Spoiler Warning: The following review contains a detailed recap of the events in the final episode of A New Frontier.
From the Gallows stumbles to its conclusion much like the walkers that finally appear in this concluding episode of Telltale Games' A New Frontier. While this closing act ties all the dangling plotlines into a neat bow, the fiery promise of its predecessors sputters out due to some odd dramatic choices. Everything plays out too predictably and is too indulgent of Walking Dead franchise cliches to be particularly satisfying to those who have followed the travails of Javi Garcia and his erstwhile flame (and sister-in-law) Kate since Episode One arrived just before last Christmas.
Of course, it's hard to properly critique From the Gallows without delving into the narrative that unfolds in this episode. The story picks up precisely where the last episode, Thicker Than Water, concluded. The fortress town of Richmond has just exploded into civil war with a gunfight on the streets. Kate has accidentally plowed a stolen truck into a wall, allowing a herd of zombies into the heart of the city--and apparently killing herself in the resulting explosion. In short, everything has gone completely to hell.
Or has it? Kate is soon seen none the worse for wear, despite riding an exploding truck into a wall that's soon overrun by zombies. The wild gun battle abruptly ends as everyone runs away from the incoming walkers. Walking Dead and general action-movie cliches come fast and furiously. Your core group of survivors flee across rooftops in scenes that evoke moments from earlier Telltale seasons, as well as those from early episodes of the TV series. Javi uses zombie guts as camouflage to walk between zombies. The guy you think is going to die does die, almost immediately after a dialogue sequence that concludes any unfinished business hanging over the plot from the last episode. He might as well be wearing a red shirt and beaming down to a planet with Captain Kirk.
Disappointingly, the big showdown between Javi and David is a huge letdown. These two hate each other, and they're both in love with the same woman, so you expect fireworks. Instead, you get pretty much nothing. Even after it's fully revealed that Kate is in love with Javi and wants nothing to do with her hothead hubby, the brothers do nothing more than get into a brawl that's capped by David taking off in a truck with his son Gabe. You can't help but be disappointed, especially if you take the high road and refuse to fight back, honoring the wishes expressed by your father in the opening prologue.
Even worse, David dies offscreen. The truck gets overwhelmed by zombies. David gets bitten. Gabe has to finish off his dad. All of this is recounted to you via a dialogue scene when Gabe returns--which, of course, ruins any sense of closure to the story between Javi and David that's been the underpinning of this entire season. It's all wrapped up by an oddly cold denouement. Javi and Kate go to David's body, she pulls off his Army dog tags, and then buries them without a word of eulogy. She even leaves her wedding ring on the dirt. David was a complete jerk through all of A New Frontier, to the point that you were clearly meant to root for Javi and Kate to get together, but this ending comes off cold to the point of being cruel. For the first time in the season, it's hard not to feel sorry for the guy.
This whole sequence may well change depending on a choice you make to either stay with Kate when she goes to help Richmond or go off in pursuit of David and Gabe--or if you chose earlier on to avoid any sort of commitment to Kate. Multiple replays are likely needed to unveil everything. But there's no way that David should be allowed to die off-screen no matter what choices are made by the player. The feud between the brothers and the love triangle between them and Kate plays too big a part in this season for this to ever occur. And it's pretty likely to happen to most players, given how much it makes sense for you to stay with Kate at the end considering the growing relationship--and how much the natural ending of the game is for Javi and Kate to wind up together.
With all that said, From the Gallows isn't entirely frustrating. The happy ending with Javi and Kate will be really satisfying to shippers rooting for them all along, especially given how few of these moments occur in the Walking Dead universe. There's a lot of action here too, mostly featuring Javi gunning down walkers. There isn't much challenge involved, but it's still nice to get more involved and to be directly threatened by a whole lot of undead for what's really the first time this season.
Clementine is used reasonably well as a background character--which seems fitting, given that this isn't her story. The writers do a great job of easing her into the supporting cast so that she remains a presence, but one that doesn't overwhelm the real protagonists. The only oddity with Clem's story comes at the very end, when she heads off into the sunset to find her lost surrogate son with no survival gear besides a pistol and a knife. All this conclusion needs is the sad piano music featured at the end of old episodes of <i>The Incredible Hulk</i>.
