Last year, Telltale Games set the gaming industry on fire with their episodic adventure, The Walking Dead. The game, with its mature storyline and well-developed characters, was a hit with both critics and players, and it proved that the adventure genre was quite alive. A year after the accolades and awards for The Walking Dead, Telltale brings to us their newest adventure title, The Wolf Among Us.
Like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us is based on a comic book, this time the Vertigo-published Fables. Unlike The Walking Dead though, which has a simple to understand concept, Fables is more complex.
Forced out of their homeland by a dark adversary, characters from various fairy and folk tales have created a community in New York City called Fabletown. The characters, who refer to themselves as Fables, go about their daily lives while shielding their true identities from the mundane masses. Where one might be a princess or a queen in their world, here they are bankers and dock workers. Due to our natural familiarity with the characters from their literary works, it presents an interesting dynamic that is fun to explore.
When you hear fairy tales, you immediately think children’s stories, but Fables is anything but. The series deals with mature themes and can often get dark, perfect for a follow-up to The Walking Dead.
Faith, the first episode of The Wolf Among Us, introduces us to Fabletown Sheriff, Bigby Wolf, whom we all know as the Big Bad Wolf of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs fame. Answering a call from Mr.Toad in regards to a domestic disturbance involving The Woodsman, Sheriff Wolf finds himself a bit out of his league, and things begin to quickly unravel.
The episode feels much like a noir detective story, a welcome change from the zombie horror of The Walking Dead. And Bigby makes for a great character, charismatic yet withdrawn, a man that is struggling with his role in this world. And he isn’t the only one that struggles with his role, as others look upon him with disdain because of his past transgressions in the homeland.
As Bigby, the player is forced to make choices, some simple and seemingly inconsequential while others seem to have more weight to them. There are some very clear divergences that–based on the preview for the next episode–point to what was major and what was not. Still, if The Walking Dead taught us anything, it is that decisions in a Telltale game are often not what they appear, at least at first.
While the story and characters are wholly engaging, the gameplay isn’t. The Wolf Among Us features nearly identical gameplay to that of The Walking Dead. This wouldn’t be an issue if the game didn’t have a string of set action moments where the erratic, non-contextual quick time events took center stage. It does and they do, making the gameplay, at its best, on par with The Walking Dead. Still much like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us lives and dies by its storytelling and so far, there is no knocking that aspect.
Surprisingly, while the game doesn’t necessarily play any better, it does seem to run better. While there are some frame hitches here and there, they were minuscule at best and didn’t detract from my playing experience. And enhancing my experience was the color palette and art style. As clichéd as it sounds, The Wolf Among Us feels like a comic book come to life.
The first episode will most likely run you about two hours for an initial playthrough, and it is two hours well spent. Telltale might not have fully figured out the gameplay integration, but they’ve gotten everything else right this time around. It comes together in a great first episode.
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