Episodes
Sunday Jul 13, 2014
Review - The Wolf Among Us
Sunday Jul 13, 2014
Sunday Jul 13, 2014
This is a review for The Wolf Among Us as a whole. The review was done on the PC using the keyboard and mouse for the controls. You can get more videogame news and thoughts from Anthony by following him on Twitter @Killroycantkill.
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Telltale has been the leading developer in the resurgence of older PC style adventure games and using episodic content to space out their releases. The last big success, The Walking Dead is loved by critics and players the world over. Now the company has decided to take a break from zombies and focus on the comic book Fables. A more adult sometimes twisted take on fairy tales you know and love.
In the world of Fables all of the fairy tale characters and creatures have been driven out of their world and forced to live in the human one. In this canonical prequel you take on the role of Bigby Wolf, or The Big Bad Wolf as you might know him better. He is the lead Detective in Fabletown, a little area in New York City that the Fables have made their own. Bigby is trying to turn away from his previous evil ways of blowing down houses and eating grandmothers to help the people. But things turn into high gear when the head of a known Fable appears on the doorstep of the apartment.
The story is dark to say the least, and just like the source material the game is able to strike this balance between grittiness and fantasy which allows for moments of seriousness, especially since something you’ll be talking with a frog in human clothing who is standing upright. Bigby works with Snow White, Bluebeard, Nerissa (Former Little Mermaid) and many other characters to find out who is behind the murder of Faith, a Fable girl who is working in an underground Fable prostitution ring to make ends meet.
Just like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us lets the player “choose” how the story will unfold. During certain times in character interaction you will have four options to choose from and depending on the choice certain characters may change the way they see you, in turn being more or less helpful in future episodes. But just like in The Walking Dead, after conversing with friends about their experiences you quickly start to realize the game is more on rails than it lets you believe. The choices are more curves in the path rather than major detours. Every chapter will eventually lead you to the same end point, but the choice of being the monster others expect Bigby Wolf to be or not depends on the player. Noticing that these choices do not affect the overall story as advertising may lead you to believe was a bigger disappointment the more I thought about it in The Walking Dead. Though in The Wolf Among Us this gripe seems to matter much less because from the outset the game is very much about trying to tell a linear murder mystery and doesn’t lead the player believe otherwise.
The choices affect Bigby Wolf more than they affect the story. You eventually notice they are all about how you want the town to see Bigby and how they will react to you when eventually trying to get information out of them. I personally took the more pacifist route but there are plenty, PLENTY of options for Bigby to be the villain all the other Fabletown citizens expect him to be.
In-between dialog choices and cutscenes you are given the freedom of walking around areas, finding clues and putting together what might have happened at whatever crime scene or location you are in. Navigation using the keyboard makes for a somewhat clunky experience, and combined with fixed camera perspectives it can be annoying to move around in the environment, especially when moving from one perspective to the other. In these detective portions, finding the right clues and putting them together with what characters have to say is not very hard, but it makes you feel like a part of the world, rather than someone watching it through a computer monitor watching things unfold. Also these clues function as a secondary type of choice that differs from the normal dialog choices. Not finding a certain clue, or not confronting a character on certain contradictions will make other situations more difficult in the future, but the game always allows you to make up for your mistakes if you are good enough of a wordsmith.
It’s a shame that The Wolf Among Us doesn’t change the fact that decisions in Telltale games aren’t as major as they make them out to be. But the use of the Fables franchise is amazing and it lends itself amazingly well to an adventure game. Truly this is the best adventure game from them to date. Yes, even topping The Walking Dead.
4/5
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