The Walking Dead: The Final Season is a 2018 episodic graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games and later Skybound Games, and the fourth and final main installment in Telltale's The Walking Dead video game series, based on the comic book series of the same name. It consists of four episodes released between August 2018 and March 2019. Taking place some years after The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, the game focuses on Clementine's efforts to raise young Alvin Jr. (AJ) in the post-apocalyptic world, coming to join with a group of troubled teenagers surviving out of their former boarding school. Their path leads them to encounter a hostile group of raiders led by a figure from Clementine's past.
The game represents the first major release by Telltale after a major restructuring; it was aimed to return to themes and elements from the first season, and expected to be the concluding story for Clementine. The game was anticipated to be released over four episodes, with the first episode released in August 2018, for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. However, due to the sudden closure of Telltale in the following month, the last two episodes were overseen by Skybound Entertainment, the production company of The Walking Dead comic creator Robert Kirkman, using as many of the former Telltale development team as possible, as Kirkman had felt it necessary to properly complete Clementine's story.
Gameplay As with other games in The Walking Dead series, The Final Season is a graphic adventure game, where the player controls the protagonist Clementine as she struggles to survive in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. The player can move Clementine around the environment to examine and collect items and initiate conversation trees with non-player characters, and progress in the game. The Final Season introduces a collectible mechanic, where the player can collect certain items in the world and place them in their room later. Some collectibles can only be obtained on the basis of choices. For each episode, a certain amount of collectibles are to be found. Decisions made by the player can affect future episodes, and The Final Season can use previous saved games from The Walking Dead to bring a player's choices from these games into The Final Season. Players that have not played previous seasons, or who may want to adjust choices made affecting Clementine's character, can use a web-based Story Builder tool to create a cloud-based save to feed into the game. This also addresses issues with various save game limitations due to platform transitions over the course of the series. For example, previous saves from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the first two seasons are not compatible with The Final Season.
The Final Season was included in The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series, which was released on September 10, 2019, for PS4, Xbox, and PC. It included graphical overhauls to the previous releases, concept art, and a way to carry over choices from previous seasons for players willing to play through each season.
In portions of the game, the player will be required to react to quick time events in action-driven scenes, such as escaping from a "walker", the name for zombies in the series. Failure to complete the events typically results in the death of Clementine or another key character, requiring the player to retry the event. The Final Season introduces more open-ended action sequences that give the player more control during them.
Setting and characters The Final Season takes place roughly seven years after the events of the first one. It is set in the same continuity of the comic book series, and it is located in West Virginia, in a world where society has collapsed after a zombie outbreak. It once again stars Clementine (Melissa Hutchison), who is now an older teenager, after she has reunited with Alvin Jr., "AJ" (Tayla Parx), the son of Rebecca, and her efforts to raise and protect him in the post-apocalyptic world, similarly to how her past guardian and caretaker Lee Everett (Dave Fennoy) once did with her.
Clementine and AJ join a group of teenage survivors inhabiting their former boarding school. They are led by Marlon (Ray Chase), and are made up by Louis (Sterling Sulieman), Violet (Gideon Adlon), Tennessee, "Tenn" (Zaire Hampton), Willy (Justin Cowden), Omar (Keith Silverstein), Ruby (Ali Hillis), Aasim (Ritesh Rajan), Brody (Hedy Burress), and Mitch (Robbie Daymond).
The Delta is a faction of raiders who antagonize Clementine and the other children. Their members include Abel (Alex Fernandez), Minerva, "Minnie" (Cherami Leigh), one of Tenn's older sisters and Violet's ex-girlfriend, and Lilly (Nicki Rapp), a former member of Clementine's old survivor group from Macon, Georgia from the first season. Other characters in the game include James (Johnny Yong Bosch), a pacifistic ex-Whisperer, the children's pet dog Rosie, and Eddie (Brandon Bales), a character from the 400 Days DLC add-on for the first season, who briefly appears in a flashback.
Plot Shortly after the events of A New Frontier, Clementine rescues AJ from McCarroll Ranch after it is attacked, and is forced to kill AJ's caretaker in self-defense. Years later, Clementine has continued to raise AJ, recalling the lessons Lee taught her. While scavenging for food, the two end up in a car crash from which they are saved by a group of abandoned teenagers, operating from the ruins of Ericson's Boarding School for Troubled Youth. While acclimating to living in the school, Clementine and AJ return to scavenging and encounter a man named Abel, who tries to rob them. After informing the others at the school of their encounter, Clementine finds the group's leader Marlon having a heated argument with another resident, Brody. Brody reveals to Clementine that Abel is part of a raider group that Marlon had traded resident twin sisters Minerva and Sophie to in exchange for safety a year ago and that he also intends to trade her and AJ should the raiders return. Marlon accidentally kills Brody out of rage for revealing this and tries to frame Clementine for her death to the rest of the children. Clementine convinces the others of Marlon's wrongdoings, but before anything else can be done, AJ kills him.
