“My mother never came back from this castle. The only keepsake we have is the money she sent back, which wasn’t even enough for me to buy a new shield from the blacksmith. Did I see a hint of sadness in his eyes when I told him what I was doing? Did the gypsy woman cackle slightly? It makes no matter. Like my mother, and her father before her, and his father before him, and his mother before him, I, too, approach the gate to this abominable fortress.The gatekeeper smiles knowingly as I pay him his fee for entrance. He knows as well as I. For my family, there is nothing else. This is our inheritance, our curse, our promise to our progeny. This... is our legacy.”

In the realm of video games, there are those games (broadly speaking) that fall into the category of “games,” and those that fall into the category of “stories through the medium of games.” Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead fits into the latter of those two. Yes, it employs gameplay mechanics that would be familiar to any adventure gamer of the past 10 years, as well as a few “quicktime lite” events, yet those mechanics serve merely to transition you from one story element to another. It is the action that sets up the next plot point or dilemma. As a game, The Walking Dead: Episode 1 has its flaws and detractors, but as a story, it is every bit as compelling as the comics upon which it is based.