The Walking Dead Season Two Xbox Release Date

Following hot on the heels of Steam's listing of December 17th for The Walking Dead: Season Two, Xbox Live has posted its own release date for the highly anticipated follow-up. According to Microsoft, The Walking Dead: Season Two will hit the Xbox Live Marketplace on December 18th.

Given what we know about digital release schedules, it makes sense that The Walking Dead would hit first on PC and then a day later on Xbox 360. That being said, the first season of The Walking Dead featured episodic releases on almost every day of the week, so nothing is for certain.

Similarly, Telltale Games has yet to confirm any of these purported Walking Dead release dates, despite reaffirming the first episode would make its December launch. Thus far, however, the developer has been keeping relatively quiet on the Walking Dead news front. We don't blame them, though; they just dropped two fairly big reveals over the weekend in Tales from Borderlands and Game of Thrones.

As far as what gamers can expect from the first episode of Season Two, titled "All That Remains," Joystiq sat down with Director Dennis Lenart and Designer Mark Darin to learn more.

First and foremost, gamers will be playing as Clementine this time around, a choice that gives them even more agency in the character's fate. For Lenart, that choice introduced a new dichotomy for Season Two, where players will have to contend with the need to protect Clementine, but also make decisions as her.

"We're all coming in still being really protective of her, and now that the controller is in your hands, there's a weird thing where half of you is playing as her, and then half of you is also still kind of protective of her. It's a really interesting thing. It's so hard usually to get people to really care about the characters they're controlling, as far as getting them injured or killed, because you can just go to the restart screen. So far it's been really cool — people feel that she's in genuine danger and feel very protective over her. It's still kind of a similar thing [to season one], except now the controller is directly in your hands, protecting her."

Those decisions, as Lenart explained, will get even more complex in Season Two. Like in the 400 Days DLC, for example, choices won't be as simple as whether to turn left or right. Instead, players will have to make choices like which survivors to give food to, or which to leave behind.

Players that expect Season Two to feature radically different paths, however, might come away a little disappointed. As the Telltale devs explain, time is a significant constraint when working with episodic content, and therefore the ability to create huge branching points isn't there. That doesn't mean the choices won't be significant in terms of the story, though.

"Producing these episodically and, sort of our live development, means that we don't have a lot of time to create so much content. So we want to create the best content, the most meaningful content that we branch not just for the sake of branching. But if it's not interesting and it doesn't give you a really good moment, then it's not worth it. We want to make the best experience. Sometimes that means different content depending on what you choose, sometimes it means characters are reacting to you differently and your alliances are different, but the story is the same."

We're still a few days out from these rumored release dates so hopefully Telltale will come out to confirm them in the mean time. At the very least, though, it's nice to know more Walking Dead is on the way.

What do you think about the decision to let players control Clementine in The Walking Dead: Season Two? How would you like to see her story continue?

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Source: Joystiq, Major Nelson