Fresh off the success of the two series of The Walking Dead games comes a three episode mini series that is a stand alone story from the two, The Walking Dead: Michonne. Focusing on another character from the Robert Kirkman comic books, Michonne, this series for me needs to do something different to stand out but can you really do something new with The Walking Dead to please fans?
This three-part mini series has a very quick release schedule compared the standard length of a TellTale Game series as episode 1, In Too Deep released today with Episode 2 releasing in March and Episode 3 in April. Whilst it is good to have a solid release schedule locked down, it also helps me to explain why I just found this opening episode to be very lacklustre and perhaps of the less gripping of a Telltale Game series yet.
Michonne came across as a rather typical cliché character from The Walking Dead. Haunted by her past which both drives her forward but also racks her with guilt, I found Michonne to a main hero I just could not connect to. The grim view she has of her situation has made her a very tough woman, not afraid to make the tough choices and has no problem mixing it up with the Walkers. In fact Michonne is perhaps the first character in Telltale’s Walking Dead universe that has no issue with the violence.
That violence is also a good marker for how the tone for this episode is set up right from the get go with an action sequence that introduces how brutal and deadly Michonne is with her chosen weapon, a long bladed Machete that she wields like a samurai disposing of Walkers in increasingly grim fashion. That Machete is so effective you do wonder why one is not the default weapon of all Zombie apocalyptic survivors. All the action sequences in this episode involve slicing Walkers up that they pretty much became very samey using the now standard QTE events of pressing the right button when prompted which never felt a challenge and almost impossible to mess up.
Player choice returns and again picking a certain dialogue response will shape Michonne’s relationship with her surroundings characters. Usually I try to pick responses that are more positive but I soon found myself giving more gruff and less caring responses simply because of how I found her as a character. The opening moments really shaped how I came to want Michonne to interact with the other characters and was refreshing to almost more of an anti-hero.
The story is again, rather typical of a Walking Dead universe with a focus on groups struggling to survive in this world and the fear and mistrust of other groups. This gives the story a real atmosphere of everything being rather harsh and unfriendly, a world that is full of dangers from Walkers and other survivor groups. Sadly it never really grabbed me, perhaps due to playing both previous Walking Dead seasons, I really needed Michonne to offer something new but it failed to stand out for me. Choices I felt may shape a direction for the story never really stood out from the relationship dialogue. Completing the episode and seeing how my choices compared to other players showed that pretty much matched together, which is not always the case in previous TellTale games.
Overall ‘In too Deep’ never captivated me as an opening episode and being only a three episode series I had hoped for greater impact. I experienced some frame rate issues and some button presses never responded. Some of the non action sequences felt like nothing more than point and click filler. Fans of The Walking Dead will no doubt enjoy another story set in the universe TellTale has crafted but it was a slow and empty opener for me. Episode 2 will need to be far more meatier with story to keep my interest but so far Michonne has left me cold.
