The Walking Dead: Michonne - Episode 1: In Too Deep Reviews
Given it has no ties (at least that we've seen yet) to the previous seasons or to what may come, for now the title has the potential to be something intriguing and different from the usual The Walking Dead experience, though whether it's solely a diversion until the proper Season 3 remains to be seen.
"In Too Deep" gets The Walking Dead: Michonne off to a rocky start, with the introduction of uninteresting characters, a drab story, and a flat ending. Yet the exploration of Michonne's past and her emotional demons is fascinating, and offers much potential for the future.
The Walking Dead: Michonne is supplementary at best. It's a sidestory that fills in a brief gap in a much bigger narrative. There are hints of more interesting things to come, but as of the first episode, this is far from essential for either fans of The Walking Dead comics or Telltale's other episodic games. It's a diversion, and not a great one.
The first episode of "The Walking Dead: Michonne," serves up nice production values and a strong protagonist that commands attention. At the same time, it lacks the tension and suspense of the debut episode of Telltale's first Walking Dead game, which should be a strong point for a story-driven game based on a horror-survival series. With the setup out of the way, let's hope this new series steps up its game and freshens up its familiar story-adventure formula in the following episodes.
Michonne travels the apocalyptic world, never staying in the same place long and never letting false promises of security get in her way. She never gives in to threats and faces adversity head on, which makes for a promising adventure.
Michonne is a fascinating character, and one that makes for some interesting storytelling. Unfortunately, the first episode of her tale loses steam after the first few minutes, and boils down into something that feels like it's been done before.
All things considered, The Walking Dead: Michonne is off to a decent start with plenty of room for improvement. Most of the new characters may feel like zombie fodder, but they've got some interesting personalities that will be fun to follow.
Though some new ground is tread, the first episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne doesn't bring much we didn't already know to the front.
Despite the burdens of a slow opening and short length, The Walking Dead: Michonne Episode 1 - In Too Deep expands on Telltale's established methods in clever ways, and delivers a promising start to the franchise's first miniseries.
To be fair, it's standard Walking Dead fare from Telltale. There isn't much of a difference, and to those who didn't read the graphic novel, and don't know what happened to Michonne during her disappearance from Rick Grimes' group, there isn't much to be said here.
More of the same just isn't good enough.
It denies the player a blank slate through which to make their own choices. Michonne is in a strange space between brand promotional piece and a true season of The Walking Dead game. However, all of that said, the compressed three-episode nature of Michonne could be to blame for that, and only time will tell if the full work coheres into something more than the slight thing we have in the first episode.
In Too Deep isn't bad, nor does it fully suggest that The Walking Dead: Michonne will be a letdown. But if this helping was any indication, it would appear that splitting this side game up into an episodic adventure was a bad idea. As a first episode, this lays the groundwork for the rest of the game, but it doesn't find the time to do anything else significant as well. Hopefully Michonne's journey picks up some steam next time, but for now you'd probably be better off waiting for the whole shebang to assemble itself.
Telltale have a written a compelling start of a trilogy that manages to immerse you without tweaking the formula.
The first episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne is a fun, interesting journey into the psyche of Michonne and how she handles a new violent group of survivors.
In Too Deep is yet another solid addition to Telltale's growing portfolio.
This brief journey into Michonne's world of The Walking Dead has begun with a promising start and has the potential to be an extremely good game, exploring mature themes but maintaining a good degree of tension. Telltale have well established Michonne; now they need to show us just what she is capable of.
Will you enjoy In Too Deep if you liked Telltale's other The Walking Dead series? Absolutely. Does it stand up to our expectations based on the previous series? Not really. A Walking Dead game in shape and form, Michonne just lacks the tension in atmosphere and decision making.
New cast, new story, new creative team - just what The Walking Dead needs.
She's no Clementine