The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier Episode 5: From The Gallows

What really makes From the Gallows stand out as one of the better episodes this season is that in and among all the action and drama, there are some really touching moments of laughter and love.

From the Gallows wraps up the season on a high note, with a truly customized chapter that forces players to make intense selections regarding the characters they have grown to love, hate or otherwise care about. Telltale has continued to prove that whatever faults may have arisen in the past can be easily set aside when the final consequences end up amounting to more than just life or death.

The close left me wondering just how differently all of my actions could have guided the direction of the episode and finale.

Quotation forthcoming.

The fifth episode encompasses both what worked and didn’t about A New Frontier — namely, the ideas of allegiance, love, and family for the former and erratic pacing and an inability to make the overarching story of much interest in the latter. But the season finale spends much more time on those successful aspects, capping A New Frontier in satisfying fashion while setting up a potentially exciting continuation down the road.

A solid conclusion to the season, and I definitely enjoyed the ride.

As with all of The Walking Dead games, there are a few different endings for players to experience, although achieving them isn’t as straight-forward as it was in prior iterations.

An emotional and heartfelt farewell to the daughter of an entire generation of gamers. The power of the narrative is such, that Telltale manages to pull one last rabbit out of it’s battered, mangled hat. As Clementine walks into the sunset, we know that we can never go home again. Telltale knows it too. It’s heartbreaking and it’s beautiful. And it’s also quite alright.

Compared to the earlier entries, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier wasn't the best season. There were more than enough characters who were unsympathetic, and some of the recycled plot devices didn't do anything to wipe away that sense of déjà vu. The final episode, From the Gallows, brought a satisfying emotional resolution to earlier actions and events, and the end report listing the overall relationship outcomes between Javi and all of the major characters made you feel like there was actually some agency in a Telltale title, even if that doesn't really occur. Though uneven, this turned out to be a good season if you were willing to stick with it.

Its characters don’t have the consistency of their predecessors, nor the emotional impact of its storytelling. But its low-points aren’t unforgivable, and after all of this, I still want to see what happens next. While the ending had me smiling just from the emotion it brought, it may have also had to do with its final words…“Clementine’s Story Will Return.”

As far as finales go, From the Gallows is pretty good. There are some great interactions between the brothers, only let down by the treatment of one of the character's deaths.

A New Frontier does Telltale’s The Walking Dead series justice, and its finale brings almost all of the closure that fans have been asking for.

This fifth chapter is the best one of a very irregular season that does not achieve to give us as good of vibrations as the previous ones.

A good season finale with lots of emotional scenes and different endings. Still, the epilogue makes you wonder if this was an interim season, and what is the real role of Clementine, for a narrative that's not so clear.

An engaging yet flawed chapter satisfyingly closes off the season and sets the stage for Clementine's next adventure.

This season has its bright spots, but it also suffers from recycled plot points and uneven writing. From The Gallows represents this season's inconsistencies; it has some satisfying moments, but it also features just as many head scratchers. At the very least, From The Gallows is a decent conclusion to Javier's story – but it didn't leave much of an impression on me.

This episode feels like for every step forward it takes one step back. It's a good episode, but we hope all the promising ideas we have here become real in the future.

Third season ended just like it began: with no spark or an underlying idea. Stuff just happened. Here are the events, here are your decisions; as for conclusions – draw your own, because script writers have already moved on to Minecraft Story Mode – Season 2. [Issue#221, p.84]

If you’ve been following the series this far, it might be worth checking out just to have a save file ready for when season four comes out. Just be aware that the finale is pretty disappointing on the whole.

What worked in this finale did not make up for the flimsy story, lack of character development and general lack of focus throughout The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. Instead of going forward and telling a gripping story that focused on a brand new bunch of characters, I couldn’t help but care about just three. “From The Gallows” does as best a job as it can wrapping things up in a neat little bow, but the overall quality makes me fearful for the future of the Telltale narrative adventure.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 5 is a gripping, emotional ending to this chapter in the series, but it's also one that doesn't quite hit the mark as well as the prior seasons of this successful franchise have. When it comes to the grand finale, players simply deserved a bigger, more satisfying resolution to Javier's story and the outcome facing him and his loved ones. And, while I did enjoy Clem's ending – again, I'll keep it vague – Clem's presence alone isn't enough to carry this piece of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier to the heights that prior episodes in this saga could reach.

After a strong start, A New Frontier ends on a slightly weak note with From the Gallows.

The episode, and the game in general, is not bad. In fact, it is good. There are moments of tension and a narrative that goes some way to engage the player. And since, I’ve been a bit of a downer about the whole thing, I would like to add, the voice acting is superb, as expected. Plus, Jesus turns up again in all his man-bun glory which made for a great ending to his character. But by the standards of Telltale, the episode is simply, and frustratingly, just ‘fine’ or ‘OK’. For any other franchise, this would be par for the course. But for The Walking Dead, a series revered and loved by many, it seems crushingly disappointing.

A disappointing finale doesn't completely undo the goodwill earned by the rest of the season, but a sour aftertaste is still pretty hard to wash out.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier didn't just have an ambitious title, it also had a great deal of promise. The start of the third season was as memorable as anything Telltale had done before, but the story took turns in some strange directions that didn't have the payoff hinted at early on. Given Telltale's track record, we're not writing off the future of The Walking Dead, but A New Frontier's finish certainly raised questions as to whether or not Telltale has anything exciting left to say about this world.