Telltale reveals plans for disc-based Walking Dead collection

Just in time for the holidays, Telltale Games will be collecting its entire episodic Walking Dead adaptation on a single disc.

If you’ve been following our ongoing coverage of Telltale Games’ episodic adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s dark horror comic book series The Walking Dead, then you’ll know that we’re huge fans of the developer’s work to date. So far the firm has released three of the five planned downloadable episodes, and as our reviews show each one has somehow been even better than the last. Thus it comes as great news that Telltale has confirmed plans to release the entire game — all five episodes — on a single retail disc just in time for the holiday shopping season.

A pseudonymous Twitter user operating under the handle of “The Dukenator” asked the official Telltale Games’ Twitter account if the company had plans for a compilation release of The Walking Dead, similar to what it did with its episodic adventure game based on the Back To The Future license. Telltale replied simply, “As a matter of fact, yes! Entire season on disc. Dec 4th in NA for Xbox 360 and PS3. EU dates TBA.”

That’s wonderful news both for those who have yet to experience what is quickly shaping up to be one of the finest games released in 2012, but also for those who have been rabidly awaiting each new episode and digesting every one the moment it comes available. Though Telltale’s original plan was to release a new episode every month, the rigors of creating, testing and releasing what are essentially five-hour-long slices of adventure may have been more than the developer bargained for, and the company has adopted a strategy of releasing each new chunk of The Walking Dead “when it’s done.” As a result, each new episode seems to appear later and later each month (if not in the following month), and those aforementioned anxious fans are left with little to do save sit on their hands and wait patiently. If nothing else, this December 4 release date for the entire game ensures that the final two episodes of The Walking Dead will necessarily be released prior to that deadline (and likely at least a few weeks before).

Since this revelation was shared with the world on Twitter (as opposed to, say, via official press release), it is lacking in a few crucial details. For instance, we have no idea how much this single-disc collection will cost, nor if it might include any extras unavailable to those who purchased the episodes individually via their downloadable service of choice. We expect Telltale will clarify those details in short order, but in the mean time we suggest replaying the three individual episodes already available. We’re sure that those of you who own them already burned through each shortly after purchase, but there’s a lot of residual entertainment value in going back into the game and purposefully making choices that you wouldn’t normally have made. We won’t claim that being the scum of the earth in the post-apocalyptic hellscape will make you feel good or “entertain” you per se, but one of the best features of The Walking Dead is its ability to inspire genuine emotional reactions in its players — including personal revulsion when you abandon all semblance of human morality.