The notorious "syndrome of the second album" in the case of "Walking Dead" from Telltale Games affected another season, which was still inferior to the first. But the third, where the beloved Clementine was joined by Cuban-baseball player Javier, respectively, turned out to be even more controversial.

Yes, according to the entertainment, direction, graphics, animation, complexity and interest of QTE, the third season, as I wrote, took a step, and somewhere two or three in advance. The plot composition is also more complicated and interesting, with constant flashbacks and uncomplicated themes. After all, now the authors actually tell two main stories. Xavi tries to protect his family in every possible way, and when he gets to the city of Richmond, led by the tough and brutal group of survivors of the "New Frontier", he also unravels the tangle of uneasy relationships with his brother, David. It was with his children and his wife that Xavi tried to survive until he came across a long-lost relative ...

Xavi meets Clem, who has her own worries - all the season she is trying to figure out the fate of baby AJ, a child of Rebecca, who died at the end of the second season. For the boy, Clementine actually became a mother, but after she joined the ranks of the "New Frontier", their ways parted - and not without the help of David Garcia.

As you can see, everything is really twisted and twisted. Accordingly, there are more characters here, the tangle of relations between them is more complex, and above all this lies the shadow of the heroes of past seasons, the decisions we made then. Yes, as I wrote, at the very beginning A New FrontierMany of those choices the authors actually slime into the toilet, but not all. And even in subsequent episodes, these decisions sometimes affect: for example, in one of Clementina's flashbacks under certain conditions, you can last see Kenny or Jane. And it's really strong!

However, this "blooming complexity" in many respects played a cruel joke with the third season. Under the weight of their own twisted story lines and the interrelationships between the characters, the writers unwittingly tried to make things easier for themselves, and in some way frankly failed to do it and did stupid things.

The fact that the whole season's action takes place in fact in one place, in Richmond, is not so scary. The fact that many moral dilemmas are just an illusion and the script will still follow the beaten path, just slightly altering some scenes, adding one character or removing another one, is also habitual. A man we could kill, but did not kill, all the subsequent passage will behave as if he already, count, and no, before the key scene in the fourth episode in general, quietly will go aside, then appear for a moment to be heroically thereafter to perish - all, of course, in order not to complicate the life of writers and to ensure more or less the same composition of characters in the decisive moments of the season.
About more important plot decisions I will not explain in more detail. I will only say that no matter what options you try, the script can not be changed. Only at the very end will be the key choice on which depends who of the people closest to Xavi will live - he, apparently, will affect the starting schedule of the fourth season, which is clearly hinted at the final of the third.
But all this, I repeat, is not so scary, but in many ways and traditionally for interactive TV series from Telltale. It is sadder that many of the characters, except, in fact, Xavi, Clem, David and his wife Keith, are spelled either weakly or silly. On Gabe, hysterical nephew of Javier, almost all those who passed A New Frontierturned their backs . He is annoying, always aching, pulling the blanket over himself, talking nonsense. It's clear that this is just a child who grew up without a father, but blaming Xavi for killing a man who actually kept you under the gun's barrel is idiocy even for a pimply schoolboy.

Gabe makes us all the way to say banality about education, growing up, how important it is to be a man and so on. It can be seen that in the duet of Javier and his nephew, the authors tried to recreate the relationship between Lee and Clementina, but it turned out to be much worse and more banal. And in general in the third season there are too many empty words and clichés, with which characters are constantly exchanged, even when five meters from them wander zombies or patrols of the "New Frontier". I believe that in the first season this would not be so obvious, but in the third the same focus does not work anymore, the degree of self-repetition goes off scale, and all this verbiage starts to irritate.

No less nervous and hefty gray-haired man named Tripp, who behaves like a big child - then yelling at Xavi, then asking for advice on affairs of love, he does not get on with his advice at all on time. Tripp, like Gabe, is a complete source of stupidity, platitudes and irritation.

The script also has holes, inconsistencies, illogicalities and stupidity. Why do the characters go to blame the leaders of the "New Frontier" without weapons and then, after a series of not very pleasant events, Xavi makes a sortie for the "trunks"? After all, nothing prevented it from being done before, not after. Why does a hefty Tripp go to collect things, and Xavi and two children manually push the armored car into the parking lot? It seems that such a task should be taken by the one who is stronger, is not it?
And the line "Clementine - AJ" is spelled out strange. Why is a young child sent somewhere beyond the well-fortified and equipped Richmond? It seems, only for the script writers to have an occasion to write the fourth season.

However, to shout that it is a failure, that to spit, say, on all these characters, that the finale does not cause any emotion, nobody is pitiful and we do not need the fourth season, it means behaving in the same way as the hysterical teenager Gabe. In the third season there are a lot of strong, emotional moments, and the relationship between Xavi and Kate, David and Clementine are written quite deeply and interestingly. Especially with his brother and his wife - here the authors raise completely new questions for the series, talk about family values and problems, about uneasy fraternal friendship, about whether we should resist our true nature, about what we choose, they choose us, but this often does not match ...

In addition, because of the initially more complex scenario, burdened by the events of past seasons, there are more options for the relationship between the characters and more situations, although not a significant, but still a choice, which can hail even after a couple of episodes. Did not kill the man who drove you to Richmond in the first series - you'll see him in the very finale. A trifle, but nice.

Toward the end of the curtain, the authors do not just show the usual layout, what decisions you and other players have made in key situations, but give a detailed dossier on the relationship with each character.

And, what is especially interesting, they tell us what kind of character Clementina formed after the whole game - and then it turns out that it was up to our decisions whether Klem and Xavi would stay in the key situation. After that, all the pricks in the address of the writers I want to take back. I got Clement's rating "A faithful fighter", and I want to believe that this will still affect the fourth season ...

Rate:8/10