The Walking Dead A New Frontier – Episode 4 – Thicker Than Water (PC) Review

Telltale springs up and shocks us all again. But not with a life or death decision of a character. Or something that’ll change the whole events of the game. No, they said they was going to release an episode on a certain day, and it was. So this time only a month after the last episode of The Walking Dead we receive episode four of A New Frontier. Thicker Than Water.

This episode shows us some more pre-zombie time of David constantly making me hate him more and wanting to help him less. But in this flashback we got the chance to beat him at some baseball. It’s the little wins. It’s nice to see how things were before people started eating each other. It makes you see a difference in characters. Or in some cases practically no difference. I find myself still struggling to help David or not. Pre-zombie I did not like him at all. And after what happened to Mariana I was expecting a good beat down from him but he didn’t blame me. From spending more time with him I definitely trust him more than when I first saw him again at the end of episode 2. He still has moments where he’s his same old self. Just an angry man being angry at everyone. And you’d think after all this he’d be happy to see me again.

Right in the feels

It’s great how Telltale can do this. It’s a whole new set of characters and yet they’ve still managed to get me attached to some and hate others. Most games it takes a good while for any connection to the characters but Telltale is the master  of character creation and progression. In my opinion.

Thicker Than Water gave us a little more control after the last episode which mostly had us as a passenger. This episode you explore again and work out little puzzles. You also make what seemed like some pretty important decisions. I was not ready for this.

When these series get near to the end it always shows me how badly I screwed things up. After season one it showed that I could’ve ended with everybody. Instead I ended with only Kenny. Season two you have the chance to leave with at least one person or you stay at Wellington. I ended completely on my own. And now history is repeating itself. I pushed away two characters and killed many more along the way. It really makes you look back at your journey and realise the mistakes you’ve made in the moment of emotion and the need for revenge. I probably shouldn’t be so quick to leave people to die. It especially didn’t help that all this came back to bite me and Joan used it all to prove how evil I am. I didn’t really have any room to argue.

Clementine makes a return again. She keeps leaving and coming back. I hope this isn’t Telltales way of slowly getting rid of her. There’s an awkward conversation about her… “growing up”. Except it didn’t feel as awkward as it would have if Javi was a real person. Instead it’s more like I’m still playing as Lee watching over Clem, using Javi as a host.

I’m probably biased

I do feel my love for the first season has kept me invested more than it should have. There doesn’t seem to be much in ways of different story branches. I remember in the first season, my journey was so different to my friends playthrough. And that was incredible. To hear about this whole new story that just didn’t happen for me. But after hearing about others play with this season everything is more or less the same except for peoples opinions of you.

We seem to be going down the interactive movie route. It’s still fun and still makes you panic and does all the good stuff. It simply doesn’t juggle things around the way you’d hope when you have a playthrough with all the opposite choices. Of course it’s not going to be massively different otherwise the game would take up an ungodly amount of space. But the first two seasons mixed it up enough.

As a Telltale Walking Dead instalment it’s still a fun and is a great story teller. I just wish there was a bigger difference when you make big choices.

The Walking Dead: The New Frontier – Episode 4 – Thicker Than Water
Release Date: April 25th, 2017
Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One
Publisher: Telltale Games 
Developer: Telltale Games