Memory Lane: Season 3 (A New Frontier)
As part of our TWDG series/subreddit 10th anniversary celebration, over a course of two weeks we’re going to be looking back at each game in the series. Every three and a half days there will be a pinned post for each of the 4 main games. Each post will contain a brief history lesson of each game as well as how this sub was doing during the time of each game. Afterwards you can post in the comments all of your thoughts on the corresponding game, like how much you love it, fondest memories with it, etc.
Next in line we have Season 3! Also known as A New Frontier, or, That time I kept siding with a girl I just met over my actual family.
#Season 3 (A New Frontier)
Much like that one scene from Interstellar, we can take a look back to the past to see all of the genuine excitement for Season 3 when the first trailer was shown and in regards to how it would incorporate characters/elements from the past games. Though Season 2 had its fair share of flaws, you can see that the eagerness for a new entry was still high.
Season 3 was designed to appeal to both veterans of the past games as well as series newcomers. Signs of the veteran appeal can be seen with Clem being present and the devs boasting about "42 different starting points" based on your choices from the past games (may or may not be greatly exaggerated). Signs of newcomer appeal are Jesus from the comics being a prominent character, the fact that you're playing as an entirely new character, and the game officially being called A New Frontier rather than Season 3. The result is... uh, well... intriguing to say the least.
It's no secret that Season 3 is considered to be the weakest game in the series, and in the first episode players had a pretty big indicator of this in the form of Kenny and Jane’s flashback deaths. Pretty much no one was happy with how the flashbacks were handled and it was easily the biggest official thing to piss fans off at the time. Another odd decision came with the inclusion of Clem. She was mainly there to sell more copies of the game, but her presence resulted in a lot of choices being too one-sided; on release day, roughly 95% of players lied for Clem at Prescott while over 90% shot Conrad. Javi's family isn't safe from criticism, as back in Season 1 the idea of Clem being the player's sister was scrapped since pre-existing relationships would've been too much for the player to handle. We then get Season 3 where Javi has... 4 family members. Throw in some other issues such as bugs, rushed story elements, and crunch conditions/toxic management and you have a game struggling with what it truly wanted to be.
This is not to say that there were no redeeming qualities to Season 3. Reception to the game did warm up a bit after the first two episodes for the most part, and Javi is a popular character to fans of the games. You'll occasionally see the Season 3 is underrated post here or people hoping for a Javi continuation, so the game at the very least has a place in the series.
Regarding web archives of the sub during Season 3, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any that I could find from December 2016 - May 2017. Closest one I could find was this one from August 2017, a couple of months after Season 3 had ended. Season 3 was when I started to really use the sub, so if you're curious about anything specific from that period then I guess you can ask me anything in this thread about it.
Below you can find the trailers for each episode as well as this sub's prediction and discussion threads for each one. Sadly episodes 1-3 did not have prediction threads (would've been interesting to see all of the Kenny/Jane theories):
| Episode Name | Trailer Link | Prediction Thread | Discussion Thread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reveal Trailer | E3 Trailer | - | - |
| Ties That Bind Pt. I & II | TGA Trailer, Release Trailer | N/A | Link |
| Above The Law | PAX Sneak Peak, Release Trailer | N/A | Link |
| Thicker Than Water | Trailer | Link | Link |
| From The Gallows | Trailer | Link | Link |
Bonus Stuff
- Season 3 trailer when it was shown live at the Game Awards, in which the awesome and totally non-toxic Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner talked about it to TGA host Geoff Keighley. For all of S3's faults, this was a pretty cool trailer.
- S3 dev AMA summary that was originally on the now defunct Telltale site. Lots of interesting insight, such as the devs regretting how the Conrad choice was handled, character backstories, why Kate calls the scooper thing a "busket" in EP5, and much more.
- A big playlist discussing cut content from Season 3, courtesy of Youtuber InColdBlood.
Season 4's post will be up around Wednesday afternoon. I'm also considering doing one for the Michonne game, so please fill out the below survey that takes like 1 minute. I'm also using this survey to test things out for the upcoming community survey.
Mini Michonne survey link Survey now closed
Posted May 1, 2022, 6:16 AM UTC · edited