interpersonal modifications based upon words spoken or mistakes made. It happens, to an extent, and I don’t doubt that the final two episodes will play on memories of seemingly insignificant decisions in the early days, but episode three has a few moments where the loose threads, the straggling suggestions of freewill, are tied off and severed like a leg in a bear trap.

On the approach to the climax, everything has been set on the same track and although the story engaged me, I couldn’t help but notice the points where my choices seemed to be choked off. Interactions past were making me watch events differently and rather than engaging me, my apparent agency up until that point served as a barrier. This must be done, I found myself thinking shortly after one shock, in order to tidy up the future. The things I have done are being erased and I can’t help but take notice of that, even if the erasure itself is quite compelling.

It’s not just who is alive or dead, friend or foe, that episode three neatly organises, the diminishing of impact and responsibility runs even to the smaller emotional beats, which have been my favourite parts of the experience. Maybe it’s an inevitable outcome of being caught up in a major bout of infectious corpsey cannibalism, but given the absolute torrents of pungent sewage that are pouring on these characters, they really aren’t going to care if you taught a little girl to say shit instead of manure, or even if you gave them crackers without cheese that one time everyone was hungry. Lee’s personality, words and choices, and by extension the player’s, are lost in the sound and fury of everything that was good being consumed.

I’m enjoying the experience but I feel more like a spectator with every episode. There hasn’t been an interactive sequence to match the skull-puncturing journey across the motel carpark since episode one and I feel more and more railroaded. Maybe the whole game is an extremely clever metatext.

What does continue to impress is the game’s heart and humanity, so impressive amidst the hyperbleakness. The living dead fuel our anxieties about what the living are capable of and this kind of fiction often meanders into a misanthropic rage. That hasn’t happened in The Walking Dead yet, at least not in this iteration, and I’m very much looking forward to watching episode four. I don’t reckon it’ll be particularly tailored by how I’ve played, but I think it’ll be fairly well tailored anyhow.

As long as Lee and Clementine keep tugging at my heartstrings I’ll keep coming back. The difficulties and dilemmas of raising a child in a world with no innocence lead to some rather beautiful and fine moments.

That picture says more about The Walking Dead than any number of zombies or mutilations, and whatever reservations I might have, that’s a fine thing indeed.

My initial thought was to put Worth Reading on hold this Friday, since the crew (sans Alex, sadly) will be wandering around PAX in a stupor. Since Worth Reading has been on and off since the beginning of July, so I’ve put together this truncated version.

Mostly, I just want to talk to people about The Walking Dead’s third episode, which is a...doozy. Without getting into spoiler territory, this feels like the equivalent of a character development episode in a TV show, where it simultaneously feels like nothing happened and everything happened at once. I'm still reeling from some of it.

(Please don't discuss/spoil episode three in the comments.)

I don’t know if you’re reading this at PAX or not, but if you are, stop doing that, and make sure to come up and say hi. The reason we don’t schedule to see very much at PAX is two-fold. One, it feels weird to be cutting in line of the patient folks who paid to be part of this very cool event. Two, the more time we can spend chatting with the users who make this site possible, and this job so great, is vital.

Hope to see you there!

Hey, You Should Play This

• Where Am I? (Browser, Free) -- www.parsecproductions/games/whereami.html

I didn’t intend for Worth Reading to have yet another horror game as a highlight, but when the creator of Slender drops his latest work, you can bet your ass I’ll be the first one to listen. Granted, Where Am I? isn’t a fully fledged follow-up to Slender, but Mark Hadley participated in the more recent Ludum Dare, and came out with...this. I’d agree with the general set of critiques I’ve seen elsewhere. Primarily, Where Am I? takes way too long to execute on its one, pretty excellent scare, but there’s an argument to be made the anxiety and frustration over the prolonged feed greatly into its execution. Stick with it, and if you’re like me, every minute or so will result in moving further and further back from the screen, knowing the “unexpected” scare is coming, and trying to distance yourself from it.

And Maybe Read This, Too

• http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/08/22/valves-abrash-on-virtual-reality-wearable-computing/

When companies like Valve, Epic Games and id Software are trumpeting the merits of virtual reality, maybe it’s time to check your preconceived notions of the technology at the door. Touch controls used to be garbage, too, and we all know how that’s turned out, whatever you think of the games built on it. Michael Abrash, the same programmer who co-authored Quake with John Carmack, is heading up a series of R&D projects at Valve, including the idea of wearable computing. Abrash shows the right amount of skepticism about VR 2.0’s prospects mixed with enough excitement to give someone like me pause. I mean, when games like Hawken are announcing support for devices like the Oculus Rift, it’s hard to not get a liiiiiitle bit geeky about the whole thing. Hey, I’m listening. Show me more.

