Right after finishing a very high-octane, action-heavy title, I thought it best to slow down and try my hand at a game that had tickled my curiosity for a good long while. Considering how much I enjoyed Gone Home, Tacoma and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, it came as a surprise when I finished Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture with very mixed feelings. Instead of falling in love with a quaint English town and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the people that had lived there, I was tempted after an hour or so of play to stop and try my hand at something else.

I can’t rightly pinpoint what exactly about the game, from developer The Chinese Room, did not sit right with me. After scouring the internet, I feel like it must have been the pace of the game and the lack of objects that could be interacted with. From the very beginning, it felt as if the playable character moved at a snail’s pace. Other titles that might be considered ‘walking simulators’ in their own right felt faster, or were perhaps more dense. Even holding down R2 did not elevate how slow I moved around the world. In fact, the speed was also detrimental to my desire to explore and see more of the town I found myself in. Why bother heading to a particular point of interest if it took forever and a day to reach it and head back to the critical path?

Additionally, the lack of objects that could be picked up and studied also served to dull my interest. In fact, other than with doors and the occasional radio, the only other thing that I could interact with were strange globules of light that required the controller be tilted either left or right. The controls for this, in particular, did not seem very intuitive and the prompt at the beginning did not anchor in my head until I found my third ball of light. 

What I did like were the revelations about each named character and the other individuals that lived in the town. Whether that was Wendy trying to meddle in the love lives of her son and his previous beau (as well as her disdain for his American wife), to the interactions between Jeremy and those that attended his church.

While the conversations proved illuminating when it came to understanding the many different individuals that lived in Yaughton, Shropshire, I feel like it was a missed opportunity that other ways to tell the story were not included.

The mystery behind the disappearing populace – supposedly a sudden influx of Spanish influenza – did prove to be intriguing. After exploring the first area, it was clear that this was something more. The tissues covered in blood and the recording made by the local physician only served to heighten the possibilities of what was truly going on. As the story continues, the player learns that a strange phenomenon may be the actual cause. Fearful, Stephen Appleton calls on the government to spray nerve gas over the entire town to stop the spread of this alien contagion.

In many ways, the quarantine that surrounded the town is reminiscent of our current battle with COVID-19. Locked in our homes, unable to venture overseas or even cross state lines has proven a difficult enterprise for many. And like some of the characters in the game, there have been the occasional individuals that have tried to sneak past borders or lied to authorities their actual movements in order to be allowed sanctuary in another state or city.

Fortunately, we have yet to be turned into dust and sucked up into a glowing pattern of light. Whether it’s meant to be considered an alien or a concept of faith is unclear. What is strange in Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is that only humans were infected. Birds and cows simply dropped dead. There was no dusting a la the Thanos Snap in Avengers: Infinity War. 

Speaking of which, Stephen feared that the contagion of light had traversed the phone lines and had spread outside the valley where the town of Yaughton was located. If that was the case, who is the playable character? Are we also a ball of light? After all, I had no feet or hands. I hardly heard any indication of footsteps. Yet, somehow, I could still get trapped on random geometry in the environment.  Alas, a mystery to solve another time.

On the other side of the spectrum of games that I managed to finish quite quickly was The Walking Dead: The Final Season. After the whole debacle of Telltale shutting its doors due to unsustainable business practices and the game initially being released on Epic Games Store, I wasn’t quite certain if I would ever see Clementine’s story through to completion. Yet, fast forward a year or two and I managed to purchase it on Steam.

Clementine has always had a special place in my heart. After looking after her while playing as Lee Everett, I had watched as she grew up in a world that was very different from our own. Each subsequent game only seemed to further paint a grim and bleak future for humanity after the zombie apocalypse and I feared something terrible would happen to the little girl I found nestled in her tree house, waiting for her parents to return home.

In The Final Season, several years have passed and Clementine is in her late teens. With her is AJ, the son of Rebecca and a very precocious five year old. He seems incredibly mature for his age and behaves basically like a rebellious teenager. Except, of course, that he still has a very black and white view of the world. Shoot monsters in the head. Food and bullets are good. Clementine is the best.

What felt different in this title, rather than the ones before, is that after an encounter at an old railway station, Clementine is welcomed to a small community that is largely run by kids. Or, at the very least, teenagers that have also lived through the traumatic beginnings of the apocalypse. There are no adults – for many of the teachers abandoned these troubled youth at the first sign of danger. And instead of trying to prove herself in a world full of adults, Clementine is able to interact with people her own age or younger. Coupled with looking after AJ, she is the one that needs to be responsible and make sure that AJ doesn’t grow up to become a completely jaded ten-year old.

The narrative of The Final Season is centred around the Erikson Boarding School and the students there. Leader of the small group is Marlon, voiced by none other than Prince Noctis himself, Ray Chase. Violet and Louis came next in import. Then came Willy, Aasim, Ruby, Mitch, Omar and Tennessee. Oh, and mustn’t forget Brody. Voiced by Hedy Burress (or Yuna from Final Fantasy X)! 

Interacting with this gaggle of kids was refreshing. Instead of suspicion, Clementine and AJ were met with curiosity. While Ruby might not have liked the fact that AJ bit her, or his eating habits, it was very easy to like each character and not have to dwell on what each person’s agenda was and wondering if they would betray the group.

Alas, Clementine’s good deed in trying to find more food leads to Brody freaking out when Clementine mentions meeting a scavenger also looking for food: Abel. The climax of the first chapter ends with the discovery that raiders have previously taken two members of the Erikson Boarding School kids and may have returned. But before Marlon could atone for his crimes, he is shot dead by AJ. Plot contrivances somehow allowed the five year old kid to pick up the gun that Marlon dropped by his feet, sneak up behind him and shoot him right in the head. Don’t ask me how.

The next two chapters proved excellent in building up the tension of confronting the raiders, one of which was Season 1 Lilly. I knew the instant that I had to once again select my choices from the previous titles that she would be making a reappearance. After all, she was a plot thread that had yet to be neatly tied into a bow. And despite everything – like the hardening of Clementine and making her a ruthless survivor – I could not order AJ to shoot the conniving ex-military woman.

In fact, I played Clementine as I did most of my other characters when it comes to role-playing games. Emphatic and desperately trying to make the right choices. 

While the story did feel a little cliched with many familiar beats, I did feel strongly invested in trying to pass on everything I could to little AJ. In that, The Final Season felt like it came full circle with Clementine getting bitten and faced with the dilemma of turning or allowing herself to be killed. Rather than repeat what happened in the first season of The Walking Dead, however, the epilogue shows Clementine surviving her leg been haphazardly chopped off with an axe covered in walker guts.

How did she not manage to bleed out? Did the other kids manage to find her in the barn and free both her and AJ? How did she not die from infection?

Like many mediums that are set after the apocalypse, the humans here are hardy and tenacious. In a world where many of us are struggling with a pandemic that does not appear to be seasonal and with long-lasting symptoms that can affect individuals months after the initial diagnosis, it does feel like we’ve entered a nebulous stage of despair. Whole countries have been shut down, re-opened and sent straight back into lockdown when numbers have climbed. With summer approaching in Australia, it feels like the worst may have passed. But for the rest of the world in the northern hemisphere, winter is coming. With it comes the additional risks of normal flu and cold. 

But what The Walking Dead: The Final Season left me with, despite how glum a zombie outbreak would bring, is that there is still the chance for hope. Of creating a family and living instead of surviving. 

Even when society has collapsed and most have returned to old bartering systems or looking after their own crops, there is still light at the end of the tunnel.