Good Things About New Frontier

RememberThat

It isn't great, but dare I say it, it had some solid things going for it alongside the bad?

• The opening.
  Not only was the setup brilliant, having us experience the very start of the outbreak from the Garcia's point of view, but we see them interact with a relative brought back from the grave in the worst way possible in one of the most atmospheric sequence of scenes ever.

This exchange still brings chills:

Yaya: You don't have to fill his cup anymore baby. Grandpa's... sleeping.
Mariana: (confused) No Yaya. Grandpa's awake.

It's also great at exposition without feeling like an info dump, especially when it comes to setting up David and Javi's tumultuous but oddly still loving relationship.

• Surprisingly likable characters
  Now of course we had duds, like Badger (but even he did his job of being our local douche), Joan, Eleanor and so on, but then you had real stand-outs, like Ava, Tripp, Mariana (however short-lived), Javi and David. Even Francine had a nice chemistry with Conrad before she was axed off, the trigger being pulled on her too early in my opinion, just for some shock value.

• Fun
  Something about this was infectiously fun, whether it was the camp of it, quips, over-the-top action scenes, or what have you, even cameos like Jesus, had me smiling the whole time. Whether it's Javi's try-hard quips as he's using walker heads as baseballs ("Batter up, fuckface!) or Jesus' off the wall spinning roundhouse kick in the sewers to a walker, Ava suffering a death so abrupt and stupid with her being "surprise mothafucka" 'd by a zombie from the back, I had a blast.

• Good protagonist
  I don't know, am I the only one who really liked Javi? His sense of humor ("Do you just eat shit, all day long? Is that why you smell so bad?"), just the right dose of arrogance, (one of my favorite scenes is crushing all those hits at the batter practice station and then rubbing it in David's face) loyalty to family, etc.

That's what I could come up with.

DabigRG

Here's some things I felt was good-ish at some point throughout the run:

• Javier was actually a pretty good protagonist that was a decent divergence from most of the others, not to mention a likably fun character in his own right.
• Kate was an intriguingly complicated character at first. And the attempt at giving her neglected character something of a concluding arc was kinda nice, I suppose.
• Gabe was an interesting deviation from previous youth characters; his character arc was both a pretty good reconstruction of his character types at first and while it definitely awkwardly sputtered to something resembling a conclusion, he was easily one of the most fleshed out and talked about characters of the installment. For better or worse.
• Max was actually a net positive from the rewrites for once and sorta provided the villains with both something of an answer to Conrad and a reliable face for when the plot began to thicken. Before he disappeared in the later rewrites, that is.
• Conrad's character arc was one of the few that actually brought some good conflict to the otherwise simple plot of the premiere and he's one of the few newer characters who can a relatively fulfilling one without a ton of focus even.
• Ava was a pretty cool supporting character with a unique design, as well as being one of the only solid contributions to ANF!Clementine's arc.
• In Harm's Way was overall my favorite of the installment in part because it actually made an effort to take much of the flawed material of the premiere and attempt to refine it into a more complex story.
• Joan was initially a promising breath of fresh air as an antagonist who's motivations actually lined up fairly well with what had been established about the New Frontier and was somewhat ambiguous.
• Dr. Lingard is a sometimes overlooked supporting character who's own character arc was oddly somber and yet had a chance for a decently uplifting resolution.
• Some of the concepts/ideas were sorta interesting, if obviously flawed to butchered.

Unfortunately, ANF's main problem(ignoring that it was teased and eventually came out at what was ultimately the wrong time, in one of the worst ways) was the fact that the constant overhauling rewrites, while having a couple of sorta neat things come out of it, ultimately led to the Season's initially streamlined storyline to suddenly rush to a complicated to trainwreck of a finale and making & leaving the wrong impressions on people.

Poogers555

The ending was pretty hype. I dont think I was ever so happy to see something finally end.

Wheres_Dinner

I read the title and was going to say the ending but you beat me to it

Wiso2kinfinity

Gabe, Kate and David's deaths were the only good things about anf ?

Erinour

Well I love the memes that came with it

Wheres_Dinner

It's an easy jump

MaikelRR_

Javi
Tripp
Marianna

iFoRias

Conrad,Conrad's arc,Mariana,Jesus,that's it.

Wiso2kinfinity

I used to love tripp (only old discord members remember this)

VengefulKenny

• Choice to smoke weed
• Glimpses of other settlements and cities
• Adult male playable character
• Really cool flashbacks that I found myself looking forward to
• Triple determinant character
• Multiple endings that affect who is alive or dead
• Some really good characters/voice actors like David

AronDracula

Gabe's death. I've never been so happy to see a character finally die. But there are things that ruins that scene:

• It didn't happen in Episode 1. Mariana's death was pointless to being with.
• Clementine's reaction. It's most unrealistic reaction I've ever seen, she cries over a boy of her age who she didn't even know for 3 or more days. She cried in the same way she did to Lee and Kenny, who had a bigger relationship with her than Gabe. It is NOT earned.
• There is no option to leave Gabe to turn. Before you say "But Javier is his uncle, why would he do that?", you should never forget that there is actually an option to leave Duck to reanimate and not shoot Kate if you find her as a walker in Richmond. There is no excuse for us not to have an option to let him become a walker.
• It is not a canon death. It's one of the rare endings that everyone misses in their first shot on the episode.

donmike84

Conrad the only determine character not to be killed off after is death scene in the underground train part

DabigRG

Egh.
Yeah and it's stupid then too.
The only reason Duck made any lick of sense is because he's Kenny's son and he sometimes can't bring himself to do it, which is why Lee can offer to do it.