If You Click This, It Will Play

I Don’t Know About This Kickstarter Thing, But These Projects Seem Pretty Cool

• There are plenty of 8-bit games, but how many are using a Game Boy asthetic? Two Brothers is.
• I've mentioned Planetary Annihilation, but it hit its funding goal early, and the stretches sound great.

Oh, And This Other Stuff

• This lengthy interview with David Cage at Gamasutra is keeping me interested in Two Souls.
• Pendleton Ward's Tumblr blog is worth it for the endless gifs.
• The new style for Spy Party is pretty impressive, though I'm still partial to its current look.
• This doesn't have anything to do with games, but I'm fascinated by stories about Internet trolls.
• OnLive CEO Steve Perlman writes a personal letter to OnLive fans. Not much new info but still.
• The Soul Reaver series is one of my faves of all-time, and this NeoGAF thread of cut material is great.
• I'm always fascinated by games hacked to become social commentary.
• NFL Sunday Ticket's going to be cheaper on PS3, and I couldn't be happier. Please work on day one this time!
• If you've ever wanted to know how crane machines work, now you have the answer. Amazing.
• It may go a bit over your head, but Valve's ongoing economics blog remains fascinating.

[Warning: If you have not finished both episodes of The Walking Dead, you should read no further. Unlike yesterday's entry, however, there are no spoilers related to the comic book.]

• The Walking Dead's Faces of Death, Part 1

If you’re a PlayStation 3 owner, Telltale Games has already made The Walking Dead’s third episode, Long Road Ahead, live for you. Everyone is patiently waiting for the next episode today, unless you’re an iOS user, in which case the second episode (a great one, by the way) is just about ready.

Giant Bomb’s embarked on a five-part feature series with Telltale about The Walking Dead, talking through the biggest choices placed in front of players throughout each episode. While we’re explicitly focusing on choices that involve the death of a character influenced by the player and Lee, the actual conversation frequently wanders all over the place, as we talk through the various choices.

I’m joined by project leads Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, in addition to writer Mark Darin, who took writing control of the darker, weirder second episode of The Walking Dead, Starved for Help.

I mean, it involves a bunch of damn cannibals, and if you’re not careful, Clementine eats it (them?) right up!

“Initially, my instinct was having a tally of good points and bad points and these things kind of add up and make people feel a certain way,” he said. “That was completely wrong--we had to go back and restructure it. [laughs] It’s just not a point-based structure. We were just trying to go and sway one or the other or anything, [but] it’s just incredibly dynamic and fluid and changing all the time, and it’s gotta reflect that, and not ever make you feel like you’re being pushed away at the same time.”

There’s more death in episode two, and I’m told episode three is even darker. Who knows what tragic events are in store for episode four, Around Every Corner, which was written by none other than our friend Gary Whitta.

And with that, let’s continue.

GB: While episode one has its own holy shit moments, I definitely think I was in a league of players that was not expecting the leg chopping off at the beginning of episode two.

Vanaman: Really?! I see that leg chop and go “Oh, yeah, yeah.” [laughs]

GB: It’s funny, because I was watching the clips of people playing, and it seems like there’s two things that happen, which results in the stat of 85% chopping off and 15% leaving him to die. You approach that scene, see you have the ability to chop off his leg, and you say “Hell yeah!” and you start chopping away. Or you’re like me, where you tried every other opportunity, and then all of a sudden you just run out of time, which I think is great, especially since the game doesn’t display that. So many other choices in the game have a timer, so you know what you’re working against.

Darin: Yup. [group laughter] We went back and forth for a little while, as to whether we should have an indicator on the screen or not that says you’re closing in. But I think people already had the mindset that there’s a leg, and I’m just gonna go ahead and chop it. I think a timer on the screen would have pushed it even further in that direction. But we wanted people to have that experience, and see who were the people who were going to not want to do that, and how far are they going to take it before they get to the point where they think they’re gonna chop that leg off. It’s fascinating to kind of get into people’s heads by looking at the stats, and see who’s doing that and who’s just going right for the leg. “This is a video game, I know what I need to do, I’m chopping that *crag*ing leg off.”

Rodkin: The best playthroughs are the ones where they’ll get two chops in, and then run out of time.

GB: That’s what happened to me.

Rodkin: “I’m gonna try to wrench open the trap...*crag* it, I gotta get that leg off.” And the guy just screams, and then Kenny pulls you off. You leave the guy in the woods with his leg halfway gone.

Vanaman: Ugh. [laughs]

GB: That was absolutely my playthrough, and my wife was screaming at me “Just mash the button, get the leg off.” Because she knows we must be running out of time, and then, yeah, we got two chops in, but didn’t get the third chop.

