Lately, Telltale has been putting out compelling games that give a fantastic amount of agency to players, which allows me to explore and make pivotal decisions in worlds (like The Walking Dead and Fables) that I've been reading about in comics for years now. This has resulted in me desiring to put together my thoughts responding to what I've experienced with various entries in Telltale's franchises, written down almost directly after playing them. What follows is full of SPOILERY reactions to the chapter and game mentioned in the title. If you haven't played it yet, go do that first! Then you'll know what I'm talking about AND you'll have played an awesome game. I'm doing you a favor. Really.

"Holy. Shit."

Those were the first words to cross my lips as the title card on the first episode of Season 2 of The Walking Dead flashed onto my screen. Within minutes of starting, Telltale lets you know that they are NOT fucking around with this whole sequel-to-2012's-Game-of-the-Year thing. What an ass-clenching, heart-wrenching way to bring us back to the zombie-infested world that we left Clementine in. Omid, who I was just starting to warm up to in my second play through of the first season, is gunned down accidentally by a stranger trying to jack all of Clementine's stuff in a pit stop bathroom, followed by Christa (poor, sweet, pregnant Christa) rushing in and falling to her knees, cradling the father of her child in her arms. I should have seen it coming. Really, I should have. Things were just too... peppy... before it all went down. They were arguing/joking about what they were going to name the kid for chrissakes! And then everything happened and it all went to shit. Seeing the look of horror and self-imposed guilt in Clementine's face, let alone the nearly accusatory stare given by Christa was enough to make my heart drop into my gut.

Did I mention this is roughly the first 10 minutes or so?

And nothing gets better from there. I could go on about every little plot detail, but surely you've already played, right? Yeah, you wouldn't have read this without already playing. Surely not. Regardless, even after the game leaps forward in time things only get shittier and shittier, with everything falling apart until Clem is all alone, fending for herself. And then she meets a stray dog named Same, and you can see how the game could get a little ray of sunshine in the midst of all the darkness. A kid and a dog, surviving the wilderness, looking out for one another. Yeah! That's a story I could get on board with.

Then, well, you know what happens.

Why did Sam have to attack me? I was going to give him some food. I was going to share... stupid goddamn dog. It makes so much sense now, looking back on it. Sam was just hungry, so he attacked me, and I had to fight him off and eventually put him out of his misery. Still, I like to imagine the story where Clem and Sam got a little more time together, where the stupid apocalypse didn't get in the way of a little girl having a pup to keep her company. But if there's one thing we've learned, especially about Telltale's The Walking Dead, it's that things never go the way you hope.

If you couldn't tell, I really enjoyed this first chapter of Season 2. Looking at the game, it seems like Telltale beefed up their game engine, improving both the graphics and the speed at which the engine runs. Unlike the first season, I didn't encounter any parts of the game with stuttering or obvious loading of situation-based dialog options. It also seems like the character animations are a little more natural, and their combat/exciting/terrifying moment mechanics are improved as well, smartly brought over from The Wolf Among Us. One of my least favorite parts of TWD Season 1 was the segments where you were forced to shoot at anything. Replacing those segments with button prompts, while icky in many situations, works for Telltale's special brand of game, so good on them for making that change.

The biggest change, however, was how different this first episode felt from Season 1. Everything seems so much bleaker, and I was surprised just how much speaking for Clementine instead of Lee changed the experience. Very quickly I realized that there are certain tactics that would use Season 1 that would not work for Clem. People definitely view her differently because she's a young girl, and I've seen that work both in her favor and against her. And that's exciting! It's not many games where you get to play a pre-teen girl attempting to manipulate/survive her way through an apocalypse, and I found it fascinating and thrilling to test the boundaries of what I thought Clem would say and what kinds of bluffs or honesty people would accept from the character. I'm really looking forward to seeing how her character, along with my perception of her, grows and changes over the next season.

Now, if we could just find another dog...

