Analysing the environments of Tell Tale's: The Walking Dead

On my journey to improve story telling in my portfolio environments it is important to analyse what works in existing games as an example and benchmark as to what its needed in a scene, I will be going through a few different genre's and mediums exploring and reflecting of what i can pick up from the environment. This time I will focus on The walking Dead game environments that tell tale has expertly crafted.

I've found these concept art renderings of the first house you explore in the game and it predominantly sets up the sort of world that the player will be experiencing so the first impressions are important, now since the walking dead is a pretty well known Intellectual property with a TV Show and Comic Book already stapled into the public's conciousness the narative of the overall world would be premptively sown into the Fan's mind but it is also important to cater to those new to world.

The game starts off with the character in a car crash and losing conciousness a few times before regaining it, implying some time has passed since they ended up in the ditch however the time frame is unknown to the player and this first scene is crucial to building the world around them. Clues of time passing can be seen in just how dilapidated the place is,

Barricades on the stairs from the bookshelfs strikes out at me to say that someone tried to take refuge here. Dirty surroundings and the clutter makes it seem as though it has been scavenged for items by desperate people meaning that it has been longer than an afternoon or that the owner left in an incredible hurry.

The main thing that gives this environment context is the drawings made by a child, who we come to later know as Clementine, through the little game play sequence of talking to her through a talkie walkie and the simple but horrifying messages in the answering phone all adds to the gravity of the situation and the effectiveness of the environment.

I'm not sure how i can incorporate game play into a diorama or how i would be able to use things like audio tapes to enrich the story, i think that might be a stretch goal if there is one or better to ignore it and focus on the visuals. The Tree house in the backyard and the mess of toys scattered around the garden are further story cues that i could incorporate into my environments.

This is another angle of the kitchen shows that the same rushed scavenging is done here and the pool of blood hints that someone has died here... the scary thing is the body is no where to be found, another hint as to future events. What's interesting here is that the game often makes it explicitly clear what is in the environment often matching it with the actions of the character (slipping on the blood).

The lighting is dim and the blue static glow from the TV makes the whole place feel sinister and unnerving, from a game that focuses it's story telling from characters, their actions and conversation this is a stellar example of how to do powerful story telling through the environment alone.