The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - The Final Season Episode 3: Broken Toys

Outside of those small technical issues, the third episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season still manages to reaches many of the highpoints of the series’ earlier seasons with a great blend of tense action and poignant character moments. While some might have expected a bit of a snag with the behind-the-scenes troubles that occurred midway through its season, The Walking Dead hasn’t lost a beat in the second half of its final season, and in just a few months from now we’ll finally get to see the conclusion of Clementine’s story. Based on how “Broken Toys” plays out, I’m looking forward to the end of Clem’s tale as much as I am anticipating it to be a heartbreaking finale.

The Walking Dead was worth saving. The usual Telltale caveats about polish and quick time action scenes apply, but this is exciting, powerhouse storytelling, packed with fantastic character work and edge-of-your-seat cinematic moments. The Walking Dead: The Final Season Episode 3 lines up the sights for a bloody good finale – let’s hope Skybound nails the headshot.

Episode 3, Broken Toys, has me suitably excited to see The Walking Dead: The Final Season out to its conclusion. The various moving narrative parts are coming together for what will undoubtedly do the series proud – and bring to proper close the journey of Clementine, the one consistent thread uniting all the series’ seasons. Like hungry Walkers, fans are slowly shuffling towards March 26th, when we get to sink our teeth into Episode 4.

The climax is one of the better actions scenes that The Walking Dead has put forward, and it delivers for the most part. I was a bit upset at the end, as there is at least one senseless death that seemed thrown in just to remind you that any choice you make has consequences, but there were also some really great moments, including one that calls back to Lily’s father Larry, and his incredible death during the first season. For the first time that I can recall as well, you are given the option to knock out the Raiders instead of simply ending their life, and I wonder how that will play into the overall narrative as this train comes to the end of its track.

Even though it’s never going much higher, this third episode is treating with care all the topics it deals with. Its conclusion gives us high hopes for the big final ending coming soon.

Featuring a sweeping narrative experience and barring a few caveats, the penultimate episode Broken Toys might be the best yet for The Walking Dead: The Final Season.

Episode 3: Broken Toys continues to improve and is paving the way for one hell of a finale. In spite of its annoying technical issues, players should look past that and see the fantastic piece of work that’s been put together there. Broken Toys isn’t perfect, but its dialogue is superb, its pacing is fluid and its gameplay is fun and engaging.

Quotation forthcoming.

Episode 3 has left me wondering what's going to happen, but passively so. I couldn't imagine feeling this way when I began the season, but obvious setbacks for the team have likely hindered inspiration and execution. I want to laud their efforts and sing their praises, especially considering everything that has happened, but the facts are that Episode 3 has only given the series buoyancy, which is hard to accept at this point in the season. While it is a positive experience, I can't help but feel lukewarm about poor Clementine's fate in this harsh world.

Clementine’s story deserves to be finished, and this third episode does justice to the legacy of Telltale Games.

Broken toys is to remember especially for two beautiful central sections and for the tumultuous ending, but in the end it remains the "same" Walking Dead episode as ever.

The Walking Dead: The Final Season episode 3 carries over Telltale Games’ swan song well with a deeply emotional, complex story of grief and redemption. Despite an overreliance on callbacks and technical issues, Skybound Games brought the series back to focus after certain doom, setting up a compelling and gripping finale.

The more the soul shatters, the more difficult it will be to put the pieces together again.

Thematically, Broken Toys is a hit-and-miss. The ideology of peace involving no violence against humans nor walkers is a high point for me since it’s a new approach to viewing the apocalypse. Personally, I’ve always thought ‘the more zombies that get killed, the less there are to roam’, but his new tack did leave me thinking about it. On the other hand, much of the content here feels like ground the series has covered several times before, and the lack of standout characters dulls the entire experience.

As the final season of The Walking Dead is brought back to life by Skybound, the narrative plot continues to shamble aimlessly like the zombies that inhabit its world. A few emotional chats between Clementine and AJ and a finale-prepping conclusion makes the journey worth continuing, but Skybound will need to go above and beyond to provide Clementine the send off she deserves and make the fourth and final season one worth playing.

The mere fact that The Walking Dead: The Final Season – Episode 3 'Broken Toys' exists is cause for celebration.

Broken Toys is a fine and quite interesting episode. There's tension, action, heartbreaking moments, good characters development and a lot of question that hopefully will find answers in a few weeks.