"The Walking Dead" premiered on AMC last Halloween, a Frank "The Shawshank Redemption" Darabont-produced adaptation of Robert Kirkman's outstanding comic book series that effectively explores the human condition against the backdrop of a zombie post-apocalypse. It's dark stuff, less for the zombies and more for the inhuman lengths the remaining humans must go to to survive. How wonderful then to see "Tales of Monkey Island" developer Telltale Games hinting very strongly that Kirkman's series will be the subject of one of their upcoming projects.
Telltale has a big event going off next month where they'll be announced five new multiplatform efforts. The title showcased very obviously on the invite, and one that we've known about for some time, is an episodic series based on "Jurassic Park." However, the invite also states that one of the titles announced is "based on a just-launched property from the TV and comic book world whose popularity is changing life as some know it."
Now looking at the current television landscape -- and I'm talking about what's on, not what's in development -- there are really only two possibilities based on what Telltale wrote: "The Walking Dead" and "Human Target." All due respect to Fox's DC Comics series, which is itself a very loose adaptation of the source, but I think Kirkman's opus is the only possibility in this case.
Which freaking rules. Even if you're suffering from zombie fatigue, it's impossible to deny the power of Kirkman's storytelling in the comic book series. The AMC show got it mostly right aside from a few slip-ups (seriously-- what was up with the shower scene in episode 6?), and it's a story that is really perfect for Telltale's brand of modern-day adventure games. The zombies are there, but it's less about shooting them in the face and more about the struggle to not shoot fellow human survivors in the face. That coupled with the show's survival themes could certainly make for an engaging, mature-themed adventure game experience.