Rodkin: Good! I feel like so many things do come down to the details a little bit. I’m pretty sure, and correct me slash don’t include this if I’m wrong, but I think on the leg chop, when the scene first opens up, your reticule is right over the guy’s leg.

Darin: Yeah.

Rodkin: So the the very first thing you see is [whistle] that [scene] opens up and there’s an axe icon.

GB: [laughs]

Rodkin: I think if we had just moved that three inches off, so that it would be equidistant for you to swing it over to the chain and the trap or to the guys leg, and we had to let the player discover for themselves “Oh, I can chop off the guy’s leg, I bet that stat would have swung more equally.” And that’s totally down to a little bit of tuning that I don’t think we had a chance to do on that scene.

GB: How did you decide on three chops?

Vanaman: It’s an adventure game, so you have three of everything. Um.

GB: Miyamoto’s rule of three applies even to chopping off legs.

Vanaman: I’m trying to think. When it comes to Lee’s brother, that’s like four or five chops, right? We can only do four or three chops! [laughs]

Rodkin: In our QA [quality assurance] area, we’ve got a lot of one-legged guys now. We found that it takes three swings, on average, for a guy to use sort of strength and chopping agility slash ability to fully chop a leg.

Vanaman: Yeah, that’s a good point. [pause]

You know, I don’t really know. It’s one of those things where one chop, okay, it feels too much like a band-aid. It’s two chops, and you’re like “Okay, it feels almost supernatural to get through that much.” Then, you go to four chops, and you’re like “Okay, that just goes gratuitous.” Then, you go “Okay, three chops.”

Rodkin: When Nick [Herman, lead cinematic artist] was first putting the team together, he had all these horrible pitches for things like you chop the leg all the way off, and then the guy tries to pull his leg out, but then just this one [piece] is still connected and you go in there and just nick the last little piece off.

Vanaman: Oh, god, I remember that part, yeah.

Rodkin: That didn’t ship.

Vanaman: Did we have obj_bonefragment? I think we do.

Rodkin: I think there is a version where there’s just a little half [piece]. I don’t think we actually shipped with that.

Darin: Remember when the leg was moving and you had to hit it right on the spot? You could hack his leg up and not actually cut through because you weren’t getting it lined up. [laughs] We tried a few things.

Rodkin: Yeah, I dunno. Legs!

GB: The scene after that is with Jolene, and that one has a similar stat flip, where you’ve got only 13% shooting Jolene, and the other 87% tried to put it off and Danny just straight up shoots her. That did seem like a scene that, by design, if you were going to be the person who shot Jolene, you were taking this character down a path that was very intentional. Otherwise, it seemed like the game was sort of guiding you to this moment where, if Danny shoots her, you get the first indication that maybe something is up with these people that you’ve aligned yourself with.

Darin: That was the point where that is supposed to flip the table. During that scene, when Danny shoots Jolene--I still would have liked to do more [to get it] down the middle. There were some things, some ideas that I had for doing that, but we couldn’t make a path for a couple reasons. I still think the scene ended up really good. That stuff with Danny, the table kind of flipping on his character, happens throughout that whole scene, even if you didn’t have him shoot her. I still think it would have ended the same way, with you coming out of that scene, feeling like there’s something not right with these guys.

Vanaman: Because if you shoot her, Danny is like “Woo!”

GB: He even says “Nice shot!”

Vanaman: You’re like “What?!? Whoa, creepy.”

Rodkin: Did you end up shooting her? What’d you do?

GB: No, I just kept having the conversation with her, and let it go. Those tend to be my favorite moments in the series, and it happens twice in episode two, almost back-to-back. I like the timer because it creates a sense of tension, but I like it even more when that timer is happening in the background, and once the scene is finished, you realize how that mechanic worked. I think that’s driven more because I play enough games to understand what mechanics are. I imagine, especially to a player that doesn’t--like my wife, for example--it's a revelation. She doesn’t think about games in that way, so the surprise to her unimaginably bigger.

Vanaman: Yeah, and we implement that on-screen timer bar in situations where it’s reasonable to think that Lee would be able to intuit how much time he has left before something happens. When Danny just ices Jolene, that’s a surprise to the player and it’s a surprise to Lee, so we feel like it would be inappropriate to message to the player how much time is left until something bad happens. That’s the implementation strategy on that one.

Rodkin: If you can perceive that there’s an endgame coming if you don’t act, we put a timer on it.

