Today I want to pivot away from the trailers that I have been covering over the past few weeks and into something fresh, like trailers that surprised me the other day. It's always funny for someone like me, who goes to stupid lengths to have a finger on the pulse of the public gaming landscape, to be introduced to something through organic marketing, but here we are. Some magical how I ended up looking at brand new footage for an imminent VR game from the second biggest zombie franchise of all time; The Walking Dead. Ain't that a kick in the head?
This new title from the minds over at Skybound, 'The Walking Dead: Saint's and Sinners', seems to be their way of apologizing for that shortlived travesty, Overkill's The Walking Dead. (A game so rough that it was killed by the licensee after they accused the title of hurting their overall brand.) Personally, I'm rather ashamed in myself for missing a new release from a franchise that I used to like, but then again I suppose that speaks to a failure in their marketing department. Why were these guys not at the VGAs? Geoff loves his VR so I can't imagine him turning them down or out charging them to appear, so I can only imagine the company didn't pursue a spot on his show. (I mean for god's sake, he showed off a average-looking 'Streets of Rage' VR game that I've already forgotten the name of; I'm sure he would have space for a choice-based zombie survival VR game!) But I'm getting lost in my own incredulity and speculation, let's get into the nitty gritty of their latest trailer.
From what I can tell about this trailer, Skydance Interactive seem to have taken a very curious approach with the visuals wherein they've danced between the comic book stylings of the original comic and a more realistic angle. The result is that the zombies look decent up close (although they aren't a patch on what Capcom are putting out these days) and the humans look comparatively cartoonish. My problem with this, and I'll admit that it's a particularly personal one, is that I'll find myself taking the zombies more serious than the humans. (Which is the exact opposite trajectory that The Walking Dead franchise aims itself in.) Why should I care about decisions regarding the lives of potato people? Simple, because those potato people should be well written with likeable and believable character traits that make them endearing. So I suppose it'll ultimately come down to the writing to sell me on this game.
Apart from that, I will say that the trailer looks decent enough to leverage it's VR routes in a desirable fashion. That is to say, when I watch this trailer I desire for VR to be remotely affordable so that I could check this game out. (Which it currently still isn't.) We see some deft handling of weaponry throughout this trailer that seems to really blur the lines between playing a game and acting out a performance piece, which I can only imagine is the intent of such features. In fact, for one scene wherein we see the player stab one Walker whilst shooting at two others, I couldn't help but think back to that scene of item manipulation and complex weapon loading in the 'Half Life: Alyx' trailer. (Could this title be setting itself for direct competition?) Another point worth mentioning in this trailer, is the mindnumbingly overt way that the narration indicates player choices occurring throughout the story, before we get an example of that very thing at the end of the trailer. (So we didn't really need the awful narration, now did we?) I see this as an example of VR games adopting the bare minimum requirements of being a good and engaging title, but that doesn't mean I'm going to bow down to this titles igneous writing because they've offered a choice. (Especially when the choice offered in the trailer is as opaque as "Will you kill this man.")
Taking place in New Orleans, 'The Walking Dead: Saint's and Sinners' promises to showcase a new side of the outbreak that we haven't seen before with a slight promise of visting the marshy swampland. (Could we be looking at zombie crocodiles? Extremely unlikely.) This will provide players with the classic iconography of the New Orlean-ian landscape as they explore what looks to be a fleshed-out open world environment. Additionally, part of the trailer showed off the player and some allies facing off against some human npcs with actual weapons. And, judging from the clunkiness with which the model's moved, the allies were either online players, hinting at co-op, or just poorly animated. (Not sure which.) I'll readily admit that I am somewhat skeptical about human enemies showing up in a zombie game, that is almost always a recipe for disaster, but I can't imagine The Walking Dead without the human element so I'm willing to keep an open mind.
One of the biggest problems with this title, in the way that I see it, comes from the pure merit of game-ifying a world as bleak as The Walking Dead. Namely, I'm talking about the way in which in the universe of TWD, a single zombie bite is enough to land you a death sentence. Now it's true, this isn't exactly unique to TWD's lore, in fact it is a staple of most zombie films, but that has almost never been the case in video game zombie lore. In order for games to be fun they have to be somewhat forgiving, therefore if the player irrevocably died the second they received their first piece of damage, most people would be instantly turned off by that. On the flip side, the constant peril of The Walking Dead universe is what gives that world it's weight; anyone can be handed a death sentence at any moment no matter how strong they are, all it takes is one careless movement/ mistake. In previous Walking Dead games this mechanic has even reared it's head in the form of a god-awful combat system (in 'Survival Instinct') or important story beats ('Telltale's game') so it'll be interesting to see how it's handled in a modern title.
As I've already hinted at several times, this isn't the first time that Skybound have licensed out The Walking Dead license to games so we do have precedence to base this title against. 'The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct', for example, was a lazy crash grap hinging on the profitability of Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead show and presenting itself as a boring, nigh un-fun, game. Telltale's The Walking Dead, created it's own cast of characters and took them on an award winning journey that ultimately ended up going on for 3 seasons too long. (Like the show.) and 'Overkill's The Walking Dead' was built on the shoulders of Overkill's 'Payday 2' and ended up being little more than a bad idea that was poorly conceived. So what I'm trying to say is, The Walking Dead doesn't exactly have the greatest track record with games, so I would approach this title with caution.
As far as VR titles go, this particular one has the rare honour of attracting both my interest and mistrust. Whilst I understand and respect a number of the choices that this game has gone through, and am actually really impressed by the intractability that the player is privy to, I'm worried about the execution and how it might sully the experience. That is to say, the trailer I saw proposed a lot of ideas that I found interesting, but presented them on a platter that looked a bit humdum and shoddy. (As I say this, bear in mind that I'm not a VR consumer, so perhaps that may cloud my judgment a little.) Ultimately, I do want to like this title, but given the average showing, the lackluster marketing and the late Jan release date, I can't help but predict that this game might end up being: dead on arrival.
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