As with all of Telltale’s games in this genre, In Too Deep is a single player, narrative-driven experience where you get to control a character and decide almost everything they say and do through available choices. For this mini-series (3 episodes), Telltale have chosen to let you play as Michonne which is great if you ask me, she’s one of the TV show’s main characters and it’s great to get a bit more insight into her.
It starts out brilliantly, I was hooked after the first minute or two which isn’t surprising as I loved seasons 1 and 2 of Telltales’s The Walking Dead, with Season 1 being one of my favourite games ever (if you haven’t played it then shame on you). After watching the TV series and reading a few of the comics it was great to play as Michonne, however bear in mind that you don’t have to have played the other games, watched the TV series or read the comics before you play this. The mini-series is set during a period where she isn’t shown in the comics, so tries to explain what she was doing during the absence in what I can only assume is a completely stand-alone story.
I was concerned that three episodes wasn’t going to be enough for a new story to develop, but the pacing was good and we got to meet what I imagine are most, if not all the important characters as well as the main villain. The story itself doesn’t seem like it will be much of a revelation, but Telltale have surprised me in the past so who knows where this is going to end up, the only thing I found was that the episode was a little short, coming in at just under two hours.
I felt that the choices I was offered didn’t really have any major consequences to them, and that the episode probably played out pretty much the same regardless of what I did, but as I saw with Tales from the Borderlands choices that seemed insignificant can actually crop up later on and play an important part so I can only hope to get something more back in later episodes.
The action sequences were great fun and really intense as usual, and I still love the style used for The Walking Dead episodes. If you haven’t played a Telltale game recently, the action sequences are made up of quick time events (QTEs) where you have to button bash and time button presses along with instructions on the screen, which normally I’d find really boring but that’s definitely not the case when you’re trying to stop a zombie from chewing your face off!
Summary
I love The Walking Dead universe and the games that Telltale have created and really can’t wait to play the other episodes in this mini-series, but for me this episode was just a bit too short and lacked any major story-altering decisions.
