REVIEW

The Walking Dead: Michonne – Episode Two Review

by Ford James, August 2nd, 2016

Episode Two, Give No Shelter, resumes right where In Too Deep left off; with Michonne and Sam reacting to the decision you made previously. Either Zachary will be dead and you’ll commence your escape with Sam as Jonas is left crying over Zachary’s body, or Zachary and Jonas will agree to assist your escape, provided you didn’t shoot Zachary previously. Subsequently, no matter what option you pick when Pete attempts to negotiate with Norma always results in the camp being set alight and the plan to leave undetected fails.

Once again players are invited to learn more about Michonne as a character, with frequent flashbacks and hallucinations including an extended investigative memory which reveals the names of her two daughters: Elodie and Colette. Despite this piece of information which will surely interest fans of the comic book series, although it does nothing for the progression of the episode itself, the episode feels very disjointed with the flashbacks and memories breaking immersion rather than enhancing the story.

While Episode One was a big disappointment compared to the flagship series for The Walking Dead, I could appreciate what it was doing with Michonne as a character and introducing the struggles she faces to the player. Episode Two undoes all that and Michonne reverts back to just another one dimensional zombie slayer with little consequence to her actions. Telltale struck gold with The Walking Dead: Season One so it’s impossible to evaluate a miniseries like this without comparing it to the original and it unfortunately lacks in every regard.

My main gripe with this episode in particular is how batshit crazy and unrealistic everything suddenly gets, even for a zombie apocalypse. One minute you’re stealthily escaping your captors and the next you’ve killed multiple innocent people, set the entire camp alive and are hightailing it out of there on a speedboat. That leads on to the other issue: Pacing. Episode Two packs all of the action into the first thirty minutes, meaning the rest of the episode is fairly mundane until the very end.

Telltale’s signature art and graphics style doesn’t let them down however, with the comic book effect and exaggerated facial expressions working well. Samira Wiley once more carries the rest of the cast with her voice acting for Michonne and the sound design toward the end of the episode when torturing Randall with the vicegrip is worth commending.

Episode Two is slightly longer than its predecessor, coming in at just over an hour but it’s still not long enough to deliver a fulfilling experience. Oddly enough though, the pacing and extended moments where absolutely nothing interesting happened meant I was bored long before the end. A complete one-eighty from the usual experience with Telltale’s games, as you’re often left longing for more at the end of considerably longer episodes.

The third and final episode for Michonne’s divergence has a considerable amount of work to do to make the miniseries as a whole worthwhile. There’s a chance here for Telltale to take a much more interesting direction but with only one short episode left, I can’t help but feel they’re going to rush to tie up loose ends and return Michonne to her usual crew.