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The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners series[1] is a VR video game series that takes place within Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic series' universe. The series was developed and published by Skydance Interactive.
The first Saints & Sinners game was released on January 23, 2020. A free update to the first game, titled Aftershocks, was released on September 23, 2021. A standalone sequel, titled Chapter 2: Retribution, was released on December 1st, 2022.
Plot[]
The game series follows an unnamed Tourist, who travels through the flooded ruins of New Orleans, Louisiana, amidst an ongoing war between two factions: The Tower and The Reclaimed.
"Saints & Sinners"[]
Prior to the fall of civilization as a result of the walker apocalypse, the city of New Orleans, Louisiana had been decimated by a large hurricane, flooding many areas of the city and leaving multiple people stranded and in need of government aid. A hidden supply bunker filled with a city's worth of food, medicine, and military-grade weapons and ammunition (colloquially known as "the Reserve") had supposedly been constructed years prior and stocked fully in the event of such an emergency, but due to government incompetence, was never located or opened. When the outbreak occurred, the US government quickly became overwhelmed, and the Reserve was left untouched as the entire nation fell into disarray. Thought to be a myth by some and a veritable treasure trove by others, the bunker has since been hunted down by survivors throughout the desecrated and submerged remains of New Orleans, to no avail.
Simultaneously, an authoritarian group of survivors known as The Tower, lead by a woman named Mama, was formed in response to the apocalypse, and took occupancy in a massive skyscraper in the center of the city after clearing its many floors of the undead. As time went on, the Tower became populated with hundreds of survivors, many of which fanatically loyal to the group and its regime, and grew to be impressively stocked, even without the aid of the Reserve. However, due to the Tower's fervency at banishing any rule-breakers or people seen as unable to properly contribute to fend for themselves into the deadly streets of the city, and their employment of extreme corporal punishment (namely, making people walk off of the roof of the skyscraper while at gunpoint), a second group predominantly composed of Tower exiles was founded across the city by an ex-Tower member named Jean-Baptiste, referred to by others as "J.B." The group, known as The Reclaimed, began revering J.B. and his words (broadcasted daily on a local radio frequency) with cultish fanaticism, similarly grew both in number and power whilst employing a voodoo-inspired motif combined with brutal, guerrilla warfare tactics, all with the intent of overthrowing the Tower and replacing them as the controlling force of the city.
One year into the outbreak, an unnamed survivor know only as "The Tourist" meets an old man named Henri in the bayous, who has heard about the Tourist's past escapades. The two sit together, and Henri informs them about the state of the city, its post-apocalyptic political landscape, and the Reserve. Henri warns the Tourist that the city is on the brink of an all-out war between the Tower and the Reclaimed, with the two groups' increasingly desperate attempts at locating the Reserve and its contents leading to an inevitable, final, catastrophic conflict between the two. Henri tells the Tourist that he has been getting close to finding the exact whereabouts of the Reserve, and is willing to provide them with a fifty-fifty split of all the supplies inside if they help him locate and access it before either the Tower or the Reclaimed manage to.
One week after meeting with Henri, The Tourist makes their way into the city by boat through the flooded streets, but is swarmed by walkers in the water, and is forced to abandon the vehicle. They make their way ashore and find their way into an old cemetery where Henri told them he has been holing up in and would meet up with them at. Walking through the cemetery, the Tourist finds several notes on dead Tower soldiers that indicate a "traitor" and her daughter, who are in possession of a 'key', are imperative to finding and accessing the Reserve. The Tourist also comes across a marked photo of a statue located in the cemetery and continues forward, getting to the center of the cemetery, where Henri's base - an abandoned but well-stocked bus - is located,
However, by the time they arrive, they find Henri having been strung up by the Reclaimed, still alive but brutally tortured and on the verge of death. In his final moments, Henri tells the tourist that the Tower and the Reclaimed soldiers who both came to get the location of the Reserve from him wound up killing one another in a massive firefight. Henri encourages the Tourist to finish his work and to find the Reserve, and that he wants his half of the supplies inside to go to an unspecified woman and her daughter in his stead. As he asks for the Tourist to save the two of them and let both factions perish, he succumbs to his wounds, and gives one final message: "waterfall." Upon his death, the player is given the choice to put Henri down before reanimation, after reanimation, or to leave him tied up as a walker.
