Video Game / The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Oh, lord, I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in...

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a VR-only first person horror survival game set in the world of The Walking Dead, released for PSVR, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Oculus Rift S in 2020, with an Oculus Quest version coming out later in the year.

You play as as a renowned survivor known only as “the Tourist”, en route to find a rumoured area called the Reserve, which supposedly holds a massive stash of weaponry and food. On the way you encounter fellow survivor Henri, whom is willing to share some goods with you if you help someone else.

Unfortunately, by the time you reach his camp, things have turned for the worse and you must now work through the flooded New Orleans, infested both by Walkers and two bitterly warring factions - the Tower, and the Reclaimed.

On September 23, 2021, the game received a DLC story titled Aftershocks, which is set after the events of the main story.

A sequel, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners Chapter 2: Retribution, was released in December 2022 for the Meta Quest 2, later being released for PlayStation VR 2 and PC VR in March of 2023. A long while after the first game and the short story expansion Aftershocks, the Tourist is now thrust into a new conflict of power between the Tower and those who seek to topple its fascist regime. However, things get even more complicated when someone only known as the Axeman comes into the picture, a man feared as a lunatic who seems to have a personal vendetta against the Tourist.

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Both games contain examples of the following tropes:

• Action Girl: All female characters you encounter with the exception of Ambre, May's daughter. Not to mention you, if you're a woman.
• Action Survivor: Apparently, the Tourist is already considered one, but you'll have to live up to that legacy if you want to beat the game.
• All for Nothing: This happens a LOT.
  • Regardless of your actions, May's plan to save exiles will be ruined by the exiles betraying her.
  • The Tower will "win" the fight at the entrance to the Reserve, rendering the efforts of the Reclaimed fruitless.
  • The Tower will be forced to retreat when May rings the bell to the church, causing the walkers to stir. This renders their efforts fruitless, as well.
  • If you choose to either flood the whole reserve or spare Casey's life, then your entire search for the Reserve can be rendered this. However, if you save Casey you at least get access to the supplies he had in the control room, which is a not-insignificant amount of food and water, plus military grade shotguns, pistols, and bolt-action rifles, with ammo for each of them. That said, you do get a lot more if you kill Casey.
• An Arm and a Leg: Certain weapons, such as axes, katanas, and cleavers, are capable of slicing off arms. Cutting off both arms will cause walkers to fall over and die, as they now pose no threat. This is especially useful against the diseased walkers, as slicing off arms does not trigger their ability to lower your max health.
  • In the Aftershocks expansion, the survivor you hear pleading for their life over the radio is found having bled out due to his legs being blown off by one of the many makeshift bombs.
• And the Adventure Continues: Following the final battle and ending, the in-game day counter jumps forward a week. With the struggle over the Reserve now in the past, both factions are now gunning for both each other and you, regardless of whether or not you helped them during the Reserve battle.
• Artificial Stupidity: For as fun as the combat is, there are a few quirks with the human AI. They barely ever use cover, running out in the open or conga lining into a room, allowing you to easily take them all out, and they aren't the most accurate with their weapons. That being said, the weapons they use deal HUGE damage to you, so it's either deliberately a little dull, or it's a blessing. If it weren't for this, the game would be incredibly difficult.
• Artistic License – History: It is stated that a hurricane affected New Orleans roughly 2 weeks prior to the outbreak which would be on July 5th, 2003. However, the hurricane that actually affected New Orleans, hurricane Katrina, struck on August 2005, two years after the in-universe outbreak on July 20th 2003.
• Awesome, yet Impractical:
  • The bolt-action rifle, while incredibly accurate at range and fun to use when you get using the bolt down, is incredibly slow to fire and difficult to use against walkers. Basically, it's only useful against outposts of people who are standing guard.
  • The lever-action rifle starts as this, with the lever being quite difficult to get the hang of due to the motion not transferring too well into VR. However, when you master it, it becomes a tour de force with damn good accuracy and a faster firing rate than the bolt-action.
  • Any two-handed melee weapon that isn't the katana. Sure, the opportunity to wield Lucille and slice walker heads off with an axe is pretty sweet, but they're much less wieldy than one handed weapons due to the heavier weight and the fact that two-handed grips don't translate all that well to VR. Plus, the hitboxes for the axes in particular are pretty wonky, and require a large range of motion that one handed weapons don't.
  • The Nail Bombs are essentially makeshift impact grenades that will easily shred apart any walkers or enemy survivors in the blast radius. The issue is that, by their nature, they will explode upon hitting the ground, a wall, or an enemy. So, if it is dropped near your feet or not thrown far enough, it can and will kill you instantly. In the campaign, that isn't too big of a deal. But in the Trial? Stick to proximity mines, lest you lose everything in the last round just because you slip and drop the Nail Bomb instead of throwing it.
• Batter Up!: One of the craftable weapons is a classic nail bat, dubbed the "Bayou Slugger". One of the DLC weapons obtained for pre-ordering the game is Negan's bat, Lucille, which is referred to as The Judge.
• Battle in the Rain: The Tower and the Reclaimed have one outside the church.
• Beware the Living: There are plenty of survivors to meet on the streets, many of whom can and will try to kill you. Once the faction war kicks into high gear and the kill squads start being sent out, they become a much bigger threat than the walkers. At the endgame, both factions will be gunning for you regardless of your choices.
• Big Bad: Hard to say, actually, but Georgia plays it straightest, having instigated the entire conflict with the Reclaimed by exiling JB in the first place. It's also heavily implied that she killed Mama before the game began. Despite that, however, you never come to blows with her unless you consciously decide to, and she's willing to leave you alone completely.
• The Big Easy: New Orleans is the games' setting, and its flavor can be found all over the place. Dishes like gumbo and jambalaya, Louisiana accents, blues and jazz motifs, you name it.