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an incredibly expansive game. The world that Bethesda crafted is chock full of content, and anything can happen at any time. This open-ended nature allows every player to feel as though they truly own their character’s story. What follows is but a snapshot of the journey of Sigrid Erikkson, warrior of the Nords, as she faces an unexpected terror in the darkest corners of her homeland.

‘I think I’m going to turn in for the night,’ I called down to Lydia as she sat guard next to the fire.

‘Yes, my Thane,’ she replied. ‘I’m sure rest will be a welcome respite after a battle like that. Sleep well.’

As I lay down in my bedroom, I thought about my comrade downstairs. In the months I had known Lydia, she had always been a bit of a mystery to me, but I had never felt less sure of what she was thinking than at this exact moment. I had just purchased a house here in Whiterun, mere hours after the battle for the city had ended. It was a battle that I had coerced Lydia into joining; a battle to overthrow the Jarl of Whiterun. What must she think of me? Joining me in the fray and turning her sword on her fellow clansmen must have tested the very limits of her loyalty as a housecarl. We both had played a crucial role in the sacking of Whiterun, and I didn’t even know if I should consider apologising for attacking her home, much less bring myself to beg for her forgiveness. I could face down a dozen men in battle, but when it came to mending wounds between comrades I hadn’t the courage to speak. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the Axe of Whiterun hanging above the bed. As my eyes fluttered and I began to drift off to sleep, I had one thought: tomorrow.

Tomorrow I would sit down with Lydia over breakfast, and we would discuss what had happened.

I awoke the following morning with a start and the feeling there was something very, very wrong. I looked around as my eyes adjusted to the flickering light of the fireplace in front of me. The walls were covered in a thick layer of grime that looked suspiciously like blood. Any remnants of sleep left me as I jumped to my feet, realizing I was no longer in my home. A figure sat atop the bookshelf in front of me, its cowl drawn, shrouded in the shadows thrown by the crackling fire. All that was visible were harsh, piercing eyes as the stranger stared at me with almost manic joy—a look I had seen far too much of in the sellswords and cutthroats I had encountered on my journeys. We stayed there for a moment, looking at each other, until the figure broke the silence.

‘Sleep well?’ the shadow said, in a voice far softer than I expected. ‘Well, it hardly matters, doesn’t it? You’re warm, dry…and still very much alive. That’s more than can be said for old Grelod, hmm?’

The moment the odd figure—who I had now identified as a woman—mentioned that old crone, I knew exactly what had happened to me. It was that damn Aretino boy who had hired me to kill the vile old woman who ran the orphanage in Riften. I took on that job as a kindness, but afterwards I had received a foreboding note by courier containing only an image of a black hand and the words We know. What had the boy said when I met him? That he was trying to summon an order of assassins to kill the old woman for him? I had heard stories of the Dark Brotherhood, but I had thought they were nothing more than that: stories.

So I steeled myself and attempted to mask my unease by smirking and saying, ‘So, you know about that, eh?’

‘Half of Skyrim knows,’ she scoffed. ‘Old hag gets butchered in her own orphanage? Things like that tend to get around. Oh, but don’t misunderstand. I’m not criticising.’ She shook her head. ‘It was a good kill. The old crone had it coming, and you saved a group of urchins to boot.’

I relaxed a bit when I heard her unexpected praise, but didn’t let my guard down. Why would this woman steal me away from my home, only to pay me compliments? I stood in silence, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

‘Ah, but there is a slight… problem,’ she continued, ‘You see, that little Aretino boy was looking for the Dark Brotherhood. For me, and my associates. Grelod the Kind was, by all rights, a Dark Brotherhood contract. A kill that you stole. A kill you must repay.’

Bracing myself for a fight, I frowned and asked the question I knew she would be expecting. ‘A kill is a kill, not exactly something I can take back. Just how would I go about repaying you?’

‘Well now,’ I could see her smile underneath her hood. ‘Funny you should ask. If you turn around you’ll notice my guests.’