Inside of the bus, the Tourist finds a two-way radio set up with personal encryption installed by Henri, but with a microphone missing. Reading through Henri's notes, the Tourist finds out he was attempting to contact 'Frequency 61' with the callsign 'Waterfall', as per a lead found in an old US Army handbook about military command-and-control procedure. Following where Henri left off in his notes, the Tourist takes Henri's handmade skiff through the flooded New Orleans streets to the Garden District to locate and retrieve a radio microphone, with which Henri used to record music before the outbreak.
Exploring the Garden District, now referred to as "The Shallows" by the residents of the city, the Tourist comes across multiple walkers, a few survivors, and multiple fliers set up by the Tower soldiers. The fliers detail the aforementioned "traitor", the woman that Henri had spoken about before dying, named May Benoit, and her daughter, Ambre. The two, who had been previous members of the Tower, enlisted the aid of Henri to help them escape the fascist reign of Mama and her second-in -command, Georgia. After leaving the Tower, May rejected joining the Reclaimed, instead opting to gather sufficient supplies from the Reserve to escape the city and survive elsewhere with her daughter, thus being seen as an enemy and renegade by both factions.
After successfully retrieving the microphone and going back to the cemetery, the Tourist tunes to Frequency 61 and uses the callsign "waterfall", receiving a reply in the process. The man on the other end, however, is paranoid and doubtful, and remains unwilling to share any information regarding himself or the Reserve with the Tourist, but lets slip that he doesn't know what's going on "up there." Suddenly, a lantern attached to a streetlamp turns on in the distance, prompting the Tourist to investigate. The Tourist comes across a collection of information left in a tomb near the lantern, including a message addressed to Henri from May, who had been working with him locating, and aiding Tower exiles. The message directs the Tourist to the location of a Tower supply cache, which the Tourist heads to in the morning.
After either sneaking around and/or killing the Tower guards present at the location of the supply cache, the Tourist grabs the supplies, including a manual full of tower intel. The intel reveals that May is in possession of a "waterfall key" - which May had to nearly kill a close friend of hers in the Tower to retrieve. After returning to the bus, the Tourist finds a note by May, telling them that she knows Henri is dead, but that she is willing to work with them in his absence. The note directs them to a nearby church outside the cemetery. Upon meeting May face-to-face, the player is given to option to either kill May and take the waterfall key from her corpse, or work with her on retrieving Tower supply caches (more specifically, the classified intel inside of them) in exchange for access to their share of the Reserve's supplies.
The next morning, the man on the radio reaches out to the Tourist. He apologizes for his neurotic and abrasive attitude yesterday, and requests that they retrieve a pump flow regulator from the city in exchange for further information about the Reserve. After the Tourist brings the regulator back, the man, named Casey, tells the Tourist that the Reserve is real - and that he's currently trapped inside of it. Casey goes on to explain that the Reserve was constructed decades ago as a means of distributing supplies to civilians in the event of a natural disaster, and that the national guard was sent in after the flood to pass out the materials inside. However, when the outbreak occurred, the military was overrun, and Casey sought shelter inside of the Reserve. In spite of his efforts at surviving, the excess floodwater above ground has since overwhelmed the facility's current pump system, and placed the entrances and exits on external lockdown.
The interior is slowly flooding while Casey is left locked inside the comms room, with the Tourist left as his only chance of escaping with his life, and with saving Casey from the flooding simultaneously being the Tourist's only chance at gaining entry to the locked-down Reserve. With the help of Casey reading instructions from a manual, the Tourist successfully calibrates and installs the pump regulator into a pumping system located near the church where May first met with them, and awaits further messages from Casey about other pump flow regulators locations that he picks up on from listening in on Tower radio broadcasts.