Besides, I'm semi sure the only reason that ending even exists that way is so Telltale could "get away" with having the kiss in there. Especially considering they otherwise do nothing with that particular stigma of shallowness.

RobertHirschko1

At least I am not the only one who likes this game. Jajaja!!!

WalkerMage102

Nah ANF is so bad. There are literally zero well written characters with an arc throughout the season.

Angelsgaming1337

i have one good thing
Conrad can live up to the whole season! and im not lying

Cdognkal2

Conrad and Javier will remember that

WalkerMage102

What coherent arc does Javier even have lmao

Cdognkal2

I think that's kinda up for the player to decide, especially with the final couple choices.

I don't think Javi should be given a super strict character arc, because then the player is forced down a path they may not particularly WANT to go down

WalkerMage102

I can’t think of ANY arc that he goes through though. He becomes the leader of the Richmond community out of nowhere at the end, with no development showing how he got to that point.

DabigRG

He goes from a guy who was carefree, frivolous, and could sometimes go a little too far with the wisecracks to one that acts as a reliable supporter and leader towards his friends and brother's family, doing what he could to keep them safe and stable.

He's technically an example of a character who, once they found their place in life, is less about being focal themselves and more about helping the people they care about find their way.

Cleminator93

It was great too see other character’s point of you in the apocalypse but I wish they still sticker with the original script before they rewrote it I give the game a C- bust it wasn’t all that bad just the annoying Gabe rants were gave me a huge Headache.

Wheres_Dinner

Tripp dies no matter what though. Like Telltale couldn't keep Tripp/Ava alive for their 45 min final episode

VengefulKenny

Yeah there was no reason Ava and Tripp couldn't have lived to the end. At least Tripp died in episode 5 for me, Ava's episode 5 death is abysmal

DabigRG

Oh shoot, was it really that short?

Wheres_Dinner

Just under an hour for me

SolidStryder

Sadly, literally none of that was done on screen, since we jumped from him being a carefree and impulsive douchebag to him be a carefree and reliable douchebag with the power of 4 year timeskip.

SolidStryder

You're a "semi-gamer", it's understandable lol.

Poogers555

yeah javier literally has no arch at all. he is basically just floating around and just ends up in positions because "i guess im doin this now lmao"

SolidStryder

Well, at least Clementine went from hardened survivor with years of psychological trauma to this guy I met Tuesday cured all of that hugs

The. Fuck.

RobertHirschko1

It is?

SolidStryder

Yea man. It's like if hadn't started reading ASOIF 20 years ago, but said Twilight was a promising read lol

Poptarts

I really, really wish they hadn't used a time skip for ANF. That opening during the initial outbreak was fantastic.

The voice acting for ANF was pretty solid. There were a lot of characters that I enjoyed, and would've loved to have seen fleshed out more than they were.

SolidStryder

Meh. Javier was a pretty shitty Cuban. Everyone keeps on about relating to some random Hispanic who loves baseball, as a Rican who never found that shit, that it falls flat. I have 3 uncles who moved here.,.

Poptarts

I can see where you're coming from, but it also depends on the family. One of my old boyfriends came from a Cuban family that moved here to the US and lived in Flordia. He grew up with his grandfather after his parents passed in his early teens. While his granddad was heavily accented, his was honestly pretty non-existent. His grandfather was the generation that lived in Cuba. The family ( himself, his grandfather, and cousins ) were pretty into baseball and soccer.

It's likely me making excuses in my own head, but I thought that the two voice actors having a difference in culture, accents, and behavior made David and Javier work as a relationship. It showed how much distance Javier gained from his family from becoming famous for a time, caught up in a different family ( a baseball team ) sort of speak. I liked how Javier was portrayed as arrogant, cocky, and Americanized by it.

SolidStryder

I see what you're saying, but I liked David though. He was the all American military kid, but when it came to things like his daughters name you could hear him rolling his tongue on those Rs. Maybe it was because he actually was portrayed by a Hispanic American, but he sounded believable, like people I grew up with. Javier was just awkward/cringe.

DabigRG

Yeah, while David himself not a factor, I did like the [unintentional(?)] vibe of Javier seemed rather American compared to his family most of the time.
Could it have been done better? Sure.

Poptarts

I know a lot of people didn't care for David, but I'm definitely with you on liking him. His voice actor was superb for sure. It can be argued that his character did get a lot of focus, but I would've liked the season to have had him as the protagonist you followed.

Poptarts

It's true a lot of things could've been done better, and I think that's a root cause of ANF's issues. You could see the potential. There's a lot of areas you wished it would have gone, and aspects explored. It did have some characters that made you genuinely curious about them. It was one of its greater strengths.

lottii-lu

We get to smoke a joint and Gabe gets game ended.