The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries
Review
Episode 2 - Give No Shelter
by Ben Petchey
reviewed on PC
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The second episode of this Telltale miniseries begins immediately where the first episode wraps up. Michonne, Pete, and Sam are first tasked with getting off of the floating shanty town away from the not-so notorious antagonists Rendall and Norma.
Dull and predictable
I praised the first episode in the way that it delved into Michonne as a character – tackling her troubling past without being cheesy about it. In Give No Shelter, Michonne is just reacting to the stuff that’s going on around her with the occasional hallucination reminding the player of her dark past. Despite these hallucinations being far and few between they seem to be the most structured part of the story, even if it is just retouching on what we already know from the first episode to keep us wanting more.
The impending threat of Rendall and Norma is there, but it is disappointing. I was hoping that the story would make a 180 causing Michonne and Norma to team up and face an even bigger threat, but it seems that the story is following the dull, predictable path I hoped it wouldn’t. Without spoiling it, a character – one that I had no real time to start to care about – gets killed, and it’s almost as cliché as a character listening to loud music while everyone dies around them.
However, Samira Wiley continues to deliver a fantastic performance of Michonne and the props to the animators too with handling Michonne’s looks of disdain and anger. There’s no real “dull” moments, objectively speaking, but the story is so formulaic that it doesn’t require a lot effort to guess what is going to go down next. And that is a shame, because one of the main alluring things about The Walking Dead universe, is the not knowing what is going to happen next. The Walking Dead: Michonne has a few “oh shit” moments, but even those are jaded by trashy horror tropes that are hard to not roll your eyes at.
Brief and underwhelming
If this was a typical five or six episode ordeal like the main Walking Dead series, Give No Shelter would be a welcome down-episode that could be used to develop characters further and build up an impending threat the group will face. Instead, it’s a very brief, underwhelming episode with little character-anything other than a little backstory on Sam. While I have no doubts that Michonne’s hallucinations and the main storyline will be neatly tied together in the final episode, I can’t help but notice how rushed we are as players to become attached to characters we have just met and care about what happens to them. And judging from dialogue in this – barely over an hour long – episode, I can take a pretty educated guess at who will be biting the dust in the next, final episode.
5.0
fun score
Pros
Action-packed, Great performance of Michonne by Samira Wiley.
Cons
Dull story, predictable deaths, rushed.