Over the next few days, the Tourist continues to go into the city to hunt down Tower supply caches for May (if she was not killed during their first meeting) and to retrieve pump flow regulators for Casey, whom the player is given the option to bond with over casual conversation after each successful pump installment. During the Tourist's expeditions into the various areas of post-apocalyptic NOLA, they come across numerous NPCs both hostile and friendly, and the player is given multiple choices with engaging in conflicts between the Tower and the Reclaimed, many of which lead directly to the locations of Tower supply caches and intel or pump regulators.
As Casey attempts to locate a final pump regulator, he asks the Tourist to do him a favor. Days ago, the rest of his squad who had taken shelter in the Reserve with him went out in search of a means to fix the pumps themselves, but never returned. Casey directs the Tourist the abandoned high school where they were headed when they left, and specifies that he look for an individual named Kenneth, who was the only person in the squad Casey thought highly of. Upon reaching the high school, the Tourist finds three of the four squad members dead: Foster, Jess, and Trent, with notes on their bodies talking about a massacre of civilians at the Reserve at their hands and voicing their disdain for Casey. The Tourist manages to find Kenneth, alive but heavily wounded and trapped under fallen debris. Kenneth explains that at the start of the outbreak, dozens of innocent people tried to enter the Reserve in the hopes of escaping the undead. Having been given orders to not let anyone into the Reserve, the five of them, including Casey, opened fire on them, and killed them all.
Kenneth tells the Tourist to relay a message to his friend: that he set things right by killing Foster, Jess, and Trent, and that what happened at the Reserve was not Casey's fault. Before dying, Kenneth implores the Tourist to shoot him in the head and prevent reanimation. The player, once again, is given a choice: destroy Kenneth's brain before he dies, after he dies, after he reanimates, or leave him as a walker.
Returning to the cemetery, the Tourist gives Casey the news about his squad's fate, and Casey explains exactly what happened. While Foster, Jess, and Trent were adamant about turning away the unarmed civilians trying to get into the Reserve, Casey and Kenneth attempted to give them supplies. As things became heated, guns began firing, and Casey instinctively fired a few shots blindly; when he looked back, all of the civilians had been massacred. Casey laments that, having looked away in the moment, he'll never know whether or not he directly caused any of those people to die, and that the uncertainty and guilt of the notion has been eating away at his mind.
As the Tourist continues to collect Tower intel for May, whose waterfall key is the only access to the Reserve, even if the flooding lockdown procedure is overridden, they find out that Georgia plans on killing any dissenters instead of exiling them, so as to deny J.B. potential new recruits from the Reclaimed, with a growing list of dozens of individuals already scheduled for execution. Meeting with May once more with the intel, the Tourist is offered a deal with her. She intends on using the Tower and the Reclaimed's obsession over the Reserve against both groups, and leaves the waterfall key in a nearby tomb for the Tourist, which will become usable with the installation of one final pump flow regulator. May speculates that, once the Reserve is opened and its location is revealed, the unavoidable battle between the Tower and the Reclaimed over the contents of the bunker will provide her with a distraction big enough to rescue the people currently in the Tower's crosshairs. She goes on to say that she intends to give her share of the supplies to the people she manages to rescue as well, as she has lost interest in trying to just save herself and her daughter.
Later, Casey reaches out the the Tourist, informing them that he's located a final pump regulator in Bastion - a no man's land area of conflict between the Tower and the Reclaimed. Upon entering the house where Casey's information says the regulator is in, the tourist comes face-to-face with a man, sitting in a chair with the regulator on the floor in front of him. The man introduces himself as Jean-Baptiste, the leader of the Reclaimed, and offers the tourist the pump regulator as a "gift", knowing it is of use to them. J.B. proceeds to tell the Tourist that, if they listen to his proposal, he will provide them with the missing dial for it that he has held onto, which is required to operate the device.