• Boom, Headshot!: It's The Walking Dead, obviously. However, in order to actually brain walkers (and humans) you need to swing with enough range of motion and force in order to penetrate the skull. Failing to do so can lead to disastrous consequences if you aren't careful, such as having to abandon a weapon lodged in a walker skull without killing them if you're surrounded.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The basic laminated bow that you unlock very early in the game. Arrows are very easy to craft compared to ammunition, and reusable to boot. What pushes the bow into this territory however is the fact that it's your only silenced ranged option, making it a necessity for the Tower Cache raids.
  • One handed melee weapons in general, but most notably the meat cleaver due to the fact that it can decapitate walkers. Decapitations use up less stamina than braining, but the other weapons capable of decapitation are two-handed and therefore a lot less wieldy to use. The cleaver isn't nearly as flashy as, say, the katana, but it gets the job done.
  • Pistols. Other guns take up a "large" inventory slot (of which you have only 1 until a late game upgrade, which gives you a second slot on your backpack), and you can only have one large weapon on your shoulder at a time (which is better spent on a bow or a katana), making them a lot less accessible in a pinch. Pistols can be holstered on either your right or left hip for easy access, take up regular inventory slots (of which you have either 28 or 36), and are much easier to aim and fire since they weigh less and you only need one hand (theoretically at least, since you'll probably use your other hand to steady your aim) as opposed to two. Not to mention that all headshots are a one hit kill (unless the target is too far, in which case it's 2-3), and anything else is overkill in most situations.
• Character Death: Literally every single character, with the exception of you, can, or will, die. Nobody in this game is flagged as invincible (although some characters are made immune to walkers) and can be killed by you if you really want to.
• Cozy Voice for Catastrophes: Jean-Baptiste, leader of the reclaimed, broadcasts a pre-recorded radio show on station 54. He tries to act as a comforting presence, and plays some classic tunes from Louisiana natives such as Louis Armstrong, but he's a total darwinist psycho that wants to destroy The Reserve to sharpen people's edges. If you kill him, the station goes on regardless.
• The Cult: The Reclaimed is made up of people who broke off from the Tower group. They leave symbols and altars that you can find as you scavenge through houses and string up walkers upside down by their feet.
• Developer's Foresight: Most of the time, if you think you can do something, you can.
  • A particularly hilarious example is the fact that you can kill the guy at the end of the tutorial who asks you if you are ready to start the game. If you do so, another near-identical looking man emerges from behind a corner, and your gun breaks so you can't kill him again. If you manage to kill him multiple times regardless, a notification saying "Tutorial Guy will remember that" will appear on screen.
  • How you handle the death of Henri can result in either the body staying where it is and just hanging for the rest of the game, or, if you keep their brain intact, they can free themselves and, as a walker, wander off to parts unknown... Meaning right in the middle of your camp.
  • Certain objects in the environment, while not weapons, can be used as such in a pinch, including pots and pans.
  • Should you be out of ammo, you can still pistol whip walkers to death with enough force.
  • You can kill May Benoit before the ending sequence, and you will not have to do their tower cache raids. This comes at the expense of a plot thread being left in the air, however. Namely, what happens to Ambre and the Tower exiles.
  • You can use wooden planks with nails in them as a makeshift weapon after you've busted them down.
  • As noted below, you can Take a Third Option during the confrontation between Jean-Baptiste and Georgia, and you'll get a unique sequence where gunshots ring out in the distance, leaving it completely up in the air as to who walked away from that fight alive.
• Diegetic Interface: Only your health and stamina bars aren't diegetic, and even then, you can turn them off and they will still be displayed on your watch.
  • Your inventory is presented within your backpack, which you have to physically grab and pull things out of. Thankfully actually putting stuff into it is as simple as throwing whatever you pick up over your left shoulder.
  • Healing with bandages requires you to physically wrap them around your arm.
  • Eating food requires you to actually put it up to your face. Drinking medicine or beverages similarly requires you to tilt your head up and pour the stuff into your (virtual) mouth.
  • You have three holsters; two for one handed weapons and one for large weapons. Equipping weapons to these requires you to physically pick up and place them in the desired holsters.
  • Your flashlight and journal are similarly equipped on your person and not in an interface.
• Early Game Hell: At the start of the game, you're mostly stuck with using a weak revolver, weapons that break incredibly easily, and have a limited inventory that prevents you from getting the resources you absolutely need to keep your health and stamina up, as well as progressing with upgrades. However, towards the end, you'll likely be mowing down enemy survivors with an assault rifle, decapitating walkers with a katana or battle axe made of sawblades, and making the world of post-apocalyptic New Orleans your playground.
• Featureless Protagonist: The Tourist, given that this is a VR game is never seen on account of being, well, you. You choose their voice, arm width, and skin color at the start of the game, but that's it.
• Foreshadowing: The final drawing Ambre gives you is one of her as a walker, showing that's she's afraid of it happening to her. The next, and first time, you see her, she's been killed and will turn upon speaking to a nearby NPC.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Despite your efforts to repair the flood controls, you'll ultimately have to choose which part of the Reserve gets flooded: The room Casey's trapped in, or the armory. Alternatively, you can choose to flood the entire Reserve, dooming both Casey and the goods.
• The Ghost: The real leader of the Tower community, Mama, is never encountered. Given that she and Georgia were at odds in regards to Georgia's brutal methods and merciless killings, and Mama hasn't been seen for about a month once the game begins...
  • Chapter 2 reveals that she is not dead. However, with her now being more directly involved with events, she is now presented as a real threat.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: As is tradition with this franchise, there are basically no heroes, nor are there any straight up villains.
  • The Tower is mainly focused on pure survival, which means that they are typically heartless and merciless. However, their methods provide a ton of people with shelter and food so long as they pull their weight. Usually.
  • The Reclaimed, made up of exiles from the Tower, are understandably pissed that they've been basically kicked to the curb. That said, much like the Tower, the Reclaimed offer a way of living that mostly provides shelter and food despite their rituals and intimidation tactics.
  • Some survivors in the street will hold you at gunpoint and demand food or medicine, but will make it clear that they aren't happy that they've had to resort to robbery.
