Telltale games had been around for a few years beforehand but The Walking Dead – for better and for worse – put the studio on the map and set their creative identity in stone. There are a lot of moments from that initial run of episodes that have seared themselves into the psyche of an entire generation of gamers but none come close to its brilliant cliffhanger ending.
At the end of the game, Lee and Clementine are all thats left of the ragtag group of survivors the player has been following. And unfortunately, Lee isn’t long for this world. Having been bitten by a zombie and then fatally stabbed by Bishop, Lee is left with Clementine, slowly succumbing to his injuries and the zombie plague. It’s left to the player to determine how this plays out. Does Lee ask Clementine to leave him behind or beg her to shoot him so that he doesn’t become a zombie? And, if he does ask, does Clementine shoot him?
Whichever choice the player makes, the result is the same: Clementine, wandering all alone. The game ends with her taking a rest in an abandoned car, before spying two human-shaped silhouettes in the distance. The game cuts to black before it can be confirmed whether they’re human or zombie.
Brutal, heart-wrenching, and ambiguous: the perfect note to end The Walking Dead’s first season on.