After a strong start, A New Frontier ends on a slightly weak note with From the Gallows. This season had its high points, and it remains well worth playing, especially if you're a serious fan of the Walking Dead franchise, due to the generally superb dialogue, voice acting, and stylish comic-book visuals. But an overall lack of player interaction, too many cliches, and a lame, predictable climax that goes out with a whimper instead of a bang make the season much less memorable than it could've been.
The Town Of Light feels like a victim of its own design. While it tells an interesting albeit disturbing story of mental health treatment in the early 1900s, it's plagued by repetitious gameplay, long load times, and visual issues that hold it back from delivering the impact it strives to deliver.
Based on real accounts from the 1930s and '40s, The Town of Light focuses on Renee, a young woman who's suffered from severe mental illness for the majority of her life. Her struggle began with sporadic blackouts as a child and eventually developed into bouts of anxiety and the sounds of strange voices in her head. Pushed over the edge by the horrors of a sexual assault, Renee is callously committed to the real-world Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra, an understaffed, overcrowded asylum in the Tuscan town of Volterra, Italy.
You assume control of Renee after the fact; at a time when the asylum has long been abandoned. She's a somewhat unreliable narrator, failing to recall exactly what occurred during her tenure at the asylum. The vast majority of your time is spent wandering the halls and grounds of the large hospital, piecing together what happened to Renee during her stint. You revisit sites of traumatic events, discover and study pages from her journal, and page through medical records, which offer eye-opening insight into the horrifying, violent ways mentally ill patients were treated nearly a century ago.
While The Town of Light struggles with portraying the ways in which people cope with mental health issues, it at least makes piecing Renee's story together an interesting process. The twists and turns therein are paced well enough that you'll remain engaged throughout. Some exposition may be drip-fed to players through found documents and the like, while big story beats are presented as hand-drawn cutscenes. Each method is linked to a different part of Renee's story, whether it's recalling the doctors who abused her, the fellow female patient who helped her explore her own sexuality, or the circumstances that led to her hospitalization in the first place.
These moments are carried by solid art direction; letters are detailed and appear to be written by hand. Flipping through Renee's journal reveals a number of dark and thought-provoking drawings that supplement the anecdote she's sharing. Despite the generally static presentation, the game's hand-drawn cutscenes utilize a unique crosshatched, watercolor style. When it comes to the The Town of Light's tiny details, there's plenty to admire despite the heavy context that surrounds it.
While the hospital is large, with tons of rooms to explore to find the aforementioned narrative tidbits, the drab and ugly environments do take their toll, and not in a way that reinforces Renee's tragic story. For the majority of the game, you'll walk through the same hallways filled with similar-looking rooms looking for scraps of evidence, guided only by vague objectives. This persists until the last third of the game, when you step outside the asylum's walls--a turn that isn't as uplifting as it sounds.
At first you're sent to the asylum's outer grounds to examine headstones in a graveyard, but you're then transported into a cognitive labyrinth in Renee's mind. You'll walk endlessly, trying in vain to figure out where to go and what to do next. Suddenly and for no explicable reason, you're sent back into the asylum. Both of these sections are confusingly designed, stretching on far longer than feels necessary. It's at this stage that The Town of Light stops being an interesting examination of a troubled mind, and becomes a frustrating game that may not be worth completing after all.
At least on Xbox One, all of this is made worse by poor technical performance. There are consistent frame rate issues when you're exploring outside the asylum, where turning in any direction also results in noticeable screen tearing. Load times are equally off-putting, stretching on for upwards of a minute at a time. This is also the case within menus, where opening up the collectibles screen comes at the cost of about a 30-second wait.
It's disappointing to see The Town of Light struggle so often, because the story it presents is both harrowing and captivating at times. While there's an interesting narrative to be found in its world, the moment-to-moment gameplay and repetitive environments impose an unavoidable malaise. Given the fact that the game is based on actual accounts of psychiatric treatment in the early 1900s, you might be better off looking up the real stories that inspired The Town of Light rather than forcing your way through a version of them here.
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