• Heel Realization: Mama writes to Georgia that the Tower has become far too merciless in their methods and have lost the sense of community that made them strong in the first place, and urges Georgia to back down from further escalation of the faction war. Given that Mama hasn't been seen in over a month by the time the game begins, it seems as though Georgia killed her. In Chapter 2, It's revealed that while Mama is alive, she has not taken the loss of the Reserve and the massacre of Old Town well. As a result, she's devolved into the same fascist ruler that Georgia was.
• Hollywood Darkness: Averted. Locations that are indoors without any kind of outside light coming in are pitch black and almost impossible to reliably navigate without your flashlight, and even then it's difficult due to your flashlight not being the strongest. Rampart High School is easily the best example, as the vast majority of the level is a giant maze of corridors with absolutely no light whatsoever. Basically, if you're afraid of the dark, these games are not kind to you.
• Hope Spot: Towards the end of the game, May has collected enough intel, with your help, to finally put her plan to save the exiles of the Tower from their fate of being left to die. Her joy is palpable in her final letter to you, which gives you some sweet dialogue about how she wishes you would come with her. And then the exiles betray May for a shot at getting back into the tower, and get Ambre killed. May is absolutely destroyed.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: It is The Walking Dead, after all. Several characters are implied to think this, either as a result of something they observed, or something they've done personally.
  • Presumably this is part of the reason why Kenny executes his group in the Rampart High School gym. If May is alive at the end of the game, she is driven to ring the bell to incite the walkers due to this belief having set in following her daughter's death.
  • If you manage to get into the Rampart gymnasium, you'll find the bodies of Casey's former comrades, who, in each of their respective confessional letters, show no regrets for slaughtering innocent people trying to get into the reserve.
  • At the end of the game, The Tower and The Reclaimed have a massive bloody battle over who gets the reserve, unable to put aside their differences to better the lives of their people. Because you go in and loot the place (or outright destroy it) while they continue the fight, all the deaths are for nothing other than a differing ideology.
• Infodump: Thankfully, this is one of the painless examples. When you first start Chapter 1, Henri explains the situation of New Orleans to you through narration while you boat through the flooded streets, seeing what Henri describes. The Reclaimed rituals, the Tower's ruthlessness, and graffiti about the Reserve. It's done well, and is thankfully entertaining rather than obnoxious. In Chapter 2, Henri appears once again in the Tourist's daze whilst he once again gives a recap of what's happened in the same way he did in Chapter 1.
• Item Crafting: A big part of the games. You'll need to search every nook and cranny for items to turn into crafting materials back at home base. New crafting recipes are obtained either by upgrading your crafting stations, or from finding them hidden away in buildings and safes.
• Jump Scare: Walkers can pound on doors. Upon attempting to open one of these doors, the door will promptly explode into shards of wood, and walkers will come on through.
  • Some walkers are quieter than others, and don't come with the Scare Chord that usually accompanies a walker noticing you, which can lead to a jump scare if you aren't careful.
  • In Chapter 2, Walkers can now fall through holes in the ceiling or from higher floors in a building, which can cause this if you're not aware of them before they fall.
• Katanas Are Just Better: The final melee schematic you get for levelling up is the "Grass Cutter", hands down the best two-handed weapon in the game due to it's light weight, large effective range, and the ability to swiftly decpitate enemies. If you own the Tourist Edition, unlocking the Grass Cutter also gives you Michonne's katana, "Absolution".
  • The Grass Cutter's description says it all.
    Fuck. Yes.
• The Load: In the eyes of his military comrades, Casey is this, being left behind with the supply cache due to not shooting at civilians when they reasonably tried to come for relief supplies. Only one of his fellow soldiers feel any concern over doing so. You have the option of agreeing or disagreeing.
  • Casey is also a major roadblock on your way to getting the supplies that you as the Tourist have been searching for the entire game: one of the final decisions you make is whether to save Casey or save the supplies - you cannot have both and you WILL lose at least one of these options on your way to retrieving the other.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Invoked due to the choice making nature of the game as well as several story elements - the Tourist is sometimes requested to complete tasks that other people can't handle themselves for personal or political reasons.
  • Chapter 1 examples:
    • Casey is trapped in an underground supply cache bunker that is slowly flooding, with no means of being able to repair the flood system himself, so he asks the Tourist to find the relevant parts to repair it over the course of the story.
    • May is a fugitive of the Tower group and isn't able to move as freely around New Orleans compared to the Tourist since the Tower group knows her face, so she asks the Tourist to gather intel for her. She also knows that meeting in a group is risky, and so limits her meetings with the Tourist by having a dropbox for the Tourist to leave things in.
    • Various members of the two warring factions often ask the Tourist to step in when they can't cross into the other faction's territory. This is taken to an extreme during the retrieval of the last pump - JB requests that the Tourist destroy what's in the Reserve, as he believes that his followers won't be happy with JB if he were to do it. Georgia asks the Tourist to kill JB to prove that she shouldn't kill the Tourist for all the trouble the Tourist has caused the Tower group.
• Maximum HP Reduction: Your maximum health can decline either by 1) Eating found food such as Twinkle Toes and dog food, or 2) Getting too close to a Diseased Walker. This can only be undone by finding medicine items or crafting herbal remedies.
• Mercy Kill: One of Casey's friends, who is stuck beneath some debris in the high school, asks you to do this to him.
  • Regular survivors you meet can be bitten and turned. You can put them down if this happens.
  • People strung up by their feet by The Reclaimed can be put out of their misery by you. This includes Henri at the start of the game. If you don't, He shows up as a walker in your camp later, forcing you to do the deed then.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Casey and his friend Kenneth felt this way upon entering The Reserve, as he and his team had to kill several civilians who simply needed help.
  • A woman who was exiled from the Tower feels this way about Ambre's death and May's capture.
  • Mama is distraught with how the Tower devolved into fascism, and unfortunately, is unable to regain control of the faction. In Chapter 2, She firmly goes off the deep end and becomes just as much of a monster as a result of the massacre at Old Town.