At her mention of others in the room, the bottom of my stomach dropped out. Lydia. Why couldn’t Lydia prevent the Brotherhood from taking me? Where was she? Would I turn around, only to find her or any number of the other kind souls I had met on my travels behind me? I didn’t dare move. I didn’t trust my limbs to hide how shaken I was by this turn of events. Instead, I returned the Dark Brotherhood agent’s steely gaze as she continued, unfazed by my glare.

‘I’ve “collected” them from…well, that’s not really important.’ Her glee was now easily visible. ‘The here and now, that’s what matters. You see, there’s a contract out on one of them, and that person can’t leave this room alive. But… which one? Go on, see if you can figure it out. Make your choice. Make your kill. I just want to observe…and admire.’

After a moment, I decided that there was no good way out of this. The woman had me at a disadvantage, and I didn’t dare attack her without the knowledge of who else was in the room with me. The chances of them getting injured or killed in the fray were too great.

Slowly, I turned…

This short story was originally published on October 13, 2013 on Blue Sun. It's been reposted here on my Giant Bomb page for posterity.

Going into Ubisoft’s E3 show, I was less than enthused. Ubisoft has a lot of games in the works, all of which we’ve been seeing since E3 2011. With games like Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, Watch_Dogs, and Rayman Legends coming out this year, I feared that Ubisoft wouldn’t have much to surprise us with this year. Thankfully, that was not the case. Ubisoft brought their top game with interesting gameplay demos and plenty of reveals up their sleeves, along with exciting new content for known entities like Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed.

Ubisoft started off their event with a bit of live guitar from Alice in Chains’s Jerry Cantrell to briefly promote the upcoming Rocksmith 2014. From there they moved on to some of the known entities, starting with Splinter Cell Blacklist. We got a trailer full of what looked to be pseudo-hacker UI elements with smaller windows playing in-game footage. The trailer alternated between concentrating on the game’s story and characters and then game modes, such as the game’s Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer mode. I’ve never been one to get into the Splinter Cell games, but the trailer made the game look interesting enough, and showed enough instances of receiving radio advice from other game characters to seem almost reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid. Well, a very, very American Metal Gear Solid, anyway.

Next, Ubisoft concentrated on some of the more lighthearted games coming from their studios. They started with the controversially-delayed Rayman Legends, showing both CG and gameplay trailers. The CG trailer seemed oddly out of place to me, eschewing the hand-painted look of the game for CG rendering, but the gameplay trailer looked like the typical platforming fun that gamers responded well to in Rayman Origins. From there, we were shown The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot. TMQfEL is a comedic, free-to-play game in which players are tasked with collecting loot and then protecting that loot. The game appears to have elements of tower defense games, and characters seem to have quite the potty mouth, if the game’s CG trailer is any indication. Rounding off their first set of light, fun games, Ubi showed us a new trailer for South Park: The Stick of Truth. While the trailer didn’t give us any gameplay, it did contain a few choice fart jokes and a self-referential crack about the game’s delay from Cartman, who told viewers the game would be coming, “…this holiday season. Or some… holiday season. You know how video games are.”

To be honest, at this point in the show I was bored. We’ve known about most of these games, and we’ve seen Ubisoft show them off many times. However, just before I started to mentally tune out, we were shown the newly announced The Crew from Ubisoft Reflections. The Crew is a new racing game with a massive scope. With no separation between the multiplayer and single player experience, you and your friends are tasked with infiltrating and taking over a criminal organization, one city at a time. You form four-man crews of drivers and perform missions, such as taking down bank trucks. There was this wonderful moment during the on-stage gameplay demo where I realised that this game could very well be Skyrim in racing game form. They even said the classic, “See those mountains? You can drive to them.” The game also has some neat cat customization options. You’ll be able to strip your cat down, replace parts, and avenge it. You’ll even be able to do this on your iPad, with the cat showing up in the game once you’re done. I’m not that much of a racing game fan, but I can totally see the appeal to a driving game as open as this one.

