Telltale Games shocked everyone last year with its award-winning episodic adventure game The Walking Dead. With a second season on the distant horizon, we’re already looking forward to what’s next--and speculating about what we’d like to see.

Be warned: It's hard to talk about what we want without talking about what's already happened. Which is to say, SPOILERS. What characters should come back? Who should stay undead? Click on to discover.

This one seems like a no-brainer, but nothing is ever certain in a zombie apocalypse. Clementine’s future was left unclear at the end of The Walking Dead, but at least she lived, which is more than we can say for… everyone but a small handful of survivors. After spending five heart-wrenching episodes with Clementine, we want to see more of her journey in season two.

She might be the protagonist or a playable character, or she might be a sidekick, but the innocent, uncertain Clementine that Lee first met in a treehouse is gone forever. We want to see her honor Lee’s memory as a strong, capable, gun-wielding eight-year-old who always keeps her hair short and never takes any foolish chances. And as players, our desire to protect the character who has been around the longest will add weight and tension to the gameplay.

In a world where the living are sometimes even more deranged than the flesh-eating undead, it’s hard to find people you can trust. That said, a solid group of friends (or at the very least, people who can tolerate each other in the name of survival) can be the difference between surviving together and dying alone. Since just about everyone that Clementine has ever known is dead, she’ll need to make some new friends in season two.

There’s certainly a chance for some familiar faces to return from the first season; several characters’ fates were left ambiguous. But we’ll need some new characters with distinct personalities to round out the cast. And once we get good and attached to them, they’ll probably all suffer disgusting, painful deaths, because The Walking Dead loves to make us cry.

We saw the zombie-infested world from Lee’s point of view in season one, with every action or inaction defining who he would become over five episodes. Since Lee didn’t make it, there’s an open spot for a new playable protagonist… or two or three.

Some adventure games, like Maniac Mansion and Double Fine’s The Cave, have successfully incorporated multiple playable characters with different and distinct skill sets. Doing this for The Walking Dead Season 2 would not only add another layer of puzzle-solving strategy, it would allow us to experience the zombie apocalypse from several different points of view, with different motivations for each character. This would really set it apart from the first season, as well as increasing replayability, since there would potentially be even more dialogue options to choose from and horrible choices to make.

The Walking Dead franchise has always been based in the Georgia area, but with the characters constantly on the move, season two might be a good time to explore new territory. Whether they cross state lines to find themselves in a new region or just get away from the cities and roads we’ve seen so far, we want a fresh environment for The Walking Dead Season 2.

Perhaps they can head to the Appalachians in the northwest region, or northeast to the North Georgia mountains in Blue Ridge. Southwest of Savannah is the coastal plain, or the group could head closer to the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico and have to deal with rising heat and subtropical weather. One of the most interesting things about The Walking Dead is seeing how different areas are affected by walkers, and a change of scenery would be refreshing while offering new gameplay challenges.

The hardest part about The Walking Dead Season 1 was making choices. Any choice, no matter how seemingly small, could mean life or death somewhere down the line. However, when it came to the big moments, there were usually only binary options. Save this guy or that guy? Forgive her or leave her to die? Tell the truth or keep silent?

We want to see the difficult choices and resulting branching paths taken even further in Season 2. Should you save one of your friends, or try to save them both (and risk saving neither)? Or maybe your inaction during critical moments, instead of resulting in a Game Over screen, will just end with the deaths of more friends and disgust from your surviving cohorts. The more choices, the better--just make them as difficult and unclear as they were in the first season.

Adventure games have come a long way from the point-and-click classics of the 1980s and '90s, and The Walking Dead is a perfect example of the genre’s evolution. Streamlined and optimized for controllers, there’s no selecting verbs, items are largely irrelevant, and decisions are mostly final. It’s one of the best modern adventure games we’ve seen, but there’s also room for more variety in the gameplay.

How can Season 2 pull this off without straying too far from the formula that made the first season so memorable? By drawing some inspiration from classic adventures, The Walking Dead can utilize a more meaningful inventory to mix things up. Players could pick up more items than they could in Season 1; some of them might be useless, and some could save a life (or end it) at some point during the course of the season. With limited inventory space, should you grab medicine or food--or leave them both in favor of a better weapon? Deeper puzzles, some of which might take several episodes to solve, will add even more variety, breaking up the exploration, dialogue trees, and all-out combat.

As a property, The Walking Dead can be confusing to someone who hasn’t been paying attention from the start. There’s the long-running comic book series that started it all, and then there’s the popular AMC TV show based on the comic. Telltale’s episodic game takes place within the comic book continuity, but Activision’s upcoming Walking Dead FPS is based on characters that only exist in the TV show.

To pay homage to Robert Kirkman’s phenomenal series, some minor cameos or references to comic plotlines would be right at home in the second season of The Walking Dead. We don’t want Telltale to go overboard; there’s no need to see Rick, Maggie, or any other major character interacting with Clementine. A few subtle references to the book are sure to be appreciated by longtime fans without the game having to explain them to players unfamiliar with the source material.

When the world is ending and there’s no hope left, sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh about it. As a convicted murderer facing a hopeless future before the walkers even showed up, Lee wasn’t exactly lighthearted as a protagonist. Moments to relieve the tension were few and far between, and while the characters had varied personalities, none of them were particularly funny.

Obviously, we don’t want a major shift in tone or a laugh track, but a humorous character to offer occasional moments of comic relief would set the second season apart from the first. One goofy guy or girl in the party who can’t help but crack jokes even in the face of a zombie horde would show how this horrible reality has become the norm; once you’re used to the constant threat of death, you’re sure to let your pre-apocalypse personality slip out. And a bit of humor would also bring more gravity to the season’s heart-wrenching moments.

Who do you want to see when Telltale’s The Walking Dead returns for a second season? What would you change, and what should stay the same? Join the conversation in the comments and let us know!

And if you're looking for more on The Walking Dead, check out why GamesRadar named it the 2012 Game of the Year and and our >Walking Dead spoilercast.