Vanaman: It’s the difference between me throwing you a football and you know almost how long you have before you have to get underneath it versus throwing it at the back of your head. [laughs]

GB: There’s plenty of surprising moments in both episodes, but the only time I literally shouted “what the *crag*” was with Larry. I chose to try and save him. The split there was actually 75/25 in favor of saving him. It’s specifically the way the camera is set up. You’re over him, and then the salt block just *crag*ing shatters his face. Whereas when I watched the way the scene plays out the other way, where you chose to restrain Lilly, you know what’s coming, you know the salt block is coming over, but if you try to save him, that whole sequence is completely out of nowhere. It gives that element of surprise when you think there’s a chance.

Vanaman: It’s so funny. Whenever we kill a character, there’s a lot of talk of “Do we want to put a split here? Do we want to split the content here and bring this character forward?” That happens a lot. We have that talk every single time someone does. Again, with Larry, I felt like I didn’t know how much more interesting story there was to tell with Larry, but it was surely going to be interesting to this woman who’s in your crew if she thinks you helped murder her dad or not. That just felt like “Okay, that is the most interesting thing, so let’s make sure we get out of the scene with that.” Therefore, old Larry’s gotta go. [laughs]

GB: He felt like a bit more of a one-dimensional character. He felt like a story tool to push Lee in certain directions.

Vanaman: I thought that’s what I was writing. I really thought I was writing, and then tossing it over to Mark for episode two, and I think Mark put a lot more interesting stuff into Larry in episode two, but I thought I was writing a really one-dimensional character that I knew was going to be this tool in episode two, but there’s so many people in the forums [saying] “I didn’t think Larry was actually that bad of a guy, he’s just an a-hole, and he knew [Lee] was a murderer, so Larry seems decent. Larry just seems like a guy looking out for his daughter, and isn’t going to put up with any shit.”

Rodkin: It was surprising and kind of awesome to read. Like you, I came across a few two or three paragraph long diatribes before we were like “I know Larry is presented as the asshole in this story, but that’s who I’d *crag*ing be in a second, if I was with these *crag*ers.” [laughs]

Vanaman: I dig that.

Darin: I also think it’s really interesting, watching the playthroughs of people, and they just start off episode two saying “I hate that guy. As soon as I *crag*ing get a chance, I’m gonna kill that guy, I’m gonna kill him.” And then they get to that point and “I can’t kill him! I gotta save him! I gotta do it!” I don’t know why that is, exactly, but I like it.

GB: The conversation just ahead of that with Lilly, where you pull her aside, was important. The dialogue option I chose, at least, was “How do you put up with that asshole?” She goes through this whole little bit about “Well, he’s an asshole, but he’s my dad, and he’s just protecting me.” That is the emotional setup for what probably shifts how the player acts. I still think you would have seen a split where most people, given the choice, are not going to kill this dude, even though he’s a virtual character, but it’s specifically because of that scene that you get Lilly’s perspective on why he’s acting that way. I don’t think you get things spelled out as plainly as you do in that very short conversation, and I think that tilts it. At least it did for me.

Vanaman: That’s awesome. I’m kind of lamenting that it’s over. [laughs] Their relationship was something that was really interesting in general, but especially that opening argument with them in the drug store, I was really happy with the way that turned out. It was put together by a cinematic artist named Graham Ross, and it’s just awesome. I always wanted it to come out that Lilly was this hard ass, but if Larry told her to shut up, she was just going to shrink. I wanted the players to not actually make Larry the villain, but I wanted the way he talked to his daughter and has moments that sort of hint at proooobably some abuse there at some point--probably not a cool dude to grow up with, who-knows-where-the-mom-went sort of thing. She’s still his dad, and I’m glad that came out in episode two.

Rodkin: She’s still his dad.

Vanaman: I’m a little out in the woods. [laughs]

Darin: It was really important for me to put that all throughout episode two. [It] was to give you little glimpses of Larry’s humanity. That one dialogue that you picked really put everything on the table, but you could get through that without picking that, and still see glimpses. There’s little psychological things, like when you’re talking to Mark, and he asks about Larry and you get your dialogue options, you see an option where Lee has the option to say “He’s just looking out for his daughter.” You might not pick that, but it still sticks in your brain, and it still gives you a piece of Larry that you might not have communicated, but it still sticks with you psychologically, and that carries over about Larry’s character. So I wanted to have that stuff layered in, as well.

Vanaman: We use dialogue like that a lot. These are the sorts of things we could say, so they matter, even if you don’t pick them. Implanting them like that is always really important, and so what happens all the time is they’ll think they have learned something from a dialogue choice, and [say] “Well, I picked that.” No, you didn’t, you picked this other thing. “Well, I knew that other thing, too!” [laughs]

Rodkin: When you have the opportunity to kill Danny in the barn with a pitchfork, those stats are overwhelmingly in favor of people of people were just like “*crag* that guy” and stabbed him with a pitchfork. Then, when they get to the next brother out in the yard, the one that you can punch and then throw into a fence, next to no one through him into an electric fence. Looking at forums, the response was “Oh, I stabbed the shit out of that guy with a pitchfork, and then Clementine was right there, and I saw here see me kill someone, and that made me think twice about doing it to the second guy, I just couldn’t do it.”

