The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier Episode 1: Ties That Bind Part One

A New Frontier, despite its name, really is sticking with what’s worked before, and it’s not made to convert. It’s made to continue, and that’s what it does superbly.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier continues to prove that Telltale Games are masters of storytelling. They know exactly how to craft a narrative that gets you attached to the characters you are controlling, invested in their choices, and devastated by the tragic consequences of those choices.

Ties That Bind Part I was the perfect way for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier to start. It reintroduced us to grown-up Clementine, provided ample time for us to get to know Javier and the rest of his group, and gave us plenty of moments for us to decide what kind of a guy we wanted him to be.

Unlike some of the episodes in previous seasons, there wasn’t a moment I found myself waiting for particular boring sections to end.

The best episodes in the series to date. Telltale have successfully created an intense atmosphere with a heavy sense of urgency that will keep players on edge throughout.

Telltale has crafted another entertaining chapter in the always-growing Walking Dead story. The Ties That Bind Part I takes the series in a welcome new direction with the Garcia family while still staying true to the moral dilemmas and zombie-chomping action that made the first two seasons so compelling. The New Frontier is off to a great start, and its troubled cast's harrowing journey is just getting started.

I don’t have a clear sense of where the season as a whole aims to go just yet, but “Ties That Bind Part I” is one of Telltale’s strongest openers in recent memory.

Perhaps the greatest shortcoming is the game’s stubbornness to shove Javi’s family as the player’s raison d’etre, when it’s clear that Clementine is a much more relatable and less frustrating character. The classic Telltale trap of unavoidable events is still there, but by now you should know what you’re getting into. If judged by what it attempts to do, rather than by what some sceptic players want it to be, A New Frontier’s harrowing first episodes smoothen most rough edges found in other games in the series in terms of storytelling. It just about manages to shake off the notion of being a rehashed concept, and become a beast that can stand on its own two feet, built upon the foundations laid by Lee and Clementine. Hopefully the rest of the season manages to sustain this level of quality.

Ties That Bind does an exceptional job at building a new world for The Walking Dead fans to explore while still integrating the components that made Telltale’s series a breakout hit.

This game actually forced me to pick up Season 1 and get to know The Walking Dead series again. Rest assured, A New Frontier is a brilliant game and continues the never-ending Walker drama, certainly providing enough intrigue to keep me avidly looking out for episode three.

Quotation forthcoming.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier begins with a very powerful double chapter and Telltale Games makes clear why they are the masters of their own genre. Dynamic, spectacular and fresh are the adjectives that describe this new adventure.

My favorite story beats in Ties That Bind are unquestionably classified as spoilers, but they all spring from the same place: drama motivated by logical character action. Javi and the gang are proactive and well-defined, which makes their struggle to survive all the more compelling. If the first two episodes are any indication, A New Frontier will be a worthy follow-up to The Walking Dead, even if there's no chance it will be quite as revolutionary.

The Ties That Bind shines with polish and quality but ultimately feels like a retread of familiar territory. Perhaps seven years of television and four years of interactive fiction have been enough for the Walking Dead. A quality work through and through but long-time fans will feel like they are in too familiar territory.

A promising, assured start, and a welcome return to form for Telltale.

Thus far, the first two episodes of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier set up the intrigue. Javi is a decent character for the player to control, and Clementine is much more complicated than before due to her experiences. The story beats seem to replay some of the events of the TV series and comic, although with different characters and locations, but the ending of the second episode is enough to capture the attention of those who may already be tired of the franchise general. With only three more episodes to go, it'll be interesting to see if Telltale can keep the momentum going.

Classic gameplay and a strong story. A Telltale game.

While both Episode 1 and 2 are rather brief – it took me less than two hours to complete each one, and I probably could have done it more quickly if I hadn’t been enjoying a slow, savoring pace – they are high-quality chapters.

Bugs and shortcomings aside, the last time I found myself this absorbed and invested in a Telltale game was with Tales from the Borderlands. If A New Frontier continues to build upon its characters and story arc with the same momentum of these first two episodes, this season could well turn out to be some of Telltale’s best work yet.

Overall, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is off to a solid start. Fans of the series will definitely have plenty to enjoy here – and emotionally suffer through – and players who found the game to be too clunky and slow previously may appreciate this entry more.

The Ties that Bind Part 1 is a great start to a new entry in Telltale’s excellent series, one that does just enough to feel fresh.

While the third season will be unlikely to re-entice those who fell off after the second season, those who yearn for the emotional scenes and depressing themes of Clementine’s journey will find plenty to appreciate in the first two episodes of A New Frontier thanks to Telltale’s high-quality storytelling skills and presentation.

A New Frontier is a good start for the new season of The Walking Dead: its plot is compelling and fascinating but the gameplay it's still the same of the Telltale's adventures.

The new engine is also firing on all cylinders here, offering the most enjoyable visual and technical experience Telltale has ever produced.

A fantastic introduction to The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. The story is incredibly well created, still managing to feel fresh despite the amount of baggage its carrying from two previous seasons of diverging narrative.

The opening two episodes set the stage for the new adventure. They have everything you've come to expect from The Walking Dead: shocking deaths, intense betrayals, and split-second decisions to second-guess. Ties That Bind mostly focuses on familial bonds - the risks we take for the people we love and how far we're willing to go to put another's life above our own.

Whether you’re a returning fan, a lapsed player or a complete newcomer, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier gets off to a good and welcoming start, with more than a few twists and turns packed into the two-part episode.

The Walking Dead Season 3 makes two very strong starts. Splitting the first episode into a two-parter means fans are treated to a double-whammy of excellent storytelling and get to spend more time with these immediately engaging and relatable characters.

The first part of Ties That Bing shows new characters and a tougher, charming Clementine which appears to be more interesting. Still, Javier, his family and the other characters still have to demonstrate their true potentiality.

These two short episodes (about three hours for both) did keep me invested and reminded me that Telltale can spin a good story. There were a few effective moments and a few tricky choices. However, the technical and narrative flaws are too glaring to ignore. And, perhaps saddest of all, I am just not as excited to play the next episode as I usually am with Telltale games.

A strong opener and weaker follow-up chapter, but the third season is certainly heading in the right direction, narratively at least.

If you were a fan of the previous two seasons and enjoyed playing as Clementine then you may be slightly disappointed as she is not the main playable character, at least not in this episode. But if you are open to a new story, characters and a fresh take to the series then you should give this a go. New players to the series will also enjoy it as long as you are aware that it is more story driven and your choices will not have a huge effect on the outcome of the episode (so far).

A New Frontier doesn’t fail completely as a narrative experience — Javier and his makeshift family aren’t unlikeable as far as characters go — but the story that’s being told in these first two episodes just doesn’t command the player’s investment like it used to. The gameplay aspects are superfluous, the story beats are overly familiar, and and not even seeing Clementine again can save the moaning, ambling corpse this series has unfortunately become.