Editor`s note: The review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. Throughout Telltale`s The Walking Dead, we have seen what living in a zombified hellscape can do to people. The one perpetual ray of hope was in Clementine, the little girl whose soul you`ve been trying to protect since the first hour of the first season, and the character you control in Telltale`s latest chapter. She was one of the depressingly few children left, now forced to grow up in a hostile world of zombies, desperate survivors, treacherous backcountry, deathtrap cities, and, above all, rampant, indiscriminate, ignoble death. We`ve seen, in New Frontier, what this world does to her. It has robbed the music from her voice. She carried the tragedies she has endured like a ball and chain wrapped around her neck.It`s worth mentioning that sad, storied history to understand just how strangely heartening it is that The Walking Dead`s final season kicks off on a note of... well, hope is a strong word. Acceptance may be closer to the truth. Having known so little else of the world before, Clementine having pushed past her broken, bloody adolescence into early adulthood with her sanity intact may be the greatest blessing Telltale could`ve possibly given her character.Without a doubt, much of that likely comes down to necessity. While we never see the how of it all, when Done Running begins it is at least six or seven years after the events of A New Frontier and Clementine has found A.J., the ersatz adopted son who was taken away by her authoritarian caretakers in Richmond, Virginia. The episode starts with Clementine behind the wheel of a muscle car, racing through the backroads with A.J. in the backseat. If we didn`t know that walkers could be literally anywhere, it could just be a young mother and their son on a road trip to see family. There are smiles, Clementine jokes around with toys to make A.J. laugh in the face of his hunger, and the trials of figuring out the next move or ...
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