GB: You have Lee, who seems to have an aversion to succumbing to this world where you have to kill everyone and *crag* everyone else. But those moments, after what those characters have gone through, you want to *crag* these guys over. You want to kill them. The atmosphere--the music is pounding, it’s raining outside--it’s a setup for “You shouldn’t feel bad if you want to take these guys out.” For the player to walk away from that feels like an important emotional shift in the story, since it’s a moment where everything becomes very real for the characters and the player. If you choose to go down this path, it’s a wholly different path than if you chose to, say, not kill them. In that case, it’s the harder choice to make.

Vanaman: Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out, actually. That was something we talked about a lot. If you put a crosshair on the screen, somebody’s going to pull the trigger, you know? Games are built around these set-piece moments often times, especially linear third-person action games where it’s like “Yeah, I iced that guy!”

GB: If you put a button prompt on there, people are, by nature, inclined to press the button. If you were to put the situation down on a piece of paper and say “Do you want to kill this guy or not?” they might circle no.

Vanaman: I think some of that stuff came into Lee’s backstory stuff. I think people always say “When’s the shoe gonna drop on his backstory?” That’s coming up, obviously. We didn’t leave that behind totally. But, for me, when we were talking about “Who is this guy? What baggage does he bring to the table when you start playing the game?” I really wanted him to bring an aversion in to having killed before, feeling really bad about it, and spending some time with that to see a) if players would empathize [and] b) if players would adopt that baggage as their own and c) give Lee something to do very physically and emotionally, in idle, before the player is put through a choice where he’s going to kill somebody or not. I’m glad. I feel that’s working a little bit. It feels like it’s another wrinkle of consideration if you’re the player. If you’re an empty shell, sometimes you’re in that sort of gameplay [mindset], where it’s “I’m not making this guy do that, I’m making this shell that I’ve got [do that].”

GB: It’s not just the agency of the player themselves, but it’s also your agency over this character, who has his own backstory. There’s this really interesting tension between what the player thinks is important, but then, at least for some players like myself, not wanting to violate who you think this character is and what they would do, even if your own motivations as a player come into conflict.

Vanaman: Yeah. I think it’s interesting. It’s interesting, the gameplay story of “I met this guy, via the game, and then I sheparded him, and thus me, through a story, really trying to achieve both redemption and, also, corner off a section of morals that worked for me and the character.” On the flip side, it’s saying “I brought Lee to this place that was inside of him and it made him do all these things.” Bad ways is not necessarily the way I’d look at it. You may construe things that some people, like Kenny for instance, feels are not bad or good but necessary. That’s the thing. What is necessary is the bigger question for us when we’re creating situations for Lee. When people come out of their playthroughs, it’s fascinating both ways, and I’m happy about that.

Rodkin: And then there’s the silent Lee, who just stands around and does nothing. [laughs] Who picks the ellipses every single time, it’s the weirdest thing.

Vanaman: Yeah, whatever. That’s really hard to support.

GB: If you can separate yourself at all, how do you think you would have acted, as the player, put into these situations?

Vanaman: You’re the first person to ask that, so congratulations. [laughs] I’ve just been waiting for somebody to ask! I don’t know who I would save with Doug and Carley--it’d be close. It’s easier for me with episode two because I was a little further away. I would have chopped the leg for sure, definitely, and I would have tried to save Larry. It would be really hard to not kill those brothers. It would have been really hard not to kill those brothers. I think I would have killed them. They’re bad people in this *crag*ing world. [laughs]

Rodkin: It’s tough. I definitely would have chopped that leg off, I think. There’s no way I wouldn’t have tried, but when everyone’s eating dinner, and Larry starts giving me shit, I would have definitely have told him to eat the *crag*ing food. [laughs] Did you do that? That’s my favorite thing.

GB: No, no. I was busy yelling at Clementine.

Rodkin: There’s one, small path you can go down where you sort of get Larry’s ire up, and he starts [yelling] “You *crag*ing *crag*” whatever, and you can just look at him and say “Eat up, Larry.” And he just starts eating the plate of food.

Vanaman: It’s the one time where it pushes the racism aspect of him the most, and he really creeps up on it, and Lee can be just like “You know, dude, eat up. *crag* it.” [laughs]

GB: I gotta go try and find that clip. That sounds awesome.

Rodkin: He’s not happy with you in the meat locker, but I probably still wouldn’t kill him. I still...I got my revenge by making him eat human meat. That’s enough for me.

