E3 2012: The Walking Dead Episode 2 preview

"Your decisions from episode one play a vital role in the entire Starving for Help story." Bet you wish you could go back and rethink some of those decisions from The Walking Dead Episode 1, right? During our E3 session with TellTale Games, we had a chance to sit down and view twenty minutes of the upcoming second episode, Starving for Help, and see how the decisions players made earlier affected the upcoming episode.

Taking place three months after the events of the beloved first episode, Starving for Help begins with some desperate dialogue between Lee and another central character, depending on who you saved/interacted with in the first episode. This brief conversation sets the tone for Starving for Help, which focuses around true survival; your camp is out of food, unlike the first episode, and is beginning to truly see the severity of this entire situation. The first sign of despair is undoubtedly when Lee has to make a crucial decision whether to shoot a bird so the camp members could eat and risk being detected by walkers, or simply keep quiet. Though these choices seem minor, actually playing through them with the controller in your hand will instantly change that perspective.

After electing to not shoot the bird, the two characters are frightened by a call for help. Lee quickly sniffs out the cause of the shrill, which ends up being two students and their teacher. According to the students, they were escaping several walkers when their teacher got stuck in a trap that's fixed to not come loose as it should. Asked to free the man, Lee begins to use several nearby items, but the trap doesn't budge one bit. Without notice, several walkers begin closing in on the group's location, and Lee is prompted to make his toughest decision yet: he could either chop the man's leg off and ensure his life, or leave him to be overcome by the zombies. In our demo, we chose to use our ax and free the man through amputation. While escaping, though, one of the students trips and quickly becomes zombie food; at least we were okay, right?

Our demo continued as we made our way back to the survivor's camp at the motel. Our presence isn't welcomed though, as several group members are upset at us bringing more mouths to feed when their food supply is already empty. During this encounter, our guide pointed out the backdrop of the motel, which featured a corner of the building completely ruined. Those who played the first episode will instantly remember that this is due to one, crucial choice made. After simmering down the group, we were presented with another major choice, this time, more personal to Lee: which four, out of the eight members, do we give that day's rations to? It wasn't an easy decision, but it's one that had to be made.

Shortly thereafter, we decided to check out the teacher whose leg we amputated. We were somewhat surprised to find out that due to a major loss of blood, he had passed. We pondered what to do with the remaining student — invite him in or kick him out the door — when another attack happened. The corpse of the teacher had suddenly come back to "life" as a walker, but after a stellar action sequence, we were able to get assistance from another group member (aka the zombie got its head bashed in). As you can imagine, our group was not too happy with our decision to let the newcomers in, but this is what sets the stage for a seemingly fabulous episode 2, Starving for Help, which is set to hit the marketplace soon.