Connect with us

Podcasts

Revisiting Telltale’s ‘The Walking Dead’ For its 10th Anniversary [Safe Room Podcast]

Published

on

Narrative adventure games have always lived and died by their ability to empower players with choice. In Telltale Games’ case, this empowerment far outweighs the all too common banal, “good or evil” path for a player to venture down. By giving players a variety of minor and significant stake situations, it allows every action to have meaning, even if, at the moment, the significance is not clear.

And for the better part of a decade, few developers did this better than Telltale. Telltale was, and by most accounts still is, synonymous with adventure narrative titles, fostering some of the most beloved comic, movie, and video game IP’s out there. And despite the company’s fall from prominence and grace, a decade later, their episodic The Walking Dead series remains an impressive standout from their catalog.

Whether it’s the strong voice acting, emotionally charged writing, or rich environmental storytelling, “A New Day” remains a perfect distillation of Telltale’s prowess at crafting morally complex characters before subjecting them to the horrors of the world they’d painstakingly crafted.

Safe Room is a weekly horror video game discussion podcast, premiering on all major platforms every Monday. Feel free to browse our LinkTree for a complete list of services here.

Feel free to follow the show and hosts on Twitter:

Safe Room – @SafeRoomPod

Neil – @Nezzko

Jay – @NotFunnyJ

Podcasts

‘Death Becomes Her’ and the Horror of Aging [The Lady Killers Podcast]

Published

on

“This is life’s ultimate cruelty. It offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then it makes us witness our own decay.”

Is there anything more terrifying than the relentless passage of time? It’s a bitter truth that just when we’ve become accustomed to our bodies, the sands of time turn and we’re forced to watch them slowly break down in a cruel march towards inevitable death. But what if there were a way to stop the aging process – a potion that would return us to our peak physical condition and hold us there until the end of time? Would we take it? And would we eventually find that the blessing of perpetual life is actually a curse? No film explores this dilemma quite like Death Becomes Her. Robert Zemeckis’ 1992 horror comedy pits two showstopping divas against each other for a single spotlight while asking what they would do for eternal youth – and what will be the hidden cost?

Madeline (Meryl Streep) and Helen (Goldie Hawn) are old frenemies with a history of vicious competition. Madeline seems to have won the most recent battle and married Helen’s fiance Ernest (Bruce Willis), but decades later, their marriage is on the rocks and Madeline’s once thriving career is now a thing of the past. When Helen returns with a stunning new look, Madeline turns to unorthodox methods to maintain her feminine dominance. She drinks a potion designed to give her eternal youth, but returns home to find her life turned upside down by her downtrodden husband and jealous “friend.” Having both taken the potion, “Mad” and “Hel” engage in a bitter fight to the death over years of petty snipes and the right to claim the title of Most Desirable Woman.

In their latest episode, The Lady Killers dissect these two glamorous killers and the hidden social commentary in Zemeckis’ iconic film. Co-hosts Jenn AdamsMae Shults, Rocco T. Thompson, and Sammie Kuykendall dish over their own fears of aging, choose their favorite diva, and decide whether they would take the potion should they ever find themselves in Lisle’s (Isabella Rossellini) lavish home. How does the film hit differently when watching as an adult? Could Madeline, Helen, and Ernest ever make a polycule work? Is Lisle a hero or a villain and how does she keep that gorgeous necklace in place? They’ll wrestle with these questions and more in a podcasting shovel battle to the death on this unique horror comedy and one of the most glamorous casts of all time.

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

Instagram | Twitter 

Continue Reading