The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners – Retribution review: more of the same

The appeal of video game sequels rests on returning players to worlds with which they’re familiar. That can feel like a cop-out, however, if a sequel applies too much of the same—same engine, same environments, same designs, similar story. That’s unfortunately the case with The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners Chapter II – Retribution, a sequel to its memorable and well-loved predecessor, which follows a zombie apocalypse-set story about a lone wolf protagonist known as “The Tourist.” It feels more like an expansion pack, lacking freshness and vitality.

This character (who we embody) is a legend in this zombie-ravaged frontier—the post-apocalyptic equivalent of Jesse James or Ned Kelly. The narrative picks up right after the first concluded, with more talk of “The Tower,” a skyscraper where a community of survivalists live. There’s talk of a potential insurrection against its leader, known as “Mama.” Lumbering through the same settings (with only four new locations) and performing similar errands as the first, and facing very similar foes, with mostly the same or similar weapons, produced a lethargic case of déjà vu. I finished the first game—which I liked a lot—but played Retribution for about six hours before calling it a day.

Both experiences begin the same way, with a brief prologue depicting a grizzled elderly man sitting in front of a fire. In the original, the old codger’s first line emphasises The Tourist’s legendary status: “Well well, I’ll be damned,” he says. “The Tourist in the flesh!” That status is reestablished in the opening line of the sequel: “Well look at you, Tourist, la celebrite on the tip of everyone’s tongue!”

Both games then change settings, relocating the player to a boat navigating a flooded New Orleans, in sequences conceptually similar to amusement park river rides. Dramatic visions unfold at various points in the tableau as the vessel continues its preordained course, floating past all kinds of violent kerfuffles: fist fights, gun fights, executions…visions of a world gone to the dogs. For the sequel, the developers at Skydance Interactive didn’t even change this environment: it’s the same damn space, with slightly different goings-on. 

Soon (again, this is the same in both versions) we find ourselves in “The Resting Place”—our home, our refuge in this zombie pandemonium. That name is a pun, given the setting is a cemetery—although it’s also literally a resting place, where we get some shuteye and time to craft supplies. Whenever I think of these games, I recall this location first. A disused school bus is The Tourist’s headquarters—with a narratively useful CB radio above its dashboard, a weapon rack, and a large map pinned to the wall.

In the original, The Tourist sleeps on a scabby mattress at the back of the bus; in the sequel, we’ve graduated to a small home (including a bedroom and lounge) in a nearby tomb. Sleep is triggered by picking up a hip flask and bringing it to our mouth. Every time we wake up, a text card announces the day and time of day (for instance: “Day 3, Early Morning”) and repeats the same two lines: “Available supplies have dwindled. The dead have grown in number.” The idea is to encourage us to stay up as long as possible, for easier access to increasingly diminishing supplies.

Most interesting is how this idea corresponds with the passing of narrative time. In Saints and Sinners, there are two kinds: the time of day according to the imaginative universe—known as game world time—and experience-controlled duration, meaning the unfolding of events as determined by the act of playing. The former moves quickly; it soon becomes dark and that darkness increases danger. In a thread on a Steam forum discussing the length of a day in Saints and Sinners, one user groused: “There is no time for detour (sic), no time to get distracted, no time to appreciate the world. Just rush, constant rush.” To which another responded: “Welcome to the zombie apocalypse.”

Experience-controlled duration of time abides by the same, or very similar, principles as the unfolding of time in the physical world. In oral storytelling, discourse time refers to the time of the telling; in written storytelling, the time of the reading. In both instances—telling and reading—narrative time stops when the teller/reader stops. In experiential forms such as Saints and Sinners, time keeps unfolding even if the player does nothing, just as it would in physical reality if we spent the day lying in bed or staring at a wall.

The discussion around whether game world time in Saints and Sinners unfolds too quickly comes down to pace and intensity. That curt response (“welcome to the zombie apocalypse”) essentially mounts an argument that faster passing of time is thematically germane to the experience. It’s a balancing act: the need to give players the opportunity to explore the virtual world on one hand, and on the other, creating a sense of urgency. In Saints and Sinners, an important point is conveyed: that the world ticks over whether we do anything or not. Those damned zombies are always multiplying.