The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Aftershocks is the end game you needed

Giving players a reason to return to post-apocalyptic New Orleans.

Since its launch a year ago, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners has remained at the top of the best Quest 2 games list. While the impressive gameplay is one of the biggest reasons to spend your hard-earned money on this game, Skydance Interactive has seen fit to update the game time and time again.

Earlier this year, players got to experience the challenges of The Trial — a totally free arcade-style content update that was separate from the main story — and now Skydance is back with yet another free content update, this time addressing what happens after the end of the game. That's The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Aftershocks.

Since this is a free update for all owners of the game — regardless of whether you finished the story or not — I'm going to be taking a look at whether it's worth your time to jump back into the world of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. Is this an update only for folks who got all the way through the Saints & Sinners story, or is it more readily available for everyone as The Trial is? Let's take a look.

For this review, I played the SteamVR version of the game, using an Oculus Quest 2 with an Oculus Link cable. Early access to the update was provided by the developer. The content of the Aftershocks update will be identical across all platforms.

Filling out the end game

At launch, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Aftershocks update is intended solely for players who have completed the main story in the game. In the next update, Skydance Interactive will be adding in a "quick jump" button on the main menu that lets players jump right to the beginning of this new content but, until then, the only way to access the new content is by continuing from a save file that completed the story.

To begin the next tale in the world of Saints & Sinners, you'll have to tune in to channel 47 on your bus radio. When the time is right, the dulcet cajun accent of a new stranger will fill you in on the details of the plan. In short, the lost cache of The Reserve has been scattered throughout the city and it's your job to liberate its contents from the clutches of warring gangs and factions that have it in their grasp.

At launch, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Aftershocks update is intended solely for players who have completed the main story in the game.

As you make your way through familiar locations, you'll notice changes in the environments that weren't there before. New fortifications, new traps, maybe even a new hole or two in a wall that you can crawl through. It's a bit disappointing to visit the exact same locations as before, but at least they have been updated a bit to follow along with the story.

Players will embark upon a series of missions to find the lost Reserve Caches, which are filled to the brim with end game materials.

As you make your way through the extended story, it becomes clear that whoever was able to secure the Reserve Cache has caught on to your thieving ways and begins to anticipate your arrival more and more.

Each of these caches is filled with supplies for the end game, allowing you to prepare better weapons than you might have had a chance to the first time around. The narration is on-point as usual, with unique voices, excellent voice acting, and great dialog.

You won't find any notable new enemies or weapons that you haven't built before, but it's entirely likely that most players didn't build all of the weapons and other items in the first place. This gives you an opportunity to do that, and it feels like many more people will be able to experience the full breadth of what the game has to offer. The new content will last you around 5 hours or so, depending on how quickly you make your way through the multi-tiered missions.

Polar opposite of The Trial

While The Trial was an arcade-style mode that focused on high scores, a fast pace, and quick planning — all with a temporary character geared up for each encounter — Aftershocks falls back to the more methodical pace of the original game. That makes sense since you'll be using your existing character to once again trudge through post-apocalyptic New Orleans, this time to stock up with more recipes, supplies, and weapons than you ever thought possible.

The Trial was a fast-paced arcade-style update, but Aftershocks returns to the more methodical pace of the original story.

It's almost like Skydance is getting your character prepared for something truly epic to happen in the future.

Skydance has yet to introduce any sort of multiplayer to the game which truly is the game's only real weak point. Heading through abandoned school hallways and being jumped by a zombie busting through a door would be even more fun with a friend, but at least we can dream of the future of the game.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Aftershocks update is available for free on September 23, 2021, for all players. Skydance says the Quest update weighs in around 6.73GB, so be sure you have around 15GB of free space on your Quest before hitting that update button. PSVR players can expect a 9.67GB update size, while PC players will find the update weighing in at a whopping 31.3GB. The game does look quite a bit better on PC, which likely explains the massive size difference.

If you're a Walking Dead player who already finished the game and is ready to get back to the grind, it's high time you put your headset on and began roaming the streets of New Orleans once again. For everyone else who hasn't finished the game yet, you might want to hold off until the first patch, which will be introducing that quick start button to get into the new content right away.

Killing with style

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

$40 at Oculus $40 at Steam $40 at PlayStation

Live the apocalypse

It's hard to imagine The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners getting any better, but this free endgame update adds more content that'll get you to revisit post-apocalyptic New Orleans once again.