Up next we saw a bit more from Watch_Dogs, but not much. The lovely host, Aisha Tyler, got in a quick NSA joke, and then we were shown the trailer that leaked over the weekend. Other than that, no new information was revealed, just a vague promise of more surprises around the game coming out over the course of E3. After that, we were shown a quick trailer for Just Dance 2014. The trailer was as bubbly and happy as you’d expect, showing smiling people dancing along to a variety of popular songs while set against an acid-trip backdrop. Not much new to see here. Once the trailer ended, the presentation moved on to another new announcement from Ubisoft: Raving Rabbids Invasion. I’ve never played any of the Rabbidsgames, and I’ve also never gotten the impression that they’ve done all that well commercially, but who knows. Invasion isn’t a new game, however; it’s actually a TV show coming to the Xbox One in partnership with Nickelodeon. The show will focus on the Rabbids creatures, and will feature some Kinect features that will allow viewers to interact with the show. I could see this being an interesting distraction for kids, especially if they were able to incorporate it into educational cartoons for younger kids. Imagine Dora the Explorer actually responding to your kid’s yelling of “Swiper no swiping!” instead of just pretending to hear them? Pour a drink for yourselves and put in some earplugs, parents. I get the feeling that children’s television is about to get a lot more loud with the Xbox One.

Moving into the final stretch of the show, we saw both a new trailer and some new in-game footage (note: not gameplay footage) from Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag. After the relative disappointment of Assassin’s Creed III, I must say AC IV is looking more and more like the Assassin’s Creed I used to love. The CG trailer started off with a character in a frilly outfit (Yes! Frilly outfits return to Assassin’s Creed after being absent for two games!) walking into a bar where the main character, Edward Kenway,is drinking with his crew. Kenway gets a few of his “co-workers” to start a bar fight, which he then uses to hide his assassination of the previously-mentioned frilly-outfit-wearer. After that, we were treated to a bit more naval warfare and cross-ship fighting. The in-game trailer was much of the same, showcasing city, jungle, and water environments in the game. This is where I got excited, as I saw plenty of climbing to high points in towns and just enough exploration to whet my appetite for a more open-world Assassin’s Creedgame.

As a break in between their two big end-of-conference games, Ubisoft announced two new Trials games: Trials Fusion for next-generation platforms and Trials Frontier for mobile. They showed a fun CG trailer indicating that the two games will talk to one another and have some sort of shared player base and announced that Fusion would have a new trick system. Then, as Ubisoft’s final, one-more-thing of their E3 show, they announced Tom Clancy’s The Division from Massive Entertainment, an online, open-world, third-person shooter RPG. Starting with a video explaining the game’s premise, they described a world where an epidemic broke out on Black Friday, throwing the world into chaos. From there, we saw an on-stage demo with three players, exploring one of the more ravaged areas of New York. At first, I thought the characters the on-stage player was with were NPC characters, saying pre-recorded dialog that went hand-in-hand with the game’s context. However, after about thirty seconds passed, I realized that those were other players in the game. Maybe it was just the way they decided to write the players’ scripts the game demo, but this, along with the stunning in-game graphics, just amazed me. To have a game play like this in a world as beautifully realized as the one shown in the demo is quite exciting, and I look forward to hearing much more about it in the future.

In the end, I definitely got more than I was looking for from Ubisoft’s E3 presentation today. While many games could have given us more gameplay and fewer CG trailers, there were still some real surprises and innovative games shown off that make me excited for the upcoming console generation. If we’re able to realize these massive worlds where the separation between multiplayer and single player is a concept better left to the more story-driven side of gaming, I think we’ll eventually see an emergence of a brand new realm of gaming. If Ubisoft keeps innovating and showing new IPs like they did today, they won’t be going anywhere for a long time.

This article was originally published on June 11, 2013 on Blue Sun. It's been reposted here on my Giant Bomb page for posterity.