Marin: I really don’t know for any of these. It’s... [pause, laughs] I know who I am.

GB: Would anyone have picked to save Doug?

Rodkin: *crag* yes.

Vanaman: Hell yeah.

Rodkin: I’d personally save Doug, but that’s because, if I were in Lee’s place. But if I were me, I would save Doug, because I’ve known Doug for, like, 15 years. That’s not a valid [question]!

GB: Oh, I forgot that. Not fair.

Rodkin: Doug is based off of Telltale’s old web designer, who’s also--he does work for us on Idle Thumbs. He does our backend stuff. He’s a dude who’s real. Making that choice is skewed. [laughs] So everyone should save Doug because he’s a nice guy. The people who did save Doug are in the minority, but many of them are very vocal about the support of their choice for saving Doug.

Vanaman: They’re like a family of brothers.

Rodkin: There’s a “Save Doug!” crew.

GB: That was in one of the YouTube videos that I pulled up. In the description, that person wrote this really long “pros” list for Doug, and how you shouldn’t let the fact that she’s a women make it that you have to save her. “Put that out of your mind. Doug is much more resourceful. Just because she’s got a gun? Everybody’s got a gun.” It was really funny how impassioned he was, so Doug definitely has his fans out there.

Rodkin: That was actually Doug’s YouTube playthrough. [group laughs]

Well, relative to right now, anyway. Originally, Telltale was dead set on a “mid-August” date for its next helping of zombie-driven drama, but time – the fickle, obstinate beast – had other ideas. Time ideas. But now, in the darkest, most hopeless reaches of late August, there is hope. You may have had to wait an extra between-five-and-fifteen days, but here it is: The Walking Dead Episode 3 – Long Road Ahead will be out later today. But why wait until midweek of late August when you can watch a (slightly spoilery) trailer in Q1 of early now?

(more…)

[Warning: If you have not finished episode one of The Walking Dead, you should read no further.]

Zombies are a tired, boring trope for a video game enemy, but Telltale Games' The Walking Dead is, somehow, one of the most riveting pieces of interactive storytelling in 2012. To think The Walking Dead is actually about the zombies, however, is to miss the point. The zombies are simply a catalyst for the human drama.

Episode one, Days Gone By, launched in late April. Episode two, Starved for Help, released in late June. Episode three, Long Road Ahead, is out on PlayStation Network today, and arrives on Xbox Live Arcade, PC and Mac on Wednesday. As this goes live, the next chapter is close, and it seemed like the perfect time to rope some of the principal characters from Telltale to take a closer look the moral decisions that have kept players sweating.

Project leads Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin and writer Mark Darin joined me over Skype for a nearly hour-long breakdown of the first two episodes, in which we specifically focus on the decisions where the player is responsible, or at least involved, with the death of a character. There are plenty of other decisions, big and small, that players make throughout each episode of The Walking Dead, but when someone finally bites the dust, those are the ones that make you wonder "Did I make the right choice?" It doesn't take long to contemplate loading a previous save.

The plan is to dissect of these moments from every episode of The Walking Dead with several members of Telltale Games in the weeks and months ahead. We're aided by Telltalle's welcomed disclosure of player decision statistics, which the studio releases as part of an ongoing video series.

Look for a dismemberment of episode two tomorrow, and when we're closer to the release of episode four, Around Every Corner, we'll (hopefully!) be back again with a look back at the inevitable deaths in episode three.

Our conversation began after I'd spent a few hours on YouTube watching different reaction videos. I came across this quote, which seemed to best summarize what makes The Walking Dead click with folks.

"At this stage, I feel like we have a pretty good gut for the type of choices we want to present the player, but that’s pretty accurate," said Vanaman in response. "We never want there to be a right answer, but at the same time, I feel like there are choices in the game that are probably better than others at doing that, so we have to ramp our due dilligence in the second half of the season when it comes to really making sure the things we’re asking the player to pick between don’t have moral connotation and don’t have good or bad or value judgements attached to them."

As Vanaman and Rodkin started pitching the studio on their ideas for The Walking Dead, there were more than a few developers put off by the material. It took some convincing to get some folks on board. Even now, some of the horrific ideas and concepts they're wrestling with give them pause, a point we touch on later.

"We want players to feel like 'I had to pick between a terrible thing and a different terrible thing,'" said Rodkin, "and 'Would I go back and do it again?' [And think] 'Maybe, but I don't know if I’d go back and reverse my decision.' Because if you have a choice-based game where people feel like 'Oh, I *crag*ed that up,' then they’re just going to go back and chance it. We really want people to feel comfortable with their horrible choice. [laughs]"

"We can’t build a system that locks you in to your choice," added Vanaman.

"Well, it’s a video game!" said Rodkin.

