Review: The Walking Dead – Season 2 Episode 3 (Xbox 360)
The Walking Dead Season 2 – Episode 3: In Harm’s Way has finally changed the way I make decisions with Clementine. I can’t really point out what caused this because that would be obvious spoilers but In Harm’s Way is an episode that is deceptively slow and much more discussion intensive than earlier episodes. The fact that things are quiet for most of the time should have been the warning that something was coming, I just didn’t realise that it would be more about Clementine and her psyche than the plot itself.
In Harm’s Way is an episode of The Walking Dead where Clementine shows her true colours, if you let it be that way. I won’t say that Telltale Games push you into it, but I found some of the characters in this episode were there to test you, to see if you were ready to make the hard choices because you know they were going to either hold you up or get in your way. Without giving too much away, Reggie will test your patience just a little too far.
The fact is as Clementine you are the leader of the group, no matter how many times you’ll be told you are a child and “the adults are talking”, in the end what you say has more effect than anything others say. When things need done, because Clementine is the focus of the game she tends to end up doing the work. Carver, a character you should know by now pushes your buttons a few too many times about how you and him are alike, and how you will be the future of the small group that he thinks he is protecting. Maybe he is correct in what he says, but we don’t have to accept a future with him in it.
This is where I found my actions changing when it came to Clementine, I knew the group had to escape the current predicament and the only way to do it was to turn Clementine manipulative. I did some things that made me feel bad, but I did it for the good of the group. The fact is Clementine has to protect the group now and make sure they survive, if that means that people outside that group have to come out worst? Then they will just have to suffer. I will admit though that after I’d made Clementine’s decisions, I often have that feeling of guilt that it may come back and bite me later, as usually happens in The Walking Dead.
Looking at the episode as part of the season, In Harm’s Way could be the weakest episode so far. For some reason it made me feel desensitised to the situation Clementine and the group are in, and made me just want to make the evil choices. I could see the group’s shocked looks with some of the decisions I made, and I could see their disappointment, but there was also a growing respect from others. Clementine is turning badass and she’s not afraid to show it, though of course there will be costs to the choices I made.
At the end of the episode there is enough of a cliffhanger to make me look forward to the next episode, but as a whole In Harm’s Way is a slow burner, though this is how it was needed. For the plot of The Walking Dead Season 2 we needed to know just how evil Carver was and just how bad a situation we were in. This may as desensitise you as Clementine, but in many ways it was time to stand up and take control and do what is needed to survive. Now those decisions have been made, it’ll be interesting to see how much I’ve messed up what is to come in the next episode.
Walking Dead Season 2 – Episode 3: In Harm’s Way is out now.