• Nothing Is Scarier: On your trip to find the last pump component, the area you travel through is completely barren of walkers and survivors. Absolutely nothing happens until you get to the main house of the area, where you are confronted by the leaders of the two factions and are given the chance to speak to them.
  • This happens quite a bit in general when you're in a dark, abandoned building and all you can hear are the sounds of creaking wood and your own footsteps, not a walker or enemy survivor in sight.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Kenneth, before being crushed by debris, killed his squadmates who were completely fine with slaughtering dozens of innocent people looking for shelter. Keep in mind, they're all former military. This guy killed three fully trained people who did a horrible thing and LIVED.
• Off with His Head!: One of two ways to be sure that a Walker stays down - and that dead characters don't turn into one.
• Order Versus Chaos: The Tower represents Order, whereas the Reclaimed represent Chaos. Neither of them are very nice.
  • In Chapter 2, the Reclaimed have been wiped out. The people who now fill in the role of Chaos are those who seek to topple the Tower's fascist regime.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Many characters justify their actions out of concern of something that has happened or could potentially happen to their children. Notably, May's daughter Ambre is killed as a result of May trying to help other exiles from the Tower community as opposed to just getting out of NOLA with Ambre.
• Playable Epilogue: After the final mission, the in-game calendar skips forward a week and The Tourist returns to the base, letting you explore the city and tie up loose ends.
• Pretend We're Dead: This is The Walking Dead, so it's possible to rub Walker guts on you to disguise yourself from other hordes. Thankfully, this never makes you sick.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Averted. Like. Hell. A headshot from just a simple pistol leaves a nasty wound with blood surrounding it, and a headshot with a shotgun close enough? Blows their head off.
  • Oddly enough, this actually can be played straight if you play the Oculus Quest version of the game. The lesser graphical power means that the head deformation effects that make the head wounds so visceral in the PC versions are absent. Not even a blood splatter. The Quest 2 version, however, averts this, though not quite to the same extent as the PC version.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: The only ways to make sure the Walkers stay dead is to do this.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Revolvers are the most common type of pistol in the game, with the added benefit that they never jam, unlike the semi-automatic pistol. In addition, one of the DLC weapons for pre-ordering the game is Rick's revolver.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Upon speaking to the sole survivor of the Tower exiles that May was trying to save in the final stage, she explains that the rest of the group thought that the Tower would have let them back in if they gave up May. Considering that the entire place nearby is riddled with corpses, it's easy to see how this turned out for them.
• Sadistic Choice: There's really just a couple of major ones compared to the other video game, but the notable one in Chapter 1 is choosing whether to kill May or allow her to wreak havoc by ringing the bell. Doing the latter will leave you with the guilt that you offed a woman driven mad with grief. If you choose the latter option, you have to shoot Casey - who you just saved from dying not five minutes before this point. You also see blood from the massacre outside flow into the church through the windows and doors while hearing the victims scream. If you don't make a choice AT ALL, Casey shoots May, but in doing so traumatize him by having him shoot a civilian.
• Scenery Gorn: The streets, locales, and homes of New Orleans are overgrown with vegetation, covered with debris, torn apart by years of erosion, collapsed, or flooded to the point of being unable to move forward without a boat.
• Shout-Out:
  • The description for the double barrel shotgun describes it as "A stick that goes BOOM".
  • The description for the crowbar option mentions that it's perfect for prying off crabs.
• Take a Third Option: You have quite a bit of freedom to make your own choices in the game's world, even when you're presented with only two options. For example, if you're caught in the middle of a confrontation between two groups of survivors, you could take a side... Or just kill everyone.
  • While it may not seem like you can at first, you do not have to pick a side during the confrontation between Jean-Baptiste and Georgia in Chapter 1. Simply walking away without killing anyone is a viable option. It's hard to tell who walks away from that fight alive if you don't pick a side, but judging by the sheer amount of gunshots that are heard, it's not pretty.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Despite the awfulness of the post-apocalypse, you can choose to be a source of goodness in New Orleans.
  • Several survivors can ask you for help, such as food or medicine. You can give it to them and be rewarded for your troubles.
  • A grim example, but several parts of the game have walker corpses hanging by their feet, unable to get away. You can choose to put them out of their misery.
  • You can choose to save Casey in the ending, but doom the supplies in The Reserve.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: On the other hand, you can also just be a complete bastard and do some truly reprehensible things, you monster.
  • You can simply kill the survivors begging for supplies and steal what they would have given you in exchange for helping them.
  • You can let Casey die in the ending of Chapter 1, dooming him to be drowned whilst taking all the supplies you want from The Reserve.
    • Adding onto that, you can also just flood the entire damn thing, killing Casey and ruining the supplies.
    • OR, you can save Casey, but then ring the bell to bring the Walkers to the church. That's an option, too, if you REALLY want to sell how big of a monster you are.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Survivalist Henri dies within the first few minutes of the game to make way for the Tourist to figure out how to make it around NOLA and navigate the city's politics on his own. In Chapter 2, however, He gets fleshed out more as a friend of the Pawn King, even having a larger role in the game's opening.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Walking Dead continues maiming children. A lot.
  • In an early sidequest of Chapter 1, a woman asks you to put her husband down since she was unable to do the deed herself. He killed their children to spare them from the hell that the world is. What you do with this information is up to you.
  • Another sidequest has you deciding whether to kill a man who wants revenge on another man who murdered his eleven year old daughter, or kill the man who did the deed since he claims he was Just Following Orders and didn't want to do it. Again, what you do is up to you.
  • Ambre, the sweet girl who draws you locations to raid and little, wholesome doodles, dies in the endings.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Like the source material.

