Michonne cuts her way through the shrubbery, foliage falling to the ground as memories haunt her. Two little girls lost, memories of a life long gone, a single bullet and a machete. And just like that, Telltale has brought us back to the world of The Walking Dead. Bleak, troubling, human.
Michonne stands independent of both previous seasons of Telltale’s Walking Dead, but any reader of the graphic novels will be familiar with the titular character. That familiarity penetrates the story from the start – no time wasted establishing the narrative or world, we know how bad things have gotten and we’ve all lived and lost alongside these people, despite never having met them before. We are a solitary survivor, the verbal option early on to tell that “you haven’t seen the shit I’ve seen” too easy to not take.
But in choosing to say this, both Michonne and myself were shot down – “You think you’re the only one who’s been through shit?” a stark reminder that the cynical approach is too easy in a world where the only human universal is loss.
But there’s more than emotional residence here – by far the most action we’ve seen in a Walking Dead episode penetrates the narrative. For the first time we play a character who knows how to fight, to keep herself safe and to wield a weapon. There is far less fear of a sudden attack taking the player unaware, as rarely does Michonne feel any less than completely in control of any situation.
And while these characters are doubtless cliche and the plot so far predictable, often the best stories in life raise from the mundane; after all, not every day can be the end of the world, and the quietly adult themes of Michonne reflect a narrative unafraid to test the player in ways the main seasons haven’t. Indeed, in both seasons the still and the quiet offer solace from the danger of change, while Michonne offers the opposite. For a woman whose past is as torn as our protagonists, keeping busy is a scarily poignant escape (a fact she herself acknowledges).
This is why it pains so much to see Telltale’s work burdened with an ever-older engine, seemingly determined to hang up or freeze whenever a twist or dramatic moment tries to escape. A saving grace presents itself in Telltale’s own new ‘cloud backup’, which creates far more frequent restore points than in previous games. One has to wonder at what point dropping support for some older platforms will be worth the move; with Life is Strange upping the narrative genres limitations so recently, the Telltale engine can’t help feel mildly suffocative.
There is a rush to Michonne which sees hurried characterisation and underdeveloped narrative threads splayed throughout the first episode, but as a quick drink to tide us until a full third season, a little rush is fine.
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