Clementine and AJ are evicted from the school. Outside, they are attacked by Abel and another member of the raiders, Lilly, the woman who either left or was banished from Lee's group during the first season. Lilly attempts to coerce Clementine to convince the other kids to join her group, but she refuses and escapes with AJ, which leads to AJ being shot. The pair are saved by James, a former member of the Whisperers, who tells them the raiders are forcibly recruiting people for a war against a rival community. Clementine returns to Ericson for medical treatment for AJ and to warn them about the raiders. The children prepare the school grounds for an attack. Two weeks later, the raiders arrive and though they are pushed back, they manage to kidnap some of the children and murder one of them. The children learn from a captured, dying Abel that the raiders have established camp in a nearby riverboat and with James' help, infiltrate the boat and plant a homemade bomb in its boiler before encountering Minerva, now a member of the raiders, who imprisons them with the others. Lilly confronts Clementine and reveals that Minerva killed Sophie when she tried to escape their group.
Clementine incapacitates Minerva, frees the children, and fights Lilly into submission, who is then held at gunpoint by AJ. Clementine can tell him to kill or spare her; if spared, Lilly murders James. During the chaos, the bomb goes off and the ship explodes. Clementine and AJ escape the sinking boat as Lilly (if spared) flees on a raft while the other raiders are overwhelmed by walkers. If James is alive, he leaves the group after arguing with Clementine over AJ killing Lilly, potentially aiding their escape, depending on choices. Clementine, AJ, and Tenn meet with either Louis or Violet, who leads them back to Ericson. After reaching a partially collapsed bridge, the group is attacked by a bitten, crazed Minerva, who has led a horde of walkers to them. Clementine fights off Minerva, who slashes her ankle, and crosses the bridge with AJ. Louis or Violet try to make Tenn cross as well, but he is too stunned to move; if Clementine previously trusted AJ, putting the confidence in him to make hard decisions, he shoots Tenn to save Louis or Violet, otherwise, he will tell Louis or Violet to throw Tenn across the gap, thus saving him, but resulting in the other person getting devoured.
While escaping the horde, a walker bites Clementine's wounded leg. Clementine and AJ take shelter in James' barn, which is quickly surrounded by walkers. A weakened Clementine urges AJ to escape on his own by covering himself in walker guts, then asks him to either kill her or leave her to turn. Regardless of her request, AJ swings Minerva's axe at her. Sometime later, it is revealed that AJ chose to amputate Clementine's leg, saving her life, and the two have finally found peace and a home at Ericson.
Episodes The game is separated into four episodes, originally intended to be released every six weeks.
Development Announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2017, The Walking Dead: The Final Season, was launched on August 14, 2018, for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with plans for a Nintendo Switch version to launch later that year. Clementine returned as the lead character, voiced by Melissa Hutchison, as Telltale found that fans of the series were not pleased with how little interactivity there was with Clementine in A New Frontier. Telltale wanted to have the final season call back to what fans had praised about the first season, and knew they needed to make Clementine the focus. With this direction, Telltale decided to make this the final season for The Walking Dead series so that they could create a satisfactory conclusion to Clementine's story arc. For this purpose, Telltale brought back Gary Whitta, the writer for the first season and 400 Days content, to help close out Clementine's story.
The story followed from A New Frontier with Clementine having rescued AJ from the McCarroll Ranch, with an ellipsis a few years ahead, where AJ is now a young boy. Telltale had initially considered writing a version of Clementine that had become more jaded, but found this was far too different from the established version of the character, and reworked her to be more sympathetic.
The Final Season used the updated version of the Telltale Tool first introduced in Batman: The Telltale Series, along with improvements in the visual style to approach the style used in The Walking Dead comic. This included improved dynamic lighting, and a new rendering style Telltale called "Graphic Black" to enforce the comic book rendering style. Some scenes featured "unscripted" zombies who may attack Clementine if the player is not careful, creating new freeform combat sequences, while other parts of the game used quick-time events as from previous games.