Yeah, it's a video game, but one unlike most I've played. And with that, onto episode one's violent moral quandaries.

GB: In the first major choice that can result in a death in episode one, where you choose between Shawn and Duck, the stats actually showed that was split down the middle. Some of the stuff that people were commenting on was that, no matter what you do, Shawn dies. In that choice, in some sense, it's illusion of choice. Because even if you try to save Shawn, he still gets captured by the zombies and moves on. When you guys set up that choice, was there ever a situation where Shawn was rescue-able, or did you want to set a tone early on where, even if you choose to save someone, that doesn’t mean it’s going to necessarily happen?

Vanaman: That was the most tumultuous choice in the game, and that was the one that took a lot of getting people bought into [it]. By the time we shipped it, everybody was into it.

But, no, there was never an option. Because Shawn Greene is presented as a zombie within the first couple trades of the comic, it was never something we wanted to do. We always wanted him to die, or, at least, to be bitten really badly. If you try to save him, he kind of talks for a minute before drifting off, so you get a little bit more out of him, but that was really hard because that choice really isn’t about Shawn or Duck. The choice is actually completely about Kenny. You’ve just met this guy, you don’t really know much about him, but hopefully you’ve walked around and talked to him and his family and got a sense of where they’re from and how they treat each other, how he feels about his son. He loves his son but he realizes his son is sort of a 10-year-old dipshit. Him and his wife have what seems to be...she really takes care of him. Hopefully you have this sense of who this guy is, so that--how much does that matter to you in a situation where you have to go with your gut? That’s really what the choice is about. The choice is not so much “Which of these characters do you care about, which of these characters do you choose to live?” It’s “I’ve just met this man. How long am I going to be with him? Am I attached enough to him and his son yet to go for him first?”

Jake: It’s also about testing the waters with Kenny as a player. Even if you are someone who is going to place the value judgement on saving Shawn and saving Duck, entirely relative to you, you immediately learn who Kenny is as a person by how he reacts to the choice that you ended up making.

Sean: If you choose Shawn, he [Kenny] saves Duck, and you’ve still got a chance to save Shawn. Lee yells “Kenny, come here!” and Kenny runs away. If those things didn’t exist, if it was just “save this little boy or this early 20s young man” and the young man always dies but you don’t know who the little boy is, you don’t know who his dad is, you take it at face value. Then, that choice...

Jake: We would feel like shit.

Sean: Then, you are just saying “Eff you, player, this game is not only is one track but means one thing." That’s the thing about the game, especially since we’re making episodic content and we can only make so much. At one point, the game is really, really linear, but we hope that we can make a linear game that, in the way it arranges itself, produces a multitude of meaning. And that’s really what I think--that’s what I went into the game thinking. Okay, I know what the limitations are of a Telltale game, I know what the limitations are [in] our production process, where do I think I can make an impact? That’s my thought.

GB: Even if you choose to try and go after Shawn, Duck can’t die. Is there any rule about an aversion to killing children? Or is that, specifically, a moment where you’re given this illusion that you’re choosing between Shawn or Duck, but it’s really about your attitude towards Kenny?

Sean: It’s tough. I’ll be honest. There’s stuff that [Robert] Kirkman does in the comics, where I’m just like...ugh. "How are we..? I don’t know if I wanna go...?" I definitely felt that reading the comics. A lot. But not necessarily in that instance. Duck surviving there or not surviving there--that didn’t really come into play there. To your point, there’s stuff in the comics. I don’t know. Are you up on the comics at all?

GB: I’ve read through the first major trade, but I haven’t read past that.

Sean: Can I spoil something for you?

[Warning: Do not click this if you haven't read the comics.]

GB: Yeah, yeah.

Sean: The little kid, Carl, gets shot in the face. [laughs] Right in the *crag*ing face! In the eye! It rips his whole face out. Oh, he’s fine!

GB: He’s just a little cyclops now.

Sean: Actually, Glenn, from the first episode, in the comics, [he] recently died--issue 100. In just a brutal way. That’s something we’re always talking about internally. I think there’s probably stuff in episode three that...I’ll be curious. Let me know when you’ve played it. [laughs] It starts to get darker.

Mark: I don’t think there’s anything off the table, really. Anything that’s been “We’re not allowed, that’s pushing it too far,” that we’re told we’re pushing it too far, we internally fear “Oh, shit, I can’t go there.”

Jake: More often than not, though, when we say “Oh, shit, we can’t go there,” and then the room kind of goes quiet for a couple of minutes, and then someone goes “No, we can probably do that.” [laughs]

One thing that’s maybe worth pointing out about choices that seem important until you do them, and then they don’t seem to do anything is that people should remember that this is a five episode game. Whether or not you save Duck or Shawn Greene doesn’t mean that Lee is suddenly going to be on the North Pole instead of, like, western Europe in episode five.