The player can either kill J.B. and take the dial, or hear him out and ask him about his group and beliefs. J.B. explains that he views humanity's ability to create and build as a monument to its ingenuity and artistry. As such, he views pure survivalism as an obstacle in humanity's path to rebuild, as it leads to an endless cycle of scavenging and hoarding finite supplies. And the Reserve, if accessed, will only prolong this mentality of materialism and help to bring about an unseemly, dwindling end to the human race. J.B. agrees to give the Tourist the missing dial in exchange for one thing: when they locate the Reserve, they must use a four digit code found on one of Casey's dead squad-mates to flood the bunker and destroy the contents inside.
The player is given the choice to either kill J.B. or leave the house. Regardless, once they exit, they are confronted by a woman and a group of armed Tower soldiers. The woman introduces herself as Georgia, Mama's second-in-command, and offers a deal with the Tourist: they can either go back into the house and kill J.B. for them, or they can kill the Tourist. Having tracked their rivals' leader down to this location, they seek to permanently cripple the Reclaimed's forces by cutting off the head of the beast, and are willing to have future Tower patrols leave the Tourist alone if they agree to execute J.B. on their behalf. The player can either refuse, engaging in an outnumbered firefight with the Tower, or agree and head back in, and then proceed to either kill J.B. or warn him of the Tower's presence. If the latter is chosen, J.B. will offer to fight alongside the Tourist in killing Georgia and her men, and (similarly to Georgia's proposal) will have Reclaimed patrols cease any animosity to the Tourist in the future. Regardless of the outcome of the player's choices, at least one of the factions' major figures will be left dead - or undead - and the Tourist leaves for the cemetery with the final pump regulator.
"Aftershocks"[]
TBA
"Retribution"[]
TBA
Cast[]
- Bumper Robinson as Male Tourist
- Salli Saffioti as Female Tourist
- Ben Giroux as Casey
- Myk Watford as Jean-Baptiste
- Morla Gorrondona as May Benoit
- Paul Eiding as Henri Lafayette
- Kim Yarbrough as Georgia
- Reggie Watkins as Andre/Davon/Additional Voices
- David Errigo Jr. as Anthony
- Darien Sills-Evans as Barclay
- Moe Daniels as Corrine/Maxine/Additional Voices
- Larissa Gallagher as Delphine/Additional Voices
- Leith M. Burke as Foster/Justin/Additional Voices
- Christopher Mychael Watson as Horace Carlisle
- Austin Lee Matthews as Jeff
- Janell Lenfert as Jess/Timber
- Billy Kametz as Kenneth
- Devika Parikh as Radio Announcer/Additional Voices
- Michael Goldstrom as Rubin/Trent
- Cheri Lynne VandenHeuvel as Additional Voices
- Alissa Razzano as Teresa/Additional Voices
- TBA as Shep
- TBA as Mel
- TBA as AJ
- Charlie Schlatter as Father Carter
- Rodney Saulsberry as Sonny
- Erica Luttrel as Desiree
- TBA as Sable
- Bex Taylor-Kluaus as Echo
- Krizia Bajos as Barnes
- TBA as Patricia
- Shontae Saldana as Whistles
- JB Blanc as Gerik Benoit
- Debra Wilson as Mama
References[]
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
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Games | Saints & Sinners • Aftershocks • Retribution |
Shorts | Cinematic Trailer |
Podcasts | The Supernatural Skeptic's Guide to New Orleans |
Walking Dead Video Games
| |
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Consoles | Telltale Series • Survival Instinct • Michonne • The Escapists • Saints & Sinners • Destinies |
Collections | Ultimate Steam Bundle • Telltale Series Collection • Definitive Series |
Online | Social Game • Left Behind • Atlanta Run • Chop Shop • Bridge Constructor • Pathways • Life • Vox • Betrayal • Empires • The Sandbox • Lands • Solve to Survive • Backstory Recreator • Story Builder |
Mobile | Dead Yourself • Assault • Dead Reckoning • Pinball • No Man's Land • Road to Survival • All-Stars • March To War • Survivors • Our World • Casino Slots • Endless War • Match 3 Tales • Dead Run • Card Trader • Encounter • ZombiECards |
Deluxe TV Games | Zombie Hunter • Battleground |
Arcade | Pinball Machines • Arcade • Slot Machine |
Companies | Skydance Interactive • Telltale Games |