
The next, you're deciding who lives and who dies during a makeshift execution. One moment, you're talking to Clementine about the challenges of puberty. Selections only become truly meaningful toward the conclusion, when you're presented with life-or-death scenarios that up the stakes. Although Thicker Than Water offers some intriguing conversational choices, their impact is somewhat muted through most of the game-reactions are mostly limited to "so-and-so will remember that” alerts. But here, it seems only right that Javy winds up with Kate, which makes the story feel a touch predetermined.Īction is also once again in short supply. And as usual with Telltale games, the episode includes some key moments where your choices can make the story go in various directions and leave different corpses on the floor.


The episode features some real "duh” moments, but the dialogue and voice acting are handled so well that you can't help but go along for the ride. Here, secrets burst out of the closet at a steady pace, unraveling the uneasy alliances that have been central to the season. The overall plot is also fairly predictable, but at least A New Frontier's narrative is finally chugging forward again after Episode Three put on the brakes. We get some new information here about David planning to re-enlist with the army and leave Kate and the kids, but other than that, this kind of second-verse, same-as-the-first moment seems unnecessary. It's hard to say what this scene is even supposed to accomplish: While past flashbacks took us to key moments like the Garcias experiencing the onset of the zombie apocalypse, this one tells us yet again that Javy and David hate each other and that David isn't getting along with his wife. This time, the introductory flashback relives an afternoon with Javy and David at an amusement park's batting cages. Thicker Than Water follows the same path of the preceding episodes, opening up with a blast from the past featuring yet another vignette starring the dysfunctional Garcia family. Still, A New Frontier continues to play out in a more formulaic fashion than other seasons of Telltale's take on The Walking Dead. And a cliffhanger conclusion sets everything up for an intense finale when the last episode of the season arrives later this spring. Tensions bring Richmond to the edge of a full-blown revolt. Fireworks explode in the relationship between leading man Javier Garcia and his brother David, who finally figures out that his estranged wife Kate might just have feelings for her brother-in-law.

Thicker Than Water plays up the soap-opera dynamics that have long been as big a part of the franchise as the brain-munching gore, making for a more satisfying episode than its snoozy predecessor. The New Frontier season of Telltale's The Walking Dead is wrapping up the way that it began, with more Garcia family strife than zombie action in the penultimate episode.