Chapter 1 and Aftershocks contain the following tropes:

• Bittersweet Ending: Regardless of what choices you make, New Orleans is beyond saving, with the two main factions utterly unable to unify for the greater good, leaving nothing but bodies in their wake. Not only that, but May Benoit loses everything; her plan to rescue the exiles fails after they turn on her, and Ambre is killed, which completely shatters any sense of self May had left resulting in her death by either your hand, Casey's, or her own. However, you and potentially Casey (if you aren't a total dick) manage to escape NOLA, and despite everything, Casey still maintains his moral code in the face of everything. Additionally, you get a good selection of supplies even if you did flood the supply room, with plenty of food, military grade weapons, and drinks. The ratio of bitterness to sweetness varies depending on your actions throughout the game. Appropriately, a melancholy reprise of "House of the Rising Sun" plays over the credits.
• MacGuffin Location: The Reserve, a location somewhere in NOLA rumored to contain a plethora of food, guns, and medical supplies. Just about everyone wants in on it, and it's part of the reason why the war between the Tower and Reclaimed is flaring up. In a twist, JB of the Reclaimed desires not to claim its contents but to destroy it to force the city to learn to survive on its own. In Chapter 2, the hunt for the Reserve is revealed to have been a complete and utter failure for everyone, leaving the city with very little hope as a result.
• Oh, Crap!: You have two dialogue options when The Reserve lights up. One of them is "Oh, shit!" and the other one is "Oh, fuck!".
• Sequel Hook: Aftershocks ends with you never actually meeting the Axeman you've been learning about, but with the heavy implication that you'll meet him in the future. With the reveal of Chapter 2, this is confirmed to be the direction the game's story will be going.
• Underground Railroad: May Benoit runs one, helping smuggle people from out of the Tower before they can be hurt and killed under their brutal regime. They turn on her, planning to use her as a bargaining chip to get back into The Tower's good graces.

