Good Things About New Frontier
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.
Comments
Here's some things I felt was good-ish at some point throughout the run:
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.
The ending was pretty hype. I dont think I was ever so happy to see something finally end.
I read the title and was going to say the ending but you beat me to it
Gabe, Kate and David's deaths were the only good things about anf ?
Well I love the memes that came with it
It's an easy jump
Javi
Tripp
Marianna
Conrad,Conrad's arc,Mariana,Jesus,that's it.
I used to love tripp (only old discord members remember this)
Gabe's death. I've never been so happy to see a character finally die. But there are things that ruins that scene:
Conrad the only determine character not to be killed off after is death scene in the underground train part
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.
At least I am not the only one who likes this game. Jajaja!!!
Nah ANF is so bad. There are literally zero well written characters with an arc throughout the season.
i have one good thing
Conrad can live up to the whole season! and im not lying
Conrad and Javier will remember that
What coherent arc does Javier even have lmao
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
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.
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.
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.
Tripp dies no matter what though. Like Telltale couldn't keep Tripp/Ava alive for their 45 min final episode
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
Oh shoot, was it really that short?
Just under an hour for me
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.
You're a "semi-gamer", it's understandable lol.
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"
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.
It is?
Yea man. It's like if hadn't started reading ASOIF 20 years ago, but said Twilight was a promising read lol
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.
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.,.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We get to smoke a joint and Gabe gets game ended.