The Walking Dead: A New Frontier - Episode 1: Ties That Bind Part I (PC) Review

A New Frontier - Episode 1: Ties That Bind Part I's most telling aspect is that it can be played without any prior knowledge of Seasons One and Two. For all intents and purposes, it's a soft reboot, which explains the lack of "Season Three" in the title. Control has been taken away from Clem and Ties That Bind Part I spends a fair amount of time with the new lead, Javier, before bothering to check in on Clem.

Despite the rather jarring shift of control to Javier, he isn't a bad main character. He acts as an excellent foil for both Lee and Clementine, different enough in direct motivations and personality without straying too far from the theme of "family" that's served as the overarching narrative throughout the course of the series.

In fact, Javi best exemplifies that theme of family as he struggles to keep his together both pre- and post-outbreak. Javier is a dynamic, three-dimensional character whose familial motivation doesn't define his personality but rather enhances it; until Clem is introduced, that is.

Clem and Javi's initial interaction is perhaps the most interesting in the entire episode. After ten episodes of getting to know Clementine and watching her grow, she's pit against player, with her actions directly conflicting with Javier's best interest every now and then.

It's a great move on Telltale's part, challenging whether players value character immersion over character loyalty, but the concept isn't as fully realised as it could be…yet. Clem's action, while not ideal for Javier, end up being rather black and white and inconsequential to Episode One's plot, rather simply affecting whether Clem treats Javi coldly, or coldly but sometimes with a smile.

Javi also becomes a broken record at this point, thanks to his character focusing solely on wanting to reunite with his family. It's an understandable shift, but almost all of his other traits vanish until the climax of the episode. His interactions with Clem end up being less about defining a personality for him and more about trying to figure out what's happened with Clementine since the end of Season Two.

That's where A New Frontier's biggest problem lies: player interactivity matters less than ever. Season One made it clear the choices were never about the grand course of the plot changing, but instead how the character relationships developed. Season Two furthered that theme and even closed off the last episode with the promise that Season Three would go even further by incorporating Clem's endgame partner, but that promise is never realised.

No matter whom Clem left off with at the end of Season Two, they will be written out, one way or another, through a flashback. The silver lining being that the flashback ends up being one of The Walking Dead's most emotional scenes, at least demonstrating that Telltale still has the ability to write some genuinely heart wrenching pathos. The use of flashbacks also sets a precedent for control jumping between Javi and Clem, although that could be a dangerous tool since Javier is nowhere near as developed as he could be at the end of the episode and Clementine is nowhere near as present as she should be to justify the character swapping.