Chapter 2: Retribution contains the following tropes:

• Actionized Sequel: You're given even more tools at your disposal than the first game, for one, including single-handed sawn-off shotguns, submachine guns, brass knuckle stand-ins, and more. In addition, there are more instances of scripted fights with both walkers and other humans that gives the game more of an action feel. That said, the bulk of the game is still the same scavenging Survival Horror of the original.
• Canon Character All Along: The Axeman is revealed to be May's thought to be deceased husband, who was exiled from the tower.
• Chainsaw Good: You can craft a fully functional chainsaw for use against Walkers.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Averted. Many characters from the original game, while they do not appear again, are referenced to by others in ways that allow the player to fill in the blanks depending on how they handled things in the original game. Characters like Casey, Georgia, Jean-Baptiste, and May Benoit from the original are never outright confirmed to be dead or alive, allowing for room for interpretation.
• In Medias Res: The game begins with the Tourist frantically trying to escape an overrun hotel as the people who joined them die trying.
• It's Personal: The Axeman is specifically targeting the Tourist because he believes they are somehow responsible for the death of his wife, May Benoit. Depending on your actions in the original game, he isn't wrong.
• Old Save Bonus: If you import your save from Chapter 1, then you are given every single recipe you learned from the original game, as well as all of your inventory, resources, and upgrades. Needless to say, this annihilates the Early Game Hell of the original game.

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Available supplies have dwindled.
The dead have grown in number.