Sean: It’s not the butterfly effect.

Jake: It’s not like you get an entirely different back half of the season. Things like that, the game and we don’t forget what you do. It’s important for people to remember your storyline because things that you’ve done in the past do end up coming back on you way later on than you think sometimes.

Sean: It’s just being pertinent. Going back, we can kind of sound like “You’re going to regret how he died!” We don’t do that.

Jake: No, I don’t mean come back on you as much as...

GB: There are consequences.

Jake: Things that seem like they sank away a long time ago might still be percolating in the back of a character’s mind.

Mark: That whole choice with saving Shawn, if you choose to save Shawn, just because you couldn’t do it doesn’t mean that the choice if meaningless because everybody remembers that choice, and that ripples through the entire game.

Sean: Mark makes a really good point. Just because somebody dies--in real-life, I’ve gotta live with that guy now, the guy [where] I didn’t try to save his son, the guy who maybe thinks he should have not run away. That’s a tension I have to live with, as opposed to you guys carrying the same amount of baggage. You can’t commiserate. If you choose Duck, Lee and Kenny could realistically commiserate and say “You know, man, back there, we really should have tried to do something else” and there’s a bond built there, whereas now there’s a rift. That, really, more interesting.

GB: In the case of Doug and Carley, the second major choice you get in episode one, when I was looking at the stats for Duck and Shawn, that was basically split 50/50. But with Carley and Doug, it was 75/25, essentially. Do you guys aim for that to be 50/50? I mean, not every choice is going to be 50/50, but these ones where you’re talking about a character death, is the aim 50/50? So when you get a situation like Carley and Doug where it’s 75/25, do you think you didn’t properly set that up?

Sean: That’s a really good question.

Jake: In the specific case of Doug and Carley, we’d hoped that it would be 50/50, but I think we knew going in with that one, we made peace with the fact that hot reporter with a gun versus dorky dude, we kind of knew where that was going to go.

Sean: I mean, we definitely kind of made our bed on that one a little bit. I would probably do things a little differently, I’ll be completely honest. I would probably frame them as different people, and not for the sake of getting it to 50/50, but because I feel, personally--I guess I’m kind of the guy who created Doug and Carley. I mean, Jake and I do a lot of the conceptual work together, but on episode one, I wrote all the stuff. It was in the can when Gary [Whitta] came on, he dug it already, so that was good. [laughs] I would probably frame them a little bit differently, to be perfectly honest. Just because--it has nothing to do with the stat choices--it has to do with the fact that I think I left some stuff on the table with them, with what possibilities could have been communicated in the first episode with their characters. I think, had I done a better job communicating the possibility of their characters, this stat would be a little...maybe not more 50/50, but you wouldn’t be able to boil it down to what Jake was boiling it down [to].

GB: I was rewatching the scene this afternoon, and there’s a line from Carley which says “Doug, if we make it through this, you should know...” which seemed to allude to a much larger backstory between the two, unless that’s me reading too much into that scene.

Sean: No, that’s totally where I was going. If you talk to Carley in the drug store, he [Lee] can be like “Hey, how’d you get here?” and she’s like “Oh, I came down from Atlanta, we were covering this festival, and everything went to shit. My producer got eaten, and that dude over there saved my ass,” and you look over and it’s Doug. “That guy?!” “Yeah, that guy.” They’ve been together for three or four days now, and that relationship--that’s what I’m saying about left things on the table. You get this sense, at the end, where, in the face of possible death, Carley clearly has something to say to Doug, and I thought that was interesting. I wanted to communicate [that].

That was one of those things where I came back and looked at the script and we’re at a moment where we’re trying to get the game done and I’m like “God, I really did not make the relationship between these two characters the way I always wanted to. Okay, I have this moment right here where everything’s going to hell. Can I, at least, allude to it?” So I did.

Jake: There’s one, little reference to at the very end.

Sean: Oh, yeah, that’s true. If you go to Carley, she says “Why’d you save me?” She basically says “Oh, well, thanks.” But if you go to Doug, and he says “Why’d you save me?” he goes “I wish you had saved her.” Depending on who you save, you get a different perspective on their friendship, or relationship in general, was.

Short and sweet, since I'm busy sitting on my couch: Telltale Games has ended speculation about the release date for the third episode for The Walking Dead, Long Road Ahead.

Long Road Ahead will go live on PlayStation Network tomorrow, and arrives on Xbox Live Arcade, PC, and Mac on Wednesday. The second episode, Starved for Help, will be available on iOS on Wednesday, too.

Thankfully, Ryan is finally finishing episode two tonight. Took him long enough.